Fighting with Randall

After reading last night's comments from Zachary, I decided to focus really hard on support during my practice.  I agree that I probably don't have enough support to keep singing with my voice at full size for as long as someone younger who's been singing longer, but I'm not sure I agree that lack of support is what makes my voice "coarse".  I do think that when my voice gets coarse (too much talking?  too much humidity? too much pollen?) if I had a superhuman level of support I might be able to push past the problem, but I don't.

Today I didn't go out at all (hence my voice was less coarse in general - I'm sure one of yesterday's culprits was the humidity) but had a frustrating day dealing with the work web site (they want me to purchase some kind of software, but as I can view it sometimes and in fact was able to download all the work I needed today and for the next week at least, I am not ready to throw money at the problem yet.)

Anyhow I finally took a practice break after dinner and overall I sounded better (I could easily sing arpeggios up to a B and after some struggle a C) and the first two rounds of that treacherous ascending phrase in the Thompson weren't bad, but then I tried singing it with the recording and I could just tell I wasn't going to make it up there unless I just girded my loins and screamed (when I say I "scream" I don't mean I do anything harmful to the voice, only to the choir director's ears).

Now (I hope you're there Zachary because I'd like some feedback) I think the problem is support but not in the sense of not having enough support.  I certainly have enough support to sing that phrase if I'm not tired, even to sing it with the high A mezzo piano, not fortissimo.  But I've had so many bad experiences with that note that when I come to it, particularly if I think ok, now this is the acid test, I panic and don't breathe properly and lose my support.  It's like a horse balking at a fence.  And this has happened to me over and over and over and over and over.  I have had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bad experiences, mosly with B flats (B naturals have always been unattainable for singing in public really) but sometimes with As as well.  And if I'm singing choral music, it's not as if I can say to myself: "OK, on a good day it will be pretty and on a bad day it will be kind of crass, but it will always be" the way I do with certain arias.  I mean I've heard some pretty ugly high As come out of Olga Borodina and Giulietta Simionato, the latter even on recordings.  The problem is that if it isn't pretty I have to shut up so of course I'm just terrified. 

And actually the better my dramatic singing is, the harder it is to sing up there as softly as a bunch of untrained sopranos with one professional coloratura thrown in.  Of course if I were in a paid choir I wouldn't be in the soprano section anyhow.  I do  like being there because second soprano is the part that suits me best, and we often do pieces with two soprano parts.   I doubt the choir director would want me singing alto on this piece: except for the high A (the A flat is no problem for me) most of it's in a lower middle register and the alto part is even lower. 

I just don't know what to do about this panic.  I have less of it than I used to and the more positive reinforcement I get the less panic I have.  But of course the choir director wants me to sing everything above an E as softly as I can, even in most solos, and then there's my partner telling me how much she hates high singing - at least mine.  So I've just been cowed.

I mean I don't have stage fright at all!!  I can get up and sing solos in a limited range - including things requiring enormous breath control like "Et Exsultavit" and, yes "Rejoice Greatly" (which only goes up to an A flat and that only in passing) until the cows come home.

A Frustrating Day

Today has been a frustrating day from start to finish.

As I'm a freelancer, this isn't a "holiday". I mean it's a day to remember men and women who died in various wars, but it's not an "oh good free time!" day. Now any day can be a day off - or not.

It started out that the web site I need to access to download work is only partially operative. Possibly it's "holiday site maintenance", which of course on-site staff are told about but freelancers are not. Finally I was able to download a few manuscripts (which I need to work on when I'm done writing here) but they're not the A priority ones.

I decided if I wasn't going to work, I could practice, and just have had a totally frustrating time. There's a way that my voice can get "coarse" and not want to do what I want it to. I'm not sure what I mean by that, as I don't understand the language of vocal pedagogy, really. I have discussed this with my teacher and he just sort of blew it off. If it were a continual problem I might think it was a technical issue, but I'm really not sure what it is. It usually manifests itself - surprise! - as trouble with the upper register and/or singing up there softly.

I can just feel the weight, too. It starts on an F or a G and I can't get rid of it. My first round of arpeggios got stuck on a B, which is a bad sign. Getting stuck on a C is all in a day's work. I tried just singing them on vvvvv, a trick I learned from my teacher and I was actually able to phonate a tiny squeak on a C but just barely. Finally I did better and went on to the Randall Thompson but it was really bad news. For a while I had been able to do something with that high A that wasn't an Amneris style "blast the windows out" note but now it's gone again. I just want to cry. If the note comes out that loud I can't sing it at all in the piece and then people think I can't sing up there which makes me boiling mad. It makes me want to cry because I feel sometimes that I have this huge voice that I don't have the energy to support for long periods, and no venue for singing appropriate rep, in, and that in the venue I do have this is not appreciated. I mean people at the church do appreciate my singing but I'm allowed to sing such a limited range of things, really. Never anything above a G or maybe an occasional G sharp and never anything where I can let it rip.

I feel like The Ugly Dachshund - for those who don't know it's about a Great Dane who lives with a bunch of Dachshunds and continually feels like a "failed" Dachshund.

In any event, the surprising news was that I sang the deadly phrase from the Amneris/Radames duet with the high B flat in it and it wasn't hard at all.

It's sort of like the B flat has gotten easier but the A has gotten harder. What I mean is I used to have about a 99 percent success rate with As and about an 85 percent success rate with B flats and now I have about a 90 percent success rate with both.

Plans

Well, family is not being any more supportive but plans are moving forward.

Yesterday I went with my teacher to look at the concert venue. It's small (seats 40) - about the size of the studio where they hold the coaching classes I've gone to - but unlike that studio it's pretty, with pictures on the walls and knicknacks on the built-in shelves. And a shawl draped over the piano. And using it will be even cheaper than we thought....there's a room next door we can use for a rehearsal that's only $15 an hour (the performance space is $25).

I think my teacher is really getting excited about this.

We are going to do either the Amneris/Radames duet or the Azucena/Manrico scene beginning with "Condotta" and going through to the end of the duet. (The latter choice is easier.) So I need to learn the Trovatore duet.

Then probably the Laura/Emzo scene from Gioconda beginning with his "Cielo e Mar", going through the duet, and then ending with my aria "Stella del Marinar".

Those will be the two big numbers. Whatever else we do will depend upon who else is going to sing with us. If we get a soprano I might do the Aida/Amneris duet which is very easy to sing (for me).

And of course I will sing "Mon Coeur". (Whether I do the G, the PG, or the R rated version will depend upon who's in the audience, of course!)

My teacher also mentioned the final scene from Carmen (which I don't know and don't think of as concert fare, but we'll see).

I'm sounding really good. I have a handle on the high A in the Randall Thompson. I've given up trying to sing it pianissimo. If I try that all I do is choke on it. Last rehearsal I sang it mezzopiano and didn't get any complaints. And the attempts I've made with this have added a new dimension to my singing. Basically I'm doing the backward scoop with an imaginary "w" in front of the note. It's funny. I've tried to sing high notes by thinking down and thinking forward and continually had a problem with them getting "stuck", but this backward scoop drops my larynx without causing tension. At my lesson Thursday my teacher and I sang through the Gioconda scene and he said I sang the B flat on Laura's entrance (never a difficult note for me, because it's in the middle of a phrase and she hasn't done a lot of singing before it) better than he has ever heard me sing a B flat. I am continuing to work on that until we've through with the Randall Thompson because I worry that the Verdi will make my voice too heavy. The Gioconda scene is something I sang with The Mentor and it was during our rehearsals for it that our relationship began to disintegrate. But I hardly think of him at all now, other than that I hope he's proud of me.

When Family is Not Supportive (2nd Reprise)

This is the third time this leitmotiv has occurred in this blog and it won't be the last. For more, you can read here which will lead you back to an entry that is earlier still.

The good news is that I think I may have prodded my teacher into being proactive with me about planning this fall concert. He wrote to me about changing my lesson time and I wrote back asking if he'd gotten my email about the concert venue and how to visit it and then I said as tactfully as I could that I was upset about not being able to find a peer group, as I wrote here. He wrote back to me (I think this had never occurred to him - he only knew that I was ticked off that he asked another mezzo to sub for his wife, not me)and said he would think seriously about this and try to introduce me to some people he knows from the pay to sing outfit (I can't be the only person on the planet who developed a passion for classical singing at a later age and has the skill of an emerging pro, the enthusiasm of a kid, and the healthy, fit, body of someone in prime middle age). Then, more miraculously, he started talking about the concert as if he were really going to participate in it!

OK, so that's the good news.

The bad news is how my partner reacted when I mentioned this. Now remember. We're talking about one concert, planned five months from now, not in conflict with anything existing on my calendar, of music I know, that might take at most two or three rehearsals. I won't be spending a ton of money on coaching, nor will I be rehearsing once a week.

So guess what my partner had to say. "I don't know why you're doing this. Weren't you just complaining that you don't work enough hours?" Well guess why I don't work enough hours??? Because I spend all day Saturday shopping for her and doing her laundry, she calls me four or five times a day to discuss her financial and health problems not to mention gossiping about her friends. Then I accompany her to various appointments, not routine ones, thank goodness she's now well enough to go by herself, but I spend enough time "doing for" her that her problems are front and center on my screen for at least five or six hours a week that I could be working (I'm not counting the pleasant happy family times we have together).

No one knows how hard it is to have to overcome all my own fears and insecurities, not just about am I good enough (and yes, I know I'm good enough to sing a concert of excerpts from Verdi etc.....I've heard my teachers' pals and students from the pay to sing outfit and I would say I fall somewhere in the middle in terms of how good I sound) but also about why am I doing this when I'm 60 and have so little money and so many family responsibilities. So then to have not just no one supportive in my life, but someone who actively does everything she can to discourage me and argue with me - no one knows how devastating that is.

So why am I doing this, exactly? I guess because I feel I'm being led. The fact that The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed found me in a House of Worship and got me to sing at the age of 54 was not an accident. Long after the weak-kneed passion I had for him has passed, my passion for singing has remained. I know I have this big dramatic Verdi mezzo voice in me that needs to get out. Doing nothing but singing church music where I have to keep the volume down is like keeping a lion in a cage. Don't get me wrong. I love that music not to mention that as a result of singing it I have better pianissimo skills than most singers in my fach even famous ones.

But if you knew someone who could run a marathon, maybe only a few more times before she's too old, would you keep her cooped up?

Normally I call my partner every morning to see how she is. Well, last night I hung up on her in the middle of her telling me why I shouldn't be planning that concert. It's very hard not to pick up the phone and call her (she doesn't own or know how to use a computer) but I won't.

Minding My Own Business

When people go to jail, they are advised to "do their own time", meaning, basically, "mind their own business". It's odd that that's a phrase that often pops into my head when I'm struggling with something in a choir piece. Being in a choir is about blending, no? It's about other people. And certainly no two things could have less in common than a choir, which is spiritually and artistically nourishing, and jail, which is not.

But I find that phrase helpful because I tend to get thrown by other people. I don't mean by their singing, but by wondering how I measure up. There is, of course, the hotshot young coloratura, who just celebrated her 25th birthday, who has cast iron lungs, and can wail through all the choir soprano parts for hours without tiring, and compared to whom, in that setting, I always find myself wanting. Then there is the woman who always tells me to shush, because I'm singing too loud. She has done that less lately, possibly because her own voice has blossomed, also because we became friendly and bonded around something outside of choir.

When I say I "do my own time" it's also about the fact that my primary reason for being there is to keep my voice in shape in musically and spiritually nourishing surroundings. I am not getting paid, nor am I a member of the congregation although this year I did pledge to give the church some money, because I love the church and the people there, although the idea of even thinking of becoming Baptised makes me squirm. (I can see my Jewish mother coming back from reading Henry James in Heaven to haunt me.) I wish I could say I'm singing to serve God but I'm really not. I'm doing it for me. Serving God is a nice byproduct and one that I don't overlook, but it's not the main reason I'm there.

So the best way not to get nervous, self-conscious, and bent out of shape over a stressful high note (what else stresses me after all? nothing! I am certainly never stressed out by singing a solo that only goes up to an F or even a G) is to imagine I'm all by myself in my kitchen with the water running, trying to make the best possible sound that I can.

So Wednesday night when we got to the Randall Thompson, at the end of a long rehearsal, I stood up (there's no reason for me to sit if I have to sing a high A - why should I?) and kept the focus on myself. I got out about three lovely pianissimo A flats. The A natural I blew because I was afraid it would come out too loud so I just squeaked it and then crescendoed into the next descending note, but the most important thing is I didn't get paralyzed with nerves. So that's progress.

Now it's back to washing clothes and singing it again and again and again and again.

Tune in for the next update.

When Beautiful Isn't Good Enough

Well, this afternoon I spent about 20 minutes solid on those ascending phrases in the Randall Thompson piece. It's called "Two Worlds" and it's about aging. We're singing it in a service dedicated to members of the congregation who are over 80. One of them is the beloved violinist I perform with sometimes. I'm not sure who the others are. That's even older than my partner, who will be 77 next month.

I produced numerous truly gorgeous shimmering high A naturals but none of them soft enough for this context, I don't think. A few nice mezzopianos but that's not good enough, certainly not from a voice like mine. The A flat really isn't a problem. Unless I'm having a very bad day I can sing softly on an A flat. But just that half step stretch is more than I can handle. In any other setting if it's a choice between singing too loud and not beautiful enough and choking and sounding like I can't sing the note at all I go for option 1. But I seem, as I said, to be much more inhibited now. So what kills me is that people probably think I can't sing that note at all which is not true!!!

Too bad I can't put those beautiful notes to some use. I guess I have a few arias I can use them in but there's no venue.

Actually by the end of the day, when I was supposed to be working on a bibliography and I turned the choir CD on (I never have music on when I'm editing an article but a lot of bibliographies are just rote work) and decided to go for broke and sing with it, the A flat was gorgeous (and probably quiet enough) and the A natural was quiet enough and if not gorgeous, I didn't choke on it. The problem is I can only do something like this if all the stars are in alignment, i.e. I'm well fed, well-rested, haven't been talking too much (my speaking voice, which is down in the basement, is my worst enemy....I developed a voice like that as an adolescent because it sounded both sexy and ladylike), and am not self-conscious, and that's not good enough.

I know a lot of my obsessive frustration about that note (which isn't all bad - as I said in an earlier post all the work I'm doing on this will have a payoff somewhere else if not here) is really about other things. Do you think if someone had asked me to sing "Mon Coeur" in a concert next week and I knew I could strut my stuff in a sexy dress I would be that bent out of shape because I can't sing a high A quietly enough for a choir? Or if I were singing a duet from Aida in a concert that someone else cast? Or if I felt my singing mattered to anyone enough to be steered in some direction not just vocally but situationally? So I think all this agonizing is a stand in for other things. I can't have the things I want but I can sweat and sweat and sweat until I can sing if not a perfect pianissimo High A at least a sweeter more beautiful one than I have heretofore, and this is something that I have control over not someone else.

This sort of thing makes me understand why women become anorexic or addicted to running when their lives are frustrating.

Still Can't Find a Peer Group

I have a few minutes to kill before meeting my partner at a museum to commemorate my first Mother's Day without my mom, and probably should be working, but there didn't seem to be enough time, so I'm writing about a major concern here. In a way it's like throwing something out into the great unknown, because I don't get that many comments, but I'm just not up for using the Forum any more - because I couldn't find a peer group there either and just ended up envying everyone.

What do I mean by a peer group?

Classically trained singers who are older (40 plus or better yet 50 plus), who are studying seriously and singing better and better. Singers who, as the esteemed Cindy Sadler tactfully has said "still have work that needs to be done", but who are on an upswing, not a downswing.

So, for example, even though at 60 I don't sound as polished as 90% of the people I sing with at a Meetup, I sing better than I did at 55 or 57.

People who are hungry to sing opera rep in front of people but don't have $300 to plunk down to sing with a pay-to-sing group (or the time to rehearse several nights a week). People who would be eager to help me plan a concert of operatic scenes and arias at a reasonably-priced venue because it's not likely they'll get to sing this rep in public anywhere else but it's rep that they can sing, maybe not with 100% technically perfect sound all the time, but certainly well enough that it's not "cringeworthy".

Who Have I Met So Far?

1. Young people (under 40) who still think they can have careers.
2. People over 40 who are in demand on the high level amateur full-length opera production circuit and who occasionally sing in D houses. Many of these have managers or agents. These people have all known each other for years.
3. People over 50 who are winding down, who don't think they sing as well as they used to. These people have all known each other for years also.
4. Amateurs who are just really amateurs and wouldn't be able to sing the kind of opera rep I can sing even if they've had a few lessons.

I think I'm really angry at my teacher. He got all excited when I told him about the concert venue and now he's backing out. I know he sings one or two concerts a year with friends of his who are all his age (they mostly fit criteria 2 or 3). He has never invited me even though he admitted I sounded better than one of the mezzos he did invite to replace his wife when she was ill.

Now he says he doesn't know if he wants to do this concert because he doesn't know how he'll be sounding. Well why doesn't he just sing some of the things he sang in his last concert a few months ago?

So now it's all on me again and I really would like it if someone else would plan something for a change.

I am also, I guess, angry at the man who reached out and offered to help me, which I suppose is ungrateful. I believe he really will help me market the concert if I pull it together but all I wanted was for him to invite me to sing something in one of his concerts.

I feel like such a wallflower. I know that I sing well enough to be on the program at one of these kinds of things but no one invites me.

I went to those meetups at people's suggestion but I didn't meet anyone who was interested in doing anything with me.

I feel like a girl (I'm dating myself here I guess) who keeps asking people to dance and they say "ok" or "maybe" but no one asks her.

We Interrupt our Regular Verdi Programming to Bring You Some Randall Thompson

Well, it's back to good old Randall again. He sure knows how to throw a curve ball to choir sopranos. Every piece of his I've sung, except the "Alleluia", which moves quickly, despite the high tessitura, has a high A in the middle of it that needs to be sung sweetly. Sure it's marked "forte" in the score but that doesn't mean an Amneris forte, it means as loud as your average sweet voiced choir soprano can sing, which for me isn't even piano it's pianissimo.

Over the years I've fooled around with different pianissimo techniques and most of them work up to an A flat but that's it. Somehow, miraculously, I was able to find a little duckbill mouthed way to sing one of dear Randall's A naturals in a piece called "The Last Words" but that was several years ago and for whatever reason my voice is now louder and freer and making it smaller seems harder. Also, I think I've become inhibited now that we have a real conservatory trained coloratura in the soprano section. When it was just me and the untrained sopranos (snark, snark) it was really a toss-up: me being obnoxiously loud or the sound getting "tinny" up there.

At yesterday's choir practice I held my own throughout a Bach piece in quite a high tessitura (it basically went back and forth between the C above middle C and the G below high C). For whatever reason, maybe because the piece moved, I had no trouble with it at all. (I can sing "Rejoice Greatly", remember?) My nemesis seems to be sustained legato singing at the upper reaches of my range in a context where I have to sound sweet. An Amneris roar, I've got. Coloratura up there, I've got. But not a nice float.

My main interest in conquering this is twofold: first, it's a challenge. This is a skill that I want for its own sake. Whatever I do with it. And even if I fail with this note, whatever I've sweated for will stand me in good stead with something else. I also want to overcome nerves and inhibitions. I want to be able to do this skill as well as I can do it, sitting down in that roomfull of people. I don't want to panic and have my larynx rise like I'm going to choke.

The article by Jane Eaglen that I referenced in this post has stayed with me. If I drill that page with the high A over and over and over (there's another page with the same progression going up to an A flat that gives me less trouble) something will surface. Either that, or the choir director will tell me to sing the alto part or to sing the soprano part minus that note. Which wouldn't be the end of the world. If I ever got a paying job in a choir it would be as an alto section leader anyhow, I just find the challenges of singing soprano are more apt to help me learn new skills that I can use with my opera rep, as long as I don't squeeze my larynx in the wrong way.

So here's how I've fared so far: trying for a tight "oo", which is just like an exercise I do in the studio, makes the note too loud. It's actually "small" in the context of my general singing, but it's way too loud for the choir. The big cottonmouth doesn't do well up that high. On an A flat, yes. On an A natural, no. So I'm going for an open mouthed scoop, then crescendoing immediately into the descending scale so that I don't choke because I can't keep that position for very long. And I must have that downward progression down cold!! It's chromatic and very difficult and it's easy to end up on the wrong notes, which I must not do.

In other news, plans are more or less moving forward for my Fall concert although my teacher is getting cold feet again. He says he doesn't want to commit to it because he doesn't know how he'll be sounding or feeling. Well, if he backs out I can find some other people. It just makes me feel a lot of despair over not having a peer group. Most people my age who sing are winding down, either vocally or psychologically. So once again I feel between an rock and a hard place: young people who are learning, older people who are winding down, and amateurs who are really amateurs and can't sing the kind of music I can. So I feel very alone and at sea again.

Part of me is touched that the man I spoke of in this post was willing to help me organize and market my concert but part of me just wishes he would have invited me to sing something in one of his concerts so all the work wasn't on me.