At first glance this post will seem to diverge from the topic of the day, but there is a connection. As a late-starting classical singer who, no matter how hard I work, no matter how well I now sing, will never ever be as polished as someone who spent 8 years at a conservatory as a vocal performance major, this article really hit home. I am probably not what he means by a true amateur or a hobbyist. I sing well, well enough to give solo recitals, sometimes with other people, at nursing homes and senior centers, and to sing featured solos at church services, but anyone who has spent years at a conservatory and who mingles in those circles, can tell that I am not the real deal. I still have rough spots in my singing technique (far fewer with each passing year, and I am 68 now), I am not 100% musically literate, my language pronunciation is not always perfect, and I often look awkward on stage (not very awkward; I am good at connecting with audiences, but I am unsure how to enter and exit, bow, and keep my arms still if I think doing this or that will help my singing).
The author wrote "Especially when it comes to physical pursuits, but also with many other endeavors, most of us will be truly excellent only at whatever we started doing in our teens." Which is what I have been saying all along.
What is so sad, is that, with performing arts at least (I think sports are different, maybe) there is no place for people like me. There are all sorts of choruses, but no performance groups that are simply for older avocational performers who may need a little polishing. Or if there were one, it would, like all the "amateur" opera groups, be overrun with out of work professionals and young people looking to get a leg up. So what I'm saying is there are not performance groups for people like me that have a way of keeping certain types of people out.
And then there's the vitriol. Which is one reason I have stopped participating in singer discussion groups. I find my blood pressure is a lot lower if I stick to groups that talk about pets, British tv, and literature. If I want to know about singing I can talk to my voice teacher, my choir directors, or my accompanists. Until I made contact with these groups I had no idea that by referring to myself as an "opera singer" (well yes, that's what I've trained to sing and that is the kind of music I do sing even if it's just in a nursing home) I was besmirching an art form, leading the public astray, and doing damage to OPERA as a cause to be promoted. I actually find that hard to believe. If anything could turn people off opera as an art form it's the mud-slinging these people get involved in, with each other and at people they deem "their inferiors".
To the second part of this post, it seems that it doesn't link up with the horrors of this week, but in a way it does. I read an article in the Times a few days ago that spoke of the world that Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford grew up in: unrealistically high expectations, high achievement, and escaping from the pressure with drunken debauchery.
Some of that was familiar territory to me, some not. My father was a professor and most of my parent's friends were doctors, academics, and school principals. Their sons were expected to be doctors. Their daughters were expected to be what I call "Jane Austen" girls. Do well in school, be smart, but not smarter than the boys, and stick to the arts: literature, painting, playing a musical instrument, singing a little, taking some ballet classes. Get into a good college so that you can meet the right kind of husband. My generation rebelled, but differently. First and foremost we rebelled by rejecting achievement. Turn on, tune in, and drop out. And for many of us, we stayed "dropped out" long after we discontinued drug or alcohol abuse.
The parties described by Blasey Ford and others, though, are quite different from the ones I attended (and I was a little older). Yes, alcohol flowed freely, drugs were readily available, and there was lots of meaningless casual sex, but nothing was ever violent. Was that because we were the "free love" generation? The men who were there were ones who had found a way to avoid going to Vietnam, who hated war, who, yes, wanted lots of women to be available and didn't want to be tied down, but I don't remember anyone forcing himself on me or anyone else. We were all in it together. Looking back I would call it "quasi-consensual" sex. Things I and other women wouldn't have done it we'd been sober, but I don't remember anyone assaulting or pursuing me if I said "NO", which of course I was more likely to do if I was sober. Love was free then.
Not long after that I became a Lesbian Separatist and we encouraged each other to observe the "Pence rule" if we had to venture beyond the bounds of our sect (mainly this meant at work). Don't consume alcohol at mixed parties (many of us were twelve steppers anyhow). Don't go for a meal alone with a man. Dress modestly. If you work in an office with straight men and it's too conservative for pants suits, make sure your skirt comes below your knees. Don't smile excessively. Be businesslike and matter of fact. Apparently that (and the fact that I worked in an industry that was predominately female) stood me in good stead.
If I am bitter about anything from those days, it is not that I got myself into sleazy situations when I had had too much to drink (or more) but all the waste. Time and energy I could have spent on my talent. Yes, "Especially when it comes to physical pursuits, but also with many other endeavors, most of us will be truly excellent only at whatever we started doing in our teens." Those people must have been around in 1968 or in 1971. Why didn't I take my cue from them?
Showing posts with label other singers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label other singers. Show all posts
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Ditch the Sports Car
I haven't written in a while, despite having had a satisfyingly successful time singing my Bach cantata aria last Sunday. I sang well, and had the delightful surprise of a viola da gamba accompaniment as well as the organ. And people applauded which they never to after a church solo unless it's something bouncy.
But this article caught my eye. It even mentions The Artist's Way, a program that my therapist recommended, which helped me more than anything I became involved in after AA and The Well Spouse.
Yes, I suppose I do fit the profile featured in this article, down to producing several charity concerts (although my takings were in the $100s not $1000s) and my current specialization of singing in nursing homes.
The one thing this article does not mention, however, is what happens when you discover a passion in midlife that you're obviously good at but not as good as the people who are really good at it, who, even if they don't do it for a living, do it as well as the people who are doing it for a living, all went to the same schools, and all know each other?
The exhilaration that I found at first realizing that I could not only sing Dalila but be Dalila at a tiny church "talent show" was quickly followed by years of rage, envy, and despair as a result of not only being rejected at auditions, but also being attacked on all sides by sharks and snarks when I tried to "join the club". I was rejected by all ten or so "amateur" opera companies here because I was too old, too inexperienced, and not polished enough, and was alternately laughed at and ignored by what I call the "Forum Crowd" (a group of lower level professional and semi professional singers who have in common that they all seem to have music performance degrees and hate wannabees, amateurs who are too big for their britches, and anyone without their credentials who thinks she can converse with her betters like a peer.) (And as I wrote this, looking for a link, I saw that their new message board is closed and requires a log in.)
I suppose a Saturday night painter can paint alone, but you can't really sing alone. There's only so far you can go singing arias in your living room, particularly considering that appreciation is pretty thin on the ground if you live, like I do, around the corner from Lincoln Center and have neighbors who go to the Met every week.
So I sing in a church choir, and am a church soloist. The irony of course is that both my parents were atheists (my mother defined herself as a secular Jew) and I am not Baptised. But it is a nice niche. There are real professional singers who cycle in and out of there but they move on to greener pastures or have limited time for solo opportunities. The older retired professionals (I'm thinking of one) are very "been there, done that". Who is going to sing a solo in the summer if they can go away?
And I produce concerts in nursing homes. I have done two since May and will be doing a third next week. And my teacher, who is now back to singing bass-baritone again, is already thinking of a concert of duets (some old some new) that we can do in the Fall or next Spring.
And of course I'm still waiting to be the subject of an op-ed or other newspaper story, like the singer featured today.
But this article caught my eye. It even mentions The Artist's Way, a program that my therapist recommended, which helped me more than anything I became involved in after AA and The Well Spouse.
Yes, I suppose I do fit the profile featured in this article, down to producing several charity concerts (although my takings were in the $100s not $1000s) and my current specialization of singing in nursing homes.
The one thing this article does not mention, however, is what happens when you discover a passion in midlife that you're obviously good at but not as good as the people who are really good at it, who, even if they don't do it for a living, do it as well as the people who are doing it for a living, all went to the same schools, and all know each other?
The exhilaration that I found at first realizing that I could not only sing Dalila but be Dalila at a tiny church "talent show" was quickly followed by years of rage, envy, and despair as a result of not only being rejected at auditions, but also being attacked on all sides by sharks and snarks when I tried to "join the club". I was rejected by all ten or so "amateur" opera companies here because I was too old, too inexperienced, and not polished enough, and was alternately laughed at and ignored by what I call the "Forum Crowd" (a group of lower level professional and semi professional singers who have in common that they all seem to have music performance degrees and hate wannabees, amateurs who are too big for their britches, and anyone without their credentials who thinks she can converse with her betters like a peer.) (And as I wrote this, looking for a link, I saw that their new message board is closed and requires a log in.)
I suppose a Saturday night painter can paint alone, but you can't really sing alone. There's only so far you can go singing arias in your living room, particularly considering that appreciation is pretty thin on the ground if you live, like I do, around the corner from Lincoln Center and have neighbors who go to the Met every week.
So I sing in a church choir, and am a church soloist. The irony of course is that both my parents were atheists (my mother defined herself as a secular Jew) and I am not Baptised. But it is a nice niche. There are real professional singers who cycle in and out of there but they move on to greener pastures or have limited time for solo opportunities. The older retired professionals (I'm thinking of one) are very "been there, done that". Who is going to sing a solo in the summer if they can go away?
And I produce concerts in nursing homes. I have done two since May and will be doing a third next week. And my teacher, who is now back to singing bass-baritone again, is already thinking of a concert of duets (some old some new) that we can do in the Fall or next Spring.
And of course I'm still waiting to be the subject of an op-ed or other newspaper story, like the singer featured today.
Friday, November 27, 2015
On Thanksgiving, and a Requiem for a Nightingale
I had thought of making this two posts, but there's no reason why they can't be one.
Thanksgiving is very important to me. It was on Thanksgiving 1976 that I got together with my partner, so yesterday was our 40th Thanksgiving. There was only one that we didn't spend together: 2006, after we broke up and before I began taking care of her again. As I posted on Facebook, I walked into her apartment that Thanksgiving (the kitchen and the front of the house looked better than they do now, because she had a roommate), one of three guests, but invited earlier than the others, to the sound of Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't She Lovely". Of course it was on an old fashioned record player, because that's where music in the home came from in those days. I was smitten, and the rest is history. I laughingly say that if I had done my Jane Austen style due diligence, the way, apparently, young women do today before they get "hitched" (also, I know of almost no middle class professional woman who ended up with the person she dated at 25), I would have run like hell. Here was someone who had been on public assistance for quite some time (you actually used to be able to live on it if you took the odd babysitting or dog walking gig), who was in trouble with the City Marshall for having defaulted on a credit card, and whose bedroom looked like a war zone, but she nailed me with her charm, wit, and flair for romance. And so she has kept me. Even now, when all we have are fragments of a relationship, she brought tears to my eyes by, when we were walking home from the bus stop, pointing out some ginko leaves that had fallen and saying "see, these are shaped like hearts, just for us!" Priceless.
As for Thanksgiving, I was realizing that the last time I sat at a table in someone's home where the people were related by blood, I was in my 20s, my grandparents were still alive, and my mother and her sister were still on speaking terms. After that I spent Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my partner and some of my mother's neighbors, or at an AA party (sometimes my mother's boss would invite her for the Thanksgiving weekend to her house in the country, knowing that I actually had somewhere else I would rather be). In later years, when my partner no longer could climb the stairs to my mother's apartment, we all ate in a restaurant. And now that my mother is gone, my partner and I continue that tradition.
I know that AA says "don't project", but I worry a lot about what will happen when I am left behind (if I am not killed by a terrorist or run over by a bus). I will have noplace to go on a holiday that is so synonymous with family. Which is why I don't damn, across the board, stores that are open on Thanksgiving. Whereas I think no one needs to buy a flat screen tv on Thanksgiving, maybe some of the store's employees are lonely and would like to forget that it's a holiday and have something else to do. (I definitely think that no stores should make anyone work on a holiday. They should ask for volunteers. I'm sure there will always be some, particularly if there is extra pay - or a free tv! - dangled as a carrot.
It also makes me sad that my Thanksgiving is so simple and bare boned, rather than a rich tapestry of the good, the bad, and the ugly that I can talk about afterwards. Not much to say, really, about a meal at El Quijote. We were probably in and out of there in 45 minutes. Then we had some pumpkin pie at home, from La Delice, a pastry shop on the corner near where my partner lives, which I think is the best pastry shop in the city.
When I was a teenager, I hated Thanksgiving, because I saw it as a time when my obese maternal relatives all got together to stuff their faces, and I, with a BMI teetering around 25, average for an adult, but huge for a 14 year old, struggled to try to say no to all the rich desserts. In retrospect, though, what I remember was all the jollity as well as the food, and how lucky I was to live amidst all that abundance, that I wasn't medically obese, and that I could have had a different life if I had had different values.
Now I am even a tad heavier than I was then (although not when compared with my age peers) and have no family and little jollity. Just a lot of hard work caring for someone I love, and trying to ferret out a few treat crumbs.
When I came home, I got some very sad news, via Facebook. My upstairs neighbor, a coloratura soprano with a Juilliard pedigree, apparently died the day before, while waiting for a kidney. I know that she had been on dialysis for a very long time. She was five years younger than me. She was one of the loveliest people I have ever met, certainly among professional singers, most of whom are snooty and snarky, at least in my experience. When I first moved into the building in 1986, I would hear her warbling the Queen of the Night aria and other coloratura standards, or she would be playing the piano for students (I think she was also a coach). A few years after I started singing she stopped me once and said that she admired how hard I worked and how much I practiced, and that she could hear that I was sounding better and better as the months went by. She even came to my DIY performance of Samson et Dalila. And I saw that she had "liked" my little DIY Facebook fan page. My heart is heavy. All this reminds me that life is short and that I am of an age when people die and that it's sad, but it's not a freak accident. How ironic that her life ended at the age when my life, at least as a singer, was just beginning.
I feel now, even, as a senior citizen, that I am only just beginning. Obviously I am not a "beginner" in terms of studying voice, but I feel it's only now, in the past year or so, that I have a solid technique, that I don't get as tired (do the extra pounds, which may partly be muscle, help, I wonder?) and no longer panic or at the least strategize every time I see a note above an F sharp. I just sing.
My Christmas solo will be "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen. The other day I sang through it and all the high climaxes on G (and there are a lot of them) were just business as usual. So when I step into the church to sing this I have to remember that this new voice is now me. (It also will help that the accompanist will be the Director of Music Ministries, not the original choir director who simply does not like big voices and makes me feel inhibited.)
And I have been singing up to a high C sharp every day now. If Lani were there now, she would be proud of me.
Thanksgiving is very important to me. It was on Thanksgiving 1976 that I got together with my partner, so yesterday was our 40th Thanksgiving. There was only one that we didn't spend together: 2006, after we broke up and before I began taking care of her again. As I posted on Facebook, I walked into her apartment that Thanksgiving (the kitchen and the front of the house looked better than they do now, because she had a roommate), one of three guests, but invited earlier than the others, to the sound of Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't She Lovely". Of course it was on an old fashioned record player, because that's where music in the home came from in those days. I was smitten, and the rest is history. I laughingly say that if I had done my Jane Austen style due diligence, the way, apparently, young women do today before they get "hitched" (also, I know of almost no middle class professional woman who ended up with the person she dated at 25), I would have run like hell. Here was someone who had been on public assistance for quite some time (you actually used to be able to live on it if you took the odd babysitting or dog walking gig), who was in trouble with the City Marshall for having defaulted on a credit card, and whose bedroom looked like a war zone, but she nailed me with her charm, wit, and flair for romance. And so she has kept me. Even now, when all we have are fragments of a relationship, she brought tears to my eyes by, when we were walking home from the bus stop, pointing out some ginko leaves that had fallen and saying "see, these are shaped like hearts, just for us!" Priceless.
As for Thanksgiving, I was realizing that the last time I sat at a table in someone's home where the people were related by blood, I was in my 20s, my grandparents were still alive, and my mother and her sister were still on speaking terms. After that I spent Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my partner and some of my mother's neighbors, or at an AA party (sometimes my mother's boss would invite her for the Thanksgiving weekend to her house in the country, knowing that I actually had somewhere else I would rather be). In later years, when my partner no longer could climb the stairs to my mother's apartment, we all ate in a restaurant. And now that my mother is gone, my partner and I continue that tradition.
I know that AA says "don't project", but I worry a lot about what will happen when I am left behind (if I am not killed by a terrorist or run over by a bus). I will have noplace to go on a holiday that is so synonymous with family. Which is why I don't damn, across the board, stores that are open on Thanksgiving. Whereas I think no one needs to buy a flat screen tv on Thanksgiving, maybe some of the store's employees are lonely and would like to forget that it's a holiday and have something else to do. (I definitely think that no stores should make anyone work on a holiday. They should ask for volunteers. I'm sure there will always be some, particularly if there is extra pay - or a free tv! - dangled as a carrot.
It also makes me sad that my Thanksgiving is so simple and bare boned, rather than a rich tapestry of the good, the bad, and the ugly that I can talk about afterwards. Not much to say, really, about a meal at El Quijote. We were probably in and out of there in 45 minutes. Then we had some pumpkin pie at home, from La Delice, a pastry shop on the corner near where my partner lives, which I think is the best pastry shop in the city.
When I was a teenager, I hated Thanksgiving, because I saw it as a time when my obese maternal relatives all got together to stuff their faces, and I, with a BMI teetering around 25, average for an adult, but huge for a 14 year old, struggled to try to say no to all the rich desserts. In retrospect, though, what I remember was all the jollity as well as the food, and how lucky I was to live amidst all that abundance, that I wasn't medically obese, and that I could have had a different life if I had had different values.
Now I am even a tad heavier than I was then (although not when compared with my age peers) and have no family and little jollity. Just a lot of hard work caring for someone I love, and trying to ferret out a few treat crumbs.
When I came home, I got some very sad news, via Facebook. My upstairs neighbor, a coloratura soprano with a Juilliard pedigree, apparently died the day before, while waiting for a kidney. I know that she had been on dialysis for a very long time. She was five years younger than me. She was one of the loveliest people I have ever met, certainly among professional singers, most of whom are snooty and snarky, at least in my experience. When I first moved into the building in 1986, I would hear her warbling the Queen of the Night aria and other coloratura standards, or she would be playing the piano for students (I think she was also a coach). A few years after I started singing she stopped me once and said that she admired how hard I worked and how much I practiced, and that she could hear that I was sounding better and better as the months went by. She even came to my DIY performance of Samson et Dalila. And I saw that she had "liked" my little DIY Facebook fan page. My heart is heavy. All this reminds me that life is short and that I am of an age when people die and that it's sad, but it's not a freak accident. How ironic that her life ended at the age when my life, at least as a singer, was just beginning.
I feel now, even, as a senior citizen, that I am only just beginning. Obviously I am not a "beginner" in terms of studying voice, but I feel it's only now, in the past year or so, that I have a solid technique, that I don't get as tired (do the extra pounds, which may partly be muscle, help, I wonder?) and no longer panic or at the least strategize every time I see a note above an F sharp. I just sing.
My Christmas solo will be "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen. The other day I sang through it and all the high climaxes on G (and there are a lot of them) were just business as usual. So when I step into the church to sing this I have to remember that this new voice is now me. (It also will help that the accompanist will be the Director of Music Ministries, not the original choir director who simply does not like big voices and makes me feel inhibited.)
And I have been singing up to a high C sharp every day now. If Lani were there now, she would be proud of me.
RIP Lani Misenas 1955-2015
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Requiem: Further Musings on a Loss
The loss of this coach has hit me very hard, much more than I expected. I didn't cry over the news, the way I did the day I heard that my 91-year-old violinist colleague had died, but that was a different situation. I truly loved him and saw him dwindle day by day. I regretted that I hadn't visited him one last time. But it was not a shock.
I suppose much of this is about "why is she gone and why am I still here"? She had a musical career that I can only dream of (it wasn't a big career, but she was always in demand playing for operas and concerts, usually ones in which the singers are not paid but the pianist is) and she had amassed quite a few regulars coming to the studio for coachings, myself among them. So she got to do what she loved on a regular basis and had the respect of her colleagues.
And then there is the mother/daughter thing. That's a touchy subject with me. One thing I have to remember is that however bad my relationship with my mother was, most of my friends and acquaintances' relationships with their mothers was as bad or worse. I think it's a generational thing. Mothers born at a certain time, even ones who fancied themselves as "enlightened" (meaning in my mother's case that she used the "F" word all the time and talked about sex in a clinical manner in a loud voice in public places) were still quite authoritarian (as in "my way or the highway") and didn't know how to respect their adult children as separate people. The women I know who are under 45 have an entirely different kind of relationship with their mothers. They can be different from their mothers and that's ok. Their mothers are interested in them instead of trying to control them.
I know this is childish and pointless, but I really do think if I had had a different kind of mother (and a different kind of school environment, and different peers - or maybe none; my coach's daughter who is a rising young mezzo was home schooled) I might have done something with my musical talent. I know character is important, and I probably lacked it until I was well into my 30s, certainly, but most people's successes or lack of it involves a synergy between the person's character and temperament and their environment.
My coach and her daughter adored each other. As I said, this young woman was hand groomed to be a singer from childhood, but I never got the feeling that she was pushed in a way that she would resent later. One sign of this was that she was independent enough to go abroad after graduating from Juilliard (which doesn't seem to offer as much to singers, as, say, Manhattan School of Music does, as a case in point, the woman in my choir whom I call "Little Miss Conservatory" has nailed a high profile mentor at MSM whereas my coach's daughter never did at Juilliard).
So again, the question is, why is she gone so soon and why am I still here?
Don't worry. I am not feeling suicidal. I couldn't imaging killing myself. Things are not that bad; there are many things I enjoy in the moment: singing well, reading, going to museums, my favorite tv programs, cuddling with my SO and my cats, to name a few. It's just that things are not that great either. In addition to having a perfect life, I always was in awe of my coach's sense of wonder at how things turned out. She was always not just happy or positive, but "elated", a mood I am almost never in, or if I am, briefly, all the much of toomuchness of twenty-first century New York, particularly here in the lee of Lincoln Center, comes crashing in on me.
In a strange kind of synchronicity, the night I heard the news about my coach's death, Verdi's Messa da Requiem broadcast on Channel 13. I listened to the beginning, then my SO asked me to turn to something else. I got to hear "Liber Scriptus", but not "Lux Aeterna". I think we changed the channel at the point that we had had an intermission in my concert; after the big ensemble ending in "Amen".
I was underwhelmed by the men, for the most part, but of course my eyes and ears were on Michelle de Young who was the mezzo soloist. She sang well (not as impressively as some of the mezzos I have on recordings) and looked stunning. Her very long (bleached no doubt) blonde hair hung in tight curls, her makeup was more for the balcony than for a closeup, and she had on a black lace dress. As I have said before, I covet all that as much as I covet being able to sing a work like that in a large venue with an orchestra and chorus behind me (no, I would not be interested in being a chorister in a large venue unless I was paid; I turned down an offer to do that several years ago). It's funny, my partner said she looked "trashy", which I suppose is understandable. She is obviously over 40, and her hair was obviously bleached and not a length recommended for "professional women".
On a more positive note, go me for being able to hear (and remember) most of the mezzo line when they were all singing together. I am not a natural harmonizer and certainly had to drill, drill, drill, my part so as not to get distracted by the top. Which is one reason I am grateful to have been singing with that church choir for all these years. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have had the musicianship to sing the mezzo line in the Requiem.
What I wish now, is that I could find some "takeaway lesson" from this loss. I am not sure what it is. Interestingly, at my last lesson (which went superbly; the big breakthrough I made has held, especially in new art songs and church pieces; too bad I am not 20 years younger with all the big girl rep ahead of me to sing well, instead of behind me with memories of singing it badly) my teacher said that what I did over the past ten years has been important: taking care of my mother (even thought I did not like her) at the end of her life, and now taking care of my partner. In the eyes of God, doesn't that mean more than having (had) a singing career?
I suppose much of this is about "why is she gone and why am I still here"? She had a musical career that I can only dream of (it wasn't a big career, but she was always in demand playing for operas and concerts, usually ones in which the singers are not paid but the pianist is) and she had amassed quite a few regulars coming to the studio for coachings, myself among them. So she got to do what she loved on a regular basis and had the respect of her colleagues.
And then there is the mother/daughter thing. That's a touchy subject with me. One thing I have to remember is that however bad my relationship with my mother was, most of my friends and acquaintances' relationships with their mothers was as bad or worse. I think it's a generational thing. Mothers born at a certain time, even ones who fancied themselves as "enlightened" (meaning in my mother's case that she used the "F" word all the time and talked about sex in a clinical manner in a loud voice in public places) were still quite authoritarian (as in "my way or the highway") and didn't know how to respect their adult children as separate people. The women I know who are under 45 have an entirely different kind of relationship with their mothers. They can be different from their mothers and that's ok. Their mothers are interested in them instead of trying to control them.
I know this is childish and pointless, but I really do think if I had had a different kind of mother (and a different kind of school environment, and different peers - or maybe none; my coach's daughter who is a rising young mezzo was home schooled) I might have done something with my musical talent. I know character is important, and I probably lacked it until I was well into my 30s, certainly, but most people's successes or lack of it involves a synergy between the person's character and temperament and their environment.
My coach and her daughter adored each other. As I said, this young woman was hand groomed to be a singer from childhood, but I never got the feeling that she was pushed in a way that she would resent later. One sign of this was that she was independent enough to go abroad after graduating from Juilliard (which doesn't seem to offer as much to singers, as, say, Manhattan School of Music does, as a case in point, the woman in my choir whom I call "Little Miss Conservatory" has nailed a high profile mentor at MSM whereas my coach's daughter never did at Juilliard).
So again, the question is, why is she gone so soon and why am I still here?
Don't worry. I am not feeling suicidal. I couldn't imaging killing myself. Things are not that bad; there are many things I enjoy in the moment: singing well, reading, going to museums, my favorite tv programs, cuddling with my SO and my cats, to name a few. It's just that things are not that great either. In addition to having a perfect life, I always was in awe of my coach's sense of wonder at how things turned out. She was always not just happy or positive, but "elated", a mood I am almost never in, or if I am, briefly, all the much of toomuchness of twenty-first century New York, particularly here in the lee of Lincoln Center, comes crashing in on me.
In a strange kind of synchronicity, the night I heard the news about my coach's death, Verdi's Messa da Requiem broadcast on Channel 13. I listened to the beginning, then my SO asked me to turn to something else. I got to hear "Liber Scriptus", but not "Lux Aeterna". I think we changed the channel at the point that we had had an intermission in my concert; after the big ensemble ending in "Amen".
I was underwhelmed by the men, for the most part, but of course my eyes and ears were on Michelle de Young who was the mezzo soloist. She sang well (not as impressively as some of the mezzos I have on recordings) and looked stunning. Her very long (bleached no doubt) blonde hair hung in tight curls, her makeup was more for the balcony than for a closeup, and she had on a black lace dress. As I have said before, I covet all that as much as I covet being able to sing a work like that in a large venue with an orchestra and chorus behind me (no, I would not be interested in being a chorister in a large venue unless I was paid; I turned down an offer to do that several years ago). It's funny, my partner said she looked "trashy", which I suppose is understandable. She is obviously over 40, and her hair was obviously bleached and not a length recommended for "professional women".
On a more positive note, go me for being able to hear (and remember) most of the mezzo line when they were all singing together. I am not a natural harmonizer and certainly had to drill, drill, drill, my part so as not to get distracted by the top. Which is one reason I am grateful to have been singing with that church choir for all these years. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have had the musicianship to sing the mezzo line in the Requiem.
What I wish now, is that I could find some "takeaway lesson" from this loss. I am not sure what it is. Interestingly, at my last lesson (which went superbly; the big breakthrough I made has held, especially in new art songs and church pieces; too bad I am not 20 years younger with all the big girl rep ahead of me to sing well, instead of behind me with memories of singing it badly) my teacher said that what I did over the past ten years has been important: taking care of my mother (even thought I did not like her) at the end of her life, and now taking care of my partner. In the eyes of God, doesn't that mean more than having (had) a singing career?
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Suddenly Spanish?
Last night I sang at the Hispanic Heritage Month get together held by the woman who produced the September 11 concert.
It turned out there were only two other people there: one singer (female) and one actor (male).
I have mostly good things to report. First of all, I can see that I have a real affinity for Spanish classical song. The organizer (who is of Spanish descent and is a specialist in this repertoire) gave me a book of classical Spanish songs to look at (which contains a song by Manuel Garcia, which was the song that inspired Bizet's "Habanera".)
Most of these songs sit in an upper middle register, which is where my voice is strongest, have a lot of melismatic passages (something I sing well), pretty much no sustained high notes, and nothing below middle C. So they are tailor made for my strengths and avoid my weaknesses.
The organizer also gave me the name of a book to read, called Spain: The Root and the Flower.
So I ordered both of these items.
What heartens me, is that (albeit in a limited repertoire) I find myself getting the kind of mentoring from this woman that I so desperate yearn for and never got from anyone except The Mentor, who of course ended up being toxic. She seems to be eager to teach me all sorts of things related to the music I am singing.
The other woman there was a mezzo, a "real" singer, aka someone who sings with these no pay groups, who has an impressive CV filled with apprenticeships, prizes, and plum high profile assignments (even if not for pay) as well as some paid singing. She is of Hispanic descent and teaches Spanish and Portuguese. She is certainly very knowledgeable about Spanish and Latin American music, and has a huge voice that can easily sing the music I so long(ed) to sing with a wide range, and a huge sound with much head resonance (although a lot of darkness as well). She is going to be singing Carmen with one of these pay to sing readthrough groups, having sung Mercedes with another one of these groups (she knows my teacher), easily sailing up to the high C. So if she is who is paying to sing at these readthroughs, they will never be interested in me.
Maybe I don't have such a big voice after all. It is certainly loud and it can certainly carry over an orchestra, at least from the middle of the staff up. (And - shoutout to the choir director - even my lower register could carry well enough above the small chamber orchestra we use for Reformation Sunday in that alto solo that now isn't.) But it doesn't have a large aureole (this is not a technical term, I know, but I am clear what I mean about it). It has taken me years to get even the tiniest bit of head resonance and that still is not a lot. If it is not my past smoking, or my being from New York and spending a lifetime speaking in chest voice, what is it? My blocked sinuses? My narrow head and narrow nose?
I mean I do have a "voice" and I will never ever ever give up singing until I die or develop a disability that prevents it, but maybe I will never have the range or the stamina for opera? I just don't know. I love it so, but recently I have tried to "unpack" my passionate obsession with singing opera to see exactly what it is that I am so passionate about. I have a dramatic personality and love the spotlight, which is why singing church music only satisfies me somewhat. It is beautiful music, but no matter how well I sing it, in that setting other things are always paramount. Maybe Spanish songs will be the next big thing? I can dress up and be sexy and sing for audiences and convey drama without overtaxing myself vocally.
The best news of all is that the concert organizer told me that I had "the makings of a fine Spanish music singer". I am looking forward to her Spring concert. Probably this other woman won't be interested in it, and even if she is, I am sure there will be room enough for both of us.
It turned out there were only two other people there: one singer (female) and one actor (male).
I have mostly good things to report. First of all, I can see that I have a real affinity for Spanish classical song. The organizer (who is of Spanish descent and is a specialist in this repertoire) gave me a book of classical Spanish songs to look at (which contains a song by Manuel Garcia, which was the song that inspired Bizet's "Habanera".)
Most of these songs sit in an upper middle register, which is where my voice is strongest, have a lot of melismatic passages (something I sing well), pretty much no sustained high notes, and nothing below middle C. So they are tailor made for my strengths and avoid my weaknesses.
The organizer also gave me the name of a book to read, called Spain: The Root and the Flower.
So I ordered both of these items.
What heartens me, is that (albeit in a limited repertoire) I find myself getting the kind of mentoring from this woman that I so desperate yearn for and never got from anyone except The Mentor, who of course ended up being toxic. She seems to be eager to teach me all sorts of things related to the music I am singing.
The other woman there was a mezzo, a "real" singer, aka someone who sings with these no pay groups, who has an impressive CV filled with apprenticeships, prizes, and plum high profile assignments (even if not for pay) as well as some paid singing. She is of Hispanic descent and teaches Spanish and Portuguese. She is certainly very knowledgeable about Spanish and Latin American music, and has a huge voice that can easily sing the music I so long(ed) to sing with a wide range, and a huge sound with much head resonance (although a lot of darkness as well). She is going to be singing Carmen with one of these pay to sing readthrough groups, having sung Mercedes with another one of these groups (she knows my teacher), easily sailing up to the high C. So if she is who is paying to sing at these readthroughs, they will never be interested in me.
Maybe I don't have such a big voice after all. It is certainly loud and it can certainly carry over an orchestra, at least from the middle of the staff up. (And - shoutout to the choir director - even my lower register could carry well enough above the small chamber orchestra we use for Reformation Sunday in that alto solo that now isn't.) But it doesn't have a large aureole (this is not a technical term, I know, but I am clear what I mean about it). It has taken me years to get even the tiniest bit of head resonance and that still is not a lot. If it is not my past smoking, or my being from New York and spending a lifetime speaking in chest voice, what is it? My blocked sinuses? My narrow head and narrow nose?
I mean I do have a "voice" and I will never ever ever give up singing until I die or develop a disability that prevents it, but maybe I will never have the range or the stamina for opera? I just don't know. I love it so, but recently I have tried to "unpack" my passionate obsession with singing opera to see exactly what it is that I am so passionate about. I have a dramatic personality and love the spotlight, which is why singing church music only satisfies me somewhat. It is beautiful music, but no matter how well I sing it, in that setting other things are always paramount. Maybe Spanish songs will be the next big thing? I can dress up and be sexy and sing for audiences and convey drama without overtaxing myself vocally.
The best news of all is that the concert organizer told me that I had "the makings of a fine Spanish music singer". I am looking forward to her Spring concert. Probably this other woman won't be interested in it, and even if she is, I am sure there will be room enough for both of us.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
A Few Small Things
After posting a comment on a friend's blog, which will link back here, I wanted to make a brief update.
Yesterday I went to a chamber music concert at the church, which featured a mezzo singing Verdi's "Ave Maria with Strings". This is certainly something I could sing. This woman has a lovely voice, is beautiful to look at, and has an impressive resume full of singing and performing in wildly diverse genres. There are dozens of these women all over New York, which is why there is hardly a nook or a cranny so lowly that is not crowded with them, where I can hardly compete. I am almost positive that she showed up once at one of these get up and sing meetups, the ones where I felt so outclassed and hence uncomfortable. (I can't tell if it was she, or another mezzo with the same first name who looks similar, who was at the meetup, but I think it was she; I remembered her smile.)
I was flattered that the choir director (who runs the series and played the piano for another number on the program) spoke to me afterwards and asked me what I thought of the piece. I said it interested me but I would need a piano accompaniment as I am not going to be able to assemble a whole string quartet! He said there was a version with a piano accompaniment. A day or so earlier he had said that he would try to get me a copy. So at least this means he takes me seriously, which is nice. This is not something I could ever sing as a church solo because it is too long, and we only sing "Ave Marias" on Magnificat Sunday and on a day like that he wants something a little less somber. But it is something I could sing someplace. It didn't sound as if it had a very wide range.
The other thing that pleased me is that the woman who is having the Hispanic Heritage event sent another email in which she mentioned that she is planning a spring concert of Spanish music, and will have several more get togethers so that people can present Spanish songs that they would like to do. I found at least three in the book of Nin songs (it only contains half of what I thought it would) that I can use. One is quite high and has a long cadenza, so I will not try to sing it Monday. The other two will certainly be manageable. My Spanish pronunciation is improving, if not my translating abilities. This book has French translations of the songs rather than English ones, but French is the foreign language I know best, so I am able to figure out what most of the songs mean.
Tomorrow is choir practice. I intend to kick b**t with those low-lying runs in the Handel. I intend for the years of training that I have, and the hours I put in practicing, to show, whether this is noticed or not.
I am having a tooth pulled in the morning, but was told I should be able to sing easily tomorrow night.
Yesterday I went to a chamber music concert at the church, which featured a mezzo singing Verdi's "Ave Maria with Strings". This is certainly something I could sing. This woman has a lovely voice, is beautiful to look at, and has an impressive resume full of singing and performing in wildly diverse genres. There are dozens of these women all over New York, which is why there is hardly a nook or a cranny so lowly that is not crowded with them, where I can hardly compete. I am almost positive that she showed up once at one of these get up and sing meetups, the ones where I felt so outclassed and hence uncomfortable. (I can't tell if it was she, or another mezzo with the same first name who looks similar, who was at the meetup, but I think it was she; I remembered her smile.)
I was flattered that the choir director (who runs the series and played the piano for another number on the program) spoke to me afterwards and asked me what I thought of the piece. I said it interested me but I would need a piano accompaniment as I am not going to be able to assemble a whole string quartet! He said there was a version with a piano accompaniment. A day or so earlier he had said that he would try to get me a copy. So at least this means he takes me seriously, which is nice. This is not something I could ever sing as a church solo because it is too long, and we only sing "Ave Marias" on Magnificat Sunday and on a day like that he wants something a little less somber. But it is something I could sing someplace. It didn't sound as if it had a very wide range.
The other thing that pleased me is that the woman who is having the Hispanic Heritage event sent another email in which she mentioned that she is planning a spring concert of Spanish music, and will have several more get togethers so that people can present Spanish songs that they would like to do. I found at least three in the book of Nin songs (it only contains half of what I thought it would) that I can use. One is quite high and has a long cadenza, so I will not try to sing it Monday. The other two will certainly be manageable. My Spanish pronunciation is improving, if not my translating abilities. This book has French translations of the songs rather than English ones, but French is the foreign language I know best, so I am able to figure out what most of the songs mean.
Tomorrow is choir practice. I intend to kick b**t with those low-lying runs in the Handel. I intend for the years of training that I have, and the hours I put in practicing, to show, whether this is noticed or not.
I am having a tooth pulled in the morning, but was told I should be able to sing easily tomorrow night.
Monday, June 24, 2013
A Winner
I should be working, or starting my practice, but I felt I had to make a post about the winner
aka Jamie Barton
who can be heard singing "Acerba Volutta" from Adriana Lecouvreur below
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01bssjb
This is an aria I have sung at auditions, thinking it was one of my best, and well, comparisons are odious.
This is greatness, which doesn't come along all that often.
Even more amazing, is her rendition of "O Mon Fernande," which you can hear here
If her rendition of "Acerba" blew me away (how can a voice be so big, so rich, and yet have so much lightness and spin to it?), her rendition of "O Mon Fernande" (which I have sung in the Italian version as "O Mio Fernando") made me want to crawl under the table. When she began, her voice was so dark, so big, and so weighty, that I just assumed she would end the aria with the standard A, which is what I do (likewise Denyce Graves). Well, after all that dark, lustrous singing, she just took off and sailed up to a light, effortless, for me, even 30 years ago, utterly unattainable High C.
A voice like this comes along once in a lifetime, if that. I have heard wonderful recordings of Giulietta Simionato, but it is a mix of exciting spine-tingling singing combined with some really ugly sounds. Those old Italian mezzos had a lot of what my teacher calls squillo in the voice, which, according to a real professional singer friend, has gone out of fashion these days.
So what went into making Jamie? For one thing, my hunch is that she has decided not to worry about her weight. The jury is still out as to whether excess weight is a health hazard (but not about whether eating junk food is a health hazard - it is), and being hungry all the time (which becomes a problem for each individual at a different weight)makes it impossible to have the stamina needed to support a big voice (or, really, to concentrate and focus on anything).
Next, she grew up in a rural area. I truly believe that growing up in the middle of New York is not an asset if you want to sing. The air is full of pollution (although there are places that are worse), and everyone screams at the top of their lungs down on their cords.
Other than that, I suppose, the kiss of the angels, hard work, and making the right connections.
I probably won't be singing "Acerba Volutta" for a long time, or "O Mio Fernando" either. For now, let me stick with Carmen.
In other news, here is a photo I took of myself outside my building in the "armpit of Lincoln Center" after a workout.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01bssjb
This is an aria I have sung at auditions, thinking it was one of my best, and well, comparisons are odious.
This is greatness, which doesn't come along all that often.
Even more amazing, is her rendition of "O Mon Fernande," which you can hear here
If her rendition of "Acerba" blew me away (how can a voice be so big, so rich, and yet have so much lightness and spin to it?), her rendition of "O Mon Fernande" (which I have sung in the Italian version as "O Mio Fernando") made me want to crawl under the table. When she began, her voice was so dark, so big, and so weighty, that I just assumed she would end the aria with the standard A, which is what I do (likewise Denyce Graves). Well, after all that dark, lustrous singing, she just took off and sailed up to a light, effortless, for me, even 30 years ago, utterly unattainable High C.
A voice like this comes along once in a lifetime, if that. I have heard wonderful recordings of Giulietta Simionato, but it is a mix of exciting spine-tingling singing combined with some really ugly sounds. Those old Italian mezzos had a lot of what my teacher calls squillo in the voice, which, according to a real professional singer friend, has gone out of fashion these days.
So what went into making Jamie? For one thing, my hunch is that she has decided not to worry about her weight. The jury is still out as to whether excess weight is a health hazard (but not about whether eating junk food is a health hazard - it is), and being hungry all the time (which becomes a problem for each individual at a different weight)makes it impossible to have the stamina needed to support a big voice (or, really, to concentrate and focus on anything).
Next, she grew up in a rural area. I truly believe that growing up in the middle of New York is not an asset if you want to sing. The air is full of pollution (although there are places that are worse), and everyone screams at the top of their lungs down on their cords.
Other than that, I suppose, the kiss of the angels, hard work, and making the right connections.
I probably won't be singing "Acerba Volutta" for a long time, or "O Mio Fernando" either. For now, let me stick with Carmen.
In other news, here is a photo I took of myself outside my building in the "armpit of Lincoln Center" after a workout.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Starting My Day Over
I really really need to start my day over. This was going to be a nice day: I could stay at home and work (I have enough work to see me through the middle of February) and then run through some sections of the Requiem.
I had said that my "default" New Year's resolution was to cherish and nurture my self-esteem.
So I should know never, ever, ever to spend too much time around the Forum.
I am herewith taking a self-imposed break from it until further notice.
I don't need to feel crappy about myself because I am an "amateur". I am trying to move on. How many people sing professionally for a living anyhow? What will all these people be doing when they're 60? I think of my poor teacher who get less than a pittance (one third of what my partner gets, and she gets a pittance) from Social Security. Half of these people who think they're so superior spend more time office temping and bar tending than they do singing, so who are they to look down on me? (I should say here that a few of the people who post things there are voice teachers, and they are usually helpful.)
It's not worth feeling like garbage just to get more blog hits, which is why I went back to reading the Forum anyhow.
I need to think of a new place to try to link this blog to.
So how do I clear my head and start over?
1. I had a really good practice session yesterday. I think the "retooling" I have done with "Liber Scriptus" has "jelled". There is a new (old?) saying: "Don't practice it until you get it right, practice it until you can't get it wrong." I am hoping this will apply here. Also I sang through the "Kyrie", "Quid sum Miser" and "Recordare" and was spot on with the notes. Today I will work on "Lachrymosa" "Domine Jesu," and "Agnus Dei". I don't need to work on "Lux Aeterna" right now because I don't have a bass, and anyhow I know that cold.
2. There is a singer who reads this blog who says he finds my story "inspirational". This is a real professional singer who earns his living singing. He says he has shown this blog to students and YAPpers. He took the time to tell me he liked my Youtube video of Wagner's "Angel".
3. My partner is being less obstructionist about my singing. She said she told several of her friends she is "proud of me" because Sunday I sang an entire church service in Spanish including a solo anthem and all the liturgy. So what if I didn't get paid? People say the classical choir I sing with is better than many of the paid choirs.
4. I will find a way to Maureen Dowd this bass who dissed me by not even having the courtesy to tell me he wasn't interested in singing in my Requiem. (Anyone who reads the New York Times will know what that means.) I may not be a professional singer, but I am a professional wordsmith and I have a very nasty tongue if I am provoked.
I am a bit concerned that the soprano has not answered my emails re: whether she will be at the rehearsal Thursday. (The tenor said he had a conflict, but I know he is serious about doing this.) I know that this soprano will never let me down. She is a friend of my teacher's, we have sung together before, and she often does pay to sings (she sings as well as or better than many professionals BTW).
So now it is in God's hands. When I first embarked on the plan for the Requiem I asked God to bless my endeavors. I knew it wouldn't be easy (singing it is the easiest part - the highest note is an A flat), but I know that God would not have brought me this far, from being discovered 9 years ago at the age of 54, singing from a hymnal in the back of a church, just to dump me.
So now it's time to get to work. On my to do list is to contact the church administrator about "marketing" the Requiem in the church's publicity materials for Lent.
I had said that my "default" New Year's resolution was to cherish and nurture my self-esteem.
So I should know never, ever, ever to spend too much time around the Forum.
I am herewith taking a self-imposed break from it until further notice.
I don't need to feel crappy about myself because I am an "amateur". I am trying to move on. How many people sing professionally for a living anyhow? What will all these people be doing when they're 60? I think of my poor teacher who get less than a pittance (one third of what my partner gets, and she gets a pittance) from Social Security. Half of these people who think they're so superior spend more time office temping and bar tending than they do singing, so who are they to look down on me? (I should say here that a few of the people who post things there are voice teachers, and they are usually helpful.)
It's not worth feeling like garbage just to get more blog hits, which is why I went back to reading the Forum anyhow.
I need to think of a new place to try to link this blog to.
So how do I clear my head and start over?
1. I had a really good practice session yesterday. I think the "retooling" I have done with "Liber Scriptus" has "jelled". There is a new (old?) saying: "Don't practice it until you get it right, practice it until you can't get it wrong." I am hoping this will apply here. Also I sang through the "Kyrie", "Quid sum Miser" and "Recordare" and was spot on with the notes. Today I will work on "Lachrymosa" "Domine Jesu," and "Agnus Dei". I don't need to work on "Lux Aeterna" right now because I don't have a bass, and anyhow I know that cold.
2. There is a singer who reads this blog who says he finds my story "inspirational". This is a real professional singer who earns his living singing. He says he has shown this blog to students and YAPpers. He took the time to tell me he liked my Youtube video of Wagner's "Angel".
3. My partner is being less obstructionist about my singing. She said she told several of her friends she is "proud of me" because Sunday I sang an entire church service in Spanish including a solo anthem and all the liturgy. So what if I didn't get paid? People say the classical choir I sing with is better than many of the paid choirs.
4. I will find a way to Maureen Dowd this bass who dissed me by not even having the courtesy to tell me he wasn't interested in singing in my Requiem. (Anyone who reads the New York Times will know what that means.) I may not be a professional singer, but I am a professional wordsmith and I have a very nasty tongue if I am provoked.
I am a bit concerned that the soprano has not answered my emails re: whether she will be at the rehearsal Thursday. (The tenor said he had a conflict, but I know he is serious about doing this.) I know that this soprano will never let me down. She is a friend of my teacher's, we have sung together before, and she often does pay to sings (she sings as well as or better than many professionals BTW).
So now it is in God's hands. When I first embarked on the plan for the Requiem I asked God to bless my endeavors. I knew it wouldn't be easy (singing it is the easiest part - the highest note is an A flat), but I know that God would not have brought me this far, from being discovered 9 years ago at the age of 54, singing from a hymnal in the back of a church, just to dump me.
So now it's time to get to work. On my to do list is to contact the church administrator about "marketing" the Requiem in the church's publicity materials for Lent.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Impressions of the Gala
Well, I watched the Richard Tucker gala on tv, and, as I had guessed, found it both depressing and inspirational.
Jamie Barton blew me away with her rendition of "O Mon Fernande". Her voice was dark and rich, and just as I said to myself, "no, with all that weight on the bottom and all that richness she's not going to interpolate some stratospheric note into the ending but will just sing a good solid A", she did interpolate some crazy high note (I couldn't grab my pitch pipe fast enough to tell if it was a B or a C). How do these singers do it? How do they get their voices to be so big, so rich, and with such ranges? I simply can't get a handle on that. No matter what I do, I just don't really have anything above an A except to sing in the middle of a run and drop like a hot potato. And her singing is surprisingly passionate, compared to her rather - so it seemed - placid "yes definitely from the heartland" personality.
And Olga Borodina rocked "Mon Coeur". Although she should have left that interpolated B flat alone. It doesn't belong in the piece unless you can sing it softly and sweetly. She also seems to have lost a lot of weight. Apparently she is chewing up the scenery as Amneris this season.
Sorry to say I found Ailyn Perez rather underwhelming. She has a beautiful voice full stop. She has neither the passion of Anna Netrebko or the brilliance of Beverly Sills, in, say, a role like Manon. But she did say something that left me with, well, something. I may be misquoting her, but it was something like "If you work harder than everybody, anything is possible."
I work and I work and actually I do keep singing better but it isn't enough. Finding that perfect energy balance eludes me (I realized today that I am always a little too wired or a little too tired), if I talk too much I'm sunk (like a typical New Yorker my default mode of speech is loud with a tight throat). I have chronic sinus drainage, which makes it hard to raise my palate.
Well, tomorrow morning I am singing Wagner's "Angel" song in church. It may be on the church's Youtube channel. I won't post it here, because there is a nasty commenter who ripped some sound clips I put up here to shreds and even though I took them down and referred to her as a bitch in my subsequent post, she still makes comments (not nasty ones, but why is she still here??) The "Angel" has to be sung entirely pianissimo and it has a lot of Fs and F sharps and one G. So I need my beauty sleep. And I will keep it what I laughingly refer to as a "female" morning. No hymns. Until the "Angel" is finished.
Jamie Barton blew me away with her rendition of "O Mon Fernande". Her voice was dark and rich, and just as I said to myself, "no, with all that weight on the bottom and all that richness she's not going to interpolate some stratospheric note into the ending but will just sing a good solid A", she did interpolate some crazy high note (I couldn't grab my pitch pipe fast enough to tell if it was a B or a C). How do these singers do it? How do they get their voices to be so big, so rich, and with such ranges? I simply can't get a handle on that. No matter what I do, I just don't really have anything above an A except to sing in the middle of a run and drop like a hot potato. And her singing is surprisingly passionate, compared to her rather - so it seemed - placid "yes definitely from the heartland" personality.
And Olga Borodina rocked "Mon Coeur". Although she should have left that interpolated B flat alone. It doesn't belong in the piece unless you can sing it softly and sweetly. She also seems to have lost a lot of weight. Apparently she is chewing up the scenery as Amneris this season.
Sorry to say I found Ailyn Perez rather underwhelming. She has a beautiful voice full stop. She has neither the passion of Anna Netrebko or the brilliance of Beverly Sills, in, say, a role like Manon. But she did say something that left me with, well, something. I may be misquoting her, but it was something like "If you work harder than everybody, anything is possible."
I work and I work and actually I do keep singing better but it isn't enough. Finding that perfect energy balance eludes me (I realized today that I am always a little too wired or a little too tired), if I talk too much I'm sunk (like a typical New Yorker my default mode of speech is loud with a tight throat). I have chronic sinus drainage, which makes it hard to raise my palate.
Well, tomorrow morning I am singing Wagner's "Angel" song in church. It may be on the church's Youtube channel. I won't post it here, because there is a nasty commenter who ripped some sound clips I put up here to shreds and even though I took them down and referred to her as a bitch in my subsequent post, she still makes comments (not nasty ones, but why is she still here??) The "Angel" has to be sung entirely pianissimo and it has a lot of Fs and F sharps and one G. So I need my beauty sleep. And I will keep it what I laughingly refer to as a "female" morning. No hymns. Until the "Angel" is finished.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Another "Don't Even Think About It!" It's Not For You
This afternoon I took my "artist's date" (something required as part of The Artist's Way program), which consisted of my going to Richard Tucker Park around the corner before setting off to do some errands, to hear an opera group whose mission is community outreach.
Now I remember when I posted something on The Forum about wanting to find older singers to network with, someone I respect very much suggested starting a community opera group. Now the problem is, if you live in New York, there are already 20 such groups and they are filled with the spillover from the minor opera houses, YAPpers, and managed singers looking to do a role that they're not getting cast in for pay. These groups are not for amateurs like me. They might have been 30 years ago (I remember singing in various schools and senior centers as part of an existing group back then) but not now.
This group was mostly young (none of the women looked a day over 30 although the only two men could have been close to 40) and very polished. Except for one mezzo, none of them had big voices but they looked and sounded like they have been getting up in front of groups, classes, juries, whatever, since they were in their teens.
Just as I was feeling so happy (or at least momentarily satisfied) about this September 11 concert, I now just feel so that everything I want is out of reach.
What's interesting is that I don't know that I thought these young women sounded that much better than I do, just different.
I would say I have a bigger, more impressive natural instrument, but so what? It has taken me into my 60s even to begin to know what to do with it outside the limited range I use for church solos. I certainly don't have that kind of confidence. I mean people say I'm a good actress but I am not comfortable. And when I sing church solos I don't have to do anything except remember my music and look other worldly.
I know that part of the issue with my voice is that as Susan Eichhorn Young (whom I am always quoting) says in her latest blog post, I did everything ass backwards.
What I mean is I didn't cosset my voice from the yellow Italian aria book through lieder through "Va Laisse Couler Mes Larmes" year by year, inch by inch, until every note was perfectly matched to every other note. Never picking up a dramatic aria with high notes in it until those notes were there securely.
If I wanted to sing the Habanera at 14 (as I burned my vocal cords with Kools), I sang the Habanera at 14. If someone cast me as Giovanna Seymour at 28, I asked my teacher what exercises to sing so that I could pull myself through it.
Now I want to make one thing clear. Except for my brief stint with the teacher I call Mr. B., I never did anything technically that abused my voice. In fact one compliment I always get from people is that despite being a large-voiced mezzo I don't "push" my voice, but always sing lyrically. Except when I would get to a note that I was not comfortable singing; in which case I would sort of gird my loins and scream. Not in a way that hurt my throat, just in a way that hurt other people's ears, and did not sound integrated with the rest of my voice.
I know there are things I sing beautifully, but I do not have a scale that is perfectly even from top to bottom. On the other hand I have heard that this is a problem with many dramatic mezzos. I read a review recently that totally savaged a dramatic mezzo whom I heard do quite an impressive rendition of "O Don Fatale" at a concert. Whether the review was deserved I don't know, but it mentioned her voice being in three different pieces, and cited that it was a problem in the fach in general.
But what I realize is that although I didn't harm my instrument, I may have harmed my psyche in that I sang things badly that I was not ready to sing, which left bad muscle and other memories imprinted somewhere, and which makes it harder now to sing those things well even though I can (a lot of the time).
Getting back to this afternoon's concert, I decided to pull myself out of my funk by watching what the various singers did with vowels, since I am now juggling two different schools of thought. Interestingly, on the whole the lighter voiced women sang brighter vowels and the mezzo sang darker vowels. And it wasn't just a question of their different natural instruments. I watched what they were doing with their mouths.
In other news, I am seriously reworking "Liber Scriptus". That is an example of a piece that I sang badly (panicking and gulping for air before the phrase with the big climactic A flat) and that now I can sing well, so I need to start from scratch. I found a way of singing that phrase on one breath by keeping my jaw loose, and that is what I am going to do. It is not a very high note, considering that I am now vocalizing up to a high C every day, although sometimes that newly found headspace is there and sometimes it's not.
And I will enjoy the concert I am in on September 11. It is like living in a small town where I'm one of a handful of singers with classical training on a program with singers without.
Now I remember when I posted something on The Forum about wanting to find older singers to network with, someone I respect very much suggested starting a community opera group. Now the problem is, if you live in New York, there are already 20 such groups and they are filled with the spillover from the minor opera houses, YAPpers, and managed singers looking to do a role that they're not getting cast in for pay. These groups are not for amateurs like me. They might have been 30 years ago (I remember singing in various schools and senior centers as part of an existing group back then) but not now.
This group was mostly young (none of the women looked a day over 30 although the only two men could have been close to 40) and very polished. Except for one mezzo, none of them had big voices but they looked and sounded like they have been getting up in front of groups, classes, juries, whatever, since they were in their teens.
Just as I was feeling so happy (or at least momentarily satisfied) about this September 11 concert, I now just feel so that everything I want is out of reach.
What's interesting is that I don't know that I thought these young women sounded that much better than I do, just different.
I would say I have a bigger, more impressive natural instrument, but so what? It has taken me into my 60s even to begin to know what to do with it outside the limited range I use for church solos. I certainly don't have that kind of confidence. I mean people say I'm a good actress but I am not comfortable. And when I sing church solos I don't have to do anything except remember my music and look other worldly.
I know that part of the issue with my voice is that as Susan Eichhorn Young (whom I am always quoting) says in her latest blog post, I did everything ass backwards.
What I mean is I didn't cosset my voice from the yellow Italian aria book through lieder through "Va Laisse Couler Mes Larmes" year by year, inch by inch, until every note was perfectly matched to every other note. Never picking up a dramatic aria with high notes in it until those notes were there securely.
If I wanted to sing the Habanera at 14 (as I burned my vocal cords with Kools), I sang the Habanera at 14. If someone cast me as Giovanna Seymour at 28, I asked my teacher what exercises to sing so that I could pull myself through it.
Now I want to make one thing clear. Except for my brief stint with the teacher I call Mr. B., I never did anything technically that abused my voice. In fact one compliment I always get from people is that despite being a large-voiced mezzo I don't "push" my voice, but always sing lyrically. Except when I would get to a note that I was not comfortable singing; in which case I would sort of gird my loins and scream. Not in a way that hurt my throat, just in a way that hurt other people's ears, and did not sound integrated with the rest of my voice.
I know there are things I sing beautifully, but I do not have a scale that is perfectly even from top to bottom. On the other hand I have heard that this is a problem with many dramatic mezzos. I read a review recently that totally savaged a dramatic mezzo whom I heard do quite an impressive rendition of "O Don Fatale" at a concert. Whether the review was deserved I don't know, but it mentioned her voice being in three different pieces, and cited that it was a problem in the fach in general.
But what I realize is that although I didn't harm my instrument, I may have harmed my psyche in that I sang things badly that I was not ready to sing, which left bad muscle and other memories imprinted somewhere, and which makes it harder now to sing those things well even though I can (a lot of the time).
Getting back to this afternoon's concert, I decided to pull myself out of my funk by watching what the various singers did with vowels, since I am now juggling two different schools of thought. Interestingly, on the whole the lighter voiced women sang brighter vowels and the mezzo sang darker vowels. And it wasn't just a question of their different natural instruments. I watched what they were doing with their mouths.
In other news, I am seriously reworking "Liber Scriptus". That is an example of a piece that I sang badly (panicking and gulping for air before the phrase with the big climactic A flat) and that now I can sing well, so I need to start from scratch. I found a way of singing that phrase on one breath by keeping my jaw loose, and that is what I am going to do. It is not a very high note, considering that I am now vocalizing up to a high C every day, although sometimes that newly found headspace is there and sometimes it's not.
And I will enjoy the concert I am in on September 11. It is like living in a small town where I'm one of a handful of singers with classical training on a program with singers without.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Groomed Singer vs the Seat of the Pants One
The title of this post is inspired by the fact that yesterday I did two things: had a voice lesson and heard the senior recital of a young woman who is going places.
One thing I noticed when I went to a lot of those meetups was that the younger singers, the ones who attracted mentoring when I didn't, had something in common. (I am speaking here of the mezzos, simply because I believe that sopranos, particularly high sopranos, have differently constructed voices with different issues to contend with.) They had voices like a perfect string of pearls, with each note exactly the same size and weight. This was true whether their voices had a light or dark timbre, or even whether or not their voices had a pleasant timbre. If they had a vocal "issue" at all, it was a breathy sound, particularly in the middle register. My voice is not like that. It is like a V on a small pedestal. The weakest note in my range is probably the E or E flat above middle C and my voice just keeps getting stronger (and louder) as it goes up the scale culminating in a high A that will break the windows. (I can vocalize solidly up to a B flat and B natural, which sound a bit narrower, but the C is just a scream on pitch - if I'm lucky - and then that's it folks). Below the lower passagio E flat I can go into chest, which is solid down to a B flat and then it weakens on the A and A flat and below that I can hum down to a low F but nothing lower. I don't know if this is the result of my training or lack thereof (I am speaking of the lack of early training "by the book") or if it's physiological. In any event, when you listen to the biggest name singers, like Dolora Zajick, Stephanie Blythe,or Olga Borodina, not to mention all of the great Italian mezzos from the 1960s and 1970s, you don't hear "string of pearls", you hear something a little more exciting. Although of course the technique is there.
This young mezzo I heard last night has what I would call "string of pearls" plus. She has a perfectly even voice, but with a dark timbre and the potential to be exciting when she lets it rip (hard to do in the repertoire that she had to sing for a graduation recital). And she is a superb actress and stunning to look at. Of course she started out with all the advantages: her mother is a pianist and is, in fact, my coach. This young mezzo began singing at conservatory programs for youngsters when she was probably 12 or 13. She has never wanted to be anything but a singer. I think she is going places.
I have never been a big fan of art songs (particularly the German ones) but I am trying to educate myself. It always seemed odd (and pointless) that to graduate from a conservatory you have to sing art songs in different languages and that the focus is so heavily weighted toward this when most people's singing "bread and butter" (for pay or not) will probably be opera, church music, and even, perhaps, some musical theater. But maybe this kind of training and grooming does something. I know young people in these vocal programs are constantly getting up in front of juries and classmates and presenting songs (easier in the beginning than presenting difficult arias) and they are taught what to do with their facial expressions, body, arms, clothing, etc. I think, in fact, that this young woman had probably even been taught how to take a bow.
Getting back to me....my training was more "seat of the pants". I mean I began with the kind of exercises that teach you how to sing on the breath, but once I was able to do that, whatever I had to sing that week, month, year, led the training. So first it was Katisha, then Maddalena and Suzuki, then (after my voice lightened from being away from cigarettes for six months) Cherubino, and finally (Heaven help us!) Giovanna Seymour. One of the blog-writing, online commenting mezzos I admire said that she had taken up photography (quite seriously) and that she found that the difference between learning about singing and learning about photography was that with the latter she didn't get a "foundation", she just decided what kind of things she wanted to know and then learned those things.
I think that was more how my vocal training progressed. If I had trouble with the murderous tessitura of Seymour, well then, my teacher gave me exercises to sing on the "edges of my vocal cords" which I practiced at every lesson. (In the performance I was not able to sustain that B at the end of her last aria but the fact that I got through the role at all was quite amazing.)
I mean there are famous singers who were seat-of-the-pants trained:Franco Corelli and Birgit Nilsson , from what I've read, so it is not totally wrong, just different.
As for my own vocal progress, I did a new exercise at yesterday's lesson: singing all the exercises on "oo" with a smile instead of puckering my lips, which my teacher says was sounding "hooty". This has made my higher notes (G, A flat, A natural, even B flat) feel easier when I sing them later although it didn't do much for the C, which is still a blood curdling scream. "Liber Scriptus" is going very well. As is "Lux Aeterna". I heard a renowned mezzo refer to it as having a "high tessitura", which I do not really find. It only goes up to a G and basically requires the same skills I use to sing soprano in the choir.
But hearing that young mezzo made me realize how much polishing I am not getting (who has time to study languages, movement, and solfege when I have to earn a living and just keep up with my practicing to keep my instrument in shape and learn the music I will be singing?). A little here and there, but it's not the same. I read somewhere that it takes three generations to make a career. I would say at least two. Which is why everyone says I'm the best copyeditor they ever hired, for what it's worth. Thanks Mom.
One thing I noticed when I went to a lot of those meetups was that the younger singers, the ones who attracted mentoring when I didn't, had something in common. (I am speaking here of the mezzos, simply because I believe that sopranos, particularly high sopranos, have differently constructed voices with different issues to contend with.) They had voices like a perfect string of pearls, with each note exactly the same size and weight. This was true whether their voices had a light or dark timbre, or even whether or not their voices had a pleasant timbre. If they had a vocal "issue" at all, it was a breathy sound, particularly in the middle register. My voice is not like that. It is like a V on a small pedestal. The weakest note in my range is probably the E or E flat above middle C and my voice just keeps getting stronger (and louder) as it goes up the scale culminating in a high A that will break the windows. (I can vocalize solidly up to a B flat and B natural, which sound a bit narrower, but the C is just a scream on pitch - if I'm lucky - and then that's it folks). Below the lower passagio E flat I can go into chest, which is solid down to a B flat and then it weakens on the A and A flat and below that I can hum down to a low F but nothing lower. I don't know if this is the result of my training or lack thereof (I am speaking of the lack of early training "by the book") or if it's physiological. In any event, when you listen to the biggest name singers, like Dolora Zajick, Stephanie Blythe,or Olga Borodina, not to mention all of the great Italian mezzos from the 1960s and 1970s, you don't hear "string of pearls", you hear something a little more exciting. Although of course the technique is there.
This young mezzo I heard last night has what I would call "string of pearls" plus. She has a perfectly even voice, but with a dark timbre and the potential to be exciting when she lets it rip (hard to do in the repertoire that she had to sing for a graduation recital). And she is a superb actress and stunning to look at. Of course she started out with all the advantages: her mother is a pianist and is, in fact, my coach. This young mezzo began singing at conservatory programs for youngsters when she was probably 12 or 13. She has never wanted to be anything but a singer. I think she is going places.
I have never been a big fan of art songs (particularly the German ones) but I am trying to educate myself. It always seemed odd (and pointless) that to graduate from a conservatory you have to sing art songs in different languages and that the focus is so heavily weighted toward this when most people's singing "bread and butter" (for pay or not) will probably be opera, church music, and even, perhaps, some musical theater. But maybe this kind of training and grooming does something. I know young people in these vocal programs are constantly getting up in front of juries and classmates and presenting songs (easier in the beginning than presenting difficult arias) and they are taught what to do with their facial expressions, body, arms, clothing, etc. I think, in fact, that this young woman had probably even been taught how to take a bow.
Getting back to me....my training was more "seat of the pants". I mean I began with the kind of exercises that teach you how to sing on the breath, but once I was able to do that, whatever I had to sing that week, month, year, led the training. So first it was Katisha, then Maddalena and Suzuki, then (after my voice lightened from being away from cigarettes for six months) Cherubino, and finally (Heaven help us!) Giovanna Seymour. One of the blog-writing, online commenting mezzos I admire said that she had taken up photography (quite seriously) and that she found that the difference between learning about singing and learning about photography was that with the latter she didn't get a "foundation", she just decided what kind of things she wanted to know and then learned those things.
I think that was more how my vocal training progressed. If I had trouble with the murderous tessitura of Seymour, well then, my teacher gave me exercises to sing on the "edges of my vocal cords" which I practiced at every lesson. (In the performance I was not able to sustain that B at the end of her last aria but the fact that I got through the role at all was quite amazing.)
I mean there are famous singers who were seat-of-the-pants trained:Franco Corelli and Birgit Nilsson , from what I've read, so it is not totally wrong, just different.
As for my own vocal progress, I did a new exercise at yesterday's lesson: singing all the exercises on "oo" with a smile instead of puckering my lips, which my teacher says was sounding "hooty". This has made my higher notes (G, A flat, A natural, even B flat) feel easier when I sing them later although it didn't do much for the C, which is still a blood curdling scream. "Liber Scriptus" is going very well. As is "Lux Aeterna". I heard a renowned mezzo refer to it as having a "high tessitura", which I do not really find. It only goes up to a G and basically requires the same skills I use to sing soprano in the choir.
But hearing that young mezzo made me realize how much polishing I am not getting (who has time to study languages, movement, and solfege when I have to earn a living and just keep up with my practicing to keep my instrument in shape and learn the music I will be singing?). A little here and there, but it's not the same. I read somewhere that it takes three generations to make a career. I would say at least two. Which is why everyone says I'm the best copyeditor they ever hired, for what it's worth. Thanks Mom.
Monday, April 30, 2012
A Happy Day
Yesterday I had the first really happy day I have had in a long time, certainly since Palm Sunday, when my partner came to church, because it is her favorite holiday. Maybe April is the cruelest month. Anyhow, it started off well and ended well and next March I will have my Verdi Requiem to sing so it won't matter who gets chosen to do what during Holy Week. I will just be my professional self and do what I'm told.
Yesterday I got up at six so that I could sing Dvorak's "God is My Shepherd" in the 9 am service. I also sang it at the 11 am service. At the 9 am service there were no choir people (usually they have someone doing cantoring) so I was on my own with the hymns and liturgy, more or less, at least in the front rows. I don't sightread, but my "phonographic" memory served me well enough as all the pieces of music were things I had sung at least once over the past two years. (And if it's an unfamiliar hymn, if the choir director plays a verse on the organ as an intro, I can plunge right in.)
I think the song went well and actually I sang it better in the second service after I had gotten warmed up (I mean this literally - it was very cold in the church so I was happier in the second service wearing a choir robe).
I also got compliments on my CD, not just from nonsingers, but from a woman in the choir who went to a conservatory and had been a paid church singer in a number of places.
After that I met my partner at Christie's to see their Impressionist collection. (We were going to go to Sotheby's to see Munch's "The Scream" but worried it might be a zoo.)
So now I am going to buckle down and get serious about learning every part of the Requiem.
I know my experience singing it will never be this (some people would rather be in the chorus of a professional production than sing the solo bits in a pastiche type situation but I would not) but it will be something and it will be a special addition to the church's Lent programs. And after that - maybe some Shakespeare!
Yesterday I got up at six so that I could sing Dvorak's "God is My Shepherd" in the 9 am service. I also sang it at the 11 am service. At the 9 am service there were no choir people (usually they have someone doing cantoring) so I was on my own with the hymns and liturgy, more or less, at least in the front rows. I don't sightread, but my "phonographic" memory served me well enough as all the pieces of music were things I had sung at least once over the past two years. (And if it's an unfamiliar hymn, if the choir director plays a verse on the organ as an intro, I can plunge right in.)
I think the song went well and actually I sang it better in the second service after I had gotten warmed up (I mean this literally - it was very cold in the church so I was happier in the second service wearing a choir robe).
I also got compliments on my CD, not just from nonsingers, but from a woman in the choir who went to a conservatory and had been a paid church singer in a number of places.
After that I met my partner at Christie's to see their Impressionist collection. (We were going to go to Sotheby's to see Munch's "The Scream" but worried it might be a zoo.)
So now I am going to buckle down and get serious about learning every part of the Requiem.
I know my experience singing it will never be this (some people would rather be in the chorus of a professional production than sing the solo bits in a pastiche type situation but I would not) but it will be something and it will be a special addition to the church's Lent programs. And after that - maybe some Shakespeare!
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Bitter and the Sweet (Reprise)
The Bitter: For the first time in a long time, I decided to investigate an audition listed in the back of Classical Singer. When I went to their web site and read their mission statement, there was the "Y" word loud and clear (and no, I don't mean "yelp", I mean "young"). In my last several posts I mentioned their being a "glut" of opera groups, which is true, and at least half of them use the "Y" word in their mission statement. The next thing that happened, which would be funny if it weren't so sad, was I googled "opportunities for older singers" and the first hit was an article was about how to get "youth choruses" to accept older teenagers and the second hit was an old post I had made on the Forum. Which about tells you how many of these opportunities there are.
The Sweet:Well, this article allayed my fears about being homeless, at least for a while, so I can focus on other things. (The downside is I won't be moving to that hypothetical small town where I can be a real diva, either, but will be staying in my cubbyhole in the armpit of Lincoln Center.) And I sang through "Lux Aeterna" from the Requiem and it sounds really good! And I have fallen in love with a new role: Gertrude in Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. It is lush and lovely, and is mostly in a middle register. Jennifer Larmore had referred to the role as "high", which to me seems odd as it does not go above an A, I don't think. My recording features Denyce Graves, who, when I think of it, is probably the closest to me, as a total package (despite the ethnic difference), rather than Dolora Zajick. Zajick has a big dramatic voice but is also blessed with easy top notes, which I am not, and plummy low notes, which I am not either, and sex appeal is not her strong suit. Graves seems to have made a career out of singing three roles: Carmen, Dalila, and Charlotte, all of which require a sensuous beauty, both vocal and otherwise, and do not go up into the vocal stratosphere. When I look at my CD, the arias on it are a close match to those on her aria CD, in fact I think she has recorded them all. In any event, she is the perfect Gertrude, and I think I am going to try to do something with this opera, after the Requiem, which now gives me a long view.
The Sweet:Well, this article allayed my fears about being homeless, at least for a while, so I can focus on other things. (The downside is I won't be moving to that hypothetical small town where I can be a real diva, either, but will be staying in my cubbyhole in the armpit of Lincoln Center.) And I sang through "Lux Aeterna" from the Requiem and it sounds really good! And I have fallen in love with a new role: Gertrude in Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. It is lush and lovely, and is mostly in a middle register. Jennifer Larmore had referred to the role as "high", which to me seems odd as it does not go above an A, I don't think. My recording features Denyce Graves, who, when I think of it, is probably the closest to me, as a total package (despite the ethnic difference), rather than Dolora Zajick. Zajick has a big dramatic voice but is also blessed with easy top notes, which I am not, and plummy low notes, which I am not either, and sex appeal is not her strong suit. Graves seems to have made a career out of singing three roles: Carmen, Dalila, and Charlotte, all of which require a sensuous beauty, both vocal and otherwise, and do not go up into the vocal stratosphere. When I look at my CD, the arias on it are a close match to those on her aria CD, in fact I think she has recorded them all. In any event, she is the perfect Gertrude, and I think I am going to try to do something with this opera, after the Requiem, which now gives me a long view.
Friday, April 20, 2012
So Why Am I Doing This Anyway?
Today was shrink day, so I resumed my discussion of how to find an identity vis-a-vis the world of singing.
My therapist asked me how it felt (the typical therapist question) to feel so frustrated and I said the interesting thing was it didn't make me want to stop singing. I said that the chain of events that was set in motion on Valentines Day happened for a reason and that I believed that my Higher Power (I feel funny saying "God" here, because in this instance I think the Higher Power in question was quite Pagan and Pan-like!)wanted me to hold onto this thread and not let it go until it had played itself out. And whatever frustrations I feel, singing is not over for me.
There are really a variety of separate issues that all become intertwined. The first is that I still need to improve my vocal technique. This continues to improve, but my teacher often says that sometimes it is difficult to tease out what is a problem that can be fixed with technique, and what is a problem that is caused by physiological limits, which are greater in someone older who began singing later. (When I complain about my upper register, he says "you can only stretch a rubber band so far". He says he believes I can have a performance-worthy reliable B flat - which I sometimes do and sometimes don't - but probably nothing above that.)
Then there is the issue of my age, not to mention people's perception of my age. I was quite surprised when my teacher told me that many people listening to me may think that the vocal flaws that I still have are the result of age, and that I am not in any sense, as that auditor politely told me, a "future investment".
Not to be forgotten is the whole issue of a "culture" of singers and musicians, that I am not a part of. I have no friends who are musicians, other than the people I know at the church, and they are colleagues, not friends. Most of the people I socialize with are readers, writers, editors, museum-goers, and yes, concert goers, but not musicians. I did not go to a conservatory. Neither did most of the people who sang with me at those amateur groups in the 1970s (my teacher, I believe, has a high school diploma and began singing when he graduated). The people I would run into at these get togethers all knew, if not each other, then the same people, and had had many similar experiences. They just had no sense of me. I mean this is something I have experienced in other walks of life as well; sometimes I have been a part of the club and sometimes I have not.
And there is absolutely no way I can ever catch up with this culture. I can sing better, but probably not well enough for anyone to be interested in me, other than my teacher, who told me he is pleasantly surprised that someone my age made this much progress, and my choir director, who, in addition to being grateful for the handful of people (myself included) with serious vocal training who are available to sing for free, is also deeply religious (in the best sense) and believes in encouraging everyone to make the most of themselves.
So the question is basically as foolishly existential as "who am I"? I heard loud and clear that to derive an identity from something you are not really doing is "delusional". (I asked the therapist about that today and she said it was a matter of degree and that she did not consider me delusional.) But I am not ready to be just a nice woman in her 60s who sings as a hobby.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
My Inner Bully
The title of this post refers to this post by Cindy Sadler who always has something to say.
What I find fascinating is that I began reading her blog because she is the mezzo I wish I were, but I continue reading it because it seems that there are many things about her journey with fitness that mirror my journey with singing.
This last post really spoke to me about how I felt at those meetups, get-togethers, etc. Part of the problem was it was not as simple as "I was a beginner, the other people were more advanced". It was more like, "I had some technical issues to work on, which were different from the ones the younger beginners had to work on, and because I was so much older than everyone, working to improve wasn't going to get me anywhere so no one was interested."
Probably the only time I went to one of those things when I had any confidence was the very first time I went to the Tuesday night one, which was the week I was going to sing "O Ma Lyre Immortelle" at that LGBT fundraiser, so I sang it there. Having a real "gig", even just singing one aria at a "cabaret" meant I was a real singer who really needed a rehearsal, so I was as good as anyone else.
Cindy suggests if you're uncomfortable, looking for a class where people are more at your level, but this is exactly what I have not been able to find. There are things for young students and things for emerging pros, and things for secure mature singers ("mature" in this context means 40), and things for real amateurs with pleasant voices who can sing a few simple art songs, but not that much for someone like me, unless you want to spend a lot of money (the bass I sang with took an opera scenes class at a community music school, and he is another rough diamond, like me, an intermittent smoker who began studying classical singing in his 30s, but it cost several hundred dollars.)
What she says about athletes is interesting. She says people are so happy that someone is interested in fitness that they don't care what level the person is at. I would not say this is true of singers necessarily. Or it's only true if the people at a somewhat lower level are younger. Then the more experienced people can "model" or be mentors.
She talks about bullies in the high school gym and I certainly have been acquainted with those! Well, not so much in high school, where the beatnik crowd I hung out with thought gym was silly, but certainly in 7th and 8th grade. In general, I have not encountered those types of bullies as an adult. Now, it's much more subtle. I have had people talk "around" me at the Forum, have had singers let me "friend" them on Facebook but never comment on anything I've posted, especially it it's about singing, etc. And I have seen people at those meetups approach newcomers who are young, asking them whom they studied with, what they are working on, etc. and notice that they never approach me (and if I approach someone, they answer questions I ask about them but never ask anything about me).
I really need to tell my inner bully to shut up right now. So what is it telling me?
1. Trying to be an opera singer is a waste of time and money.
2. If you're not even good enough to sing a role you want (or even one you're lukewarm about) in someone else's amateur production you should just pack it in and do something else with your free time.
3. Why don't you just settle for being a nice church singer who sings "After the Ball is Over" at an occasional party? (This is the kind of thing my partner thinks I should be singing instead of struggling with high notes - which I refer to as my "triple Axles". She says singing is to "entertain" and whom am I entertaining if I'm sweating?)
Tonight will be my first night at choir practice after my Good Friday meltdown (the meltdown occurred only in my head and in the "pages" of this blog). So what is my game plan? This morning I will write to the choir director and say since I hadn't heard from him (not surprising, as he played one concert out of town over the weekend and is playing another one Monday night) I will bring the music for the three solos to rehearsal. I will warm up (I had a really constructive voice lesson yesterday about focusing on keeping my pharyngeal space open to get rid of that tight "gargly" sound in my upper passagio). We are going to be singing Pinkham's "Alleluia" on Sunday. This has about 10 high Gs for the sopranos but they're situated in a comfortable way for me and it's something I sing well. I will keep my mouth shut about Good Friday unless someone else mentions it. (I thanked the people who deserved thanking: the choir director for conducting, the woman who wrote the passion play, and as many of the actors in it that I could find to thank.)
So now it's time to pound this keyboard for a while and earn some $$$.
ETA: I will also thank any and all of the instrumentalists who played. They did a fabulous job. And I'm keeping my ear to the ground for an oboist who might want to play "Qui Sedes".
What I find fascinating is that I began reading her blog because she is the mezzo I wish I were, but I continue reading it because it seems that there are many things about her journey with fitness that mirror my journey with singing.
This last post really spoke to me about how I felt at those meetups, get-togethers, etc. Part of the problem was it was not as simple as "I was a beginner, the other people were more advanced". It was more like, "I had some technical issues to work on, which were different from the ones the younger beginners had to work on, and because I was so much older than everyone, working to improve wasn't going to get me anywhere so no one was interested."
Probably the only time I went to one of those things when I had any confidence was the very first time I went to the Tuesday night one, which was the week I was going to sing "O Ma Lyre Immortelle" at that LGBT fundraiser, so I sang it there. Having a real "gig", even just singing one aria at a "cabaret" meant I was a real singer who really needed a rehearsal, so I was as good as anyone else.
Cindy suggests if you're uncomfortable, looking for a class where people are more at your level, but this is exactly what I have not been able to find. There are things for young students and things for emerging pros, and things for secure mature singers ("mature" in this context means 40), and things for real amateurs with pleasant voices who can sing a few simple art songs, but not that much for someone like me, unless you want to spend a lot of money (the bass I sang with took an opera scenes class at a community music school, and he is another rough diamond, like me, an intermittent smoker who began studying classical singing in his 30s, but it cost several hundred dollars.)
What she says about athletes is interesting. She says people are so happy that someone is interested in fitness that they don't care what level the person is at. I would not say this is true of singers necessarily. Or it's only true if the people at a somewhat lower level are younger. Then the more experienced people can "model" or be mentors.
She talks about bullies in the high school gym and I certainly have been acquainted with those! Well, not so much in high school, where the beatnik crowd I hung out with thought gym was silly, but certainly in 7th and 8th grade. In general, I have not encountered those types of bullies as an adult. Now, it's much more subtle. I have had people talk "around" me at the Forum, have had singers let me "friend" them on Facebook but never comment on anything I've posted, especially it it's about singing, etc. And I have seen people at those meetups approach newcomers who are young, asking them whom they studied with, what they are working on, etc. and notice that they never approach me (and if I approach someone, they answer questions I ask about them but never ask anything about me).
I really need to tell my inner bully to shut up right now. So what is it telling me?
1. Trying to be an opera singer is a waste of time and money.
2. If you're not even good enough to sing a role you want (or even one you're lukewarm about) in someone else's amateur production you should just pack it in and do something else with your free time.
3. Why don't you just settle for being a nice church singer who sings "After the Ball is Over" at an occasional party? (This is the kind of thing my partner thinks I should be singing instead of struggling with high notes - which I refer to as my "triple Axles". She says singing is to "entertain" and whom am I entertaining if I'm sweating?)
Tonight will be my first night at choir practice after my Good Friday meltdown (the meltdown occurred only in my head and in the "pages" of this blog). So what is my game plan? This morning I will write to the choir director and say since I hadn't heard from him (not surprising, as he played one concert out of town over the weekend and is playing another one Monday night) I will bring the music for the three solos to rehearsal. I will warm up (I had a really constructive voice lesson yesterday about focusing on keeping my pharyngeal space open to get rid of that tight "gargly" sound in my upper passagio). We are going to be singing Pinkham's "Alleluia" on Sunday. This has about 10 high Gs for the sopranos but they're situated in a comfortable way for me and it's something I sing well. I will keep my mouth shut about Good Friday unless someone else mentions it. (I thanked the people who deserved thanking: the choir director for conducting, the woman who wrote the passion play, and as many of the actors in it that I could find to thank.)
So now it's time to pound this keyboard for a while and earn some $$$.
ETA: I will also thank any and all of the instrumentalists who played. They did a fabulous job. And I'm keeping my ear to the ground for an oboist who might want to play "Qui Sedes".
Friday, April 13, 2012
No Matter How High I Jump.....
I have written at great length about my despair over not being able to get my foot in the door of any of these amateur productions. Well in 2009 this is who sang Turridu in Cavalleria with the company where I had the disastrous experience with Carmelites.
He's great and I hope he has a big career. But so what's left for the little people?
Leaving one keyboard for another - I am going to put in a full hour of practice before I leave for my eldercare sleepover.
He's great and I hope he has a big career. But so what's left for the little people?
Leaving one keyboard for another - I am going to put in a full hour of practice before I leave for my eldercare sleepover.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Easter Message
Yesterday was Easter, a time of new beginnings, whether you associate it with the risen Christ or just with the Goddess Estra and her sacred rabbit. And for Christians, Easter is a season not a day (which means we can sing Easter music for several weeks) so I might as well take advantage of it.
First I want to say that I feel bad about my previous post, in that it is not usually in my nature to disparage other performing artists (unless they're famous - then I suppose it's fair game). I was even thinking of editing out some of the remarks I made in my last post on the other hand that was how I was feeling at the moment.
The issue with Good Friday wasn't how well any particular person sang or didn't. The issue was that the situation was not handled fairly. It was handled as if this other group provided the professional singers and we provided the choir, which didn't even do as much singing as we normally do on Good Friday. In two pieces were were just backup to soloists, which is not normally what our choir director likes, in fact I learned at a lecture about Lutherans and church music recently that they believe the "communal voice" is more important than the individual voice, which is why choral music usually trumps solos and hymns sung by everyone trump choir anthems. (For example my singing soul mate - another woman who began serious study of classical singing in late middle age - sings in an Episcopal church and if she has a good solo at the ready it will be substituted for a hymn slot, something that we would never do.) So the format of this Good Friday service flew in the face of that precept and for what?? OK, that other choir is paid and we are not, but - and this is what prompted me to get snarky - we have several professional sounding singers, myself included, certainly in that range, who sound as good as they do so how dare people assume that it's ok to treat them like the stars and us like the background? They didn't even give us a chance to either 1. audition for some of the solos that they wanted to include or 2. offer to come to extra rehearsals so that we could sing some of the contemporary music (which was intertwined with the Bach) either as a choir or as a solo quartet?
In any event, I just have to let this go. I am not angry because I was aware of another singer's flaws. Goodness knows I have plenty of my own. I am partly angry at myself because I think I could be a paid church singer if I weren't too lazy to learn how to sightread or read key signatures.
I don't even think there's any point in saying anything to the choir director. He is very sweet and has been very supportive of me (and everyone). If I feel underappreciated I can cut back on some of my involvement there and try to audition for some paying gigs at least on the big holidays.
I need to ratchet up my work on my oratorio solos, as well as my opera repertoire. I will never be competitive in the latter because I am too old and probably don't have the stamina to sing the roles that my voice is most suited to (I would have if I had begun doing serious work on them even in my early 40s) but I can still sing arias and scenes in concert or even throw together something like I did with Samson et Dalila.
I am looking at the alto solo from the Bach Easter Oratorio. It's sung by Mary Magdalene, which of course is right up my alley because she's part of my "brand" along with Dalila, and it's magnificent. We would have to make cuts in it, of course, so I might pass on it for now but it's a good thing to learn. In the summer there's more leeway but I couldn't sing this in the summer because it specifically refers to the Magdalen at Christ's tomb - it's not just a jolly Easter piece like "Rejoice Greatly".
I also had bought another book of oratorio arias and found something by Saint Saens called "Thou O Lord Art my Protector" which I will look at and there's also the song about Jesus at Emmaus called "And Their Eyes Were Opened" by Charls Raymond Cronham.
So my project for today is, after I log in enough work hours, to review all three of these pieces. I can put the Verdi Requiem aside briefly, then once I have an Easter solo spot I can go back to it until it's time to think about a summer anthem. I really would like to do "Qui Sedes" with an oboe.
In other news, yesterday I managed to sing through the entire soprano part of the Halleluia Chorus twice. The second time I didn't make it up to the A on "He shall reign" (actually all I sang was "ah" on all the high parts) but I feel I have mastered some of the skills required, which was a good thing, as I was alone on the part with the two First Sopranos - the two other Second Sopranos decided to sing alto.
First I want to say that I feel bad about my previous post, in that it is not usually in my nature to disparage other performing artists (unless they're famous - then I suppose it's fair game). I was even thinking of editing out some of the remarks I made in my last post on the other hand that was how I was feeling at the moment.
The issue with Good Friday wasn't how well any particular person sang or didn't. The issue was that the situation was not handled fairly. It was handled as if this other group provided the professional singers and we provided the choir, which didn't even do as much singing as we normally do on Good Friday. In two pieces were were just backup to soloists, which is not normally what our choir director likes, in fact I learned at a lecture about Lutherans and church music recently that they believe the "communal voice" is more important than the individual voice, which is why choral music usually trumps solos and hymns sung by everyone trump choir anthems. (For example my singing soul mate - another woman who began serious study of classical singing in late middle age - sings in an Episcopal church and if she has a good solo at the ready it will be substituted for a hymn slot, something that we would never do.) So the format of this Good Friday service flew in the face of that precept and for what?? OK, that other choir is paid and we are not, but - and this is what prompted me to get snarky - we have several professional sounding singers, myself included, certainly in that range, who sound as good as they do so how dare people assume that it's ok to treat them like the stars and us like the background? They didn't even give us a chance to either 1. audition for some of the solos that they wanted to include or 2. offer to come to extra rehearsals so that we could sing some of the contemporary music (which was intertwined with the Bach) either as a choir or as a solo quartet?
In any event, I just have to let this go. I am not angry because I was aware of another singer's flaws. Goodness knows I have plenty of my own. I am partly angry at myself because I think I could be a paid church singer if I weren't too lazy to learn how to sightread or read key signatures.
I don't even think there's any point in saying anything to the choir director. He is very sweet and has been very supportive of me (and everyone). If I feel underappreciated I can cut back on some of my involvement there and try to audition for some paying gigs at least on the big holidays.
I need to ratchet up my work on my oratorio solos, as well as my opera repertoire. I will never be competitive in the latter because I am too old and probably don't have the stamina to sing the roles that my voice is most suited to (I would have if I had begun doing serious work on them even in my early 40s) but I can still sing arias and scenes in concert or even throw together something like I did with Samson et Dalila.
I am looking at the alto solo from the Bach Easter Oratorio. It's sung by Mary Magdalene, which of course is right up my alley because she's part of my "brand" along with Dalila, and it's magnificent. We would have to make cuts in it, of course, so I might pass on it for now but it's a good thing to learn. In the summer there's more leeway but I couldn't sing this in the summer because it specifically refers to the Magdalen at Christ's tomb - it's not just a jolly Easter piece like "Rejoice Greatly".
I also had bought another book of oratorio arias and found something by Saint Saens called "Thou O Lord Art my Protector" which I will look at and there's also the song about Jesus at Emmaus called "And Their Eyes Were Opened" by Charls Raymond Cronham.
So my project for today is, after I log in enough work hours, to review all three of these pieces. I can put the Verdi Requiem aside briefly, then once I have an Easter solo spot I can go back to it until it's time to think about a summer anthem. I really would like to do "Qui Sedes" with an oboe.
In other news, yesterday I managed to sing through the entire soprano part of the Halleluia Chorus twice. The second time I didn't make it up to the A on "He shall reign" (actually all I sang was "ah" on all the high parts) but I feel I have mastered some of the skills required, which was a good thing, as I was alone on the part with the two First Sopranos - the two other Second Sopranos decided to sing alto.
Monday, October 17, 2011
What is My Definition of "Success"?
As so often happens, Susan Eichhorn Young taps into an issue that is close to my heart at the moment. In this post, she asks people to think about how they define success.
In light of my recent feelings of disappointment, this was a useful exercise for me.
I think at the age and stage I am now, my definition of success would include (not all of these are possible, but they are something to aspire to):
1. To be able to sing the roles in my fach (Dalila, Carmen, Amneris, Azucena, Laura, Cilea's Principessa - I think Eboli is a lost cause so I'm not including her, and Charlotte is a maybe) in a professional sounding way, without getting tired or having notes/phrases that are touch and go.
2. To have this acknowledged by other people - teachers, coaches, peers - whether or not they want to "hire" me or "promote" me in any way.
3. To have a regular venue for performing these roles that costs me a minimal amount of money (singing them in concert is fine).
4. To have a real support system of people who check in with me, encourage me, and act as a counterbalance for all the negative input I get from my partner.
What makes me feel so frustrated is I think that some of this is achievable. I have the natural raw material (a big dramatic mezzo voice), a good teacher, I know most of these roles by heart already, and I have a big dramatic personality. I have built up my stamina enormously over the past five years and I am blessed to be extremely healthy. Other than the fact that my knee injury and surgery make me less than "nimble" onstage, and that my neck is ugly, there is really nothing else about me that looks or sounds "old".
If I didn't think I was sitting on this mountain of talent I wouldn't be so frustrated. For example I love going to the ballet but I am not a ballerina and never thought I was, despite having taken ballet classes off and on (until I had my accident). But singing is different.
So, for example, if I were in the kind of environment that allowed me to put on one of these concerts every couple of months, I would feel "you win a few, you lose a few, you learn". But I will be lucky if I get to do something like this in six months (I'm hoping to pull off this Verdi Requiem but if the pastor says I have to pay to "rent" the church it's not on).
It's also, of course, the competition. I live in the heart of Manhattan (the closest opera company to my front door is the Met) where the competition is staggering. Interestingly, even though classical music is less popular than it was 30 years ago, there seem to be more people wanting to sing opera than in the past. When I was singing with the "opera underground" as it seems to now be laughingly referred to, I didn't sing as well as I do now, but the competition was much less. My teacher says some of this competition (not so much in my fach - mostly slim, pretty, light voiced sopranos and mezzos) comes from people crossing over from musical theater. So they are pretty with good acting skills and strong middle registers (this did not used to be the case with the higher voices on the amateur circuit). True, these people aren't competing for my roles, but there are enough who are to push me down and out.
I think what bothered me the most about those meetups, etc. was feeling that I was not treated with respect. I was mostly ignored. I don't do well being ignored. Possibly that had to do with my being older than everyone. The people who needed polishing were younger. So what was anyone going to say to me? It might have been different if I had a friend or buddy to take with me to some of these things, but I don't.
So I guess I should end my list of "success" with "being taken seriously".
In light of my recent feelings of disappointment, this was a useful exercise for me.
I think at the age and stage I am now, my definition of success would include (not all of these are possible, but they are something to aspire to):
1. To be able to sing the roles in my fach (Dalila, Carmen, Amneris, Azucena, Laura, Cilea's Principessa - I think Eboli is a lost cause so I'm not including her, and Charlotte is a maybe) in a professional sounding way, without getting tired or having notes/phrases that are touch and go.
2. To have this acknowledged by other people - teachers, coaches, peers - whether or not they want to "hire" me or "promote" me in any way.
3. To have a regular venue for performing these roles that costs me a minimal amount of money (singing them in concert is fine).
4. To have a real support system of people who check in with me, encourage me, and act as a counterbalance for all the negative input I get from my partner.
What makes me feel so frustrated is I think that some of this is achievable. I have the natural raw material (a big dramatic mezzo voice), a good teacher, I know most of these roles by heart already, and I have a big dramatic personality. I have built up my stamina enormously over the past five years and I am blessed to be extremely healthy. Other than the fact that my knee injury and surgery make me less than "nimble" onstage, and that my neck is ugly, there is really nothing else about me that looks or sounds "old".
If I didn't think I was sitting on this mountain of talent I wouldn't be so frustrated. For example I love going to the ballet but I am not a ballerina and never thought I was, despite having taken ballet classes off and on (until I had my accident). But singing is different.
So, for example, if I were in the kind of environment that allowed me to put on one of these concerts every couple of months, I would feel "you win a few, you lose a few, you learn". But I will be lucky if I get to do something like this in six months (I'm hoping to pull off this Verdi Requiem but if the pastor says I have to pay to "rent" the church it's not on).
It's also, of course, the competition. I live in the heart of Manhattan (the closest opera company to my front door is the Met) where the competition is staggering. Interestingly, even though classical music is less popular than it was 30 years ago, there seem to be more people wanting to sing opera than in the past. When I was singing with the "opera underground" as it seems to now be laughingly referred to, I didn't sing as well as I do now, but the competition was much less. My teacher says some of this competition (not so much in my fach - mostly slim, pretty, light voiced sopranos and mezzos) comes from people crossing over from musical theater. So they are pretty with good acting skills and strong middle registers (this did not used to be the case with the higher voices on the amateur circuit). True, these people aren't competing for my roles, but there are enough who are to push me down and out.
I think what bothered me the most about those meetups, etc. was feeling that I was not treated with respect. I was mostly ignored. I don't do well being ignored. Possibly that had to do with my being older than everyone. The people who needed polishing were younger. So what was anyone going to say to me? It might have been different if I had a friend or buddy to take with me to some of these things, but I don't.
So I guess I should end my list of "success" with "being taken seriously".
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking, with Help from Susan and Others
Well, after sleeping on it for several days, I feel better about the concert. Neither my teacher nor the soprano I sang with said I sang well, because they both heard me sing better.
But the audience liked it, and I communicated something to the audience about these characters. The biggest compliment I got was from the woman who rents out the studio, herself a dramatic mezzo, who has sung Azucena. She told me that for those moments I was Azucena.
As with so many things, nobody says it better than Susan Eichhorn Young.
Great singers have flaws. Callas had them, God knows. I love Maria Guleghina and I am bored witless by Dawn Upshaw. I mean of course as with all artists I respect her artistry, but I am not moved by the pretty, well-schooled voice.
People laugh at someone like Paul Potts, but in the 1940s or 1950s, that is who big agents would have been chasing and trying to polish, not a cookie cutter cookie from a conservatory with perfect pitch who can play several instruments and sightread obscure contemporary music, all with no passion.
My voice has a lot of flaws. Is that because I started studying so late (even 26, when I began studying seriously the first time, is "late")? Is it because I drank until I was 25 and smoked until I was 26? Is it because I am impetuous and passionate rather than scholarly? (I can throw myself into the study of a role or a piece of sacred music - even a piece of choral music - but I can't bring myself to crack the solfege book and if you ask me what key I'm singing in I have no idea.)
I don't want my voice to have flaws, and I have worked hard on my technique (if I hadn't minded my ps and qs every second at the concert, I wouldn't have even sounded as good as I did)and have reined in my passion but I will never have a perfect scale, like a string of pearls, with every note the same size.
God knows I have lived. The relationship I've had with my partner over three decades could rival the plot of every opera not to mention the high drama that was unleashed by my relationship with The Mentor.
So now I will put the Trovatore score away for a while and get back to some arias I haven't sung for a while, for my recording.
But the audience liked it, and I communicated something to the audience about these characters. The biggest compliment I got was from the woman who rents out the studio, herself a dramatic mezzo, who has sung Azucena. She told me that for those moments I was Azucena.
As with so many things, nobody says it better than Susan Eichhorn Young.
Great singers have flaws. Callas had them, God knows. I love Maria Guleghina and I am bored witless by Dawn Upshaw. I mean of course as with all artists I respect her artistry, but I am not moved by the pretty, well-schooled voice.
People laugh at someone like Paul Potts, but in the 1940s or 1950s, that is who big agents would have been chasing and trying to polish, not a cookie cutter cookie from a conservatory with perfect pitch who can play several instruments and sightread obscure contemporary music, all with no passion.
My voice has a lot of flaws. Is that because I started studying so late (even 26, when I began studying seriously the first time, is "late")? Is it because I drank until I was 25 and smoked until I was 26? Is it because I am impetuous and passionate rather than scholarly? (I can throw myself into the study of a role or a piece of sacred music - even a piece of choral music - but I can't bring myself to crack the solfege book and if you ask me what key I'm singing in I have no idea.)
I don't want my voice to have flaws, and I have worked hard on my technique (if I hadn't minded my ps and qs every second at the concert, I wouldn't have even sounded as good as I did)and have reined in my passion but I will never have a perfect scale, like a string of pearls, with every note the same size.
God knows I have lived. The relationship I've had with my partner over three decades could rival the plot of every opera not to mention the high drama that was unleashed by my relationship with The Mentor.
So now I will put the Trovatore score away for a while and get back to some arias I haven't sung for a while, for my recording.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Rehearsal 1
Overall, today's rehearsal went well. We are talking about a soprano who can sing anything from Lucia to Brunnhilde who never gets tired and a tenor who has sung several of these Verdi roles in their entirety onstage. So I held my own. I am sounding just about the best I have ever sounded. Things seem to be coming together thanks to - what? My keeping my body in terrific shape, keeping my ribcage inflated, doing the exercises on vvv. The latter really seems to keep my high notes functioning. I had no problem at all with the B flat in "Condotta". The one place I fell flat was in the duet, on that long showy run that some mezzo stick a high C into (actually it's written in the score but most mezzos just sing an A). In any event that has always been a walk in the park for me but this time for some reason I conked out and could barely get up there - to the A obviously. As a C is the highest note I've ever been able to make any sound on I'm not singing one in public any time soon. I recouped myself and finished off the duet with the two high As and it sounded fine, but still, that was a scare. However I need to mention that as the tenor came late (he had told me he would, so it was ok) the soprano and I did the Aida duet first. Then I did the beginning of "Condotta" (not the part with the high notes) and actually I sang that section of the duet "Perigliarti ancor" that had the aforementioned run in it before the tenor got there and it sounded great.
I drank a whole carton of muscle milk during the rehearsal. This whole thing is going to be informal so I can certainly chug some during the performance, and my teacher told me if I sing things in sequence (the Trovatore scene is in the first half and the Aida duet, which is much easier for me, is in the second half) I won't get tired.
Of course there were moments when I felt out of my depth when the two other singers were chatting about all their stage experience, but that is not what I need to focus on. I need to focus on doing my personal best with this.
So let's just pray that I can stay at this new level and that the next rehearsal and the performance go well!
I drank a whole carton of muscle milk during the rehearsal. This whole thing is going to be informal so I can certainly chug some during the performance, and my teacher told me if I sing things in sequence (the Trovatore scene is in the first half and the Aida duet, which is much easier for me, is in the second half) I won't get tired.
Of course there were moments when I felt out of my depth when the two other singers were chatting about all their stage experience, but that is not what I need to focus on. I need to focus on doing my personal best with this.
So let's just pray that I can stay at this new level and that the next rehearsal and the performance go well!
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