REVIEW - The Singer's Ego: Finding Balance Between Music and Life

I recently read Lynn Eustis' above-titled book. Dr. Eustis is on the faculty of the University of North Texas and did 3 session on Mental Health and the Singer at the NATS conference in Salt Lake City this summer. They were excellent, often cathartic sessions on discussing just why singers are so neurotic. And how teachers can help and also harm their students in their growth as performers and as people. Based on Dr. Eustis' engaging personality and the value of the information in these sessions, I ordered the book before I left Salt Lake City. I looked forward to how I could use her insights as both a singer and a teacher - in fact, the subtitle of the book is "A Guide for Singers and Those Who Teach and Work with Singers." I finally got around to reading it on my recent mini-vacation.

The book is organized like a textbook, with questions following almost every chapter (except, interestingly enough, the one on the benefits of therapy, which I thought cried out for some self-analysis!). It is in two parts: Part 1 - the inner world of the singer; and Part 2 - the outer world. The book could be used with the college music student, and there are many things that would apply more to the singer starting out than to the ... mature singer (i.e., me).

I found Part 1 particularly valuable. There were some extremely good points made about how singers are different from instrumentalists. I especially liked the analogy of how if an instrumentalist's instrument breaks down on him before a performance, he can get it fixed! He can get another one if he has to. He might even have a backup instrument. Pianists are another story - a traveling concert pianist has to work on a different instrument everywhere he goes. If he's famous, he can specify that he wants a Steinway or a Baldwin to play on, but it's still a different instrument.

We are our instruments. If we get sick, don't sleep well, need emergency dental work, get into an argument with someone on the day of a performance - our instrument is affected. We can't go get another one. We have to either cancel or make do, and especially if we've been practicing under perfect conditions, and suddenly fate kicks us in the teeth, it's heartbreaking.

Dr. Eustis doesn't hold anything back. She admits that she is not a natural performer and that while she might have been the best singer at any given audition, she often didn't get the part because she was considered "boring." She had to work at inhabiting the music and letting it take her to the next level. Like her sessions at NATS this summer, her focus is on finding the truth in what you are singing. I found her analyses to be extremely insightful, inspiring, and often humorous.

But one thing about the book bothered me, and that happened in Part 2, the outer world. In the chapters regarding competition and relationships and the world of professional singing, she told stories about other singers who had done her wrong and how their actions affected her. I can appreciate that. I remember a fellow mezzo introducing me to a conductor and saying, "This is Christine Thomas. She's a fine choral alto." At which point I said, smiling, "And a mezzo soloist as well!" My problem was not with her telling these stories, my problem was the specificity of the stories.

At one point, she told a story about how a soprano in an apprenticeship program said something vile to her immediately before going on for the 2nd act, in which she had a major aria to sing that required intense focus. My problem was not with the story itself - it was that she said where it happened, which role she sang, which role the other girl sang and which opera. In this day of the internet, it is not hard to imagine that someone would say, "Gee, I wonder who that bitch was," and with a couple of keystrokes, find out.

I did. I Googled Dr. Eustis, the role she mentioned, and the opera house. In 5 minutes, I had a review of the performance and I found the offending soprano. And then I found her website. If I could do it, so could a casting director. Or an agent. It was 20 years ago - the soprano could have had her own issues that year. Maybe since then she's found Jesus. Or a new partner. Or better medication. Or she just grew up. Why bring this up now? And so specifically?

That specificity spoiled the book for me in some regards because it wasn't necessary. She could have - she should have - kept it much more general. It would make her look better . And I don't think she's a petty person. I've met her - she's not. I think it was a mistake, and one that her editor should've had her change. Telling these stories in a workshop is one thing - but print is forever.

I can recommend the book in so many ways. The insight into the singer's mentality is invaluable - there is so much truth in this book (maybe too much truth) - and she offers the reader a great opportunity to become self-aware by answering the questions at the end of chapters. (What is my goal for my voice lesson? Besides getting there on time? Really, I'm supposed to have a goal? Oops!)

As I've said in the past, quoting the now-defunct TV show Eastwick, "I am here to inspire and facilitate." And Dr. Eustis opens the book with an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the last two lines of which I found applicable to that thought:

"Leaving it you to prove and define it,

Expecting the main things from you." 

I look forward to her upcoming follow-up, The Teacher's Ego. 

Chick Singers

I was doing some thinking about female pop singers - aka "chick singers" - whose work I particularly enjoy. I'm not including musical theater singers who moved into pop (e.g., Streisand, Midler) because I wanted to be a purist about this, although I may include some who went the other way. Some of these singers may be ones with whom you may not be familiar.

Linda Ronstadt
Ann Wilson
k.d. lang
Alanis Morissette
Patsy Cline
Christina Aguilera
Lady Gaga
Annie Lennox
Amy Winehouse
Pink
Lisa Moscatiello
Shakira
Queen Latifah - on her Dana Owens jazz/pop CD
Patricia Barber - jazz
Joan Baez
Judy Collins
Grace Slick
Florence + the Machine
Fergie
Jennifer Hudson
Juice Newton
Joni Mitchell
Aretha Franklin
Shaun Murphy
Cher (a guilty pleasure)

And locally -

Ellen Winters
Alaria Taylor

Most of these are big voices - if not belters, just big and full and rich.

I'm planning to read The Singer's Ego while I'm on vacation next week and write a review of it. That'll be my next post. There are a lot of things going on in my head right now, many ideas, some restlessness. I'm hoping I can find some kind of focus for them all.

2010 so far....

This is what I've accomplished in 2010 (and the few weeks before):

1. Got my nearly-blind eyes fixed. Sometimes I miss taking off glasses at night, because I'm so used to that being part of the going-to-bed process. But being able to see in the middle of the night - you can't imagine what a miracle that is.

2. Got a smartphone. Still get a kick out of the notification sound, "DROID!" Scares the heck out of my husband, especially in the middle of the night. (Note to self: Turn off phone)

3. Bought the car of my dreams (not entirely true - I wanted a VW Beetle, but they've stopped making them in stick except for the base model, and at my age, I don't want the base model).

4. Got the personalized license plates I'd wanted for years - MEZZOID. This has become my brand - it's my email address, it's part of my Facebook address, it's my website domain name, and it all started with a little joke made during a choral rehearsal:

Choral Director: All right, altoids, let's turn to...

Me: Excuse me, I am not an altoid. I  happen to be a mezzoid.

Choral Director: What's the difference?

Me: I'm still curiously strong, I just sing a 3rd higher.

And that's where that began. This summer when I showed up at NATS in SLC to pick up my registration forms, someone looked up and said, "You're mezzoid!" I was nonplussed. I was famous. Hopefully not infamous. Makes me think twice about the things I post on the internet. 


5. At the age of ... whatever I am .... I decided that I was going to run. And not just run, but train for a 5K. So I downloaded Couch to 5K Lite (the free app) to my Droid (see above) and got myself running for 42 consecutive minutes over a 3 month period. I did my first 5K at Irish Fest a few weeks ago. 


It didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I couldn't run the whole way, and I can relate this to singing, like I can relate everything to singing....


I didn't check the house, or in the case, the trail. I didn't scope out how much shade there would be, and since I had trained running on the shady sides of streets, running in blazing sunlight two hours later than my usual training time made a HUGE difference. 


I trained wearing specific outfits - sleeveless tops, light fabric. I ran the race wearing a short-sleeved Irish Fest/Arthritis Foundation t-shirt. Not smart. Between the annoying sleevage and the blazing sunlight, I was ready to fall over. I could not do what I'd done in training. It's like wearing flats in rehearsal and then putting on heels for the first time in performance. Or getting new reading glasses to do a concert and realizing that you have not mastered the skill of looking down at your music and up at the conductor and you are not going to master it in performance (I did that one a few years ago....)


But I will try again.


6. I got to be really good at Zumba. I think I am, anyway. And I'm contemplating becoming certified to teach it.


7. I switched from PC to Mac! I'm really enjoying the new levels of creativity that this change is going to offer me. 


There are more things that I've done and more things that I intend to do. And as this week of break continues and the new school year begins, I want to keep trying new things, going new places, and exploring new ideas in singing and teaching singing. I'm hoping to give a recital next spring at Carroll, I'm coordinating a MacDowell Club recital for next March, and Ryan and I are putting together a bunch of cabaret shows that we want to market here and outside Milwaukee - outside Wisconsin, for that matter!

Jane Pesci-Townsend, 1959-2010

A DC performer that I had the good fortune to encounter during the wonderful 9 year period I lived in the DC Baltimore area just passed away this past Friday. I did not personally know her, but she was an authentic performer and teacher who will be missed by many, including people who will not have had the opportunity to be touched by her work. 

Please enjoy the video at the bottom of this obituary.

What sort of diary....

Dominick Argento set parts of this entry as the opening movement (and returned to it in the final movement) of his brilliant Diary of Virginia Woolf, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. It's the way I feel about this blog and my journal:


"What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time.”
Virginia Woolf


I hope to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself - and refined itself and coalesced as such deposits so mysteriously do - into a mould - transparent enough to reflect the light of our life.....

The "Ecstatic Experience" and the Authentic Singer

I've been doing a lot of thinking about authenticity, which makes me wince because I do not want to be a New Age-y cliche-spouting person, but all of a sudden I'm finding a need to define what it is I want to be, how I want to teach, and what I want to hear and see in performers.

This past week I've been describing to my students how I recognize authenticity in performers. It's a very visceral reaction on my part that is almost impossible to describe verbally.  I shake my head, my hands flutter, I suck in air ... it sounds like I'm having a seizure. But then I found a book on my porch that hit the nail on the head, and I'd like to quote from it.

On page 27 of Sarah Ban Breathnach's book, Something More: Excavating your authentic self, Breathnach describes (via Emily Dickinson) the "'ecstatic experience': what excites us or moves to tears, what makes the blood rush to our heads, our hearts skip a beat, our knees shaky, and our souls sigh." In my case, it's the rapid shaking of the head and hands, but that's what's happening inside.

Some performers that trigger this in me include:

Young Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl)
Audra McDonald
Kristin Chenoweth
Idina Menzel
Kelli O'Hara
Angela Lansbury
Lady Gaga (seriously)
Brian Stokes Mitchell
Placido Domingo
Bette Midler
Nathan Gunn
Marin Mazzie
k.d. Lang
Samuel Ramey
Jerry Hadley
Leontyne Price
Matthew Morrison
Chris Colfer

Performers who do not trigger in this me (although they might be extremely talented):

Older Barbra Streisand
Madonna
Michael Bolton
Lea Michele (heresy, I know)
Celine Dion (don't get me started)
Marilyn Horne
Jose Carreras

I may applaud the latter group when they perform. I may cheer. (Well, not in the case of Bolton or Dion because I choose not to listen to or watch either of them for any length of time.) But I'm not really touched - I don't feel that "ecstatic experience." And in the case of Bolton and Dion - I don't believe they do either.

But this is an individual reaction. Clearly, based on their success, Bolton and Dion are touching people, and perhaps the same people are not moved by any of the artists who move ME.

I wouldn't dare presume to list the students who fall into either of these categories, but think about this - have you ever made someone cry or catch their breath with your performing, whether it's me or someone else?

R.I.P. Richard Weber 1940-2010

Yesterday morning, as I was waking up in Monterey (on the final leg of my Westward Ho! vacation), I reached for the phone to see if I had any messages.

I was sad to read (and even sadder to write) that the disappearance of my dear friend Richard Weber has been solved, and not in the way I had hoped. I had hoped that Richard had checked himself into a mental hospital or had been laying low with some non-music friend that none of us knew, but instead it was reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that a body pulled out of the Milwaukee River last Friday had been identified as Richard's.

I'm chagrined that someone who identifies himself as a pastor at a church at which Richard played said in the comments, "I knew this would happen." Really? You read of the death of a talented man you knew and the first thing you can write is a smug "I told you so"? Really? Perhaps Richard had demons which I only suspected in the last few years of his life that I attributed to health, aging, and the vicious beating he took in 2007, but is the comments section of a newspaper article really the place to write "I'm sorry to say I knew this would happen"? NO. The remaining balance of his comments were all that needed to be said: "I had known him since 1996. I was pastor at the Church where he played the organ from 1996-1998. Many people were worried about him. My prayers are with his family."

Whatever church has this guy for a pastor, I don't want to go there. (See previous post on why I'm not doing church right now - attitudes like this are a major element of my ambivalence toward organized religion.)

Anyway, I know that whenever I pull out a piece of music that Richard gave me - and those gifts comprise a large part of my music collection, particularly in my file cabinet of sheet music - and see the words "ex libris Richard Weber," I will smile and think of him fondly. I'll think of his quips about organized religion - the elderly Presbyterian congregants at Calvary were "God's frozen people," one of my church jobs in DC was at "the National Shrine of the Inaccurate Deception," and he'd ask me how things were at "Mrs. Paul's." And his politics were unabashedly liberal but often peppered with completely politically incorrect commentary that sounded like it came straight from my ultra-conservative father's mouth.

I can't help but think of Richard leaving a message for me with my husband: "Tell her not to call back tonight, because I will be in the arms of Morpheus."

Sleep well, dear Richard.