No Autotune Necessary

Here are ten isolated vocal tracks of pop singers (the link says 11, but the one of Idina Menzel has been disabled - pity).

While we all knew (I'm using the Royal We here) that Ann Wilson and Freddie Mercury were rock gods, it's nice to know that even contemporary artists like One Direction have chops. And that Beyoncé's voice can stand on its own. It's heartbreaking to hear how incredible Whitney Houston had been, knowing how her voice wound up, as well as how incredible Amy Winehouse was, knowing how she wound up - and wondering if she would've wound up going down the same vocal path as Whitney Houston if she'd lived as long.

And it's nice to hear isolated vocal tracks that are good, instead of ones we can poke fun at. And with that in mind, I will not post recordings of Linda McCartney or Britney Spears.

Why I sing OPERA

Last year, I returned to the stage after a ten year break. I did three shows - Edward II, Sound of Music, and O'er the Ramparts. One was a cabaret style frame for a straight play, in which I improvised a character, Sally Fitzgerald Kelly, owner and proprietor of the Black & White Bar. The second was a classic musical, and the third a world premiere musical. And then in June of this year, I did another musical, Music Man, in which I played Mrs. Paroo. This show had a special significance to me - it was the first show I was ever in, as a chorister at Hamilton High School.

Doing musicals was what I intended to do when I went into music. I loved all the classic musicals. But when I went to college, that wasn't the direction I was steered toward. There were no musical theater degree programs in those days. Everything was classical. So, I wound up being an opera singer, with my first professional gig right out of college with the Florentine Opera in Carmen. And I put aside musicals for the longest time - I sang for 7 seasons with Washington Opera (now Washington National Opera), I did Gilbert & Sullivan with the Young Vic in Baltimore and Victorian Lyric in DC, I sang with Wolf Trap Opera, Washington Concert Opera, Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia, and then when I came to Wisconsin, I did a couple of shows with Lyric Opera of Chicago, toured with Opera for the Young out of Madison, did a show with Dupage Opera Theater, with Chicago Opera Theater, three shows with Skylight, and then.... everything stopped.  We won't discuss why. but it did.

But last weekend, I returned to the opera stage as Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro with Carroll Opera Theater. And I felt at home again. So - why do I sing opera when musical theater was my dream?

I sing opera because musical theater wasn’t an option back when I was in college. Not only because of the way education was structured in those days, but because the musicals on Broadway were dance-oriented. And in the case of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express, you had to be able to skate. I was neither a dancer nor a skater. So it wasn't an option.

I sing opera because that’s the way my voice seems to work. I don't have a timbre that lends itself to pop-y musical theater. It works with the legit stuff, and I intend to continue to pursue those kinds of roles. But I remember buying sheet music for a Stevie Nicks song and taking it home to play on the piano. As I sang, "Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom," I stopped and said to myself, "I sound... stupid!" And I'd never had a voice lesson at that point. It wasn't a question of being overtrained and losing my natural sound. My natural sound IS classical.

But most of all, I sing opera because I love opera. And I’d forgotten how much I love opera. I'm waitlisted for Washington National Opera chorus and I am kicking myself up and down the block for not making myself available for Carmen. I don't know if that would've made a difference in their casting decisions - but I've done the show twice before, and doing it again would be sheer heaven. It's a lot of work, true. But I'd love it.


And although I identify as a voice teacher who is a musical theater specialist and I do love musical theater and want to continue having it as part of my life, I am an opera singer.

Has musical theater been a boon or a detriment to my return to the opera stage?

• Musical theater has enhanced my performing. Having done dialogue has improved my ability to do recitative in a way that doing recitative never did for me doing dialogue.
• Although for awhile it seemed that my operatic resonance had retreated because of all the work I'd been doing in contemporary commercial music as a teacher, I have found the balance and I don't sound like a musical theater singer when I'm singing opera (and vice versa).
• The staging I did for my studio showcases in Milwaukee has improved my own acting in a way that years of performing at places like the Kennedy Center never did.

I'm hoping that more of this is ahead - although my next gig is Madame Dilly in Bernstein Remembered in NYC in October. But I'm coming up with a list of roles that I can see myself doing in both genres, which may be my next blog.

Because I will be blogging more. Count on it.

Catching up....

The ease of posting to Facebook and tweeting on Twitter means that I don't get around to blogging very often. It's been over one year since I last wrote, and in that time, I've done four roles (with another one coming up in a week), sung in two oratorios, performed on a couple of recitals, added a new college to my teaching load, given a workshop on musical theater technique, and moved.

I'm going to write about the process of getting back into opera and how it's not like riding a bike. It's work, and I definitely am out of the practice of preparing a role. And that will be the subject of my next blog, which will probably be after the show opens and closes (unlike musical theater, which usually has extended runs, opera tends to be a single weekend).

But I'm still here, and I hope to start writing again.

Bolcom & Morris

A few weeks ago, I had the honor and privilege of attending both a master class and a recital given by mezzo-soprano Joan Morris and her composer/pianist husband, William Bolcom. I have been a fan of Bolcom & Morris for a long time, dating back to my discovery of Mr. Bolcom's first two volumes of Cabaret Songs back in the early 1990s, when I performed them on the In Series at Mt. Vernon College as part of a quartet. (That was an interesting "3Bs" program - usually the "3Bs" are Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but in this case, it was Bizet, Brahms and Bolcom. I got to sing the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes and the Bolcom songs, both of which were staged. But I digress.)

Besides performing Mr. Bolcom's compositions, Bolcom & Morris are known for their recordings of turn-of-the-century (20th) songs and works from the Great American Songbook. These pieces were a large portion of the concert they performed at Howard Community College on March 1. They also did pieces from the Cabaret Songs and a few pieces by those great art song composers, Leiber & Stoller. (Seriously, the guys who wrote "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Hound Dog" wrote these fantastic pieces. But more about that in a moment.)

Ms. Morris is a true artist in her delivery of the American songbook. Her performance was nuanced and authentic, with unique interpretations of the material that drew in her audience. Mr. Bolcom balanced her at the piano, playing with bravado or intimacy as the songs required. In the hands of lesser artists, a lot of the material could have been just a bunch of old songs, possibly perceived as corny by some people. This was not the case in this performance.

While I did not attend Mr. Bolcom's piano master class the previous evening, I did attend their joint vocal master class in the afternoon. As giving as they are as performing artists, they were equally so as teaching artists. Each singer was given their full attention and appreciation, and Ms. Morris was particularly adept at finding the right trigger to bring out a deeper understanding of the text for some of the singers.

After the master class, I went up to them to introduce myself and told them that I had discovered a bootleg cassette of theirs via a friend years ago, and that I had played it so often that it broke. These were the early days of the internet for me, and I really wanted to find out who wrote these songs, and since I knew that they taught at the University of Michigan, I checked out the website to see if I could find their contact info. I then wrote to Ms. Morris, and was surprised when I got a response from Mr. Bolcom telling me that his wife was on vacation, and that the songs were by Leiber & Stoller, and that I should write to them and tell them that Bill Bolcom said it was okay for me to have them. And then he gave me their address and fax number.

So I did just that and didn't hear anything back for a couple of months. And then, when I had forgotten about it completely, a package came in the mail with photocopies of hand-written music and a note from their secretary apologizing for the delay, but that Mr. Stoller (or Leiber - I can't remember which) had been out of the country and she had to wait for him to come back to get his permission.

The song that I was particularly anxious to have was a piece called "Humphrey Bogart," which is the only one of the packet that I've performed so far. I told Mr. Bolcom and Ms. Morris that the recording of that song gave me the idea for my cabaret show about movies and movie stars (that and Christopher Berg's "Poem," which begins with the line "Lana Turner has collapsed"). As a result, I had the beginnings of the show "Oh, to be a movie star!", which Ryan Cappleman and I performed together in Milwaukee as the inaugural show of our duo, MezzoPiano.

I thanked them for that and for all the wonderful music they have introduced or re-introduced in their 40+ year career. I'm hoping to be in touch with them and ... maybe make a road trip to Ann Arbor to coach with them?  

New Year, New Directions, and Keep Using Moisturizer

Of course, the term New Directions reminds me of Glee, and also of what I can only imagine was an intentional double-entendre. But I feel as though I'm taking some steps to do things differently.

First of all, I've decided that, for now, I'm not going to focus on developing my private studio. I'll take on students if they call and I can make it work. I'll build up my studio at Howard Community College and teach primarily during the day. But I don't want to be in the place I was in Milwaukee, where I had so many students that I didn't make time to practice, seek performing opportunities, and put myself out there to perform.

(The cynical part of me says, "It's not like anyone was coming to hear you sing anyway, even when you did." And that's true. But that is bitter, and I'm trying to put that behind me. So this is the last time I complain about that.)

So I recharged myself personally and professionally this past few weeks. I went to Jamaica a week, which was my personal recharge. And before that, I recharged myself professionally by going to NYC for the NATS/NOA Joint Workshop at the Roosevelt Hotel. I sang in a master class on belt (which I'll write about later), attended fantastic master classes by Andrew Lippa and John Bucchino, both of whom I spoke to (and I have Bucchino's card and might go up and coach his songs with him), and went to terrific sessions on finding the truth in your interpretations in auditions and performances.

I'd like to write a bit about the last part, in particular regarding two sessions on the final day.

One was taught by Stephen Wadsworth, who is a well-respected opera director and teaches advanced acting techniques at Juilliard. He was also the Skylight's co-artistic director in the late 80s/early 90s - right after I left Milwaukee the first time, but we'd met numerous times and I'd sung for him. In fact, he remembered my face (which means my moisturizer must be working, because it had been 25 years since I saw him last!) when I spoke to him after his session.

His focus was on boiling down your material - musical theater song, aria or monologue - to a single sentence that had a universal message.

When I returned from NYC, I had an audition for Washington National Opera. I prepared two arias, one of which was "Seguidilla" from Carmen. So this was how I approached the aria, by creating this sentence:

"This is a person who wants freedom from an authority figure, and will use charm to manipulate that figure into giving it to her."

Then I translated that to:

"I am a person who wants freedom from an authority figure (Don Jose), and I will use my charm to manipulate him into giving it to me."

Later that day, I saw Nicholas Muni, another well-respected director at the head of the opera department at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He spoke of the 5 magic questions that needed to be asked when preparing an aria. So I applied these to Seguidilla as well:

FIVE MAGIC QUESTIONS
1. What do I need/want at this moment (Goal)? My way and freedom. Maybe some fun.

2. What course of action would give me the best chance of obtaining it at this moment (Action)? Being sexy and teasing, making my jailer think it'd be worth his while to let me go.

3. What is the obstacle (Obstacle)? Don José, my jailer

4. What must I do to transform the obstacle (Tactic)?  Seduce him. Let him know how much fun we could have together if he not only let me go, but came with me.

5. What are the positives/negatives of success/failure (Stakes)?
Positives/success: Get my freedom, have sex
Negatives/failure: Stay in jail, be bored, no sex

I also applied this to "Voce di donna" from La Gioconda, my other audition aria. I worked on the Seguidilla more because that's what I intended to offer them.

And of course, they didn't ask for that one. But I still felt like I was more prepared and comfortable than I'd been in a long time. And rather than thinking of it as an experience where I'd be judged, I thought of it as a performance opportunity (another thing that Muni encouraged the participants to consider).

And Stephen Gathman of the WNO remembered me, even though I hadn't sung for him since 1996, when he was an assistant chorusmaster.

Yay for recharging my energies and yay for moisturizer!

A summer with no to-do list

I realized that it's been awhile since I did a to-do list. And then I checked my online to-do list and realized that it's been two months to the day. 

This is not like me. I have always been an obsessive list-maker. Shopping lists, to do lists, bills to pay, bucket lists - it's who I am. How on earth can I get anything done without one?

Well, I didn't really get much done. In part because the wrist tendonitis that plagued me from mid-April to early August, and was especially bad after the move was completed, didn't allow me to do very much. I couldn't really do any yard work, I couldn't do a lot of unpacking and organizing (crumpling up paper hurt), and it even hurt to write.

And I didn't really have that much to do - I had two students at Howard Community College, both on Wednesdays. They were pretty low-maintenance, so it wasn't like I had to do a lot of prep work.

I did a lot of traveling - I went to New York three out of the five weekends of June; the first weekend, up to Manhattan to see my dear friend Sorab Wadia on his closing weekend of Bunty Berman Presents off-Broadway and to see my I-wish-he-were-my-dear-friend Alan Cumming in his tour de force performance of Macbeth on Broadway. The second and third weekends of June I spent in Baltimore, enjoying the weirdness that is HonFest in Hampden on the 8th and spending my birthday (the 15th) with my BFF Carrie Widegren at the Penn-Mar Irish Festival (skip it) and just hanging out.

The following weekend Bill and I celebrated our tenth anniversary in the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, where we'd spent our honeymoon. We stayed in the same B&B and in the same room and drank some of the same wines - which we didn't like as much as we did ten years ago. Our palates have changed, I guess.

And then the final weekend of June, I went up to NYC on my own and saw my wonderful friend/former student/cabaret partner/studio pianist Ryan Cappleman and other friends in the off-Broadway production of Waiting: A Song Cycle. 

I felt really unproductive this summer, but I wasn't, all told. I just wasn't obsessing over everything that needed to be done. I think I needed that time to collect my energies to prepare for my new life. 

And now that I'm here - the house is sold, I have a job, and I have a studio to market - I'll be returning to my list-making ways, but hopefully allowing enough time for spontaneity and life to creep in.

Chrissie has REALLY left the building (for good)

Last weekend I was back in Milwaukee, emptying out the house, which is now occupied by the new owners. Technically, we still own the house - they're renting from us till closing.

While I was there, I got to see a couple of performances (my husband said, "Are you there to bring stuff back or are you just going to see shows?" I said, "Both").

Friday: Oliver! at UW-Waukesha, choreographed by and starring the wonderful Ryan Cappleman. I don't really like the show, or at least, I haven't liked the show in the past. Ryan did a great job choreographing the show and he was a fantastic Fagin. His "Reviewing the Situation" had so many layers I hadn't thought of. His characterization was really unique - I saw a bit of Gollum in it (in a good way). It was a great show, overall (although I still think that Bill Sykes is a character that has no redeeming qualities and I don't understand why everyone puts up with his crap).

Saturday: Les Miserables, Greendale Community Theater. This was a revelation. I've only seen Les Mis done by high schools (MUHS, Tosa East & Pius) and the movie. I wasn't sure what the full show was actually like. This was an amazing and wholly professional production that I think Skylight is going to have to live up to when they do it in the fall. Studio representation included Lissa DeGuzman as Eponine, who was lovely. She sang and portrayed the role beautifully - flirtatious, noble, heartbreaking and courageous. Kat Geertsen was also a terrific addition to the ensemble. Friends of mine in the production were the fabulous Doug Clemons as Enjoiras, Robby McGhee as Thenardier, and Mara McGhee in the ensemble. I would've gladly seen the show again before I left and I kind of wish I did because on -

Sunday: I saw Don Giovanni, presented by East Side Chamber Players in the Pius XI HS Black Box Theater.

The DG was good, as was the Leporello. All the other singers sang pretty well. But -

I wish I'd seen Les Mis a second time instead. Although DG was free. Free is good.

And on Monday, I cleaned up, packed up and took myself out to dinner at Café Hollander to use their free WiFi.

Tuesday - got up early, went for a run and then loaded up the poor damaged MINI and hit the road. And 15.5 hours later (!!!), I arrived at home (there was a lot of construction).

I miss all my students terribly. And I hope you will all keep in touch. I may come back to town time to time and give a workshop or two. If I do, I will let you know. Please keep following the studio page and my blog to see what words of wisdom and silliness I have to impart. :D