Honesty ... is such a lonely word....

Holy Serendipity, Batman.

I decided that these Billy Joel lyrics were going to be the title of today's blog - and it's been awhile since I wrote - and then I decided to lie by the pool and just let thoughts roll over me. Suddenly, I hear that very song as I lay in the sun. I haven't heard this song for years. So - this was meant to be.

I haven't written for awhile because my last blog entry - around Easter weekend - was negative, filled with vitriol, and it wasn't what I want this blog to be. I want to inspire people to sing, to facilitate their singing, and not to make them feel guilty for making me feel bad. If I feel bad, it's my own fault, not someone else's. So I deleted that post, because I was embarrassed that I even posted it. It wasn't honest.

A lot of the talk at the NATS Conference in Salt Lake City this past weekend had to do with singers being honest in their performances. Teachers being honest with their students. Students being honest with their teachers. This is what sets us apart as performers and as teachers - telling the truth in each and every communication we have, whether that is one-to-one in a lesson, one-to-two or more in an audition, or one to 100-10,000 in a performance setting.

The best example of a performer who tells the truth with her every gesture, with her every sound is Audra MacDonald. I had the privilege of seeing her perform in 110 in the Shade this past Friday at the Hale Center Theater in Orem, Utah.  It was a small theater (320 square foot stage) in an area that I can only describe as the Armpit of Utah. (Sorry to anyone who may be from Orem.) But she inhabited the role. She told the truth. She was present.  The same with Kelli O'Hara in her recital this past Saturday and in her masterclass on Sunday.

I want to be that kind of performer and teacher. I want my students to be those kinds of performers and students. And I want to do what it takes for us all to get there.

This message in the various sessions reminded me of a video I posted a few months ago on my studio FB account. Acting coach Patsy Rodenburg spoke at a TED conference on the subject of "Why I do theater." How appropriate in a blog called "Why I sing."

I will be honest with my students and with people for whom I sing, with whom I speak, and those who I love. A recent FB status of mine was "I have decided that I will no longer use my FB statuses for evil." This means I will not be passive-aggressive; I will not seek to shame people for wrongs (perceived correctly or not) they have done me; I will not write cryptic messages with veiled innuendo where the clear message is "You know who you are." I will be honest and I will be present with them in their lessons, on my Facebook pages, both personal and studio, and in this blog. If I have offended you with any of this negativity, I do apologize and I will try for it never to happen again. I may backslide, but hopefully I will catch myself.

I will be posting a lot more videos on the studio FB page. You may also check out my You Tube channel, Mezzoid01, in order to see what it is I like.

Have a great summer. I'll try to write more regularly.

"I'm here to inspire and facilitate"

There was a show that premiered on ABC last fall that I really, really liked but apparently no one else did. That show was Eastwick, rather loosely based on the book The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike. The show was cancelled rather abruptly at the beginning of the December, yanked from the schedule, and the final two episodes were relegated to the graveyard hours of the night. Somehow, I managed to record the last episode (although not the penultimate one, which resolved all of the stuff that happened on the final episode of November sweeps) and I finally watched it Monday morning.

The character of Darryl van Horne (Jack Nicholson in the movie, some extremely handsome actor I didn't recognize in the show) is kinda sorta the devil. The three "witches" are women who feel powerless in their lives and relationships and then suddenly find each other and their powers. Their lives are turned around and they are able to take control of the things that had been spiraling out of control. Suddenly Darryl shows up and their powers grow stronger, often much to their chagrin.

Anyway, a bunch of things happen and on the final episode, Darryl explains that he was drawn to them because of their strength and that he was not the cause of their powers, because they existed within them the whole time. And then he said a line that just took my breath away:

"I'm here to inspire and facilitate."

Now, if you Google this line, you will find that there are 575,000 occurrences of its use in various educational and self-improvement venues, from weight loss to business strategies to creativity. But it sounded new to me, even though I've probably heard it 575,000 times.

I hate it when a student's parents say, upon his or her successful performance, "Wow, thank you. You did this." I always smile and say, "No, he/she did it. I just provided the materials and he/she ran with it." I hate it because I grew up with parents who didn't believe I could do anything on my own, that if I did something outstanding, someone must have told me how to do it.

Yes, I love that my students do well, and perhaps I'm just really good at inspiring and facilitating, but when it comes right down to it, they're the ones who are doing it. Just like I was the one who "did it" all the times when I did something outstanding, they are the ones who are doing it now.

I wonder what lessons I will learn from the series finale of Ugly Betty. We'll find out in a few weeks.

Richard F. Weber

On Sunday, March 21, I decided to take myself on an "Artist's Date" (see Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way for info on that concept) and go see the Florentine Opera's Elmer Gantry at the Marcus Center. It was wonderful, although I did decide that the title character and the baritone portraying him bore a strong resemblance to Don Draper of Mad Men.

When I returned home, my husband told me that a private investigator had swung by to see if I have heard from Richard Weber. Richard is an organist and choral director who I have known for about 25 years now. I first met him at Calvary Presbyterian Church on 11th & Wisconsin, and when I returned to Milwaukee, at Bethlehem Lutheran Church. He has been a great source of wisdom (musical and political) and humor (ditto) for me for this time, as well as a source of some income for both me and my students who I have sent his way for Christmas and Easter gigs.

I spoke to Richard last on January 2 of this year, and he told me that he had left Beth Luth and was going to be working at St. Stanislaus on the South Side. He sounded very upbeat and eager about this new job. Apparently, that was one of the last conversations anyone has had with him. He has not been seen at his apartment nor at St. Stan's since January 4, which is when they gave him a check... which has not been cashed.

I'm very concerned about Richard. His 70th birthday is this Friday and I'm hoping that we hear from him soon; or at least hear something.

A Classical Celtic Concert

Yesterday afternoon, the MacDowell Club put on a concert called "Bits of Blarney," which I was asked to coordinate. (Had I known it was going to be called "Bits of Blarney," I might have balked... or at least requested a name change!) Because of the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday, we did an Irish theme.

I have always wanted to be Irish. Maybe because I'm Slovenian and Estonian and as a child, I was greeted with "You're a Sylvania light bulb? You're a stone?", I wanted to be an ethnicity that people had actually heard of. I wouldn't have minded being Italian. I would've loved to have been Jewish. (Boy, that would have thrilled my parents.) I didn't really want to be Polish or German - that was too common, especially where I grew up. I just wanted to be something that had traditions, had a strong sense of family (and extended family, not just the in-house unit), and had strong social and cultural ties to the community.

The Irish literary heritage was appealing to me. The importance of music in Irish culture and in Irish family life - goes without saying that I would've loved to have that be part of my life.

And then I met Bill O'Meally, and I became Irish by marriage. We spend every 3rd weekend of August at Irish Fest, rain or shine.

So it was perfect for me to coordinate an Irish-themed program and to be able to explore Celtic music that was not "die-dee-die-dee" music but to find music that was (excuse the term) "legitimate." Music that was written by Celtic composers, or based on Celtic poetry, or in some way explored Celtic culture.

We did a pretty good job with yesterday's concert, but I want to take this further. Milwaukee has the world's largest Irish music festival every summer - but only of trad music. Why can't we establish an annual concert of music by Irish composers (or Celtic composers - after all, I've heard a lot of stuff from Cape Breton or Nova Scotia that is much more French or Scottish than it is typically Irish)?

Next week, I'm going to touch base with the director of the Ward Irish Music Archives to see if we can find a way to work with them next year. Perhaps they can co-sponsor the program - perhaps we can do it AT the Irish Fest Center....

To be continued!

ANECDOTES & MEMORIES OF RENATE BOJIC

I'm writing up anecdotes about my father for his pending memorial service, and I looked at the ones I wrote for my mother. I realized that many of them were pretty darn funny. I think that sometimes I get a bit snarky about my mother in print but here are some warm and funny memories I have of her.

ANECDOTES & MEMORIES OF RENATE BOJIC (These were written to my sister so the "you" references are to her)

1. When we went to Europe and Aunt Maria had misread Mom's "24" as "27" so we had no one to pick us up in Luxembourg and take us to Holland, so we had to take a train, and we had a layover of - I seem to remember 12 hours, but that seems like an exaggeration - in Belgium. Mom was so exhausted that she fell asleep with her head hanging to the side in the aisle, and the conductor walked into her and she woke up with a loud SNORT! And we all laughed.

2. Of course there's the famous time you got her to drink dishwashing liquid at the health food store.

3. She had a deep and abiding love for sour cream and believed everything tasted better with sour cream on it. (I got that from her.) She used to make sour cream sandwiches on rye bread. I would take them to grade school but they didn't always taste as good after being in a paper bag all morning.

4. Mayonnaise was also a passion and you couldn't have too much. I remember her asking a waitress if the egg salad was good, and the waitress said, "Yes, it's very good - a really nice balance, and not too much mayonnaise," and Mom just looked at her in horror and said incredulously, "But I like mayonnaise!"

5. She was a fierce defender of us. If anyone was going to yell at us publicly, it would be HER! I remember when the priest at my first teaching job berated me in front of the school and I called her crying that I was so humiliated and embarrassed.  Later that day, she called me and told me, "You know what I did? I called Father Grohall." I was horrified! But then she reassured me that she didn't say she was my mother, she just identified herself as a mother whose daughter had told her that she was very upset about how he had treated the music teacher, and gave him a piece of her mind. The poor old coot was racking his brain trying to figure out just which student had a mother with a foreign accent, and kept asking her, "Are you Maria's mother? Jenny's?" and she told him, "I won't tell you because I don't want you to take it out on my daughter." (Nasty old fart deserved it.)

6. She and Daddy came to visit me in Baltimore. It was the first time they'd met Bill and he helped carry their very heavy suitcase into my apartment. When we opened it, we discovered that Mom had filled it with frozen solid chicken breasts that she had bought on sale before she left so that I would have enough to eat. I took it completely for granted - Bill was shocked!

7. I remember her making strudel. From scratch. Stretching the dough over the table so that it was paper thin (no prepackaged phyllo dough!) and then sprinkling it with flour and butter and filling it with raisins and apples and whatever else went in.

8. I also loved her potato salad. Mom wasn't the most creative cook, especially when it came to meat and veggies, but I remember she made great potato salad. And that strudel!

9. She loved The Dean Martin Show.

10. I still watch General Hospital and One Life to Live because I watched them with her - first, in the case of GH, when I'd come home from morning kindergarten and she'd be watching it while ironing. My job was to fold hankies and washcloths while she ironed. I would ask questions like, "Why is that lady having a baby when she's not even married?" and she would tell me, "She was secretly married." OLTL started a few years later and we started watching it together during my summer breaks.

11. She loved Bob Hope. We went to County Stadium once to see him. I remember it was raining and I don't know if we actually saw him, but I know that we stayed and waited.

12. When Mr. Maeste's son from his first marriage found him and came to the US to see him, it was a big deal - apparently Mr. Maeste had gotten one of the local news channels involved as a human interest story, and they came to the airport to cover the reunion. All Maeste's friends were invited, and Mom bought a new outfit (including a HAT) because she would be on TV. Daddy refused to wear anything new and Mom was really upset about the shirt he chose to wear. Guess who got on TV? Daddy, strolling through the airport while the voiceover said, "And Vello and his friends continue to wait...." Mom was SO mad!

13. I was taking a music history exam at Alverno. My teacher was Louise Kenngott, the Journal's then-music critic, and I found her both intimidating and someone I looked up to. All of sudden, during the exam, I hear a tap-tap-tap at the window and I see Mom. She's got some knit hat pulled over her head somewhat askew and she is gesturing for me to come to the door. I was horrified. I looked back at my paper. Tap-tap-tap again, I look up, and she makes this funny grimace that says, "Oh, Christine, help me!" I look at Louise and she says, "Go ahead." So I go to the door and out in the hall, and say, "What IS it? I'm taking an exam!" and she said, "I lost my keys in a pile of remnants at Minnesota Fabrics." I turned over the keys and said, "Well, how did you get here?" and she told me she had hitched a ride with a trucker. I was so nonplussed that when I went back in, I forgot to finish the question I had been answering when she knocked at the window. I think I got everything else right, but that one I didn't.

14. When you were a baby, you had a splinter or something, and I remember Mom getting out a magnifying glass to look at it, and you seeing her giant eyeball looking at you and screaming bloody murder. She felt so bad that she scared her baby!

15. She was a fan of WOKY radio when it was a top 40 station, and they had a prize with a "phrase that pays." You had to send in a postcard with your name and phone # and they would pick #s at random, and if you answered the phone with "I listen to fun-lovin' WOKY!" you won money. Well, they said, "We're making a call right now!" and her phone rang, and she blurted out, "I listen to fun-lovin W-Oak!" and there was a pause and then the DJ said, "Close enough! You get the money!"

16. She would sing along to songs that were just inappropriate for her! I remember her singing the end of Harry Chapin's Taxi: "Taking tips ... and getting stoned!" Cracked me up every time. But she didn't always get words right. She thought the words to "You're so vain" were, "I had some dreams, they were cows in my coffee." I said, "Mom, it's CLOUDS," and she said, "That's stupid, how do you get clouds in your coffee?" (I guess cows = cream)

17. She would design her own tops. They were all based on a square - a square body, a square neckline - but she was so proud of them.

18. When she told jokes, she'd always explain them at the end. Bill called it the "Renate Bojic Post-Joke Explanation." I don't know if it was because she was afraid she wasn't clear because English wasn't her first language but she did it with EVERY joke. Until I was over 30, I never realized that the joke should end with 
"he got a little closer and saw her on the grave ." I always told the joke the same way, adding the line, "I am cooling the grave." (I think I knew enough to leave out the NEXT explanation, "You see, she wanted to get married again, so she was trying to make the grave cooler faster!")

When I write my anecdotes about my father,  I will post them here.

Supportive Families and Performance Anxiety

I have dealt with performance anxiety for most of my performing life. How can something that you love doing so much terrify you so much?

I think the more supportive your family and friends are in your formative years, the less terrifying performing is. However, that's not always the case. I've had students with terrible anxiety who have wonderfully supportive parents. I've known people who have received no familial support throughout their lives who shine on stage and who create their own family unit from their theatrical peers.

I've mentioned Alfred Lubrano before, the author of Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams. For some people, the feeling of not fitting in impacts them both in the families they grew up in and the careers they choose to pursue. I think that is a major factor in my own performance anxiety issues. The feeling of being a fraud and that people will find out and kick me out of the lofty perch to which I've aspired - back to the old neighborhood where I was thought of as stuck-up.

My mother was not supportive. My father was, in his own way. He may have thought what I was doing was unrealistic, but he came to my performances - by himself. Mom came to the first Miss West Allis pageant I did, but it made her so nervous that she thought she was going to die of a heart attack. (She told my college advisor that she'd had to have a schnapps beforehand to calm her nerves, and Sister Ann asked me later, "Christine, does your mother have a drinking problem?" "No, Sister Ann, she has a drama problem.") The next year I did the pageant, I begged her to come and she wouldn't because she was afraid she'd die. (Hey, I was the one in the swimsuit!! ) Dad came. And I took 2nd runner-up that year. He also came to my first professional opera, Carmen (I was in the chorus - Florentine Opera, 1980!).

He came to many things until he had his stroke and could no longer drive. Once Mom was in the driver's seat, literally, she was also... in the driver's seat. If she didn't want to go, she didn't go. So he couldn't go either. She was in control! (Any wonder why she got so mad when the doctor said she couldn't drive any more? Or when she thought I'd sold her car while she was in the hospital? It was being repaired and detailed, but she was certain I'd sold it just to keep her from driving.)

Controlling mothers - there are pages and pages about them in textbooks and novels. Maybe if I'd gotten out from under her influence earlier, I could have had a better relationship with her later. It took me a long time to find my own voice in so many ways. It's too bad she really didn't want to hear it. I loved her very much and only wanted to please her. Once I decided I needed to please myself, she didn't like it.

There are also pages and pages about performance anxiety. Sometimes it's just a matter of getting up and doing it until you stop falling down. I'm going to try to remain upright for as long as I can.

VIVA TO THE DIVAS... great show!

A quick follow-up to my earlier rant. The show was just great, and without the extra person, it turned out to be just the right length.  The people who performed were cooperative and poised and confident. One of the girls sang with a sprained ankle on crutches. Now that is professional ... amazing that it was from a 7th grader. Someone else came even though her voice was not working this morning and she had to coax it out of her body. Why? Because she knows that there will be times in her professional career that she is engaged to sing and her voice might say, "Let's stay in tonight. I don't feel like it." So she did steam, mucinex, and she sang the crap out of both her pieces.

Seriously... unless your throat is truly on fire and singing might cause further damage or you have digestive issue that might cause a mess (a different and much more unpleasant way of "singing the crap" out of your pieces), you sing when you are committed to sing. Earlier I had included "or you've injured a limb," but then Grace showed up on crutches, so clearly, that's not a factor.

Next recital - June 6, hopefully at the same place - theme and personnel TBD!