When I’m not indoors rehearsing or outside and blinded by the sun, I’m getting to see some of the topography of the sunshine state, which I will write about in detail later. First, I’ll observe my fellow singers in their natural habitat.
Of all the phyla in the musician species, none have more magnificent plumage nor a more distinctive call than the singer. Her face is permanently made up for the stage, her wardrobe highlights her contours, and she makes certain to carry her breasts high and visible, downstage center. Much as other musicians may boast of playing a Strad or a gold flute, the singer inspires your confidence in her by exhibiting the beauty of her instrument, which in her case is her body. In my first days here, I was astounded at how beautifully painted and well put-together most of the singers present themselves, even at 8 in the morning. But it’s a strategy found throughout nature: look like an alpha and eventually the rest of the pack will believe you too.
Also as in nature, creatures make noises and behave in ways related to their appearance. A dense, meaty soprano emits a dense, meaty sound. A tenor’s vowels swell out of resonance and out of his mouth like the fat over his belt. The soubrette who talks about sex all the time and delights in flashing people performs coquettishly, regardless of the meaning of her song. Can’t tell a book by its cover? Take one look at a singer and you know exactly what kind of performer she will be. That socially awkward girl is never comfortable onstage, that wooden soldier guy is stiff as a board when he sings.
Although women (particularly sopranos) greatly outnumber men, nature’s diversity is evident in the range of personalities in any given population sample. There’s the crazy and the clueless, the diva and the obnoxious, the intellectual and the terrified. One woman greets you with a bracing “Hello ugly!” and can never take the hint that you would prefer to decline the opportunity to touch her breasts. Another will take it upon herself to correct you in rehearsal, even though she’s barely learned her own part. When congregated in high numbers, they all talk fervently about singing: commenting on recordings, marveling at musical examples, complaining about a passage, etc. I revel in it, until I grow weary. Perhaps the koala can subsist on eucalyptus leaves alone, but I need some variety in my conversational diet.
Every single one of us struggles with at least one aspect of technique or stage presence. By contrast, everyone offers a strength or two that I can learn from. Even if one of the Queens of the Night (the role is triple cast) has trouble with her runs, her acting and grace on stage is simply beautiful. A little soprano doesn’t have much of a voice, but from tip to toe embodies her character. The dapper but sleazy bass who is performing two roles (and oh how the sexual tension skyrocketed the minute he set foot among all the ladies!) can stay in character even while eyeing the maestro for his cues, and remains cool as vichyssoise while dashing between rehearsals.
Overall, however, I’m surprised at the level of singers here. I thought I would be struggling to prove myself among a competitive pool of accomplished performers. There are, however, quite a few singers who are just plain bad! Some even have advanced degrees! I think I’m somewhere in a respectable mid-range. If a singer’s career has as much to do with Darwin as it does with talent, I have a feeling I’ll be fit enough to survive.
If I’m inspired later on, I’ll try to write about some of the “culture” I’ve observed here in Florida, and tomorrow I’d like to tell you more about the nature of the state, which is drastically different from up East. I’m hopefully going to a little day trip tomorrow to a wildlife park, where I bet you I just might find my mammalian doppelganger!
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Holy Smokes!
I'm famous! I mean, I'm really sad! I mean, I'm sappy! Actually, I can't type, and I leave emotional comments on other people's blogs!
In any case, one of cyber-eulogies got picked up by The Guardian, typo and all! Here's the article, look for the fourth paragraph to find me, aka "anonymous Boston blogger" in Jerry Hadley's obituary:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2129478,00.html
And here's the original context of the quote: http://irontongue.blogspot.com/2007/07/jerry-hadley.html
Have I really made my "debut" into the blog world? Will my little musings now attract intrigue across the globe? Will blogging suck up even more of my time? Stay tuned to find out.....
In any case, one of cyber-eulogies got picked up by The Guardian, typo and all! Here's the article, look for the fourth paragraph to find me, aka "anonymous Boston blogger" in Jerry Hadley's obituary:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2129478,00.html
And here's the original context of the quote: http://irontongue.blogspot.com/2007/07/jerry-hadley.html
Have I really made my "debut" into the blog world? Will my little musings now attract intrigue across the globe? Will blogging suck up even more of my time? Stay tuned to find out.....
Monday, July 16, 2007
Transfigured Week
Well, what a week!
A new experience works the mind in much the same way a yoga pose works the body, pulling you at once inward and out. We spent the first week here getting accustomed to our new surroundings, observing each other, and complaining loudly about the many apparent nuisances of daily life in northern Florida. I’ve been on sensory overload, until this week, when I’d taken everything in and could now return my thoughts to myself and my many questions about my singing.
Also, I had some nice experiences last week, singing wise, and I knew they would be difficult to repeat. To sing for different teachers after having only been with one for a stretch of time is refreshing, like having a few great dates after a lackluster relationship. Sometimes all it takes is the right turn of phrase to free up your sound, letting you make a stronger, more beautiful sound with less effort. Two teachers did this for me last week, and I left me feeling confident that I had the tools I needed to sing well, even if I needed more guidance on how to use those tools. “It’s your oyster,” one of them said to me, complimenting my former teacher’s work.
So that was last week. We started staging the operas this week, which has proved a stressful experience. I’m fairly new to the stage, having grown up musically in youth orchestras. I’m honestly more interested in the intimate communication between performer and audience found in chamber music or the most simply staged aria, rather than elaborate prancings about in the name of “theatre.” Also, adding physical and character elements to difficult music really challenges me; it’s so easy to forget all technique, choke on nerves, and lose track of where you are. The rehearsals have been going fairly well, but I feel I can never be solid enough with my knowledge of the score, or have enough time on stage to be comfortable putting together the many elements that make up a performance – music being only one of them, rather sadly.
There is also the fact that I am in two operas which tend to rehearse at the exact same time, a difficulty that affects only two people in both shows. I spend my time frantically running between rooms, trying to get my time onstage or asking colleagues to explain the blocking to me that I just missed. No matter where I am, I feel as if I should be somewhere else, that I’m missing out, that someone is getting something that I should be getting.
And speaking of which…..
This program entitles us to three lessons a week with a voice teacher of our choice. (We won’t discuss the fact that they are only 30 minute slots, down from 45, and that we were initially promised a lesson a day.) However, we must sign up for lessons each evening when schedules are posted, an occasion that resembles a feeding frenzy. Some teachers are infinitely more popular than others, and missing a signup usually means not having a lesson at all the next day. Moreover, some teachers block out most of their schedule for their private students from elsewhere, and will offer only four precious slots to the hoi polloi.
This creates a problem when some private students are especially keen for lessons, and resort to tactics like signing up for two a day, signing up with false names, crossing off other people’s names from the list, and bodily attacking the poor guy who tacks the schedules to the wall. Such has been the scene since the arrival of one teacher’s minion, whose poor sportsmanship and defensiveness has been stressing everyone out.
After that lovefest with last week’s teachers I decided to sing for another teacher here, whom I will call Tarzan. She earns this name thanks to her, um, singular personality and teaching style, involving loud snorting through the nose (encouraging head resonance), pounding of the chest (chest resonance), funny faces (humiliation of the student), and hyperactivity. Tarzan belongs to the “monkey see monkey do” school of teaching, in which she sings at me, tells me all the things I’m doing wrong, and extols all the things she’s doing right. This is interspersed with frequent ugly of exaggerations of how I sounded and looked to her, and many inquiries of “Do you get it? Does this make sense?” Towards the end of our excruciating half hour together, I did make some progress, and latch onto the sensations the nicer teachers had guided me towards. She played favorites among students, encouraging some to come study with her privately while skimping on time with others, namely me. I was miserable, but I decided to take another lesson with her, in hopes that things would be different, or I could make things better. In other words, with the same attitude as a battered wife.
The presence of Tarzan’s minion didn’t help either. I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t direly intimidated by the other singers during my first week here, but after this floundering lesson and the stressful rehearsals, I began to doubt myself. The minion has a superior air and competitiveness that instantly made me feel as if I couldn’t compete. She dominates in the trio I share with her, and is not a flexible musician.
But the week went by, I’m sort of learning how to manage the rehearsals, and Tarzan started to like me. I know this because in our last lesson together, she confessed as much, along with the fact that she didn’t like my voice at first. I was glad to get to know her here, instead of paying for lessons in Boston. She got me to do some good things, but a little bit of draconian goes a long way.
In fact, I think her students all have problems, the minion included. After a week of her attitude, I was looking forward to the songs she was singing on one of our group recitals. If you’re going to scare me and make me feel bad, then you better knock my socks off. Well, she was a bundle of nerves (it is quite difficult to sing for 70 of your peers!), sweating and shaking, and then screeching and howling. I put my socks back on. I’m sure Tarzan was distressed, or else delusional. I was happy that my performance met with high praise from my colleagues, even though it was a very long program. I sang some Britten folk song arrangements that I had done in May with my lovely harpist, and I was able to rely on my newly revitalized technique to focus on the emotion and storytelling of the songs. A few people said I even made them tear up – I just love making people cry! I even got hugs and congratulations from both Tarzan and her minion. Overall, it’s been a week of transition from freaking out to gaining control.
When I sang last night, I dedicated the songs to Jerry Hadley, who had so inspired me earlier this year. But I don’t think people had heard the sad news, and I didn’t want to describe it at a concert. I was dismayed that the person who redirected me to such positive feelings about singing could allow himself to be so consumed by a strong depression. I suppose singers can end up living operatically, feeling emotions as deeply as the characters we portray. Are we drawn to singing because music most accurately reflects our feelings, or are our emotions heightened and exaggerated because we sing?
Pourquoi me reveiller, o souffle du printemps?
Sur mon front je sens tes caresses.
Et pourtant bien proche est le temps
Des orages et des tristesses.
Demain, dans le vallon,
Se souvenant de ma gloire premiere,
Et ses yeux vainement chercheront ma splendeur:
Ils ne trouveront plus que deuil et que misere! Helas!
Pourquoi me reveiller, o souffle du printemps?
Why do you wake me now, o sweetest breath of spring? On my brow I sense your most gentle caress, yet how soon creeps on the time, filled with tempests and with distress! Tomorrow through the vale, the traveler will pass, recalling all of the glory of the past. And in vain he will search for the bloom of my youth, and nothing will he find but deep pain and endless sorrow. Alas! Why do you wake me now, o sweetest breath of spring!
From Werther
A new experience works the mind in much the same way a yoga pose works the body, pulling you at once inward and out. We spent the first week here getting accustomed to our new surroundings, observing each other, and complaining loudly about the many apparent nuisances of daily life in northern Florida. I’ve been on sensory overload, until this week, when I’d taken everything in and could now return my thoughts to myself and my many questions about my singing.
Also, I had some nice experiences last week, singing wise, and I knew they would be difficult to repeat. To sing for different teachers after having only been with one for a stretch of time is refreshing, like having a few great dates after a lackluster relationship. Sometimes all it takes is the right turn of phrase to free up your sound, letting you make a stronger, more beautiful sound with less effort. Two teachers did this for me last week, and I left me feeling confident that I had the tools I needed to sing well, even if I needed more guidance on how to use those tools. “It’s your oyster,” one of them said to me, complimenting my former teacher’s work.
So that was last week. We started staging the operas this week, which has proved a stressful experience. I’m fairly new to the stage, having grown up musically in youth orchestras. I’m honestly more interested in the intimate communication between performer and audience found in chamber music or the most simply staged aria, rather than elaborate prancings about in the name of “theatre.” Also, adding physical and character elements to difficult music really challenges me; it’s so easy to forget all technique, choke on nerves, and lose track of where you are. The rehearsals have been going fairly well, but I feel I can never be solid enough with my knowledge of the score, or have enough time on stage to be comfortable putting together the many elements that make up a performance – music being only one of them, rather sadly.
There is also the fact that I am in two operas which tend to rehearse at the exact same time, a difficulty that affects only two people in both shows. I spend my time frantically running between rooms, trying to get my time onstage or asking colleagues to explain the blocking to me that I just missed. No matter where I am, I feel as if I should be somewhere else, that I’m missing out, that someone is getting something that I should be getting.
And speaking of which…..
This program entitles us to three lessons a week with a voice teacher of our choice. (We won’t discuss the fact that they are only 30 minute slots, down from 45, and that we were initially promised a lesson a day.) However, we must sign up for lessons each evening when schedules are posted, an occasion that resembles a feeding frenzy. Some teachers are infinitely more popular than others, and missing a signup usually means not having a lesson at all the next day. Moreover, some teachers block out most of their schedule for their private students from elsewhere, and will offer only four precious slots to the hoi polloi.
This creates a problem when some private students are especially keen for lessons, and resort to tactics like signing up for two a day, signing up with false names, crossing off other people’s names from the list, and bodily attacking the poor guy who tacks the schedules to the wall. Such has been the scene since the arrival of one teacher’s minion, whose poor sportsmanship and defensiveness has been stressing everyone out.
After that lovefest with last week’s teachers I decided to sing for another teacher here, whom I will call Tarzan. She earns this name thanks to her, um, singular personality and teaching style, involving loud snorting through the nose (encouraging head resonance), pounding of the chest (chest resonance), funny faces (humiliation of the student), and hyperactivity. Tarzan belongs to the “monkey see monkey do” school of teaching, in which she sings at me, tells me all the things I’m doing wrong, and extols all the things she’s doing right. This is interspersed with frequent ugly of exaggerations of how I sounded and looked to her, and many inquiries of “Do you get it? Does this make sense?” Towards the end of our excruciating half hour together, I did make some progress, and latch onto the sensations the nicer teachers had guided me towards. She played favorites among students, encouraging some to come study with her privately while skimping on time with others, namely me. I was miserable, but I decided to take another lesson with her, in hopes that things would be different, or I could make things better. In other words, with the same attitude as a battered wife.
The presence of Tarzan’s minion didn’t help either. I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t direly intimidated by the other singers during my first week here, but after this floundering lesson and the stressful rehearsals, I began to doubt myself. The minion has a superior air and competitiveness that instantly made me feel as if I couldn’t compete. She dominates in the trio I share with her, and is not a flexible musician.
But the week went by, I’m sort of learning how to manage the rehearsals, and Tarzan started to like me. I know this because in our last lesson together, she confessed as much, along with the fact that she didn’t like my voice at first. I was glad to get to know her here, instead of paying for lessons in Boston. She got me to do some good things, but a little bit of draconian goes a long way.
In fact, I think her students all have problems, the minion included. After a week of her attitude, I was looking forward to the songs she was singing on one of our group recitals. If you’re going to scare me and make me feel bad, then you better knock my socks off. Well, she was a bundle of nerves (it is quite difficult to sing for 70 of your peers!), sweating and shaking, and then screeching and howling. I put my socks back on. I’m sure Tarzan was distressed, or else delusional. I was happy that my performance met with high praise from my colleagues, even though it was a very long program. I sang some Britten folk song arrangements that I had done in May with my lovely harpist, and I was able to rely on my newly revitalized technique to focus on the emotion and storytelling of the songs. A few people said I even made them tear up – I just love making people cry! I even got hugs and congratulations from both Tarzan and her minion. Overall, it’s been a week of transition from freaking out to gaining control.
When I sang last night, I dedicated the songs to Jerry Hadley, who had so inspired me earlier this year. But I don’t think people had heard the sad news, and I didn’t want to describe it at a concert. I was dismayed that the person who redirected me to such positive feelings about singing could allow himself to be so consumed by a strong depression. I suppose singers can end up living operatically, feeling emotions as deeply as the characters we portray. Are we drawn to singing because music most accurately reflects our feelings, or are our emotions heightened and exaggerated because we sing?
Pourquoi me reveiller, o souffle du printemps?
Sur mon front je sens tes caresses.
Et pourtant bien proche est le temps
Des orages et des tristesses.
Demain, dans le vallon,
Se souvenant de ma gloire premiere,
Et ses yeux vainement chercheront ma splendeur:
Ils ne trouveront plus que deuil et que misere! Helas!
Pourquoi me reveiller, o souffle du printemps?
Why do you wake me now, o sweetest breath of spring? On my brow I sense your most gentle caress, yet how soon creeps on the time, filled with tempests and with distress! Tomorrow through the vale, the traveler will pass, recalling all of the glory of the past. And in vain he will search for the bloom of my youth, and nothing will he find but deep pain and endless sorrow. Alas! Why do you wake me now, o sweetest breath of spring!
From Werther
Friday, July 06, 2007
Opera boot camp!
Because a weekend in Tennessee didn’t satisfy my curiosity enough for big-box/big-butt America, I am now in Florida (I believe the town is called West Bumblefuck) for a five week opera program with lessons, masterclasses, recitals, coachings, and four full-scale opera productions.
Here are my first impressions of the other Bush’s state:
A sleeping fat man spread out in an airplane seat really does embody the word “spread.”
Many black pastors in white collars.
Metal flamingos suspended from the ceiling of the airport.
A manatee emblazoned on the floor.
Wizened old timers.
Very young looking parents.
Toll booth workers all wear loud tropical shirts.
Friendly fatsos at the baggage claim.
A lost bag. DOH! Why has this happened 100% of the times I’ve flown out of Logan??
Anyway…. that shiftless sense that everything is not precisely where it should be probably contributed to my restlessness on the first night, and I was not soothed by the striking disorganization of the place, and the intensity brought on by concentrating 70 singers in one very small place.
Already at the airport, the one-upmanship started:
“So what school do you go to?”
“Vanderbilt.”
“Oh, I wanted to go there, but it’s just so expensive.”
“Well I got a scholarship, so….”
“Well I have a scholarship where I go too.”
You get the idea. I’ve also had to adjust my conversation parameters to a different level; it’s true when they say that singers aren’t always that bright. I tried to explain my current reading interest on nutrition and our industrial agricultural system to one of my two roommates, and she blinked back at me and continued crunching her Pringles. My other roommate stocked up on EasyMac, frosting, and no-bake Jello pudding mix. I feel like a believer among the damned.
That is actually a righteous direction to go in, as we are staying at a Christian college, which happens to have the ugliest campus in North America. More than 60 of us are packed into 20 rooms (mostly triples), cleaning and supplies are all on our own, most – but not all – of our meals are provided, and there’s nothing much to do around here. I take that back: there are some trees. And farther down the road, some cows. For entertainment, I suggested a round of strip beer pong (i.e., attempting to whack ping pong balls into beer cups, drinking the ones you hit, and stripping every time you miss). A tenor countered that we ought to be more respectful of our hosts, and that perhaps a strip prayer circle would be better…..
The program hosts around 70 singers, mostly women, as usual, and they have a range of personalities. Mostly airheads and divas, but the occasional down to earth type you can actually talk to. I even found a friendly Seattle native who speaks beautiful Italian – thanks to a year’s stay in Rome – and is willing to chat with me.
Apart from many scomodissimo aspects (it’s hot and humid outside, freezing inside; we’re rehearsing some 40 minutes away by car, and maybe 10 people have cars; privacy is very, very, very dear) I can’t help but feel joy in the music we’re studying. I’m singing in The Magic Flute and Albert Herring (by Britten), which couldn’t represent more disparate styles. I call them Magic Albert or Herring Flute for short. If the Mozart could soothe you to sleep or inspire you to dream, Britten makes you laugh and coaxes a new comfort level out of your ears. While singing early music is about discovering voices that have been silent for centuries, and to learn with surprise that the human heart will never change, performing well-known operas is like visiting old friends, whose charms are as fresh the first time as the last.
And the fantastic pretexts of them all! How often do you tell your new friends that three young, beautiful, fair, and wise youths will hover over them and be their leaders? How often do you muse “that country virgins, if there be such, think too little and see too much?”
The last time I performed Flute was in the pit with the orchestra, where I loved the music for the three ladies above all. I am now singing the part of the third lady, whose line often functions as a cello in trio sections, and more like a horn or bassoon in quintets. But oh, it’s nice to have the words this time.
Here are my first impressions of the other Bush’s state:
A sleeping fat man spread out in an airplane seat really does embody the word “spread.”
Many black pastors in white collars.
Metal flamingos suspended from the ceiling of the airport.
A manatee emblazoned on the floor.
Wizened old timers.
Very young looking parents.
Toll booth workers all wear loud tropical shirts.
Friendly fatsos at the baggage claim.
A lost bag. DOH! Why has this happened 100% of the times I’ve flown out of Logan??
Anyway…. that shiftless sense that everything is not precisely where it should be probably contributed to my restlessness on the first night, and I was not soothed by the striking disorganization of the place, and the intensity brought on by concentrating 70 singers in one very small place.
Already at the airport, the one-upmanship started:
“So what school do you go to?”
“Vanderbilt.”
“Oh, I wanted to go there, but it’s just so expensive.”
“Well I got a scholarship, so….”
“Well I have a scholarship where I go too.”
You get the idea. I’ve also had to adjust my conversation parameters to a different level; it’s true when they say that singers aren’t always that bright. I tried to explain my current reading interest on nutrition and our industrial agricultural system to one of my two roommates, and she blinked back at me and continued crunching her Pringles. My other roommate stocked up on EasyMac, frosting, and no-bake Jello pudding mix. I feel like a believer among the damned.
That is actually a righteous direction to go in, as we are staying at a Christian college, which happens to have the ugliest campus in North America. More than 60 of us are packed into 20 rooms (mostly triples), cleaning and supplies are all on our own, most – but not all – of our meals are provided, and there’s nothing much to do around here. I take that back: there are some trees. And farther down the road, some cows. For entertainment, I suggested a round of strip beer pong (i.e., attempting to whack ping pong balls into beer cups, drinking the ones you hit, and stripping every time you miss). A tenor countered that we ought to be more respectful of our hosts, and that perhaps a strip prayer circle would be better…..
The program hosts around 70 singers, mostly women, as usual, and they have a range of personalities. Mostly airheads and divas, but the occasional down to earth type you can actually talk to. I even found a friendly Seattle native who speaks beautiful Italian – thanks to a year’s stay in Rome – and is willing to chat with me.
Apart from many scomodissimo aspects (it’s hot and humid outside, freezing inside; we’re rehearsing some 40 minutes away by car, and maybe 10 people have cars; privacy is very, very, very dear) I can’t help but feel joy in the music we’re studying. I’m singing in The Magic Flute and Albert Herring (by Britten), which couldn’t represent more disparate styles. I call them Magic Albert or Herring Flute for short. If the Mozart could soothe you to sleep or inspire you to dream, Britten makes you laugh and coaxes a new comfort level out of your ears. While singing early music is about discovering voices that have been silent for centuries, and to learn with surprise that the human heart will never change, performing well-known operas is like visiting old friends, whose charms are as fresh the first time as the last.
And the fantastic pretexts of them all! How often do you tell your new friends that three young, beautiful, fair, and wise youths will hover over them and be their leaders? How often do you muse “that country virgins, if there be such, think too little and see too much?”
The last time I performed Flute was in the pit with the orchestra, where I loved the music for the three ladies above all. I am now singing the part of the third lady, whose line often functions as a cello in trio sections, and more like a horn or bassoon in quintets. But oh, it’s nice to have the words this time.
Cranes walking around on campus!! How cool is that?? 
The sign in the library, did they get this from the Italians? (Scusa, Paolo ;-)
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