Stories and musings as I bumble around life
The human voice is a funny thing. We singers are often reminded that our voices can have a shelf life…particularly those of us of the female persuasion, since hormones play a big role in vocal production. Now that I have hit the ripe “old” age of 40, I’m making plans of my own for the day when my voice is no longer as much of an asset as it currently is (hopefully that day is very far away!). Continue reading “An Inspiration Without Expiration”
Back in September, when I was rehearsing La bohème, I got this text from a fellow chorister:
Many of us had been furiously studying our music over the past week, getting ready for staging rehearsals, when we had to be off-book. I had also spent almost the entire month of July memorizing the role of Dame Quickly in Falstaff, so good memorization techniques have been fresh in my mind.
I thought it might be nice to share them here, for those who might be having some difficulty memorizing their own music (or play or test material or whatever…these techniques are fairly universal, although I will mostly be talking about memorizing words and music, since that’s what I do most often).
Continue reading “What’s My Line? 10 Steps to Memorizing Your Music”
I’ll make this quick.
Last week, I went over to the house of my friend, Becky Oehlers (some know her from her design blog, Hemidemisemiquaver), who took a bunch of photos for me, since I needed new headshots.
What I got back was stunning.
I cannot recommend her enough. Not only was the entire process easy and stress-free, but she was very good at making me feel incredibly comfortable. Okay, so it helps that she is a friend. But she’s like that with everyone.
Check out the entire gallery here. And look at the rest of her portfolio here.
There is a general misconception in today’s society that opera is only for old, rich, and snobby people. And though some Jackie Evancho fans might consider me in the last category, I must protest! I think opera can and should be accessible to everybody. You just have to discard the stereotypes of an overbearing soprano wearing horns or a tenor singing for hours and open your mind.
Continue reading “Opera, Tabloids & Britney Spears”
After a couple weeks’ hiatus, I’m back in the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. It’s good to be back, folks. This week’s prompt comes from Head Ant, who writes:
An opera is being written about your life. Summarize the first act.
I’ve put the challenge at the top this time because I wanted to explain a little bit about what I decided to do with this totally exciting and incredibly daunting task. An opera about my life?? How in the world would anyone be able to put my complicated life into approximately three hours? I mean, heck, Harry Potter’s life had to be told in almost 20 hours, and they left out huge chunks of plot from the book. Not that I’m anything like Harry Potter, but you know what I mean.
Most opera plots paint pictures in very large brush strokes. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at some of this year’s Twitter #operaplot contest submissions, where you have to summarize an entire opera plot in 140 characters or fewer.
The whole medium of opera necessitates skimpy plots because most of the stage time is taken up with arias about how a character is feeling. Often, action will take place off stage and explained in exposition by one of the characters as a storytelling tool to move the plot forward.
In addition, the characters portrayed in opera are usually larger-than-life archetypes who make stupid, stupid mistakes. It makes for great storytelling, but terrible living…and I decided at a very early age that I had had enough drama in my childhood to last a lifetime, so I tend to avoid the stupid, stupid mistakes as an adult. (Not that I don’t make mistakes, mind you; I just don’t make monumentally stupid, opera-worthy mistakes. At least I try not to).
With that in mind, I decided to create my own autobiographical opera synopsis in the style of Les contes d’Hoffmann, which is a collection of stories in which the poet E.T.A. Hoffmann is the protagonist. Each act is a fantastical tale that deals more in metaphor than reality. (This way I can also protect the identities of the innocent and not-so-innocent…but the overarching story is still autobiographical in nature)
I also decided that if I was going to create an opera synopsis, I couldn’t just stop at the first act; I had to finish it. Also, I decided my opera was going to be sung in Italian. Just because. Clearly I had way too much fun with this challenge!
My challenge went out to Penny, who will post her answer to my prompt here before the end of the week.
Maren – mezzo-soprano
Teresa, her friend – soprano
Gianmarco, a suitor – bass-baritone
Giotto, a lawyer – tenor
Stefano, his friend – tenor
Raimondo – baritone
Chorus – friends, party-goers, wedding guests
Dancers
The Puppeteer
Young Maren (child dancer)
The Mother
Puppets
The Mother and The Puppeteer dance a pas de deux. Young Maren enters, and The Puppeteer begins a puppet show for Young Maren. During the show, The Mother leaves, and the Puppets begin to play with Young Maren. At first she is delighted by the attention, but soon tires and looks for her mother. The Puppets do not allow her to leave. She begs The Puppeteer for release, but instead, he attacks her and forces her to dance a twisted variation of the first pas de deux. The Puppets carry her off the stage.
A Victorian Mansion.
Maren is in a tower, singing of her romantic ideal and wondering if there is someone out there to sweep her off her feet (“Chi sarà il mio principe?”). Her friend Teresa enters, with news that the guests are arriving for her birthday party, and that the very rich Gianmarco is expected to attend. They sing a duet about the potential of a rich mate (“Non mi dispiacerebbe”). They descend the stairs to find a party in full swing. Gianmarco arrives with his friends and immediately declares his love for Maren (“Non riesco a respirare”). While he is singing, however, The Puppeteer arrives and Maren becomes afraid. She is the only one who can see him. The Puppeteer begins moving Maren around the room, throwing her first at Gianmarco, then making her spurn him. Embarrassed, Gianmarco becomes angry and tells her how worthless she is. She begs him to understand, with a reprise of “Non riesco a respirare,” but The Puppeteer makes it so that she cannot sing the right words.
Gianmarco laughs cruelly at her antics and says that two can play at that game; he picks a random woman, kisses her in front of everyone, and announces that the party will continue at his house. Laughing and cheering, the crowd follows him out the door, leaving Maren alone.
A library.
Giotto and his friend Stefano are arguing over a legal point and having a great time with their debate. Maren enters, singing sadly, with The Puppeteer not far behind her. Giotto asks who she is. Stefano replies that she is a singer who has been cursed to be unlucky in love. Giotto then asks who the man is behind Maren, and Stefano does not know what he is talking about.
Curious, Giotto approaches Maren and the two start a conversation about their love of books (“I libri possono cantare”). Giotto points out The Puppeteer behind Maren, and she becomes frightened. When Giotto addresses The Puppeteer directly, he does not answer, but gestures menacingly at Giotto. Giotto encourages Maren to confront The Puppeteer, using some of the most powerful words in the world: Shakespeare’s Hamlet (“Difenderci, O angeli e ministri della grazia!”). Defeated, The Puppeteer disappears and Maren is released from his clutches.
Filled with gratitude, Maren declares her love for Giotto, who sadly informs her that her love can never be requited because he only has eyes for Stefano. He leaves her, quoting the holiest of books, Winnie the Pooh: “You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
A Renaissance Faire.
Maren and Teresa sing bawdy songs about how they don’t need a prince anymore: just someone who will please them. Raimondo, who has been watching them sing, stands up and applauds. He will please Maren quite well, he boasts, and takes her into his arms. As he does so, The Puppeteer appears, and attempts to capture Maren once again. But she is no longer afraid of The Puppeteer, and she joins hands with Raimondo and Teresa to banish him once and for all (“Basta, basta!”). Defeated by the power of love, The Puppeteer loses all his magic, and his Puppets, now freed, surround him an devour him.
Maren and Raimondo are married, and for a wedding gift, he gives her a red cape and tells her that she has the power, through her words, to reach others who have been abused or held captive by their own fears. As she puts on her cape, Maren pledges her love to Raimondo and they declare that they shall conquer the evils of the world together, to the cheers of the throng (“Evviva, evviva!”).
Here are some of my own submissions to the #operaplot contest (no, I didn’t win):
On Friday, I spent the whole day with a famous person.
Well, okay, he’s not A-list celebrity famous (my husband had never heard of him), but in the music world — the choral world, especially — he is quite well-known.
His name is Gabriel Jackson, and he wrote a song for The Crossing, which will be premiered Sunday, June 5. He has written an awful lot of gorgeous music, much of it choral (which is why he’s a bit of a celebrity with choirs), and The Crossing was able to commission him to write the first piece for their commissioning project, Seneca Sounds (works based on the writings of Seneca the Younger).
You know what my biggest worry was before I met him? That I wouldn’t have anything to say. I always get tongue-tied around celebrities.
My celebrity complex all started, I think, when I met Peter Tork. Apparently my dad and he used to be close, back in the day, and once my dad realized Nickelodeon had made me a fan of The Monkees, he thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to introduce me to Peter. And it was such a cool thing that I turned into the most awkward, shy preteen you could imagine, and even though I knew I had every capability of being smart and funny, I couldn’t formulate a single witty thing to say.
When I was a freshman in college, I went to a masterclass and recital by Frederica von Stade, my favorite mezzo and idol at the time (I still love you, Flicka, but I have since broadened my horizons!), and my friend convinced me to go backstage and say hello. I was at the end of a long line of well-wishers, and I think she may have been getting a little tired by the time I got to her. This was our exchange:
Me: You were great.
FvS: Thank you.
Me: I’m from the Bay Area too.
FvS: Oh?
Me: Yes. Say hello to San Francisco for me! (nervous, high-pitched giggle)
FvS: …uh…okay…have a good evening.
Me: You too! (walking away with a smile pasted on my face and the distinct urge to bang my head repeatedly against a wall)
After that, I gave up trying to make conversation with famous people. I was riding the subway in New York about ten years ago, and this older gentleman got on the train and sat down next to me. I glanced at him briefly, and here was my thought process:
That guy looks a lot like Henry Winkler.
Heh…I bet he gets that a lot.
Can you imagine being mistaken for Henry Winkler?
OMG, that actually IS Henry Winkler.
Henry Winkler is sitting right next to me!
Henry.
Frickin’.
Winkler.
The Fonz!
What do I do? What do I do what do I say what should I do?
Okay, be cool. Just be cool. Act like you don’t notice.
He doesn’t want to be bothered.
At that moment, some guy got on the train, took one look at him, and said (in a really loud voice), “Hey, you’re the Fonz! How are you? That’s the Fonz, man! Eyyyyyyyyy.”
Henry Winkler just nodded, mumbled, “Thank you,” and got off the next stop. I breathed a sigh of relief that I had not offended Mr. Winkler like that rude guy. But I realized that I was pretty darned close to doing the same thing, and if I had opened my mouth, something idiotic like that would have come right out. I’m sure of it.
So all of these botched celebrity meetings made me doubly nervous to meet Gabriel Jackson, a composer who I seriously admire, and whose very rhythmically complicated music I had been practicing for the last week, trying desperately to get perfect. And what was I going to say to this man? What was he going to be like? I had to pick him up from Newark Airport and take him to his hotel in Philadelphia, a good two-hour drive. Would he be cold and distant? Cranky from the long plane ride? Sleepy and jetlagged?
Was I going to say something incredibly stupid?
When I arrived at the airport, his plane had just touched down, and it took another 30-45 minutes for him to retrieve his baggage and go through customs. All the while, I was nervously waiting with the other limousine drivers, my sweaty palms clutching the paper proclaiming “GABRIEL JACKSON” in big letters — bigger than any of the other drivers’ signs, I noticed. Was that a faux pas? I sighed. His more difficult passages played in a tape loop in my head. Over and over again, my mind subconsciously practiced while I waited for him to appear.
People started trickling out of customs into the waiting area. I studied the face of every man that came down the hallway. Oh, no, I thought, would I recognize him? I’ve only ever seen his headshot! I know he has a big mustache, but maybe he shaved it off before the flight. Well, at least I have the sign. If I don’t recognize him, he will surely see me with the sign.
Turns out, I had nothing at all to fear. Not only did he still have the mustache, but he was wearing the same hat he wears in his photo. I knew it was him the moment he rounded the corner, and I saw him long before he saw me. I waved at him.
He didn’t see me.
I waved again, this time, bouncing his sign up and down.
Finally he saw me. And we shook hands as he entered the waiting area.
“How exciting,” he said in a charming English accent. “I’ve never been met at the airport by someone with a sign before.”
All of a sudden, the pedestal I had been holding him up on disappeared, and he was just an ordinary musician, just like me. We spent the long drive chatting about all sorts of things, from politics to human nature to religion and everything in between. I enjoyed his company immensely, and he even convinced me to come out for a drink with a few folks after rehearsal (which, for those of you who know me, I do very rarely! I’m such a homebody).
Maybe I should stop thinking of famous people as being famous and start remembering that they are just people. I mean, heck, if I ever get famous, that’s how I would want folks to think of me.
Oh, also? If you’re wondering about this group, The Crossing, that I mention from time to time, they just released this video that gives you an idea of how much we singers love being in this ensemble. Seriously, it is AWESOME.
And come to Sunday’s performance. You might even get to meet Gabriel Jackson too.
Last weekend, I sang the alto solo in a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in Reading, PA. I had a great time, and the choir (made up of the Reading Choral Society and the MasterSingers of the Berks Classical Children’s Chorus) was terrific.
We sang in the sanctuary of a high-ceilinged Frank Lloyd Wright-esque church with acoustics very favorable to the voice, but the “stage” (read: altar) did not lend itself favorably to the size of the group (chorus + orchestra + conductor + soloists). As a result, we soloists sat in one of the front pews, facing the choir and orchestra, until we had to sing. Then we would turn around and face the audience. It was a little awkward, but we made it work.
However, this unconventional seating arrangement offered an opportunity that I haven’t had in a long time: I was able to watch the chorus during a performance.
It was fascinating. I loved watching the immense joy and ecstasy on many of the singers’ faces, but I found my eyes kept wandering to one boy in the front row who looked exceedingly sick. He kept wiping his brow and looking around dazedly. He stopped singing at one point, and I thought for sure he was going to faint.
Immediately, I was hit with a wave of memories. While I was in the San Francisco Girls Chorus, I suffered from concert nausea/fainting quite often. The girls shunned me, the conductor mocked me, and nobody ever really tried to help fix my problem. Year after year, we were taught to stand still, smile, and watch the conductor; yet no adult bothered to ask me what was going on in my mind or in my body that I was suffering from this sickness so consistently.
It was up to me to figure out what worked and what didn’t; sadly, I never learned how to stay healthy during my entire tenure at SFGC. It wasn’t until I went to Tufts and took a few biology courses that I started to figure out what was going on with my own body. After that, I just picked up various tips and tricks along the way, and I thought, for the sake of that boy I saw (and everyone else who has had this problem), I’d share them with you.
1. If you feel like you are going to faint or throw up, sit down and put your head between your legs. Standing in a large group of people for an extended period of time can get claustrophobic. If you’re already not feeling too well, those close quarters might be exactly the worst possible thing for your state of health. When you sit down, you are able to 1) get the blood running back to your brain, and 2) get the audience’s eyes and attention off of you.
2. Keep hydrated. One of the main reasons people feel faint is that they are mildly dehydrated, and that usually happens because most people just forget to drink water. You probably won’t be able to bring water onto the stage, but you can certainly bring a large bottle of water with you wherever you go. Take a swig right before you go on stage.
3. Keep your blood sugar up. I’m almost positive the main reason I kept getting sick when I was young was because I wasn’t eating properly. Either I ate too much and felt sick or I didn’t eat anything and I felt faint. I know a lot of singers don’t like to eat before they sing, much like an athlete won’t eat right before they perform; however, in my opinion, a little protein bar or a piece of fruit can mean the difference between being present and being spaced out for half the concert. Eat something, for goodness’ sake.
4. Shift your weight and bend your knees. A lot of times in choral situations, you have to stay standing for a long time. It’s very easy to let your knees lock, and when that happens, it cuts off your blood circulation and leads to vasovagal syncope. I’m not making this up, people. I’ve seen it happen.
All in all, don’t try to tough it out; it’s a concert, not a military excursion. If you faint or get sick on stage you’ll be mortified, and if you just stand there turning green, you’re going to upstage the music.
Do you have other tips on how to stay healthy and upright during performance? Please feel free to add them to the comments below.
As I alluded to in my last post, my fellow Divas and I have been making good on our promise to do more for our careers. And part of that process this month was a dinner meeting followed by a seminar by Dallas Travers, an award-winning author and actors’ advocate who is incredibly passionate about helping actors help themselves. She provides methods and strategies for actors to get ahead in the business; it’s essentially Marketing 101, only with a left-brained slant that makes the whole thing understandable for those of us who have been told that artists have no heads for business.
I won’t go into the details of Dallas’s seminar here; I think she deserves all the credit, and I’m more than happy to pimp her to my friends (just as Amy pimped her to me). However, I do think that this blog is a good forum to run through a few points that I took away both from my “Diva in the Details” meeting and the seminar itself.
I do have the audio of our Diva in the Details meeting and will (hopefully) be able to edit it and turn it into a proper podcast. You know, in all my free time. But we talked about those three topics quite a bit throughout our dinner, and I think we managed to have a few really good anecdotes as well. More on that later.
As for me, I didn’t make it through to the Oratorio Society of New York finals. I’m sad, but I am not going to let one setback stop me.
In fact, as I was moping about my failure tonight, I paused and looked around me, with the realization that I was sitting on the Avery Fisher Hall stage with the NY Philharmonic. Not only that, but I was successfully performing some incredibly difficult music that only a handful of people would dare tackle. So I’m not chopped liver.
I have a list of a bunch more competitions that I would like to enter, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t get right back in the game.
Everyone loves the underdog. From David and Goliath to Rocky, there’s something eminently satisfying about seeing the little guy win.
Are we all underdogs? Most of the time, I certainly put myself in that position. I have terrible self-esteem (like most artists), so I automatically assume everyone I compete against is better than me. I struggle with my perfectionism constantly, and even when I know that I have achieved quite a bit, I still see myself at the bottom rung of the ladder.
But I always thought this mindset was a strength. I was raised to be modest, to never get a “swelled head,” as my dad put it. And I think that modesty has gotten me far, because it has made me work hard to get ahead, never stopping to rest on my laurels.
This week, I attended a seminar by Dallas Travers with my fellow Divas. Although Dallas works primarily with stage and film actors, much of her message carries over to the singing world as well, and I found myself taking furious notes (that’ll be another post entirely). One thing she said resonated with me more than anything else that night: “Your odds are entirely determined by your expectations.”
Your odds are entirely determined by your expectations.
Underdog, long shot, sleeper: what pessimistic synonyms to describe the person who is least likely to win! No wonder I always feel like I’m on the bottom rung if I have placed myself in this role. There I am, being the submissive dog, rolling onto my back as the winner dominates me. The target is placed so far away I can barely see it, much less pull my arm back on the bow to let the arrow fly. Am I asleep, that the contest is almost passing me by before I awake?
My odds
are entirely
determined
by my expectations.
This Saturday, I am singing in the semifinals for the Oratorio Society of New York’s solo competition. If I make it through to the next round, I will sing in the finals at Carnegie Hall* on April 2. Instead of looking at my competition and thinking of them as so much better than me, I don’t want to think of them at all. This competition is not about them; it’s about me, and how I expect myself to perform.
So, how should I picture myself now? Am I still the little guy? The dark horse? No, I think I’m the littlest bird who sings the prettiest songs. I’m the artist I have always striven to become, and it only gets better from here. I love singing, and I love bringing music to people. I love my voice, and I think you will too.
But I still won’t mind if you all cross your fingers for me at 1:50 pm on Saturday, March 26.
*don’t even ask how to get there, I’m practicing already.
This post was an Indie Ink Writing Challenge response to this prompt from Jen O.:
Write anything – any genre, fiction or non, any length – around my favourite metaphor: The littlest bird sings the prettiest songs.
You can read Wendryn’s response to my challenge here.
P.S. – In case you’re curious, this is what I sound like: [audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Music/Theodora_Wings.mp3]
I’ve threatened to write a post about how I practice for a while, and I think now is the time. I’m preparing right now for a performance of György Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds with the New York Philharmonic, and I thankfully was able to get my hands on the music before rehearsals have begun. I flipped through the score and my eyes bugged out when I saw this:
I’m not a fan of reading manuscript, especially in the age of digital music. Even though the score was published by Schott, who normally prints lovely, legible music, I have a feeling there hasn’t exactly been enough demand since its premiere in 1973, for them to go through the trouble of republishing a proper, printed version.
That being said, I think I should be able to at least read what I have to sing. That squiggly line you see going through the staves? That’s the bar line. And with everything so squished together, it’s essentially impossible to see what beat goes where. This is a sight-reader’s nightmare.
After I posted this picture onto Facebook, several of my friends suggested that I transcribe it into Finale to make it more legible. With over 200 measures of 12 staves each, I wasn’t too keen on transcribing the whole thing, but it would certainly help me learn the music if I transcribed some of the harder bits.
Here is the same passage, only legible (click on image to enlarge):
Now that you can actually see it, you may notice that each part only sings two notes: G# and F#. The trick, therefore, is not trying to find the notes themselves, but making sure you sing those notes at the right time. This is what all the parts sound like together:
[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Music/Clocks_Clouds_excerpt_piano.mp3]It’s not so easy to tell which part is yours, is it? In situations like this, I like to use a feature on Finale that changes the instrument a particular staff is playing. Since I’m singing Alto 2, I’ve switched my part to “Oboe,” and all the other parts to “Choir Aahs” (very cheesy MIDI sounds, I know, but they do the trick). This is what the same passage sounds like, only with my part pulled out of the texture:
[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Music/Clocks_Clouds_excerpt_oboe.mp3]I practice like this all the time when I’m at my computer, especially with difficult passages like this. I can also turn on a click track to remind me where the beats are, and I can play different passages at different speeds, depending on what I want to target during my practice session.
I don’t only use this technique with difficult-to-read music; I am also a terrible pianist, and I can’t afford to pay a coach every single time I want to rehearse something with accompaniment, so I use Finale to practice my regular rep as well (I’ve written about my accompaniment tracks here).
I do happen to have several very useful skills in the singing world: 1) I’m a good sight-reader, and 2) I have perfect pitch. That means that most of the time, I can show up to the first rehearsal, pick up the music, and sing what’s on the page without very many mistakes the first time around. But I’m certainly not perfect, and when I can get prepare my part ahead of time, it makes the entire rehearsal process go more smoothly.
So, that’s my “process,” such as it is. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section. And if you’re just starting out and need some advice: learn how to sight-read. That one skill will make you ten times more marketable than any other tool in your vocal toolbox.