”Lying under the Piano”

My family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky when I was about 5 years old. One of the first purchases of furniture my parents made was a Baby Grand piano. My mother and father both play the piano, my mom was a more ‘useful’ pianist and my father had his repertoire of songs he had learned in his childhood back on the farm, which may sound hokey, but he actually played them very well. 

I often would crawl  and lay under the piano while they played because I loved the way it sounded and could feel the vibrations go through my body. They thought I was nuts.  This was my first real musical experience. 

My mother tried to teach me to play the piano, which she had no idea how to do, and I was more interested in sports, after all my father was a football coach the first five years of my life.  So, I resisted her teaching, and we soon stopped with that project. But still, I would lie down under the piano when they played.

Being dragged to church taught me a lot about music.

My childhood was dominated by my parents forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do, and one of these things was to go to church. I hated church to be honest, but it didn’t matter, I went because I had to.  Sometimes I am sure my folks wanted to give me away to the circus I would put up such a fuss, but they didn’t. 

Of all the denominations to belong to, the Southern Baptist denomination is right up there with Catholicism and Judaism in its ability to inflict the scurge of guilt into people. Being the open and impressionable kid that I was, this had and still has a huge impact on me.  

It made me angry that we were all supposed to be guilty of something even if have not done anything wrong. Original sin to me was a death wish. What is the point of not sinning, when you were born one?  All it takes is one sin to send you to hell, right?

So this line of thinking dominated my youth. The only thing that I found interesting in church, besides girls ( a no no of course) was music. I ignored the words and just looked at the notes in the hymnal and followed them as the music went along. I would sing with everyone else, so nobody could hear me, and besides the pipe organ was pretty loud. 

Our church is a downtown church and back then had a large population of college professors and students. My parents, my father was a professor, were the Training Union teachers of the University group in the church. So, we often had a lot of college kids at our house. Several of them could play the piano, and we would have Christmas or Thanksgiving parties at home with them playing on the piano. 

Hearing a Choir

Being professor at the university, my brother and I were able to attend the Training School, called College Heights Elementary and High School. I attended 1st and 2nd grade there. It was great because we were right in the middle of the campus of college students. It was like going to college for grade school. 

One rainy evening we were outside the school building and the big bells of Cherry Hall would mark the time chiming the Big Ben of London ”tune.” Then I remember hearing a choir warm up somewhere in the distance. Somehow, the combination of that scholarly atmosphere and the beautiful sound of the chorus, made me feel so great.  There was something uplifting about it. It made you feel that you were in a place of higher ideals. I love that campus to this day. 

But, time went by and I rejected joining any choir, attempted the trumpet and it looked as if I would never be involved in music. Not that I had ever considered it as an option. 

”Tell it like it is”

When I reached high school, the Minister of Music at our church wanted to recruit my brother and I into the choir. Our church had become a very popular church, and the youth choir was huge. I would have nothing of it, besides, I didn’t like the ”pop” breathy ”Jesus is my boyfriend” music they were doing. It just seemed like fluff to me. 

This is when our church decided to produce our first church musical, ”Tell it like it is.” I can’t remember who wrote it, but it was all pop music, but did have some nice tunes in it. One of the songs made it into the hymnal, ”Pass it on.”  There must have been 100 kids in that chorus, and the musical was a stunning success. It ”sold out” two Sunday nights in a row and to be honest, they could have gone on tour with it. 

Our church had just renovated the building, and there were spotlights imbedded in the ceiling, and there was a good sound system installed, non-obtrusive. The church is more like a synagoge in its design. A huge dome with balconies not unlike St. Marks in Venice. It had an estimated capacity of about 1500 people. So, filling it was a pretty big deal. Back then our attendance was pretty high. My mom was church secretary, and sometimes we would have 900 people in Sunday School. 

But, I degress. I had to say all that because music was an important part of our church. Many girls played the piano in Sunday School and some were very good. One is the head musical assistant of the Nashville Opera and was my accompanist as well. 

But, like I said, I had no interest in it….until one Sunday night when my parents took me to a concert, again, kicking and screaming. That concert was with a contemporary Christian musican named Ken Medema, who was totally blind. Well, I was sitting in the crowd, my arms crossed in defiance until he started playing. I suddenly was struck by the ”seriousness” of his music, but also by the masculinity and passion in it. It wasn’t the flull that the teenage girls whispered when they sang, this guy played like he meant it, and sang like he was on fire. 

It was on this night that I got my first musical nudge and it was to try out playing the piano for myself. 

Silent Night

To be honest, I am not sure if this happened before or after the Medema concert, but I believe it was after. I was doodling on the piano when my father came in and spoke these words to me…”If you learn the chords, you can play anything.” That statement lead me to pick out Silent Night on the piano. I was able to discern the major chords, C, F, and G were the same ‘kind’ of chord and when played at the right time with the melody produced the song. 

It was at this point I realized what the secret behind music was. It is a system!  All I have to do is figure out the system and I can do anything!  So, I figured out the system. It was more important for me to figure out the system and memorize it for songs, than it was to open a piece of music and sight read it.  It was all about ”picking out” tunes on the piano by ear. 

Due to the hymnal at church, I began to put together the chords and the sounds and began to start becoming interested in the organ. It was during church that I started ”sightsinging.”  Most of the hymns have 4 stanzas, so I would sing the soprano line first, the alto line second, the tenor line 3rd and the bass line 4th. This occupied me during church. I would sit and look at the hymnal during services and read through the hymnal, wondering what all of those symbols meant. 

”I write the songs”

I became interested in pianists of pop music. One of the most popular songs on the radio during this time was ”I write the songs” played and sung by Barry Manilow. (Later I was disappointed to learn that he didn’t write the song!)  But, I bought the sheet music to it and started to pick it out on the piano. 

This isn’t the first song I learned to play, I had also picked out ”When Johnny Comes Marching Home” from a song book we had. It was attracted to it because of the chords used in it. 

But, I write the songs was the first song that I learned to play AND sing. But I didn’t play it all that well when I sang it. At the time I was trying to just get the song sung. It never crossed my mind that my singing was anything special. But this experience had the following result…

Barry Manilow did a concert and my university and I went to watch it. His show was awesome and the arena was sold out, probably 10,000 or so people. I was enthralled by it. 

So, I bought Barry Manilow’s song books and began to ”sit high” like he did and play the piano and try to sing his songs. I was still about 15 I guess when all of this was happening, so it was a bit of a strain to hit the notes, considering I was a pubertacious youth. 

I turned into a closet musician. My parents were fed up with me listening to music and playing the piano all of the time, so they moved the piano and my bed out into the converted garage so they could get some sleep. It was there in that room that I taught myself the piano, theory, to sing and to act like I was performing, with the recording, being careful to not let anyone hear me. 

”Carry On My Wayward Son”

One Saturday morning, I assume I was 16 at this point, my friend drove up in his sky blue Ford Pinto station wagon. I think we were going to go play golf. When I sat down in the front seat I heard music playing that I had never heard before. We talked for a while and then I said, ”What is this music?”  I was amazed how virtuosic and different it was to any music I had heard before.  He said, ”Thats Kansas!” 

Kansas? What is Kansas?  He went on to tell me it was a progressive rock group and he had an 8 Track tape of it playing in his car.  I was immediately hooked. 

I went and bought my first rock and roll album, ”Leftoverture” by Kansas and was hooked.  It was a revolutionary album to me. Such a combination of sounds were so compelling to me for so many different reasons. Kansas was best described as a ”Southern Gothic Progressive Rock and Roll Band.”  This album changed my life forever. It determined my entire life’s philosophy, and still, that album stands alone among albums as a transformational work for me. 

They played all of this complicated music where melodies intertwined and harmonies staggered the sound with rhythmic precision and clarity, with sheer power. This counterpoint style delivered me to the master of all music Johann Sebastian Bach. The Fugue.  Thus began my quest to play the organ, like Steve Walsh, singing with wild passion, playing with incredible skill and performing to sell the show as if was the last thing he would ever do in life. 

The perfect combination of rock and roll and classical music, deep, rich, powerful and profound. I loved it all. Music became my religion. 

Still, hardly anyone knew about it. My parents and brother thought I had lost my mind, playing all of that sinful rock and roll. Not that it made any difference that Kerry Livgrin’s lyrics are more spiritual than most hymns at church. So, while I was in high school I decided to take piano and organ lessons from our church organist.

I got it together somewhat enough for my teacher to ask me to play the postlude for a Sunday Night church service, which goes unnoticed mostly. Then she asked me to play the postlude on Sunday morning and that caught everybody’s attention.

People came up after I played and couldn’t believe what they had just heard. Here was a kid who hardly ever sang a not in a school or church choir, playing a huge pipe organ for the postlude. The music professors in the congregation were amazed at it. Some of them were in my parents Sunday school class.

So, I wanted to figure out how to sing. Fortunately, the Minister of Music at the time was a very good tenor. He did ”Die schöne Müllerin” and sang quite a few solos in church. He was excellent, now as I look back on it. So, he agreed to listen to me.

I can’t remember what I sang but he looked at me with a big grin on his face and said, ”Right now, without learning anything else, you are already one of if not the best tenor in the entire state of Kentucky, and that includes me!”  

So, he gives me this rendition of Amazing Grace to sing. It starts low and ends high with a big effect.  I can’t remember who played for me, because it wasn’t my organ/piano teacher because as I was practicing for the Wednesday night prayer meeting, she walked in while I was singing and after I had finished she said, ”What are you doing taking piano and organ lessons?”  I said that I wanted to play and sing. She said that it would be best to concentrate on singing, which now turns out to be half true.

So, my minister of music told me to go up to Western and take lessons. I got a teacher who taught part time. We had 30 minute lessons and after the third lesson she said ”Come with me, you are going to sing for the opera director.”  I answered, opera? I don’t know a thing about it.

So, she knocked on his door and told him he should hear me and he asked what I was, and she said the most treasured word in the world of opera, ”A tenor.”  He said, okay, take a look at this.  As I looked at the music I had no clue what it was, I had never heard of it before, much less knew the melody. I told him I would have to practice it first and he said, never mind, just do the best you can. So, he grabbed a pianist and I basically sight read The Flower Song from Carmen, with all of the notes.

He looked at me and said, ”What are you doing Thursday evening?” I said I didn’t know. He said, ”Good, take this, go through the entire book and look at El Remendado and Don Jose and come to rehearsal at 6:30 on Thursday.” I anwered…”You’re joking right?”  Nope, you are the tenor who is going to do El Remendado and understudy Don Jose. I was 21 years old and had no clue about the opera Carmen, a piece I would sing many times as a professional.

The rehearsals for Carmen grabbed me to the stage. I had found it…home. The stage became my home for life and I loved it from day one. The funny thing is, I had no clue about it growing up. I wasn’t good at it necessarily, but had all of the ingredients already in me to be a good singer. Two years later I performed the title role Faust in the opera and my destiny was sealed.

Nothing could pull me away from music. Nothing. Doing Shaker Music, singing solos here and there, going to the Eastman School, then on to Chautauqua and the the Zürich Opera Studio, all were amazing opportunities and expereinces and it all began with lying under the piano, letting the vibrations wash over my body as a kid.

How fortunate I have been!