When you are studying to be a performer at a world renowned music conservatory the lessons you learn often come from unexpected places.
I spent 3 years in Rochester, New York, 2 of them as an official student of the Eastman School of Music, 1 year I spent taking voice from my teacher privately, working with the coaches, working at the delicious delectable Cafe Creme de la Creme and auditioning from there to determine what my next step would be. It is an incredible experience, but not necessarily for the reasons I had expected.
The first thing I remember being told during an orientation meeting for incoming graduate students was that we had been accepted and they weren’t going to throw anybody out because you aren’t at a certain level. We were there to reach those levels and they were here to help you get there.
It was a similar experience when Johannes Felsenstein, Oberspielleiter at the Stadttheater in Bremerhaven, said to me, “Herr Simpson, Sie sind bereits Engagiert. Wir proben hier, es ist kein Vorsingen. Entspann dich!” (Mr. Simpson, you are already hired. This isn’t an audition. Relax!”) Then he proceeded to kick my butt for 3 years and 12 productions of the most detailed stage work I would ever do.
The reason I am thinking about this is because it seems I had built up such a fear of how things worked in serious music surroundings where excellence was simply a common standard. I had this idea that the higher you went, the meaner and less forgiving people would be.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The higher I went the easier everything became. The teachers at Eastman were incredible. I wished I could be a teacher like that. It seemed all so laid back.
I remember taking remedial graduate music theory from a Doctoral Student who taught in such as way that made so much sense to me. It became easy to take dictation, sight sing, and analyze music and helped me understand the complicated structures of modern 20th Century Music. Certainly, I would have had great difficulty singing some of the crazy stuff I sang throughout my career without that guidance. Now, I’m not sure I remember much of the details, but it was the way of approaching such tasks that completely flipped my consternation about singing atonal or simply insane modern pieces.
I remember one day in rehearsal for Offenbach’s “Robinson Crusoe” and we had a choreographer from “New York City” to work with us and he said…”I’m surprised you all don’t know how to ‘work’.” I didn’t know what he was talking about because we were all trying our hardest. But, there is a difference in work in academia and in the professional world and it is a hard thing to put your finger on to be honest.
But the essence of it was simply the idea that working on music or on stage shouldn’t be taken personally in any way. You are there because you are supposed to be there and then it is just a matter of putting stuff together and working things out. If a conductor tells you that a note is a little flat or you are behind in a certain section of music, they are doing it to help you get better, not to put you down. It doesn’t mean you are a bad musician, it means something needs to be fixed. Everyone wants you to be good. It is in everyone’s best interest that you are good.
An afternoon conducting class
David Effron asked me to sing in his undergraduate conducting class because they had the task of conducting the Accompanied Recitative of the Sprecher scene of Mozart’s Magic Flute. Of course at Eastman, you do that with an actual orchestra made up of students who were likely sight reading it. I did Tamino of course and I don’t recall who did the Sprecher. Anyway, it was interesting to observe.
First off, I had a huge fear of string players because they were such good musicians and listening to them in Eastman Theater gave me extra reason to respect them. So, I was very nervous about singing this in front of them and of course nervous Effron had asked me to do it, something you wouldn’t consider saying no to and was also a guy you didn’t want to perform poorly for.
So, we all stumbled through those pages and then one kid got up and started to conduct. He was young and had the “lead arm syndrome” that tall lanky young conductors have but was managing quite well in spite of it. So, he gets to a certain point and stops conducting.
Everyone looked up at him, Effron waited for a while and it was obvious he wasn’t going to conduct anymore.
Effron asked, “Why did you stop? It was going pretty well.”
“I don’t have any more of the music.” the student answered.
Effron with his usual puzzled look “Why not? Was it unclear how much of it you were supposed to conduct?”
“No.” the student answered. “I ran out of nickels.”
Back in those days, the copies cost a nickel a piece and he had come up one nickel short and didn’t copy the entire section, but stopped one page short.
Effron had a reputation of somehow upsetting students because he was from the real world and just point blank with students. I don’t think he ever thought his statements could hurt somebody, but people were so jacked up there that tears were fairly common. Stress for undergraduates at Eastman seemed very high.
“When did you copy it?” Effron asked.
“About an hour ago.”
“What? You copied this piece an hour ago, couldn’t finish copying it because you didn’t have a nickel and came to class to conduct this piece without practicing it?”
“Yes.” said the student rather hesitant.
Effron paused for a bit. He was shaking his head and said…
“You students amaze me. You have amazing optimism. You cram the night before for tests, you learn your music at the last possible minute and don’t practice conducting a very difficult passage before class starts? I couldn’t do that! It would scare me to death to do that.”
So, he got up, walked over to the student and gave him a nickel.
“Next time, have all of the music and practice it before you come in, okay? Never do that again.”
There was general relief in the room and the session went on for another hour or so and that is how I learned the Sprecher scene in the Magic Flute in David Effron’s Conducting Class.
Figaro
The first production I did at Eastman was “The Marriage of Figaro”, Mozart’s masterpiece. The production was done in 4 acts with 3 intermissions and we did all of it.
I was in the chorus.
So, that right there tells you how much we had to do. If you know Figaro, you will know that the chorus part is really small. But, we were given the task of changing the set during the intermissions.
Now, the production was done in the historic, glorious and acoustically divine “Kilbourne Hall”. We helped hang the lights, which was quite a chore since the rigging was not counterweighted very well and we had to lift those lights up using this course rope and anchor it on the side of the stage.
The sets were painted flats, where you had to fit it together a bit like a puzzle and of course carry the necessary furnishings to and from stage. So, we were pretty busy all night long, but we had a good time and laughed a lot.
At that time I hadn’t had any exposure to Figaro but was excited to be a part of it, with the orchestra sitting so high and close to the stage, Effron played the Harpsichord and the end effect was stunning. I remember listening to that famous duet with the Countess and Cherubino that is played in a scene in the Shawshank Redemption. I was amazed by how beautiful that piece was. I still am. The entire opera is like that. One masterpiece, top ten hit after another in a seemingly seamless flow.
It was a long evening, and although we started at 7:00 we weren’t done until 11:00 p.m. When you do all of it, it is a long evening. But, doing that piece as a chorister in that gorgeous hall with all of my new colleagues all I can say about it looking back is, Wow! That is an incredible experience.
When you are living in the dream, you don’t see it as a dream, but as day to day reality. It becomes your normal. Clearly, it isn’t normal.
It is extraordinary and not because I had anything to do with it. I am just so grateful for these memories and I think recalling them here does them some kind of honor.
Missa Solemnis
During my tenure as a student at the Eastman School of Music I had opportunities abounding. I sang in every ensemble that school had except the jazz band, with the exception of doing a master class with Ward Swingle.
The choral program was directed by the one and only Donald Neuen. His energy and vitality bordered on the superficial, but he was really good at delivering professional level performances with precision and passion. He would call you out if you’re attitude wasn’t a “go get em” type of attitude, which I now appreciate so much.
We were doing Beethoven’s masterwork the vaunted “Missa Solemnis”. He had hired outside singers to do the solo work, but asked four students to stand in and rehearse with the orchestra and chorus the solo sections. I was in heaven rehearsing in the Eastman Theater with the Eastman Philharmonia and Chorus on that monumental piece. I was a bit put off that we weren’t going to do the solos.
Anyway, like I said, I was a very busy singer at Eastman. I often had multiple performances on weekends, what with church work and all, and on this weekend, I think I was singing in an opera production and had a performance of Britten’s Serenade to sing for a horn recital.
So, we are cruising through a rehearsal on a Friday afternoon and he leans over to me and says, “You can go.” I looked up at him and he was all smiles. I turned to my colleague and asked, “Did I do something wrong.” She said no and again said very politely, “You are free to go. Thank you.”
So, I got up and walked back to the Eastman dorms. I was dumbfounded and horrified. I thought, I must have been really awful for him to kick me out of rehearsal like that. I agonized about it for a couple of hours, called a couple of people and spent a whole day worrying about it.
I caught up with him in the Main Hall the next day I think and asked him, “I was just wondering about today. Did I do something wrong today that made you want me to leave rehearsal today?”
He looked at me and said, “No, why?”
I said, “Well, I thought you sent me home because I sang something off or did something incredibly wrong and that you were throwing me out of the rehearsal.”
He said, “Oh no! I’m sorry! It wasn’t that at all. I knew you had several concerts this weekend and I just didn’t want to tire you out. You are a very busy student and I just wanted to take some of the load off!”
Boy was I releaved! I told him, “Well, I appreciate that because I was really worried about it. But, I want you to know, if I could sit in the middle of that orchestra everyday and just be there inside the music all of the time I would. Besides, the more I sing the stronger I get.”
That held true my whole life. I can’t say I ever got tired singing too much. Physically yes, vocally no.
Bach St. John’s Passion
Now I have to confess a not so proud moment in my career at Eastman.
My teacher, Marcia Baldwin said to me during a lesson one day, “Tim, Donald Neuen asked me if I though you could sing the arias in the upcoming concert of Bach’s St. John’s Passion and I said yes, I think you’d do very well.”
This was going to be another one of the Eastman Chorale’s Tour de Force peformances in the Eastman Theater with the Eastman Philharmonia and being asked to sing a solo with that piece under those circumstances is like winning the Oscar or something.
There are two arias in Bach’s St. John’s Passion, and they are very difficult tenor arias at that. “Ach mein Sinn” and “Ewege” are the titles of these two contrasting arias. One is long and sustained, the other is very rhythmic, disjointed and strong.
So, in my youthful vigor I said, “Y E S!”
Then I went to the library to look at it because I didn’t know it from Adam and I was to sing it for him before he cast it.
Well, here is what happened.
After getting to know them fairly well I was excited because I knew that I could do it. But, there was one problem.
I didn’t practice and coach it enough. I wasn’t prepared for the audition as I should have been and that is totally on me. I stumbled sort of ungracefully through them at the hearing and then he sent the accompanist on his way.
He sat down and said, “Darn it, Tim, you can sing this and sing it well and honestly I figured you would be doing it, but I am not going to cast you because frankly, that wasn’t up to your standards. I’m really disappointed that you didn’t prepare better for this.”
He was right and I knew it going in. I could blame it on the class load I had, or the music I was learning for this or that project but in the end I had not done the hours and hours of work on those two pieces that it takes to prepare them properly. I wasn’t necessarily devastated, but it was a wake up call for sure.
He hired mostly outside talent for the soloists, and I know that I would have done it better than the guy they got. But, I was still really green and naive about how difficult the path that I had chosen would be and how much work it would take to learn the music and the languages that I would be singing for the rest of my career. It was hard to sit in the audience and hear it, but the performance was brilliant, and then of course I finally got the memo on how great those Passions of Bach’s are.
There would be other moments like this in my career and when I look back on them it still is painful to know I squandered away some great opportunities because I wasn’t diligent.
When I think about teaching voice, I don’t think I know anything but I do know this…I have a lot of experience in the realm of operatic performance and my knowledge can be of help to others not because of my successes but because of my failures and to make sure my students don’t make those same mistakes.
Young people are basically insecure, especially when it comes to singing and their voices, but I don’t think coddling them is the answer at all, but to give them real confidence by treating them like adults with honesty, respect and expectations.