As I sit on the Amtrak train heading home from an audition in upstate New York, I am reminded of several things.
1) It takes a great deal of love for something to give up an entire day of one’s life to sing for about 10 minutes in the hopes of possibly getting hired.
2) The opera world is truly small and everyone knows someone that knows someone
3) Just when you think that the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, you discover that there are beautifully kind people who inhabit this great sphere.
I was scheduled to sing for an opera company in Niskayuna, NY at 1:36 pm. Niskayuna is located a mere three miles outside Schenectady, NY. In order to make my audition I decided to travel via the Chinatown Bus from New York to Schenectady, then take a cab to the audition site (which happened to be in the pianist’s home.) I wanted to travel a little bit better so I opted to pay more and travel home via Amtrak.
My day began by catching the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) at 6:28 am and getting to Penn Station at 7:44 am in order to catch my 8:30 am bus. (Actually my day began with the thought that I must be a fool, but once the espresso kicked in, I was up and rearing to go.) The Chinatown Bus is in no way glamorous, but it is inexpensive and pretty fast. So fast in fact, we arrived nearly an hour early! The bus stop was in the middle of the ‘hood so I caught a cab and went to the audition site (a whole hour early to the chagrin of the pianist who was trying to settle in for a peaceful lunch. Surprise!) Luckily he kindly let me change and warm-up as he waited upstairs for the auditions to begin.
Slowly, people began to arrive (and by people I mean sopranos, because there are a billion of them.) In auditions I tend to avoid the small talk of what arias are you singing or where have you performed. However the lovely girl sitting next to me was having none of it and wouldn’t stop asking questions so I decided to actually engage in conversation. I’m glad I did as I found out that she was currently working with a conductor with whom I’d worked. We both commented on his fabulous conducting as well as his wicked wit. I think we both relaxed a bit. Eventually it was my turn to sing and everything went incredibly well. The pianist, most likely hearing me warm up with bits and pieces of my arias during his “peaceful” lunch seemed to know my every whim and played exquisitely. Because we were auditioning in a house, everyone could hear me. Thank goodness, it wasn’t crap!
Well it was time to go, so I called the cab company and asked them to pick me up. The woman on the other end assured me they would be there in 15 minutes. 25 minutes later, a sweet soprano who I hadn’t even talked to, but had overheard me calling the cab company offered to take me to the train station thus saving me time and money. While I rarely get into cars with strangers in cities I am unfamiliar with, I figured if things got dicey, I could take her, dump her in the trunk and drive myself to the police station and try and convince them that a white girl from Schenectady had tried to abduct a black man from “the city.” Lucky for me none of that came to pass. During our brief conversation, we realized that a colleague I had worked with a couple of years ago was her voice teacher. We laughed about how small the world was as we bopped to Michael Jackson.
She dropped me off in front of the train station all the while with me thanking her about 100 times. As I got out of her car, I noticed that my phone was ringing with the number of the cab company. They had indeed arrived (and only 40 minutes later than promised.) I celebrated by not answering the phone and treating myself to a coffee with a shot of espresso while I waited on my train that was to depart a couple of hours later.
I am now en route to New York and I’ll arrive at Penn Station around 8ish and then take the LIRR home with an estimated arrival time of 10 pm. What has been most fascinating about today’s audition was that I was singing for future seasons since I am unavailable for the productions in August (I have this little wedding thing going on and I am not allowed to book any work in the month of August or I will have to “deal with the consequences” as I have been told.) Anyway, who knows if anything will come from today’s adventure, but I can’t help but feel happy that I have experienced so much (joy, kindness, music, coincidence, travel and espresso.) What is certain is that each day brings something new, unexpected and interesting and I am utterly grateful that this is my life.
Peace,
Eric
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Friday, March 7, 2014
Technique Talk
I rarely, if ever talk about vocal technique, not because I don’t think about it (often!) However, I have learned that like many things, it is very personal and while I do believe the end results of optimum singing are the same, the process each singer goes through can be quite different. I bring this up because I recently finished singing the role of Don Parmenione in Rossini’s “L’occasione fa il ladro.” After one performance, I was told that someone in the audience was very complimentary of my technique. At the same performance, one of the orchestra members complimented me on my singing and musicality. While I love that I received a wonderful review, I was most happy that it was recognized by others that I had worked hard on my technical security in order to make the work sound “easy.”
When I started studying voice as a freshman in college, I had NO idea about technique. I simply sang and when it was too high or too low I figured the piece was not for me. Luckily by my junior year, I found a teacher who got me onto the right path and that luck continued throughout grad school and now into my professional life with teachers who really talk about HOW the voice works and what it should FEEL like. (Note that I said “feel” and not “sound.”)
A talk on technique could take up pages and pages, but in order to give some insight into what I do; I will break it down into the SSS system. When I am warming up my voice, I am always aiming for Space, Spin and Squillo. These three elements working together help me feel like I am singing at my best.
Space. As an undergrad, I learned a lot about singing on vowels. Vowels are what we singers spend so much time on during the act of singing. But what I also learned is that depending on what part of the range one is in, the vowel’s space will alter and in my case modify. So most of my warm up time is finding where a particular vowel resonates best within my range. For me, the space is created by the amount of lift of the soft palate and the placement of the tongue. This is an amazing coordination act and yet, for me, is the foundation for all my sound. My current teacher believes it is necessary to find your optimum space on each vowel (and there are lots of them, especially in French!) in each part of your voice. I’ll admit, it can be VERY tedious, and yet so helpful when learning a role.
Spin. This is what I call continued airflow. Many people use a myriad of words and images to describe this: support, energy, imagine a ball floating on a fountain, etc… But for me, I think of the voice vibrating at an “intense, yet relaxed rate.” One of my first warm-ups before I sing anything is to sing “La, Le, Li, Lo, Lu” on one pitch. This helps me coordinate the amount of spin in the voice with the vowel space. I know my breath or spin is working when it feels easy. Some days it clicks faster than others, but I always try to be patient as we know voices have a personality of their own. As I go higher, I often think of a “sigh” into the vowel as it makes for an easier coordination of onset and spin. Again, this did not come easily, but it helps to ensure that I am using breath and space versus muscle to sing in the upper part of my voice.
Squillo. This is another word that many people talk about in which there are multiple terms: placement, ring, steel etc…For me, this was one of the last elements to come into my voice, not because it wasn’t naturally there, but because I spent several years listening to myself and I liked what I perceived as a warm, rich, velvetly sound. Unfortunately, no one else could hear it and all that “color” was getting lost. It was my current teacher who talked to me about really bringing “focus” to the middle voice as it sounded a bit dull (open, but without clarity.) For a while squillo sounded “ugly” and we talked at length about how to balance the ping and the warmth. (In undergrad, I became a huge fan of chiaroscuro, the balance of light and dark elements in the voice that many opera singers work to achieve.) This was when the three elements that I had worked on separately came together.
Space is the darkness, or warmth and squillo the light. But I also realized that “lightness” had another meaning and that was the spin or shimmer in the voice, that creates a lightness or ease of production or coordination of these elements. It all sounds so simple, but any singer will tell you that to balance these elements is like walking on a tightrope. Then on top of all of that, we add text and drama and it’s no wonder opera singers are INSANE.
But there is an incredible joy of breaking all of these elements down and putting them together. And it is even more exciting when someone (ANYONE) recognizes the hard work of making it seem easy.
Peace,
Eric
When I started studying voice as a freshman in college, I had NO idea about technique. I simply sang and when it was too high or too low I figured the piece was not for me. Luckily by my junior year, I found a teacher who got me onto the right path and that luck continued throughout grad school and now into my professional life with teachers who really talk about HOW the voice works and what it should FEEL like. (Note that I said “feel” and not “sound.”)
A talk on technique could take up pages and pages, but in order to give some insight into what I do; I will break it down into the SSS system. When I am warming up my voice, I am always aiming for Space, Spin and Squillo. These three elements working together help me feel like I am singing at my best.
Space. As an undergrad, I learned a lot about singing on vowels. Vowels are what we singers spend so much time on during the act of singing. But what I also learned is that depending on what part of the range one is in, the vowel’s space will alter and in my case modify. So most of my warm up time is finding where a particular vowel resonates best within my range. For me, the space is created by the amount of lift of the soft palate and the placement of the tongue. This is an amazing coordination act and yet, for me, is the foundation for all my sound. My current teacher believes it is necessary to find your optimum space on each vowel (and there are lots of them, especially in French!) in each part of your voice. I’ll admit, it can be VERY tedious, and yet so helpful when learning a role.
Spin. This is what I call continued airflow. Many people use a myriad of words and images to describe this: support, energy, imagine a ball floating on a fountain, etc… But for me, I think of the voice vibrating at an “intense, yet relaxed rate.” One of my first warm-ups before I sing anything is to sing “La, Le, Li, Lo, Lu” on one pitch. This helps me coordinate the amount of spin in the voice with the vowel space. I know my breath or spin is working when it feels easy. Some days it clicks faster than others, but I always try to be patient as we know voices have a personality of their own. As I go higher, I often think of a “sigh” into the vowel as it makes for an easier coordination of onset and spin. Again, this did not come easily, but it helps to ensure that I am using breath and space versus muscle to sing in the upper part of my voice.
Squillo. This is another word that many people talk about in which there are multiple terms: placement, ring, steel etc…For me, this was one of the last elements to come into my voice, not because it wasn’t naturally there, but because I spent several years listening to myself and I liked what I perceived as a warm, rich, velvetly sound. Unfortunately, no one else could hear it and all that “color” was getting lost. It was my current teacher who talked to me about really bringing “focus” to the middle voice as it sounded a bit dull (open, but without clarity.) For a while squillo sounded “ugly” and we talked at length about how to balance the ping and the warmth. (In undergrad, I became a huge fan of chiaroscuro, the balance of light and dark elements in the voice that many opera singers work to achieve.) This was when the three elements that I had worked on separately came together.
Space is the darkness, or warmth and squillo the light. But I also realized that “lightness” had another meaning and that was the spin or shimmer in the voice, that creates a lightness or ease of production or coordination of these elements. It all sounds so simple, but any singer will tell you that to balance these elements is like walking on a tightrope. Then on top of all of that, we add text and drama and it’s no wonder opera singers are INSANE.
But there is an incredible joy of breaking all of these elements down and putting them together. And it is even more exciting when someone (ANYONE) recognizes the hard work of making it seem easy.
Peace,
Eric
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