Albertitalks

London to New York

2011-12-07T22:39:00.003-05:00

I have come into New York City for several days, mainly to hear Yevgeny Kutik in his Alice Tully Hall debut this evening with the Riverside Symphony.

Last night I saw Noel Coward's Private Lives at the Music Box Theatre. Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross played the two main roles, Amanda and Elyot, very well indeed. I have seen many productions of this play, including one where, for some reason, the locale was changed to South America and everyone spoke with a Spanish accent. That made no sense whatsoever since all the humor is a British as Paddy's pig.

Last night's production also featured Anna Madeley and Simon Paisley Day as Sybil and Victor and Caroline Lena Olsson as Louise, the maid.

Act one is definitely the best part of the play when Amanda and Elyot, having been divorced, find themselves in adjoining suites on their honeymoons with their new spouses. Acts two and three get a bit langweilich with the repeated fighting and making up. But the dialogue, as always with Coward, is brisk and funny.

Returning to New York after ten days in London is an interesting experiece. In comparing the two cities, the whole tempo of life is different. The British are more laid back in their activities around town. In New York, the fact that Broadway, from 47th street to Times Square, is now a pedestrian mall, has made that area even more frantic than ever. Groups of tourists simply stand in one place, making it next to impossible to walk in a straight line. And of course several bus routes have had to change. My old faithful, the 104, now goes down Seventh Avenue from 59th street south instead of Broadway.

Now to Yevgeny Kutik, whose new album, Sounds of Defiance, is available at http://www.marquisclassics.com/

Tonight Yevgeny outdid himself, playing the recently discovered Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in D minor.Yehudi Menuhin was responsible for having rescued it from obscurity. Mendelssohn was thirteen years old at the time. This is the work of a very young genius. And it was performed by a very young genius. I have been following Yevgeny's career ever since he was the first winner of the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation Scholarship eight years ago. He blew us away then and he continues to do so now, especially tonight. His very special combination of technique, musicianship, and passion, make him the violinist to watch in this decade. I have heard them all, from Heifitz on, and he is a major talent. Bravo, Maestro!

The program opened with Antiphonies by Donald Crockett, a New York City premiere. After a frantic first movement it settled down into a decent piece. It is written in concerto grosso style, with small groups alternating with full orchestra.

The concert ended with Haydn's lively Symphony #83 in G minor. The Riverside Symphony is a fine ensemble and the conductor, George Rothman, is splendid.

London Again!

2011-11-30T13:53:00.017-05:00

I have just returned from ten days in Merrie Olde England, mostly in London at the Park Lane Hotel. London is getting trimmed within an inch of its life in Christmas holly and everything else imaginable. It's a great time to be there.

I had some interesting musical and theatrical experiences while I was there.

First was a master class in voice led by Roderick Williams held at the Royal College of Music. He is a lyric baritone who has sung at the English National Opera, Covent Garden and on the continent. He taught a spirited class of singers, mainly working with interpretation, stage presence and the like. Not much was said about vocal technique.

The first to sing was a young Asian tenor who performed 'Ah, mes amies' from La Fille du Regiment of Donizetti. He certainly had the high 'C,s' in abundance needed for this aria but they were a little hard on the ears. Williams tried to get him to ease up a bit through what he was doing physically in interpretation. It didn't help a great deal. The voice was still overly bright and pushed. In fact all of the singers had this quality, what the British call singing with 'Blade'. Blade is right! It cuts right through your ears!

I was attending the class with my friend and former student, Nigel Brookes, who is a graduate of the College. I asked him if it was the accoustic of the room or simply the way they were singing that made the sound so edgy. We decided it was the singers themselves.

Then a young Irish soprano with a really lovely voice sang 'Ch'il bel sogno' from Puccini's La Rondine. She is a very good singer, but again pushes the top where she really doesn't need to.

Then a tenor, who was the singer I liked best, sang 'Fatto inferno e il mio petto' from Rodelinda of Handel. His voice had more color and freedom than any of the other singers.

Then followed a soprano, another tenor, and a mezzo, none of whom was impressive. The mezzo in particular had vocal problems that suggested tension and a lack of freedom. She was developing a wobble, which at any age, but especially in a young woman, is not a good thing.

Mr. Miller bounded on and off the stage with an ease that I envy and congratulated all of the singers on how well they sang. I can't bound anymore, and I had a very different take.

I attended a performance of The Lion in Winter by James Goldman at the Theatre Royal Haymarket starring Robert Lindsay as Henry II and Joanna Lumley as Eleanor of Aquitaine. Both excellent actors in a well staged production. It was interesting to compare it to the film with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.

Then, a night at the Opera! The ENO, or English National Opera, for their production of Eugene Onegin. It was sung in English as are all their productions but it might as well have been sung in the original Russian for all the words you could catch. Fortunately, there were super titles! It was an odd production which has not had wonderful reviews. The first act takes place in a barn for some reason instead of Tatyana's home. Tatyana was sung by Amanda Achailaz, who sang with lots of 'BLADE'! A review refered to her voice as steely, which it was, and is totally wrong for the role. The Onegin of Audun Iversen was very well sung and acted. The star, to my way of thinking, was Toby Spence, who looks like a young Robert Redford and sings like a young Jussi Björling. What a great young singer-actor. The score is to die for; Tchaikowski at his most romantic.

Toby Spence

Audun Iversen

One more musical evening found me at Crazy for You!, a Gershwin musical that never really was. I think someone has taken a lot of Gershwin's songs and put them together into this flimsy pastiche of a story. But who cares? S'wonderful! Sean Palmer is the perfect leading man, dark, handsome, and he can really sing and dance, Claire Foster plays the hometown girl he falls in love with way out west. Guess what? She has an abandoned theatre so they put on a show. And what a show it is. It was a very gay final evening in London.

E Books

2011-11-21T18:17:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my technical mentor Ryan Salame, my two most recent books are now available as E Books from Amazon.

Case Studies in Vocal Pedagogy deals with the voice teacher as psychologist. As an E Book it is $9.99. If you would like to order a soft cover copy, it is $20.00.

Take Two Deep Breaths and Call Me in the Morning, is a singer's guide to deep breathing.
It is also $9.99 as an E Book and $20.00 as a soft cover copy. I have dedicated this book to my dear friend, Phyllis Curtin, on the occasion of her 90th Birthday. Happy Birthday, Phyllis!

To order on line http://www.amazon.com/ Select 'Kindle Books' and type in my name. They will download automatically.

To order a soft copy of either book by mail, send a check made out to Herbert Burtis, to 53 Rood Hill Road, Sandisfield, MA 01255.

My previous books are all available in soft cover only.

Sing On! Sing On! is $15.00
Vocalizing from the Ground Up! is $35.00
How to Make your Arm into a Wet Noodle is $40.00.

Lorraine at BAM 1994

2011-11-19T10:48:00.012-05:00

In the recent issue of Opera News Philip Kennicott has written a wonderful article about repeatedly seeing Lorraine Hunt as Médée at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1994. I remember these performances well. On one occasion, I met several of my vocal students in Brooklyn for dinner and we went to a performance afterwards. It was mesmerizing. Kennicott speaks of the emotional impact her performance had on him, as it did on the entire audience. We all went backstage afterwards to give her hugs and kisses.

Always, within a voice lesson, Lorraine never held back or 'marked'. She poured her heart and soul into every note she sang. We would sometimes work for three hours at a clip. We were always equal partners, rather than teacher and student. We both had the same aim in view. Musical, vocal, and emotional perfection. As emotionally involved as she was in every lesson, each time I would later witness her performance on stage I was blown away by the power it contained. She would turn a performance into a living breathing moment of joy, sadness, anger, whatever. She left you spent, having merely been in the audience.

She sang for Les Arts Florissants for several seasons in Paris as well as several times at BAM. William Christie, the director of the group, had studied conducting with John at Harvard years before.

John and I, along with my brother and sister-in-law, went to Paris a year or so later, for her début at the Salle Garnier in Hyppolite et Aricie, again with Les Arts Florissants. It was an evening I will always cherish.

It makes me both sad and happy when something like this article brings her back into my life. Sad that she is gone, and happy that her great art has stirred the emotions of so many people.

She was unique.

I hope that you will read the article.

Caballe at 79

2011-11-12T20:51:00.006-05:00

Tonight on Connecticut Public Broadcasting featured Nicolay Baskov, tenor with guest artists Monserrat Caballe and her daughter Montserrat Marti.

Baskov is a handsome young tenor with an Italianate voice. In the 'Libiamo' from La Traviata both he and Monti take superb high 'c's' at the end of the duet. Otherwise he seems to favor Italian popular songs. But the man can sing. He is a cross between Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Andrea Bocelli. He has the looks and white hair of Dmitri and a much better voice than Bocelli. Apparently in real life he is a blond.

The program seemed to be a mish-mash of operatic arias and duets, Italian songs, and Broadway hits. Marti, at the end of one duet from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, wound up screaming the final high notes.

Caballe appeared with him in a silly sort of duet called 'Kalinka' and proved that at age 79 she can still sing. She laid out a high 'A' at the end that many of today's sopranos half her age might envy. Nikolay apparently studied with her. Not a bad teacher to have!

I would love to hear him minus the big Radio City production and without a microphone. This was what killed Bocelli when he appeared in Detroit un-miked in an opera and no one could hear him. Nikolay has performed at the Bolshoi in Yevegny Onegin, Prince Igor, Traviata, and other legitimate operatic roles so I presume that the voice is the real thing. I look forward to hearing him in a live situation.

It's quite a voice!

Anna as Anna

2011-10-17T15:59:00.000-04:00

Having read several mixed reviews of Donizetti's Anna Bolena, the recent Met production which starred Anna Netrebko, I was looking forward to seeing it in HD at Monmouth University in Long Branch, NJ this weekend. I attended the screening with several friends whom I was visiting while in the Garden State.

The production is hampered by a bleak, rather ugly set that appears to be a series of gray walls. In the days of Henry VII I have a feeling that royal palaces, at very least, had some furniture. More than the bright red bed which, while appropriate to Henry's reputation, left a lot to be desired scenically. When singers were required to sit, they had to plop down on ledges that projected from the gray walls.

This is the first time I have heard Netrebko in person. It is an amazing instrument, but I am not a fan of the kind of 'covering' she employs. While this worked in mid-range sections of the role, she changed position when she had to sing a high note. At this point, she visibly adjusted, physically and vocally, to get rid of the weight that is caused by covering. While the voice has a creamy sound, it is almost as if someone else is doing the singing behind her somewhere. I would love to hear what she would sound like with a more forward projection throughout the range.

At the end, she goes through a door in the wall, pulls her hair to one side, and prepares to have her head cut off. High above her appears the executioner with an axe in his hands. I believe that, as with all royal executions, for Anne Boleyn, a French executioner was used who wielded a sword instead of an axe.

The role of Jane Seymour, Anne's lady in waiting and Henry's wife-to-be was sung by Ekaterina Gubanova, a Russian mezzo-soprano, who sings much more in the tradition of many Russian singers of the past. Her brilliant voice is really fine and she sang with great energy and passion.
Unlike some of her predecessors she does not 'Take the paint off the wall' with her brilliant voice. It would be nice to find a nice mutation of her voice with Netrebko's. You'd have the heavy cream plus the brilliance. When we can clone singers, that might actually happen.

In the scene where Henry is trying to get Jane into bed, he seems to be kneading bread as he wrestles with her, ignoring her pleas to wait until they are married. I wondered if she were black and blue at the end of the performance.

Oldar Abdrazakov, as Henry, has a very good and powerful voice. He is an imposing personage on stage, looking very kingly. He tends to push his very low notes, making them thin out a bit, and overworks his jaw to excess. He also pulls his tongue back into his throat a lot of the time.This tenses the instrument and thickens the sound.

For a voice teacher, the advantage of the close-ups the camera provides, which I would never be able to see in the house, allow a voice teacher the opportunity to look right down the singers' throats, just as I often do in a lesson. It is important for the teacher, and especially for the singer, to know what's going on in there. Voice teachers, especially I, should probably not be allowed to go to opera productions like this one since we can't stop teaching in our heads as we see fine singers doing energy-wasting, vocally unpleasant things. And we can't say 'Wait a minute, let's fix that!'

Lord Richard Percy was sung by Stephen Costello, a good tenor, who started out a bit roughly vocally, but who got better as the opera went along and began singing rather well later on.

Tamara Mumford, mezzo, sang the pants role of Mark Smeaton. She has a good voice, if a little uneven at times, and certainly looked the part.

The roles of Lord Rochford and Sir Hervey were sung by Keith Miller and Eduardo Valdes.

Overall I was disappointed in the production. A more exciting set would have provided a better mood for the action to take place in. I wish that I had heard Beverly Sills or Joan Sutherland sing the role.

Alas, it's too late for that to happen.

Chapter Three

2011-10-08T10:13:00.003-04:00

I am being propelled into making this into a book. I had an email from a friend saying 'When are you going to talk about using your air to sing?'

I guess now is as good a time as any.

Once we have taken this free, low breath, what do we do with it?

We sing!

As I said in the previous chapter, the inhalation-to-sound rhythm is like the bounce of a tennis ball. Inhale as the ball strikes the floor and sing as you catch it. Ka-boom. If you hold the breath, even for an instant, you shut down the vocal apparatus. It also gives you time to 'manage' the breath-to-sound instant. In this case, managment is a bad thing. Olga Averino always spoke about singing from 'Impulse'. That is a very good thought. You should basically inhale the phrase you plan to sing. Your inhalation should be lively; not a gasp, but lively. Lively in-lively out. A slow drawn-out inhalation prepares you to yawn; that's about all.

Everything we do in life requires energy. In singing, our air is our energy. We stymie this by slowing down the breath-to-sound process.

An instant release of sound from the deep, open-throated, relaxed larynx inhalation should be a free, beautiful sound. I just witnessed this happen, yet again, in a student who began studying with me recently. I worked with her on the breathing exercises I have already mentioned, did some work on focus as detailed in my books on singing, and she instantly produced a free, wonderful sound. She was amazed at how quickly and easily this happened. It was an example of free energy at work.

There are several focus exercises I use; humming, duck call, and so on, when the voice is out of focus. But in general, when the air works this way, the voice finds its focus without outside help. A free release of sound automatically locates the resonators, and vibrates, finding the overtones in the sound, and sounding great.

I also do a 'Slow Release of Air Exercise' that I stole from Monserrat Caballe who was being interviewed by the flutist Ransom Williams in Opera News some years ago. She suggested taking a deep breath and then letting it escape. No pushing of the air. You won't even hear the air escaping. When your mouth is full of air, a little place in your lips will open and a tiny stream of air will escape. It's like sticking a pin in a tire. You produce a slow leak. You then time how many seconds of release you can achieve. I have had students go over a minute with this exercise.

Obviously, this is a lot less air than we use at the time of singing, but it gives us a very good idea of how much air our lungs can hold.

Turning air into sound should be an instant simple event. Too many singers complicate it in various ways that make it difficult. Sing from the impulse of the deep breath hitting your pelvic bone and bouncing right back up into sound, like the tennis ball.

This friend also mentioned that ballet dancers and Pilates practitioners advocate high breathing. Frankly, I don't see the point of this. To my way of thinking, high breathing involves tension, holding, in the lower abdomen. Tension is the enemy of good singing. In Yoga the deep breath is paramount. In singing, it is as well.

This friend also pointed out that good posture is not a part of everyone's body. Stand against the wall so that your back and buttocks touch. The back of your head may or may not be touching, depending upon how you are built. This should give you an idea of good posture.

Lie on the floor. Place a small pillow under your head so your head is not pulling back to touch the floor. Again, you should get a good idea of a straight line for your body.

Good posture should be a comfortable sensation. A military stance is not required. Tension should play no part in the alignment of your body.

Look into a mirror a see what you look like when standing in comfortable posture. Have your teacher or coach help you to achieve this way of standing.

Our entire body is our instrument as singers. Getting it into a good posture is like putting your clarinet together. Unless you assemble it correctly, it won't play!

Once this is all in order, the act of singing is mostly a mental and emotional operation. Again, quoting Olga, 'If you think what it is you want to happen, it may just do that'.

Take a deep breath and call me in the morning.

2011-10-07T15:49:00.077-04:00

This is apparently going to be chapter two of my sixth book. (NOT!)

My recent posting on the subject of the term and physical action of Appoggio and reaction to it has got me off on another tangent. I have heard, and been taught, so many different and disparate methods of singing breathing that I feel the need to put in print the method I use in my own teaching.

My first voice teacher, when I was in high school, was an aging tenor who emphasized the need to have very strong abdominal muscles. He would have me stand on his stomach in my stocking feet while he lifted me up and down. I was six feet, three inches, even in high school. It's a wonder I didn't kill him.

So the first point I will make in talking about breathing is: Don't do this! It won't help the singer and you may do damage to yourself.

When I went to college I studied with a soprano who never said a great deal about breathing, so I have no idea what her theory was on the subject. Apparently, many voice teachers have little or nothing to say about breathing.

Point two: Breathing is the absolute basis for singing. It is important that as a singer and/or a teacher you figure out how to incorporate a good breathing technique into your vocal equipment.

The first woman I studied with in New York City emphasized the use of the umbilicus muscle. That's the muscle right around your belly button. She wanted us to tug that muscle each time we began to make a singing sound. She had students who sang at the Met, so for them I guess it must have worked. Either that, or they simply ignored her suggestion. I know that I did.

Two of my students from years ago also did some work with Eleanor Steber. She was a very great singer. Apparently she taught this umbilicus thing, too. I still don't advise it.

Point three: Don't yank on your belly button, or anything else down there, when you are singing. Yanking creates tension; tension creates bad singing.

The next two teachers I studied with never had much to say about breathing at all. They both had students who starred at the Met so they must have been doing something right. Not that everyone who sings at the Met is a great singer! But I learned other important things about singing from each of them that I use in my own teaching to this day.

So here we are. One from Column A and one from Column B.

Or none of the above.

My theory, which I arrived at through about sixty years of teaching and coaching voice, is based on the fact that everyone breathes. That is an important part of living. The body seems to know how to keep us breathing all night long when we are asleep. We don't have to wake ourselves up and say, 'Breathe, dummy!' In fact, nearly everyone breathes deep, belly breaths all night long, however they may breath during the day or when they are singing.

Perhaps we have hit on something. Deep breathing is so easy to do you can do it in your sleep. Why not do it when you sing?

This is where my method of breathing begins. Singing breathing should be deep and relaxing, while still being energetic. Just as our abdominal muscles move in and out all day and night long when we are doing other things, they can probably do that when we sing without our getting in the way. Because that's exactly what we do when we push or pull abdominal muscles while singing. We get in the way of a natural physical activity and create tension. Tension is the killer of good singing.

Many people, for one reason or another, develop a habit of using a high breath all day long. This is not particularly healthy but if all you are doing is sitting, standing, chatting, who cares? Some people develop the habit of holding their abdominal muscles to look thin. Get a size larger shirt and stop holding. It is not sensible to breath one way all day long and then try to breath correctly when you start to sing. It probably won't happen.

For singing YOU MUST OPERATE FROM A FREE, LOW BREATH. End of story.

Now, how do you find this free, low singing breath if that is not your habit? Here is how I work with a new student in solving this question.

First of all, check your posture. Your body should be in a tall, straight, easy line. No zigs and zags. Elaine Brown, my conducting teacher from years ago, suggested that we imagine a pendulum hanging down the center of our body. Centering. This is easy to do. This easily gets our body into a comfortable, straight line.

Your collar bone should be the highest part of your rib cage.Learn to maintain that position without tension or stress. This puts our rib cage in the optimum position for singing in a free, relaxed way. Or just for every day good breathing. Do not feel that you are holding your body in this way, just allow it to find this position as comfortably as possible.

I then suggest to my students that they mentally transplant their lungs from their actual locale in the rib cage to the space below the belly button. No real surgery required. Place your hands in this area and say to yourself, 'These are now my lungs'.

Now inhale and fill them.

ALWAYS INHALE THROUGH THE MOUTH FOR SINGING! A nose breath will cause you to hold your lips together, shut your teeth, and send your tongue to the roof of your mouth. This is not the optimum way to prepare to make a singing sound. You have just completely closed your instrument. Nose breathing is fine for 'keeping your motor running' during musical introductions and phrases where you are not actually singing. But to sing, breath through the mouth!

Through your easily opened mouth (no pushing down), inhale, listening for the sound of 'Ah or Aw' as the air goes down your windpipe. There is no way you can get a high breath using this inhalation. I've tried; I always get a deep, relaxing breath.

Allow the air to go down in a lively manner. A slow inhalation will mean an unenergetic response of sound. I sometimes have singers bounce a tennis ball to feel the rhythm of inhalation to sound. When the ball hits the floor, Inhale, when you catch it, Sing. This does not give you time to fiddle around with the air you just inhaled. Do not inhale and hold the air for a second. One of my teachers wanted us to do this. What this does is cause your vocal cords to close and your epiglottis to close. Your body assumes you are going to swallow and it doesn't want you to drown. This is a natural defense the body employs to keep you from choking. Vocally, when this happens, you will need to blow open the cords and epiglottis to make a singing sound. This is unattractive and not healthy for your larynx.

There are various breathing exercises you can do to practice this kind of 'Singing Breathing'. I mention several in my various books on singing.

You should create an imaginary curved line just behind your head around which the inhalation speeds and comes right back out as sound.

Singing should be a relatively easy occupation. I am amazed at how complicated many singers make it out to be.

Of course, we must go beyond this initial stage of developing a good breathing technique. As singers and teachers we must work on singing a musical, emotional phrase, singing every language as if we were a native of that country, developing ourselves into a musical artist.

Nobody wants to listen to technique.

But without this underpinning, this method of breathing on which to send our song into the world, no one is going to want to hear a poorly performed song either.

To be a good singer, or a good oboeist, or whatever, we need to develop all of our musical skills.

Breathing is the basis of all the other musical qualities we possess. Learn to use it wisely.

Push-pull, click-click

2011-10-04T20:09:00.133-04:00

A student recently asked me to define 'appoggio' and 'covering' for her. Neither of these is a term I use in my teaching. Covering I do know is a pulling back of sound rather than allowing it to surge forward from the instrument. In some people's heads, the sound they hear when doing this is rounder and darker. To my ear it is swallowed and out of focus. Don't do it.

Appoggio is a different problem. Appoggiare in Italian means 'to lean', as in an appoggiatura where one pitch 'leans' into a second pitch. It is also defined as meaning 'to press' or 'to hold'. These are not singing principles I agree with.

In singing, appoggio does not seem to have the definition of 'leaning'. In reading Shirlee Emmons's article on 'Breath Management', she quotes Richard Miller from his book Training Soprano Voices to support (pardon the pun) her theory of appoggio. To begin with, I do not train soprano voices much differently than alto voices or bass voices, bar the obvious range and passaggio differences. A good singing technique should apply to any voice part. Miller, in his definition of appoggio also suggests tucking in the lower abdomen. In my opinion, this merely causes tension.

The abdominal muscles should move freely in and out without pushing, pulling or tucking. I use a breathing exercise wherein the singer takes a deep breath and then allows the air to escape. The singer doesn't push the air out. It's as if you stick a pin in a tire and develop a slow leak. You then time the release. I have had students exhale over a minute with this release. Toward the end of the breath, the abdominal muscles certainly do come in and up. But THEY do it, you are not pulling them in!

This is a perfectly natural way that these muscles operate. When you cough or sneeze, when you cry 'Watch out!!!' to someone about to be hit by a bus, they perform a more violent version of this movement. You are not pulling on them. This is an involuntary reaction to an event.

Miller also speaks of the expansion of the chest upon inhalation. This is perfectly true, but it should, again, happen naturally, not through purposeful pressures to expand and contract the rib cage. This only produces more tension. Tension is the enemy of good singing.

William Vennard, the noted writer and teacher, has said that vocal teachers should spend more time on phonation than on breathing techniques. I disagree whole-heartedly with this concept. The breath is the basis of singing. We are wind instruments. Everything else will follow when one develops a free breathing system. Without a good breathing system, you can phonate your head off and never learn how to sing.

With almost very new student who comes into my studio I find I must begin to insure that they can use a deep, energetic breath before we do anything else. I do not ever use the term SUPPORT in regards to the breath. I find that with most people, this word means to them: 'holding or pushing the abdominal muscles', which makes the whole body rigid. This is no way to begin to sing.

Then I work on 'focus'- phonation- whatever you want to call it. But trying to get good focus on a tense breathing system is a waste of time.

Another source speaks of 'taking a breath and then pushing in your belly muscles to move the diaphragm. Push-pull, click-click! More tension!

Emmons's main point seems to be that the chest cavity should be in a high position. This is fine with me. I simply tell singers 'Your collar bone should be the highest point of your body without tension'. Basically I am talking about good posture.

She also says that 'the descent and ascent of the diaphragm are not directly controllable.' Right on. But she then says that 'Appoggio singing retains the inspiratory posture of the sternum and ribcage, retarding the ascent of the diaphragm.'

Hmm. I thought that the speed of the diaphragm's movement was not 'directly controllable'.

Miller apparently dislikes the term 'belly breathing'. 'Your lungs are up here!' That's how a student of mine almost stopped singing when a new teacher at her University tried to change her low breathing habit which was working just fine. She left the teacher, came back to work with me outside the University, and went right on singing beautifully.

I know where my lungs are. Everyone does. But I ask students to mentally transplant their lungs below the belly button and inhale, listening to the sound of 'ah or aw' as the air goes down the wind pipe. You instantly get a deep, relaxed breath which is ready to go to work at once to produce a free, beautiful sound. Breath should go into the lungs and be returned immediately as sound without a second of holding. When one takes this kind of breath, not only does the singer get a deep, relaxing inhalation, he relaxes the larynx simultaneously.

Emmons goes on to suggest that the singer not allow the chest to go up and down with inhalation and exhalation. Great! Me, too! But then she speaks of 'sideways' inhalation. This term puzzles me. Popeye may inhale sideways, (look at his mouth), but for singers this is a strange suggestion to my way of thinking. 'Inhale sideways, not frontways', she says. I have no idea how to do that.

She speaks of how the ribs will expand- which is great. But unless the abdominal muscles are allowed, not made, to expand as well, you are going to get a high breath.

So beyond the point of keeping the collarbone high and allowing the chest to expand with the inhalation, I still don't know what this definition of appoggio has to do with free singing. It is just too busy to allow instant access to your sound.

Like a well-known politician, I guess I am a maverick; but a number of my students have had wonderful careers without covering or appoggio.

Another source speaks of using appoggio to 'retain' air in the lungs. As Olga Averino said, 'Lose your air'. To my way of thinking, appoggio is apt to create tension in the breathing process. Here is the 'holding' part of the definition of the word.

Too many rules spoil the singer. It leaves no time for singing.

The singing process should be a simple one. Learn to take a deep breath and use it at once to produce a sound. In a lively, relaxed body, everything else that has to do with singing should flow effortlessly into infinity.

I hadn't planned to write my sixth book today, but my student's question got me up on my soapbox about this subject. It also made me really think about this term, appoggio, which I have never used in my own teaching. So thank you, Anita, for getting me interested in talking about this questionable technique.

Why make something simple complicated?

Amen!

Dear Olga

2011-10-01T20:01:00.009-04:00

First we had Irene, then we have had several days of torrential rain. As a result my picturesque dirt road is in ruins. So this was a good afternoon to watch Turner Classic movies.

As fate would have it, they were showing Doctor Zhivago. I know that I read the book years ago, struggling with all the Russian names, but, for some reason, I never saw the film.

Well, today I did. And it brought memories of my dear friend and beloved mentor, Olga Averino.

I first heard Olga sing when she was in her late sixties and was stupefied by the ease and beauty with which she sang. She was already a good friend of my life partner, John Ferris, so it was natural that I got to know her and to study voice with her. I quote her obsessively in my teaching and in my writing. She was an incredible musician and a wonderful human being.

Today's film reminded me of the many times Olga and I sat on the sofa in her apartment in Cambridge after one of her dinner parties and talked.... and talked...
Often about singing, but also often about her amazing life.

As Zhivago in the film, she, with her husband, her baby daughter, and a nanny, fled across Russia to escape the Revolution following WWI.

She had many tales of these harrowing adventures. In one, she tells of a friend who was also trying to escape and had hidden her jewels to avoid having them stolen by the Bolsheviks. Olga asked her where she had hidden them. She said, 'There is a place in my piano where I concealed them'. Olga said, 'O my dear, that's the first place they look!.'

She, herself, was trying to keep some jewels to use for cash for the long trip across Siberia. She had a large cabochon emerald ring, which had a very great value. When the soldiers found this she told them, 'Oh, that's just a piece of stage jewelery; it's worth nothing.' The soldiers, looking for sparkling diamonds and such, believed her, and the money from the ring got her family across Russia to Vladivostok. She tells how the train was stopped from time to time; everyone was forced to get off and find somewhere to stay, sometimes for days, until the train went on its way. They slept in whatever humble dwelling they could find. From Vladivostok they finally went into China.

Olga said that she sang in Western Opera in China until they were able to get passage to the United States. When she finally got to New York City, where she sang in the Greek Opera (her grandmother was Greek), walking down the street one day she saw her father, who had escaped by a different route from Russia.

Her husband was a fine violinist who became a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Olga became Koussevitsky's favorite soprano. She was the first to sing the 'Lied der Lulu' of Schönberg in this country. This was before any recording of the work had been made. Koussevitzky was amazed at the first rehearsal when Olga sang it perfectly. He said, 'Olga, how do you do that?' She answered. 'It's like teaching the rabbit to ride the bicycle; do it over and over until he doesn't fall off.'

I have used this illustration of preparation in my teaching for years. I quote Olga in practically every lesson. Just yesterday in a lesson with a new student, a fine young soprano, Olga was right there with me. This is the wonderful thing about teaching: we pass down to following generations information that we have received from our mentors. I owe more that I can say to this wonderful woman. A good teacher is not just out there on his own. He has a wealth of wonderful teachers behind him who inspire him to pass it on to the next generation.

Everyone who reads this post should go to

http://www.youtube.com/ and type in 'Olga Averino'. There are two wonderful posts by Olga's grandson, Michael, which have her speaking, and, above all, singing, in that free, beautiful, intense voice.

She is one of the reasons I am still teaching voice at 81 and a half.

Come to the Cabaret!!

2011-09-23T22:55:00.000-04:00

Amanda McBroom has been called 'the greatest cabaret performer of her generation, an urban poet who writes like an angel and has a voice to match.'

Truer words were never written!

What a fabulous way to spend a rainy evening in Pittsfield. I first heard Amanda several years ago during her last appearance at Barrington Stage 2 and tonight, was pleased to find that she is better than ever.

All summer long I have raled against the screamy singers that have appeared on the Stage 2 and Main Stages of that venue, as well in various other milieus where hollering goes for singing (see my review of Lucie Arnaz!!), so it is a pleasure and a relief to find a singer who just sings, and does it wonderfully.

Her pianist, Michele Bourman, is an equally talented musician who sang along with her on several songs. She played the entire concert by memory. What fingers! She is also a composer and she and Amanda have collaborated on many songs.

In a voice that can be sweet or strong or sexy, or everything at once, Amanda proves that the first sentence in this review is true beyond words.

She sang many of her own songs as well as songs by various other composers. Several Harold Arlen songs were especially tasty.

I loved her bi-partisan political song suggestion to Congress which opens with the line 'Keep it in your pants!'. Oh, that they would.

She is a fine actress as well as a really wonderful singer. All of my students, classical or pop, could take a lesson in what 'involvement' means when you are singing a song whether it be by Arlen or McBroom or Schubert by watching this woman perform. Her performance goes beyond mere singing. She inhabits her songs with her soul.

Probably her most famous song is 'The Rose' which both she and Bette Midler popularized in 1979 and with which she ended her performance.

She looks fabulous but, since she announced tonight that she and her husband have been married for forty-two years, she is obviously not sweet sixteen. But her voice and her presence are as powerful and beautiful as if she were.

She has appeared in concert halls and with symphony orchestras all over the world.

We were the lucky ones to hear her on the first of her two-night stand at Stage 2.

If you live within reach of that theatre, you have one more chance tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. to hear this remarkable woman.

Trust me, even in the pouring rain, it's worth the trip!

Oy Vay is mir!

2011-08-24T22:46:00.006-04:00

Guilt! Gut-wrenching, soul-searching, deep-seated guilt! That's what My Name is Asher Lev is all about.

It tires me out just thinking about it.

The play, produced at Stage 2 of Barrington Stage, which I saw tonight, is based on a novel of the same name by Chaim Potok. It was made into a play by Aaron Posner, who also directed it.

It deals with a young, Orthodox Jewish boy growing up in a rigid, restrictive home in Brooklyn, who becomes a famous artist but loses his orthodoxy in the process, much to his parents dismay.

Adam Green as Asher Lev gives a powerful performance which is practically a monologue. For an hour and a half he relates his trials, tribulations, and guilt as he progresses from a strict observer of orthodox Jewish mores to a guilty, secular artist. This story is very possibly based on Chaim Potok's own life, in which he went through a similar metamorphosis.

Daniel Cantor as 'The Men', portrays Asher Lev's father, his uncle, the Rebbe, and the artist who takes Asher under his wing, bringing about his fall from grace. He is wonderful in all of these personae with minimal changes of costume.

Renata Friedman as 'The Women' is Asher's mother, an art critic, and a naked art model. She is equally good in these roles, with and without her clothes.

This is a touching story but is a bit awkward as a play with only three actors. When the parents are speaking to Asher when he is six or ten or twelve, he crouches at the side of the stage to deliver his lines while they speak to an empty chair. This really bothered me. Why not speak to him personally and allow the audience to envision him as a child. He would raise his voice in each case to give the illusion of youth which, to me, would be enough to convince me that he was very young. It kept going through my mind, 'Why are they talking to a chair when he is sitting right there in the corner?'

A very bare set consisting of a table and three chairs set the scene for this one act play.

The idea of this kind of guilt is very bothersome to me, probably because I grew up as a Presbyterian. No guilt there! I did attend Union Theological Seminary in New York City where I got my Master of Sacred Music Degree, but somehow I escaped the need to feel this life-crunching guilt. If I hurt someone, I'm sorry about it. But I don't turn it into a life-long beating of my breast the way the characters in this play do.

I think that any society that is rigid and orthodox to this point, be it Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, will produce this kind of guilt. There is more to life than this.

As you can tell, I am conflicted, (guilty?) about this work for the stage. It must have been a powerful novel but in translation to the stage it puzzles me.

Point counter Point

2011-08-20T23:22:00.003-04:00

Today we spent a very pleasant afternoon in the Norfolk Music shed. My second visit there in a week. Today's concert was by the Norfolk Choral Festival which was co-sponsored by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. John taught conducting there after he retired from Harvard in 1990.

Today's program was arranged by Simon Carrington, the Director Emeritus of the School.

A number of conducting students led a very fine vocal ensemble in works by Victoria, Monteverdi, Legrenzi, Haydn, McDowall, Britt, Reger, and Ives. They were of varying degrees of expertise. All of them seem to want to conduct with cupped hands. This was always a no-no in my studies with various conductors. Elaine Brown, among others, told us that your choir needs to see a point of contact in your hands. We always extended the index finger which Elaine called our 'baton'. If these people were conducting a less professional choir, the result would have been quite different.

The choir had a very good sound. I don't like what the sopranos were doing on high notes: straight tone with no sense of messa di voce. This produces a shrill sound. Boys voices can do this beautifully; adult women have to hold the sound to achieve this, which I find very unattractive.

The soprano soloist, Sherezade Panthaki, sang in a held-back technique, making her sing just under the pitch much of the time. Her high notes were unpleasant. When she had fioratura to sing, she cut way back on her sound which gave a sense of unbalance to her singing.

The instrumental ensemble was excellent. Mr. Carrington conducted a première, House of Clouds, by Colin Britt, which was interesting but not exciting.

All in all it was a pleasant way to spend a Berkshire Sunday afternoon.

Oy!

2011-08-17T00:20:00.000-04:00

Tonight, with two friends, I attended a performance of The Game at Barrington Stage. It is a musical (?) re-working of Les Liasons Dangereuse, a novel from 1782 by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos which was made into a play in 1986 by Christopher Hampton in London, and seen on Broadway in 1988 and again in 2008, and also as a film as well.

By mutual agreement, my two friends and I rose as one and left the theatre at intermission. A boring, lack-luster score did nothing to help the disjointed action and plot. Yet again the women of the cast seemed to equate singing with screaming. This is apparently how it's done these days in certain theatres. After last night's superb performance by Sinfonia Baroque, tonight's event represented the polar opposite of that kind of professional quality.

All of the above authors and playwrights must be churning up the earth from their graves.

The set was beautiful, to give the production its due.

Nuff said!

Philharmonia Baroque

2011-08-16T00:04:00.000-04:00

This evening I had the pleasure of attending a concert given by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco led by Nicolas McGegan. It was performed in the historic concert hall on the estate of the Batell family in Norfolk,CT. The estate was left to Yale on the condition that every summer the Yale music school would move to Norfolk to hold its classes and concerts. It is a fine hall.

And it is a fine orchestra. Virtuosic in every way. Maestro McGegan seems to be a jolly man who conducts with verve, often letting the orchestra play on by itself once the music is underway. The members of the orchestra seem to be enjoying themselves much more than many more staid groups I have encountered. They play with energy and musicality.

The program contained works by Vivaldi, Corelli, and Handel and was delightful.

The soloist was Diana Moore, mezzo-soprano. Ms. Moore has an excellent voice and amazing fioratura. The bottom part of her voice lacks resonance and body, but the rest of it is fine.

I was especially eager to hear this group since Lorraine has sung and recorded with Maestro McGegan many times.

Recently an album of Lorraine singing with this group included a spectacular performance of Nuits d'été by Hector Berlioz and several Handel arias. This was Lorraine at the peak of her career.

The group was brought to Norfolk by Dominique Lahaussois and her husband David Low. Interestingly enough, he sang in John's University Choir at Harvard in the 70's. He is on the board of the Philharmonia Baroque.

A reception was held following the concert in a wonderful barn on the property of the hosts. A great time was had by all.

Yevgeny in Prague

2011-08-02T14:04:00.000-04:00

I am happy to announce that Yevgeny Kutik will make his début in Prague, Czech Republic next May 23 at the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague Castle. This is a joint effort of the Ferris Burtis Foundation and my dear friend William Lobkowicz.

William Lobkowicz and myself at the Prague Opera House in April.

Recently Yevgeny has performed in London and at the Friedrichsberg Festspiel in Germany. For his complete concert schedule see http://www.yevgenykutik.com/

The Ferris Burtis Music Foundation is pleased to help brilliant young artists like Yevgeny further their careers.

http://ferrisburtisfoundation.blogspot.com/

Gifts to the Foundation may be sent to Maeve O'Dea, Berkshire Taconic Foundation, 800 North Main Street, Sheffield, MA 01257. All gifts are tax deductible.

Proceeds from my newest book, Case Studies in Vocal Pedagogy are also going to the Foundation. For a copy, send a check for $20.00 made out to Ferris Burtis Foundation, to Herbert Burtis, 53 Rood Hill Road, Sandisfield, MA 01255. This will also be tax deductible since all profits are earmarked for the Foundation.

Bravo Yevgeny!

It's here!

2011-07-29T20:21:00.003-04:00

It's here!

My new book, Case Studies in Vocal Pedagogy is ready for mailing. It discusses how a voice teacher may also have to be an amateur psychologist when dealing with some singers.

If you would like to order a copy, send a check made out to Ferris Burtis Foundation for $20.00 to Herbert Burtis, 53 Rood Hill Road, Sandisfield, MA 01255. All proceeds are going to the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation which assists young classical musicians in their education and early careers. Your purchase price will be tax deductible.

At the moment Yevgeny Kutik, brilliant young concert violinist (http://www.yevgenykutik.com/ ), The Elektra Ensemble, a sensational trio (http://www.elektraensemble.org/) and Julian Müller, a fine young 'cellist who will be attending the Jacobs Music School at Indiana University this fall, are being helped by the Foundation.

Yevgeny Kutik

The Elektra Ensemble

Julian Müller

I just re-read the book. It's pretty darned good!

The Best of Enemies

2011-07-27T05:17:00.000-04:00

Tonight I saw a very impressive piece for the theatre at Barrington Stage. It's not exactly a play; it's more of a documentary. It is called The Best of Enemies and was written by Mark St. Germain, who also wrote Freud's Last Session which the company did last season and the season before. It is based on a book by the same name of Osha Gray Davidson.

It deals with Durham, North Carolina in the seventies when the town, and much of the south, was divided by racial and economic tension.

Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis were on opposite sides of the problem. Ellis held a high office in the local Ku Klux Klan, Mrs. Atwater was a poor working black woman. Bill Riddick came into town to help relieve the tensions and to begin to desegregate the schools. By chance, Mr. Riddick and his wife were seated next to me tonight in Row C. Mrs. Atwater was also present. Mr. Ellis died a few years ago.

Mr. Riddick somehow persuaded Mrs. Atwater and Mr. Ellis to co-chair the committee to discuss and decide how the local schools could be integrated.

I call it a piece for the theatre rather that a play because it unfolds as a series of vignettes that begin with Mrs. Atwater and Mr. Ellis at sword's point and ends with them the best of friends. He was hated by his fellow Klansman and tore up his membership card in public at the end of their work together. It is a very strong and emotional evening of theatre.

Aisha Hinds as Ann Atwater is a powerful actress portraying this amazing woman with strength and fervor.

John Bedford Lloyd was equally strong as C. P. Ellis who began as an Exalted Something in the Ku Klux Klan, eventually tore up his membership card after being shunned by many of the white townsfolk, losing most of his white friends, losing his wife to death, his gas station, and winding up as a janitor. He eventually tried to slash his wrists to kill himself. It was at this point that Ann Atwater came to the hospital to see him and give him courage to continue his life. They became life-long friends.

Clifton Duncan and Susan Wands were excellent as Bill Riddick and Mary Ellis, C. P.'s wife.

All in all it was an emotional evening in the theatre. It's not quite a play, but that doesn't seem to matter. At the end of the evening Aisha Hinds, as Ann Atwater, tells of going to C.P.'s funeral, the only black person there. She is told that the service is for family members only. When asked if she is a family member, she emotionally says, 'Yes. He's my brother.'

Trust me. There was not a dry eye in the house.

The emotional hit you get from this play that is not quite a play is that every word of it is true. These were real people and real events that took place.

In 1952 John and I attended the wedding of two very dear friends in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We saw public restrooms and drinking fountains that were labeled 'White Only' and 'Colored Only'. Twenty years later, at the time of this play, race relations were worse than they had been on that trip because by then laws had been passed to rid our country of this stigmata. But not much had changed.

Today a black man sits in the White House. Many people in this country and a good percentage of our Congress oppose everything that he suggests not just because they disagree politically, but, in my opinion, because he is black.

We still have quite a way to go, haven't we?

Where the hell is Cy Coleman when you need him?

2011-07-20T23:01:00.021-04:00

I'm jaded. I admit it freely, bright green jaded when it comes to musical theatre. Having grown up seeing and hearing musicals by the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart, Mary Rodgers, Richard's daughter, (Once Upon a Mattress), Adam Guettel, his grandson, (Light in the Piazza), Cy Coleman, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim... well, you get the idea- after 80 years of listening to writers for the musical stage of this calibre, one gets to be able to discriminate between Veuve Clicot and Thunderbird, musically speaking.

That Rodgers family was a sort of modern herd of Bachs, weren't they?

All this is a preamble to my discussing tonight's première of Mormons, Mothers, and Monsters at Barrington Stage 2. Veuve Clicot it ain't.

The book and lyrics are by Sam Salmond and seem to be a recitation of his trip through psychoanalysis. He, or the hero, was born into a Mormon family. A fairly dysfunctional Mormon family, apparently. His mother remarried a number of times. Like Mae West, she apparently never met a man she didn't marry. As husbands go, hers did. She is presented as a very controlling factor in the young man's life.

To make the cheese more binding, the young fellow finds out that he is gay. What, you may say, a gay Mormon? Brigham Young must be rolling in his grave with all of his wives.

He has his first sexual encounter after being baptized in the Mormon Temple- in it! He goes to New York, to NYU and...... well the mother is to blame. Put the blame on Mom, boys. Sigmund Freud would love this scenario.

The music by Will Aronson seems to work, even with the sometimes unsetable text.

The excellent cast almost makes up for the lack of real musical theatre. Jill Abramovitz is good, if screamy, as the mother.

Taylor Trensch is adorable as the young boy (Mormon). He looks about twelve but is obviously older since he graduated from Elon University.

Stanley Bahorek is fine as his alter-ego and the narrator of the piece.

Adam Monley does an incredible job as the monster and all of the mother's various husbands. They all turn out to be monsters as well, as does the mother, of course. By the end of the show even the boy is turning into a monster.

Perhaps this is supposed to be a gay re-make of Ionescu's Rhinoceros.

As with the musical last season about a woman coming down with Alzheimer's and her daughter, I think this would have worked better as a straight (you should pardon the expression) play. Or an opera.

Tonight solidified my opinion that too much of what comes out of the Music Theatre Lab at Barrington Stage is from Clone City. They need to get some fresh ideas going in what could be a very fine program

But, as I said, I'm jaded.

Domingo as a baritone?

2011-07-16T22:33:00.006-04:00

Tonight I have been watching a most unusual production of Verdi's Rigoletto.For some reason RAI decided to film it on location in Mantua, indoors and out, at the times, day or night, noted in the libretto.

To make it even more interesting, the role of Rigoletto was sung by tenor, or possibly, former tenor Placido Domingo.

Recently my voice teacher friend and I were discussing how some sopranos, as they get on in years, have retooled, and come back to the opera stage as mezzos.

Apparently Domingo is doing a similar switch. He actually began his singing career as a baritone, so perhaps this is not as unusual as it might first appear.

In tonight's performance he was vocally lost in the first scene. But that scene was so badly filmed with so much going on, everyone was more or less at sea.

Later, in the duet with his daughter his voice came forth in all it's beauty. Rigoletto is a high baritone part, and it is only at the Met where he needs to be stentorian.

This may be a role he can sing on camera that might not work for him in an opera house.

Leonie Rysanek sang the title role in a filmed version of Strauss's Elektra some years ago when the role she usually sang in that opera was Chrysothemis, Elektra's sister. Apparently it took a lot of persuading for her to be convinced that she should attempt the role. She said that she would never perform it live on stage. Her filmed performance was excellent. Usually her Elektra was sung by Birgit Nilsson.

Julia Novikova as Gilda sang with a beautiful, silvery voice. Her 'Cara nome' was sung with great finesse and vocal beauty.

As the Duke of Mantua, Vittorio Grigolo sang with a bright, strong tenor voice the role that was Domingo's for so many years.

Zubin Mehta conducted the orchestra in the Teatro Scientifico Bibiena. Through various technical wonders the singers and orchestra stayed together even though they were physically far apart. This might be a way of getting a better singer to orchestra balance at the Met where, in my opinion, the orchestra is almost always too loud.

The production was filmed live by RAI.

At age 70, Domingo, either as a tenor or a baritone, still sings better than most other male singers around today.

Back to School

2011-07-14T20:15:00.000-04:00

This morning I had the pleasure of attending a voice class at Tanglewood led by the redoubtable Phyllis Curtin. For many years Phyllis has worked with budding singers, helping them find their way to a professional career. Her career at Tanglewood goes back many years to her own early days there as a student.

Today was no exception. She listened to a number of singers, all of whom had obvious talent and fine instruments, and coached each of them to sing better than they had when they came to class today. She told me that the singers had all had a very busy day yesterday, beginning with her class, followed by more coaching with other members of the Tanglewood faculty, ending with a very long concert in the evening.

Neither the students nor Phyllis showed any signs of wear.

There was a variety of talents on display today. Several very good sopranos, a fine mezzo, a couple of baritones, a bass and a tenor. I especially like one soprano who sang 'Deh vieni' beautifully with a technique that moved up and down her range superbly and was emotionally involved in the role.

I also like the tenor who first sang a song and then sang the first movement of Bach's 'Ich habe genug'. This last, of course, was a staple of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson who performed it many times, including a staged performance directed by Peter Sellers that won ecstatic reviews from critics and has been superbly recorded with Craig Smith and the Emmanuel Music Orchestra. This young man is very promising but still has a few things to learn about singing Bach. But then, who doesn't? He has a fine, easy, tenor voice. I hope that he will take the time to listen to Lorraine's recording of the cantata.

Phyllis has been a dear friend for many years. We get together from time to time and talk about- what else?
Singers and singing.

I wish her a long life and happy classes.

The New Book

2011-07-13T11:10:00.000-04:00

I have been telling myself and others for a number of years that I did not have another book in me. I have published two books on vocal technique, Sing On! Sing On! and Vocalizing from the Ground Up, a book on piano technique, as espoused by Theodor Leschetizky, How to Make you Arm into a Wet Noodle, and a book of poetry Save the Wine for Me Another Day. I also penned a mystery novel that takes place in the Berkshires that has been lost in one of my previous computers. I figured that I had done my bit.

Not so, apparently. Recently, in the midst of practicing three hours a day to prepare a long-delayed solo piano recital, I found that I had so much energy left over that I surprised myself and wrote another book!

It is called Case Studies in Vocal Pedagogy and details work that I have done with students where Psychology had to work hand in hand with Music. I have turned out about a hundred pages that I hope are interesting, amusing at times, and helpful.

The title makes it sound like a very pedantic, scientific tome, but it isn't. That just seemed like a good title. It was a lot of fun to write and I hope it will be fun to read.

Chapter One 'Boo-Hoo Betty'
Chapter Two 'Can't Sing Those Low Notes'
Chapter Three 'Can't Hit Those High Notes'.
Chapter Four 'Dealing with a Six-Pack'.
Chapter Five 'Tight as a Tick'.
Chapter Six 'Wunderkind''
Chapter Seven 'Hit and Run'.
Chapter Eight 'I Give Up'.
Chapter Nine 'Lorraine'.

The book is available by writing to me at: Herbert Burtis, 53 Rood Hill Road, Sandisfield, MA 01255, and including a check made out to Ferris Burtis Foundation for $20.00. The proceeds will go to the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation which supports the education and careers of young classical musicians. The amount over the cost of the book and mailing is tax deductible.
roodhill@verizon.net

Guys and Dolls

2011-07-06T08:22:00.003-04:00

In 1950 or 1951 I saw the original production of Frank Loesser's and Abe Burrows's perennial classic, Guys and Dolls at the 46th Street Theatre in Manhattan. It was, and is an incredible show.
Matthew Risch

Last night I witnessed Barrington Stage's current production, which is a winner. Director John Rando has managed to capture all the vigor and excellence of the original production.
Leslie Kritzer

The cast, which featured Michael Thomas Holmes as Nathan Detroit, Morgan James as Sarah Brown, Leslie Kritzer as Miss Adelaide, and Matthew Risch as Sky Masterson, couldn't have been better They all can sing and act with verve and portray their characters as Damon Runyon, the author of the original stories, might have wished.

Morgan James, as Sarah, should get special mention. It was so good to hear someone who can really sing take the part. Isabel Bigley, the original Sarah, had a break in her passaggio that became legendary and the source of many parodies in the song 'I'll know'. Apparently Frank Loesser slapped her at one point during rehearsals because she wasn't singing the song the way he wanted it sung. Now that's showbiz.

Michael Thomas Holmes

The supporting cast was equally good, especially Daniel Marcus, who sang the role of Nicely-Nicely Johnson and stopped the show.

I didn't care much for the orange and black sky-scrapers which didn't much look like 1940's New York, but otherwise the set worked very well.

I also was lucky enough to see the 1976 revival of the show which featured a dynamite all-black cast.

But this group was right up there with the best!

After having heard Lucie Arnaz caterwaul her way through a solo evening a while ago, it was refreshing to hear a talented cast of Broadway singers who know how to sing!

Down in the Holler!

2011-06-12T19:18:00.006-04:00

When is a cabaret not a cabaret?

When it's something else.

That's what happened at Barrington Stage 2 this afternoon: something else. It was listed as 'A Cabaret from the Musical Theatre Lab' and it was more lab than musical. It is called Surviving the Avalanche and had lots of sound effects of avalanches and rock and ice crashing. That part, at least, was authentic. The music was by Vadim Feichtner and the lyrics by Jeremy Desmon. The performers were Miguel Cervantes. Andrew Kober, Dana Steingold, and Cassie Wooley.

According to Wikipedia, a cabaret is a musical entertainment featuring song, dance, theatre usually held in a restaurant or bar. This performance included a free glass of wine, so maybe that was an attempt to make you think you were in a bar. There was no dancing and not much theatre.

The lyrics seemed to be 'Stream of Conciousness' writing that Mr. Feichter tried to set to music. Say Virginia Woolf met Stephen Sondheim. You should be so lucky.

It sounded to me like an autobiographical rant about a life spent under an avalanche of problems, all of which could be solved by singing. That didn't happen. It was tiresome to hear these long, tedious sentences painfully set to a wandering melody that you certainly did not leave the theatre whistling.

All four singers have what could be fair show-biz voices if they would stop feeling the need to scream and shout when holding a microphone two inches from their lips. Hence the title of this post. There is singing and then there is hollering.

Every musical I have heard that has come out of the Musical Theatre Lab sounds alike, no matter who is the composer and who the librettist. Most of the participants work with William Finn at NYU and are obviously influenced by his work. This is not necessarily a good thing.

I am probably just not in the swing of things when it comes to present day musical theatre, but if this is the trend, I'll pass.

Dear Julie Boyd, your lab needs some new ideas.

The force is with us

2011-06-08T23:11:00.015-04:00

A dear friend of mine used to say, 'What's worse than one flute?' The answer, of course, is 'Two flutes'. Dorothy had a flute problem.

Well then, what's better than one Tour de Force?

Three!

As someone once said 'Tel jour, telle nuit'. Tonight I had a ticket to see Zero Hour at Barrington Stage 2. It is a one man show about Zero Mostel.

On the drive up to Pittsfield I encountered the first tour de force. It was my own Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. I decided to listen again to her recording of the Berlioz Nuits d'été. I should not have been surprised at the power of her performance. I had heard her sing it many times. But tonight, driving through the countryside on the Tyringham Valley Road with its multitudes of greens and pinks and lavenders, it just hit me once more.

My God, that girl could sing!

A few years ago when Lorraine was still with us, I was having dinner with friends. A local music critic was also at the table, and when the subject of Lorraine came up he said, 'I think that her singing is just too intense.' I, amazingly, kept my mouth shut, but my thoughts were unprintable. It was only too intense if soul searing emotion and musicality are more than you can take. As you might guess, he was not a very good music critic and is no longer in print.

Then, arriving at Stage 2 and being seated in Row AA, center, the second tour de force arrived on the scene in the person of Jim Brochu who simply blew the walls out as Zero Mostel. He had known Zero when Jim was a young actor and has him down to a T. He made us laugh, and cry, and gasp. In the midst of this one act mono-drama, we were treated to a major storm going on outside the theatre. Perhaps this was to compliment the major storm going on inside the hall. We could hear hail pounding on the roof. At first I thought it was a theatrical effect, but when the lights kept dimming and coming back up and even going out for several seconds, I decided that both storms, inside and out, were the real thing.

Jim Brochu, a consummate actor, never blinked an eye at the competition and kept absolutely in character even when the lights went off in the theatre. I would say that he and Lorraine have the same intensity when doing what they do best. It is an all compelling fury about the way they approach their art. Fury and love, I guess.

Whew.

Then, to cap off the evening, when I left the theatre, I found that the storm had put out all the lights in Pittsfield and everywhere else most of the way home. The theatre must have it's own generator. I guess you would call this a Tour de force de nature. Number three.

As I wended my way back to Sandisfield, I encountered downed trees strewn across the highway. I actually got lost for a few minutes in Lenox with no lights. Then had to make a detour before getting to Stockbridge and come home through Lee and Monterey. For those of you who do not know Berkshire County, this is not exactly as the crow flies. Mix in a lot of fog and you have the setting for the perfect Hallowe'en night!

The Temperature today went from 96 at Bradley Airport to 64 in my front yard when I reached home.

Who ever said that life in the country is dull?

Two for the Price of One

2011-06-06T08:17:00.006-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I drove over to Hadley, MA, ostensibly to hear a new student sing a very difficult Bach aria we had been working on for several weeks, and found I was attending a double header. In addition to the Bach cantata sung by the Da Camera Singers, there was a premiere of a new work by Ron Perera.

The choral group is ably directed by Sheila L. Heffernon and was assisted in the Bach by a chamber orchestra that played very well. The chorus of 40 singers performs very efficiently and is obviously well trained. They could use a few more sopranos. Especially in the first movement of the Bach, with two excellent trumpeters tooting away, I had a hard time hearing the soprano line.

My student, Justina Golden, sang her aria very well. It is a real gut-buster, with endless runs that went at the speed of light, which she negotiated with ease. Peter Shea, who was listed as baritone/tenor, sang very well in his two recitatives. A well-focused pleasant voice that easily covered both ranges.

I was happy to see Ron again after several years. Some time ago Jane Bryden, another student of mine, sang the leading role in his opera S at Smith College. Jane and I worked on the role while Ron was still composing the end of the opera. It was a great success. Ron studied composition with Leon Kirchner at Harvard and with Randall Thompson.

If memory serves me correctly (not always guaranteed these days) the year we landed on the Moon, in fact, that very day, John's Harvard Summer Choir sang a work of Ron's at Dartmouth College. I drove up from New Jersey with our friend Dorothy Fee for the performance. How time flies!

Part of Thompson's Frostiana was also sung on the program. Thompson has never been my favorite composer and, having once taught my choir his famous Alleluia, I vowed never to do it again. And I haven't.

Ron's new work, North Country is also based on poems of Robert Frost and explores the poetry with great imagination and beauty. I was happy to be there for the occasion.

The choir also sang Songs of Nature by Antonin Dvorak. These relatively minor works were in the same mode as the Thompson, making the program too monochromatic.

I always like to hear my students in live performance; that is where we find out if 'the curse is working': that what we have been doing in lessons is actually becoming a part of their technique. When one is changing the way one sings, one needs time to build new muscle memories. Justina is in the process of doing this. It is a very good voice and I look forward to our future work together.

Strident la vampa!

2011-06-03T00:11:00.017-04:00

Apparently one of the signs of my advancing age is that there are just not that many singers I want to listen to these days.This truth was borne out tonight when I attended a re-HD showing of Verdi's Il Trovatore at the Warner theatre in Torrington, CT. In previous years the Warner has shown live filmed operas from European opera houses that I have enjoyed very much. This is the first time they have dealt with the 'Live from the Met', or in this case, since it was filmed a while ago, 'Dead from the Met', series.

It opened with a commercial from the Bloomberg Co., followed by a treacaly introduction by my not favorite soprano.

Caruso is supposed to have said that the only thing you need for a production of Il Trovatore is having the world's four greatest singers. Apparently they were tied up tonight.

The Leonora of Sondra Radvanovsky had its moments, but most of the time her square shaped voice hung on the flat side of the pitch. When she went high she tuned it up and it could be quite beautiful. Unfortunately in Verdi, you don't spend all night at the top of your range.

Marcelo Alvarez as Manrico has a true Italian tenor voice. He can sail out the high notes with ease, in spite of taking very high, shoulder wrenching breaths. It is when he sings in mid-range at a mezzo-forte level that he swallows the sound. In the duet with Azucena in the last act he found a resonant pianissimo, probably because he had to match Dolora Zajick's amazing soft sound that is both sweet and resonant.

Speaking of Ms. Zajick, she has been singing this role at the Met for twenty-three years and certainly is in command of all its requirements. She has an odd way of dealing with her mid-range when singing with medium volume. She seems to maintain a Sherri Lewis technique. Her lips don't move. It's a little disconcerting because I wasn't sure if she was the one singing or not. When she goes higher or lower or louder, everything seems to work normally. It is an enormous voice that she can pare down to a whisper and still be heard perfectly. Go Dolora.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky as the Count di Luna has a remarkable voice which he is beginning to cover. Maybe this is a Russian baritone thing? I've heard this in others from that part of the world. He also is doing the Popeye thing when he sings high and loud: singing out of the side of his mouth. This looks like tension to me. It's too bad, because I don't think that he really has to do this.

I also like him because he has white hair!

I'm sorry to be such sour grapes about this performance but all of the singers in the cast have perfectly fine voices that they are not using to their fullest capacity. Dolora excepted.

For some reason the opera was placed by the stage director in the period of the Civil War. Huh? It had a very drab set that certainly didn't look like Spain, where it is supposed to take place. Maybe Appomattox?

I have heard this opera performed wonderfully at the Met years ago and wish I could remember the cast. Oh well, as I said, I have a hard time with singers these days. Especially when they waste wonderful instruments by doing dumb things with them.

As the story goes, a man said to Jasha Heifetz, 'That Strad makes beautiful sounds'. Heifetz held it up to his ear and said, 'Really? I don't hear anything.'

It's nice to have a Strad, but you have to learn how to play it. Replace 'Strad' with 'Voice'.

Trop de Rameau?

2011-05-07T01:17:00.008-04:00

A night at l'Opéra

Jordan Hall is the major concert hall in Boston. I have been there several times in the past to hear Lorraine sing.

Tonight it was Nat Watson's turn. He was singing in Jean Phillipe Rameau's opera Les Indes Galantes, an opera-ballet by the French Baroque composer.

Rameau replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the major opera composer of the period. He was also a contemporary of Francois Couperin.

Nathaniel Watson

The opera is in four un-related acts. Le Turc généreux, which takes place in Turkey; Les Incas du Pérou,set in Peru, Les Fleurs, set in Persia, and Les Sauvages, set in 18th century North America. It premiered in Paris in 1735.

Let's face it- Boston Baroque is not Les Arts Florissants. This is a very long opera that was put together in twelve long days of rehearsal. Lorraine used to spend the entire summer in Paris when preparing an opera with Les Arts Florissants. Obviously, the French government was pouring tons of francs into the production, so they had all the time in the world. Lorraine would show up at 10:00 for rehearsal and not sing a note until 4:00 in the afternoon.

Apparently a similar event happened with this production with only twelve days to get it ready for the stage.

That being said, it is a wonderful Baroque opera that deserved to be heard. This was just not the company to do it.

Nat sang like an angel. Beautiful voice, very dramatic on stage, funny, sad, whatever was needed. The other singers were Amanda Forsythe, soprano, Nathalie Paulin, soprano, Aaron Sheehan, tenor, Daniel Auchincloss, tenor, and Sumner Thompson, baritone. Of these my favorites were Paulin, Sheehan, and Thompson. And, of course, Nat.

Amanda Forsythe has a pretty voice that seems disembodied at times. There is no connection. This often results in a very fast vibrato which is unattractive.

Daniel Auchincloss has a raspy sort of tenor voice. He did a very funny bit in drag in the third part, using a lot of falsetto. Nat told me over drinks afterwards that this was NOT falsetto. Trust me, it was.

I was much more delighted with the singing of Aaron Sheehan. He is the same tenor I heard several years ago in a performance of Handel's Saul, which was sung by the Harvard choir in memory of John. In that performance, the part of Saul was sung by Nat, one sister was sung by Amanda Forsythe, and the second sister by my own favorite, Janet Brown. Aaron has a beautiful voice. He needs to learn how to move it more easily in rapid flowing passages.

Nathalie Paulin is an excellent singer from Toronto. She and Nat have sung together many times in Canada. It is an easy sound from top to bottom. In the last part of the opera she was really singing a mezzo role and brought it off beautifully.

Sumner Thompson is a fine singer. His voice moves easily throughout the wide range that was required in his singing tonight.

The chorus sang admirably. Good blend, energy. A few too many dumb things with props, but that isn't their fault.

The orchestra played very well. The conductor, Martin Pearlman, tended to drag tempi, making for a very long evening.

The weakest part of the evening's performance was the staging and the dancing. The staging seemed impromptu and the dancing mindless. Also the dancing went on and on. Here was a good place to cut. The choreographer, Marjorie Folkman, had supposedly done some work with Mark Morris. I am not a great fan of his choreography, but if anything, she took his worst habits and capitalized on them.

I must say in all lack of predjudice, that I was very proud of Nat. His singing these days is very musical, sophisticated, and beautiful. I guess he has had a good teacher.

PS Nat told me later that a lot of ballet music was cut from last night's performance. No where nearly enough, for my taste. Perhaps if there had been a more sensitive choreography that somehow related to the wonderful music, this would not have seemed so long. But endless 'heel and a toe and away we go' doesn't do Rameau's music justice and give it the gravitas it deserves. As it was, the incoherant bobbing around on stage was far from the mark. I would love to see a fully staged production of this work. It deserves no less.

Mrs. Rosa

2011-05-03T13:18:00.006-04:00

Today on CNN they were featuring a story about a school where, within several grades, pupils move about from table to table according to their ability in various subjects instead of all doing exactly the same thing at the same time. You test out of one table to get to the next higher one whenever you think you are prepared. You may be doing math at the fourth grade level and English at the seventh grade level. Either way, there is no stigma attached to which table you are working at.

What a modern idea.

Mrs. Daisy Rosa, my algebra teacher in the ninth grade used exactly this same method of teaching in 1945. We sat at large round tables scattered throughout her large classroom. Mrs. Rosa was as round as the tables. The class all started out as a unit for the first week or so. At the end of the week we all took a test.If we passed it we moved to the next higher table. If we failed, we stayed at the same table and reviewed the material. Then we would test again the following week. If we passed the test we moved, otherwise, we stayed where we were. I often stayed at the same table for a while.

She taught in a very large room at Southwestern Junior High School on Goguac Avenue in Battle Creek, Michigan, where I grew up. She was way ahead of her time, apparently.

I was playing piano concertos when I was in the ninth grade, but algebra was not in my vocabulary. Somehow Mrs. Rosa got me through the class and sent me on to high school. If asked today what x equals, I would have to admit that I have no idea except that it often 'marks the spot'. Don't even ask me what y is all about. Mathematics and I have never had a close relationship.

I freely admit that I also cheated all through fractions, whenever that comes along in your schooling. Maybe that's why algebra was Greek to me. My 4th, 5th, and 6th grade teacher was Gertrude Woodard. She seemed to pass from grade to grade with the class. In fractions, at the end of a quiz, she would read the answers. Since I sat in the back of the room, I simply jotted down the answers as she said them. Mea culpa. Naughty boy. I still have no idea how to do either fractions or algebra. So sue me! I also count on my fingers.

But I have played all the Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert sonatas, so I can't be all bad.

Or can I?

Primavera

2011-05-02T12:47:00.003-04:00

Spring comes to Rood Hill Farm.
Finally!

My poor road!

And to Colebrook.

All this plus Osama bin Laden!!

Here comes the bride

2011-04-29T07:47:00.017-04:00

Let's face it. The Brits know how to do a spectacle. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and saw the whole wedding. I don't know what the networks were doing from 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. as advertized.

I was delighted that the choir sang Hubert Parry's 'I was Glad' for the procession. We used to sing that anthem at the Methodist church years ago when I was the Director of Music in Red Bank.

The recession was Walton's 'Crown Imperial' which I had the honor of playing on the organ, assisted by brass from the New York Philharmonic, for the Queen Mum in 1954 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue. It was the 200th anniversary of my alma mater, Columbia University. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was the honored guest and speaker.

I was the Associate University Organist and Choirmaster at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia, at the time under Searle Wright. That day's processional was Searle's 'Fantasy on Wareham', with the St. Paul's chapel choir, organ and brass. It was a day I shall always remember.

Good show, folks!

Czech singers

2011-04-26T19:12:00.031-04:00

Today I spent another delightful afternoon with my friend, The Other Voice Teacher. She asked me about the operas and the singing I had heard while I was in Prague and I confessed that I was disappointed in both with possibly one exception, Pavla Vykopalová, the Rusalka.

We agreed that Slavic sopranos, whether by training or inclination, tend to have very bright, almost brittle voices. I told her what may be an apocryphal story of Galina Vishnevskya when singing the Verdi Requiem, being told by the conductor that the octave leap in the last movement on the word 'requiem' was to be sung ppp. She had sung it fff. On hearing this she turned to him and simply said 'NO'. End of story. She sang it loud and very bright.

The best of the sopranos I heard while in Prague was Vykopalová, the woman I heard sing the title role of Rusalka. She had a bright voice but it was very well modulated and she used it well.

The soprano who sang the title role in Tosca started out well but must have tired or forgotten her technique by the time she reached 'Vissi d'arte'. She strangled the climatic moments by taking what I call 'suicide breaths': gasping high breaths just before a high note, leaving her technique in the dust.

The soprano who sang Lucia was simply annoying in her shrieking of high notes, which, God knows, she had- but who cares when they are screamed?

My friend mentioned the wonderful Czech soprano Emmy Destinn, who it turned out, had studied much earlier with the same voice teacher my friend had later studied under. Emmy sang dramatic roles and was honored by having her picture on the Czech 2000 Kroner note. Not many opera singers wind up on the money.

Today there are several Czech sopranos who are well-known in the Czech Republic, but do not have international careers. Jarmila Novotna was another wonderful Czech singer from the past.

We agreed that WWII probably
had an effect on European singers who
emerged after that period. Perhaps
in Czechoslovakia the whole concept of singing never recovered after that time. Certainly at that period many US singers went abroad to begin careers because of the lack of local singers.

I remain puzzled by the fact that almost none of the singers I heard in Prague, to quote my friend, 'knew how to sing!' I have discussed the foibles of the several sopranos I heard. The tenors all seem to know only how to bellow. Prague has an enormous musical heritage and should be able to produce better singers. Also, none of the singers in any of the operas I saw knew how to act. They had no respose to the other members of the cast, whether they be lovers, witches, or whatever. Sad.

Justino Diaz and Leontyne Price in the Met production of Cleopatra.

We got on to such varied topics as the first production of Samuel Barber's Cleopatra which opened the 'new' Met when it moved up to Lincoln Center and was such a disaster. My friend covered the leading role for that opera but never sang it.

It is always a joy to pay a visit to my friend and exchange thoughts on singing and music and everything else. I look forward to our times together.

Peter Lieberson

2011-04-24T13:51:00.003-04:00

This morning I learned of the death of my friend Peter Lieberson. He was a gifted composer and the husband of my dear Lorraine Hunt. His most beautiful writing, as far as I am concerned, came after their marriage. He once told me, when I was visiting them in Santa Fe, that he never really knew how to write for the voice until he met Lorraine. She was certainly his inspiration for his later outpouring of vocal music.

John and I met Peter when we were in Santa Fe for the premiere of Ashoka's Dream in which Lorraine was singing the part of the second wife. This was prophetic, since she soon became Peter's second wife. I have never known two people who were more in love. They made a pact that they would never be apart more than ten days. As a composer, he could go wherever in the world Lorraine went to sing.

They visited us at Rood Hill Farm a number of times when Lorraine and I were working on a role she was preparing. He was a lovely man and I shall miss him very much.

In March of 2006 I heard Lorraine sing for the last time. It was at the Performing Arts Center in Newark with the BSO. She sang a heart-breaking performance of Peter's Neruda Songs. I told him backstage afterwards that I thought these were the most wonderful songs I have ever heard. I still weep when I hear Lorraine sing the final 'amor' at the end of the last song.

Their love will continue in his music and her recordings. Two great souls who should still be with us. I loved them both very dearly.

Dear Doris

2011-04-22T17:13:00.018-04:00

For lack of something better to do this afternoon, I tuned in to Turner Classic movies and found myself in the midst of a Doris Day and Jack Carson movie. This must have been early in her career because she got fourth billing and he got first. Janis Paige was listed above her.

The thing that impressed and amazed me was in the final scene of this predictable romance, when she sang 'It's magic', every time she took a breath in her skin tight gown, her belly button moved forward. Imagine that! She was taking a low breath. I have never thought of her as a prime example of vocal technique, but I also realised that she always sang through complete phrases without running out of air. Earlier in the movie (the title of which I never saw) she was seated or moving around so I did not get a good look at her mid section. I don't know why, but this just tickled me. Imagine, Doris Day knew how to take a singing breath. I can think of some opera singers who could learn something from her.

Singers like Kate Smith always took a deep breath. But Kate was a sizeable woman and didn't worry about trying to look thin. And could she ever sing! Stephanie Blythe from the Met, is doing a tribute to her as I write.

I was recently talking with a friend about the days on Broadway when musicals were not amplified. Long, long ago! That was when Ethel Merman and Mary Martin were in their prime and could sing, un-amplified, and reach the last row of the balcony without belting.

These days everyone is wired for sound. It's often difficult on a crowded stage to figure out who is singing, since all the sound comes from the same speakers. I simply look to see whose lips are moving.

I have been trying to remember when things changed. Possibly in the 60's, when suddenly, no one walked on stage without a microphone in her bosom or stuck in her hair. Nowadays, men and women all wear what I call telephone operator headsets. I often wonder when two people who are fitted out like this kiss on stage, how they avoid becoming permanently connected electronically, head set to head set. Some new kind of S and M.

When I think of some of the men I heard on Broadway 'back in the day', the likes of John Raitt and Ezio Pinza never needed amplification either. Or Danny Kaye.

Apparently today absolutely everything that has to do with sound must be amplified to the level of physical pain. I remember walking out of a production of Les Miz in Boston some years ago with a splitting headache from the intolerable din. Of course, the music might have had something to do with that as well! I felt that the show was well named.

There is a local movie house near here that in the past I have enjoyed attending, where you can order a drink, have a light supper, and enjoy the movie. These days the sound system is tuned so loud I have had to plug my ears to save my hearing. I even asked at one point if the sound could be turned down. It was lowered for about two minutes, and then went right back up to terrifying levels! I just don't go there any more.

I always thought as I aged, that my hearing would be apt to get worse. But looking around the theatre, everyone else seemed unaware of the painful volume. Either they have all lost their hearing or mine has improved with age. Some weird sort of miracle.

I never was close enough to Ethel or Mary to check out their belly buttons while they sang, but I'll bet a nickel they moved out when they inhaled. I'm sure that Kate's did!!

PS A friend who read this just emailed me the name for a navel watcher: omphaloskesis. I guess that makes me an omphaloskesist. I love it!! All voice teachers need to be one of these to make sure their students are taking a low breath.

PPS Another friend just emailed me that Doris graduated from the Cincinatti Conservatory of Music,my friend's alma mater . Go Doris!

To Write or not to write?

2011-04-08T07:26:00.006-04:00

I debated overnight whether or not I should write about the high school performance of The Sound of Music that I heard last night. A year or so ago I heard a performance in this same school that was simply delightful. Last night, it just didn't work.

Any group that is going to present this show with young singers needs to be aware that while everyone in the cast, no matter how young, has probably seen the Julie Andrews film, when you order the orchestral parts you get the 1959 Mary Martin keys. Julie had a high soprano voice, Mary, in 1959, was definitely an alto, so all the songs are written in much lower keys.

Mary Martin

In the days when I was teaching a number of high school age singers, I always warned the girls trying out for the role of Maria, 'You are auditioning with the high key from the Movie Book. If you get the part, you are going to have to sing everything down about a fifth. Several of them got the part and were really not effective vocally in the lower key.

This was part of the problem last night. For Maria, and for some of the other female roles, the tessitura lies right over the passaggio. For a trained singer, one has hopefully learned how to cope with this area of the voice, but for a young person with little or no vocal training, this 'break' in the voice becomes the Grand Canyon. The young singer tries to sing the lower notes in the songs in chest voice and then when they have to go up, the voice nearly disappears into a tiny head voice.

The Mother Abbess has a similar, but different, problem. 'Climb every mountain' is practically an operatic aria. Patricia Neway, who sang this role in the original production of the work, had previously sung the role of Magda in Gian-Carlo Menotti's The Consul. This is opera at its best. Very few 16 or 17 year old voices can cut this kind of singing.

The young male roles have an easier time since none of them have ranges that go very high, thereby avoiding the male passaggio. Theodore Bikel, who sang the role of Baron von Trapp in the original production, had a mellow, folk singer voice. Most young men of high school age don't sound like this, but it is always easier for a young man to get away with singing show tunes than for a young woman.

I realise that from year to year the talent pool in any school may vary wildly. Almost all of the cast in last night's performance acted their parts well, but the vocal problems inherent in these roles make Sound of Music not the best choice for a high school musical.

A friend and former student of mine wrote to me just a day or so ago that she has been judging high school musicals in New Jersey for some group. One show she had to review was Sweeney Todd. I can't imagine any high school group that could possibly bring this off vocally. Apparently, when Paul Plishka was in high school he had a voice that sounded about the same as it did when he first went to the Met. OK. Then you can do Sweeney.

Tiger, Tiger!

2011-03-19T22:39:00.005-04:00

About seven years ago when John Ferris and I first heard Yevgeny Kutik audition for the Ferris-Burtis Scholarship in the studio at Rood Hill Farm, we realised that in choosing him as the winner, we had a tiger by the tail.

Yevgeny has gone from a brilliant career as a music student-performer to a sensational career as an international concert artist, proving that our judgement of him was right on the money.

So what could have been a happier eighty-first birthday present today, than attending a private recital by Yevgeny tonight in Lenox? This was serendipity at its finest!

In a recent blog I wrote about a conversation I had had with a good friend who is a fine musician and extraordinary voice teacher. We spoke about where you go, as a performer, when you are out there on that stage by yourself. When asked, she said that she sings to eternity. Rene Pape said that he enters into whatever character he is portraying, leaving himself behind.

I know without asking that Yevgeny goes to a very special place when he performs, a place no one else will ever find, but a place where he and the music become one. It is obvious watching him play that he has left the rest of us poor mortals behind and gone among the gods- eternity.

I am always reminded of hearing a mezzo-soprano singing the first aria from Honegger's King David at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. years ago. I was there to play an organ concert the next day in the Cathedral, and decided to hear the oratorio. Some radical set off a bomb in one of the high balconies while she was singing 'God shall be my shepherd kind, He protects me from the wind.' After about ten bars, the bomb exploded in that incredibly reverberant space, booming on and on. She never blinked an eye, but calmly finished singing the very quiet aria as if nothing had happened. She, too, had gone to that special place we all, as performing artists, must find.

Yevgeny finds it in every concert and stays there through the entire program. This is but one of the qualities that makes him the exceptional artist he has become.

In tonight's program at Kimble Farms, a retirement community in Lenox, MA where Yevgeny has performed every year since he was nine years old, he blew everyone away with his performance. He has at his finger tips a multitude of sounds, silky, steel-like, sensuous, aggressive: the works!

Timothy Bozarth, his long-time performance partner, produced the same kind of excitement at the piano.

The program opened with a Brahms Scherzo that set the excitement level for the whole evening. This was followed by the lovely Schumann Sonata in A minor, and the Tchaikovsky Solo and Russian Dance from Swan Lake. After the Intermission they performed Beau Soir, an arrangement of the song by Claude Debussy, the Ravel Sonate in G, and the Wieniawski Polonaise No. 1.

Yevgeny produces sparks which fly from the fingerboard with his amazing technique. It was a wonderful concert.

I drove home under the fullest full moon ever. Tonight was the night the moon was at Perigee, when it is closest to the earth once in a zillion years. With that, and the magnificent concert, I felt that both Heaven and Earth were celebrating my eighty-first birthday!

Yevgeny and the Elektra Ensemble will be performing a benefit concert for the Ferris-Burtis Music Foundation on Sunday, May 22, at 4:00 p.m. at the Sandisfield Arts Center. For more information see:
http://ferrisburtisfoundation.blogspot.com/

Where to?

2011-03-12T16:04:00.006-05:00

It's dangerous to allow two voice teachers to sit down to chat a spell.They come up with the most wonderful ideas! Today my friend and I started talking about nothing in particular and got into the most wonderful conversation about words and music and direction and lots of other issues having to do with vocal performance. I had asked her opinion of a very well-known singer who is famous for her machine-gun like style of singing runs, and I was happy to find out that my friend detests her singing as much as I do. While it is mind boggling how anyone can sing that many notes that fast, it really boils down to: 'Who cares?' It is so un-musical and un-interesting that speed is beside the point.

We went on to discuss another soprano who has one of the most beautiful voices on stage today but who fails to move either one of us with her singing. My friend said that what this woman does are 'vocal effects', rather than becoming involved with the text and character and emotion of whatever she is singing. As our mutual former voice teacher, Olga Averino, used to say when hearing this kind of singing, 'Now, what else can you do?'

We decided that when someone is born with this amazing type of natural instrument, it is easy to fall into the trap of falling in love with your beautiful voice and leaving characterization and emotion in the other room. What a pity.

My friend said that she was once asked by the writer Charles Michener 'when you are singing, to whom do you sing?' She answered, 'I sing to the Universe.'

What a great concept. Interestingly enough, Jose van Dam, on being asked that same question, gave the identical reply. Singers take note! Aim for Infinity!

Charles Michener did an article for the New Yorker on Lorraine some years ago and got an in-depth look into her soul. Lorraine always sang for the Universe, and often, I believe, the Universe sang right back to her.

Driving home from my friend's house today, I was listening to the Met broadcast of Boris and Rene Pape was being interviewed. He was asked where he goes mentally and emotionally when he is on stage in any given role. His answer was similar to the others. He said that when you are on stage you enter a different world from reality. You make your own reality within what ever role or song you are singing.

Maybe this is all about a sort of 'Out of body' experience to which we must open ourselves if we wish to be really fine, complete performers. We need to give up a part of ourself to become Boris or Violetta or whom so ever.

This is undoubtedly the reason why there are lots of very good singers about, with beautiful voices, but only a few complete artists who have somehow given themselves up to the emotional, dramatic and musical components that allow us to 'become the song.

Alive and well

2011-03-12T07:15:00.002-05:00

Last evening a group of friends treated me to a nice Italian dinner and the local high school's Spring Concert as a pre-eighty-first Birthday Bash. Having heard an excellent performance of The Wizard of Oz at this same school several years ago, I should not have been surprised at the quality of the program, which was excellent.

It opened with a small chorus singing a capella versions of a number of songs I had never heard, but which were sung with sweet, light voices in tune. Various members of the group sang brief solo lines, including the daughter/grand daughter of my friends. It was good to hear these light, young voices singing with ease. Only one young woman felt the need to 'belt', but everyone else did a very nice job with their brief moment in the spotlight.

Their conductor was a young woman who obviously knew what she was doing. Apparently, these kids show up early at school several mornings a week to participate in this group before regular classes commence. My only suggestion to the conductor would be that she wear a longer jacket on stage. Keeping time with her right foot, the gyrations of her read end were a sight to behold. Not since Lenny went to his reward has a conductor's butt made such an impression on me!

Their finale was a medley of songs from Guys and Dolls, a show that none of these young people could have had any idea about. It brought back memories of seeing Vivian Blaine and Robert Alda sing the leads in this show on Broadway in the fifties, Being eighty-one lends one a certain perspective, doesn't it?

The chorus was followed by the Jazz Band, a sizable group led by a fellow who obviously knows his fachs of life. (Sorry!) They played with excellent technique and verve. He would mostly get them started with the traditional 'And-a-one-and-a-two', and they would take off and soar! The fact that this whole genre of music was more from my generation than theirs didn't seem to bother them in the least. They got it! The instrumental soloists had a real opportunity to perform, unlike the singers who barely got to sing one line of the song by themselves. And whereas Zoot Sims and Miles Davis would have improvised their 'licks', these kids played their written-out variations as if they were making them up. They were terrific!

It is very good for an old fogey like me to show up at a high school concert like this once in a while to be reminded that in a few public schools, at least, music is alive and well. There was even dancing in the aisles during one of the band numbers. It's almost like living in Greece!

Our name is MUD

2011-03-10T03:24:00.001-05:00

'Mud, glorious mud!' are the lyrics that used to be caroled by the comedy team of Flanders and Swann back in the day. It was an amusing song about the salubrious effects of this yucky substance. Well, Flanders and Swann, thou shouldst be living at this hour. And living on Rood Hill Road!

Following the snowiest winter on record we have just had the rainiest couple of days up here on Rood Hill Road since the biblical flood, turning our picturesque retreat into an oozy, goozy mess.

Rood Hill Farm has stood on the south side of this hill since 1780 on very solid ground. Only last summer I had my circular driveway topped with what is known in the trade as 'Airport Mix' to further strengthen its resistance to weather. But this recent display of flowing water and melting snow by Mother Nature took the cake- or at least part of the driveway.

The road descends a hill just beside my home in what is, in dry weather, a charmingly scenic manner. For the past several days it has been turned into a lava-like sea of mud. Fortunately for me, the other end of my driveway has been able to hold its own so I can come and go with only minor wallowing in the muck.

Seeing pictures on TV of homes that are in water up to the windows, I feel fortunate that I live on the side of a hill where the water, however furious,at least runs downhill, taking only part of the roadway with it, leaving this old house standing high and fairly dry. That John Rood was a crafty old man when he built on the south side of this hill all those years ago. It's as if he knew that in 2011, Aprés moi le déluge would require true grit!

Gala Benefit Concert for Ferris Burtis Foundation

2011-03-04T01:38:00.012-05:00

On Sunday afternoon, May 22, at 4:00 p.m., the Ferris-Burtis Foundation, The Berkshire-Taconic Foundation, and the Sandisfield Arts Center will present a Gala Benefit Concert for the Ferris-Burtis Music Foundation at the Arts Center on Hammertown Road in Sandisfield, MA.

Performing will be Yevgeny Kutik, violin and Timothy Bozarth, piano- http://www.yevgenykutik.com/ and the Elektra Ensemble, Brunlida Myftaraj, violin, Melissa Morgan, 'cello, and Igor Lovchinsky, piano-
http://www.elektraensemble.org/ These brilliant young musicians have been aided in their education and careers by the Foundation and are donating their considerable talents to this event.

The Ferris-Burtis Foundation was founded by my late spouse, John Ferris, and myself in 1987 through the Berkshire-Taconic Foundation in Sheffield, MA, to aid young classical musicians in their education and careers.

If you would like to make reservations for this concert and/or make a special tax-deductible gift to the Foundation, you should send a check made out to Ferris-Burtis Foundation to Herbert Burtis, 53 Rood Hill Road, Sandisfield, MA 01255. Reservations are $20.00 each. Include your email address for confirmation. If you wish to make an additional gift to the Foundation you may choose from one of the following categories to help keep classical music alive, even in small towns like Sandisfield. You will receive two reservations and your name will be listed in the program. Portions of your gift over the cost of the reservation are tax-deductible.

Friend- $100.00-$299.00
Sponsor- $300.00-$499.00
Benefactor- $500.00-$699.00
Angel- $700.00-$999.00
Founder- $1000.00 or more

Any gift will be appreciated and well-used to keep classical music alive and well.
Thank you, Herbert Burtis roodhill@verizon.net
http://www.hburtis.com/
http://www.berkshiretaconic.org/
http://www.sandisfieldartscenter.org/

Baby, it's cold outside!

2011-02-28T14:21:00.003-05:00

'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose'. That's the romantic picture of New England in winter.

Not!!

We have had more snow and ice this winter than I ever remember in fifty winters in New England. I was fortunate to miss a few of them while I was in Puerto Rico for three weeks, but I'm making up for lost time now.

Today, the last day of February, we usually see some sign of Spring. Looking out of my studio window, all I see is that every twig is sheathed in ice. My poor birds, the Chickadees, Finches, Tufted Titmice, and a female Cardinal, are perching on frozen twigs to wait their turn at my three feeders. I have not seen the male Cardinal so I don't know if she is a widow or if they've had a divorce. Do birds get divorces?

While everyone else prefers the two feeders filled with sun-flower seed, she seems to like the one with 'the low-priced feed' for some reason. She gets it all to herself.

I haven't tried to budge from the house today. I would probably break my neck. And as for 'chestnuts roasting', I have never liked chestnuts and an open fire brings on my allergies. Give me my Franklin gas stove!

So much for romance.

Victory in sight?

2011-02-23T19:23:00.001-05:00

Today President Obama announced that the Justice Department will no longer fight cases which have been filed against DOMA. As someone who has been involved as a plaintiff in the GLAD suit to defeat DOMA since 2008, I herald this decision. Now, possibly, one day in my lifetime we will see true equality in this matter.

Next!

2011-02-18T22:32:00.004-05:00

I was discussing how to audition with one of my students recently. She was about to sing a major audition for an opera company. We had worked long and hard on the arias she had chosen to sing and I was giving her last minute instructions.

I told her the first two rules of auditioning are:
1. Show up on time
2. Sing all the right notes.

Beyond that, everything is gravy. Yes, you must have a beautiful voice. And yes, you must sing musically and emotionally. And yes, you must be perfect. But slip up on one entrance or pitch, and you're consigned to the 'Don't call us, we'll call you' file.

Spencer Tracey is reported to have said when asked how he prepared for a scene, 'Say all the words clearly and try not to bump into the furniture'. Perfect advice for the actor or the singer.

Auditions are dreadful but necessary parts of having a career in any of the performing arts. If you allow the auditioner to choke you up, just go home and start knitting or inventing new recipes for tomato sauce.

Before you audition for anything in the performing arts you must have killed all possible snakes that could attack you in mid-performance. Otherwise, you will be eaten and swallowed whole.

I can remember people in New York City holding auditions, who after hearing four bars of some sublime aria would say, 'Thank You.'........Period!

Cattle call auditions are the worst. You barely get to utter a few bars when the person sitting in the second row of the theatre says, 'Next!'. Elaine May wrote a brilliant play with this title.

In addition to showing up on time and singing all the notes, here are some other audition suggestions:

1. Show up looking like a professional person. You don't need to deck yourself out like a Lipizzaner stallion, but get yourself together. No blue jeans or sweats. The Marlon Brando era has passed.
2. Arrive on time totally prepared to sing whatever is on your list of songs or arias. Don't ever put down a song that you 'almost know', because that is the very one they will ask for.
3. Present yourself in a happy, outgoing mode. Let them do most of the talking.
4. When you finish singing, walk away in a serious, calm manner. Save your ideas about what you just did, or didn't do, until you are having a drink with your accompanist at the nearest bar.

Fortunately, my student did all of these things just right today and walked away knowing she had done a splendid audition. We are hoping that this audition will lead to more substantial things- like contracts!

Auditions are a dreadful part of a singer's, or actor's, life until you reach the point where you don't have to audition. They just call you from the Met and ask when you are going to be available.

It happens! Trust me.

Whatever happened to Baby Jane? Or John?

2011-02-16T06:38:00.007-05:00

Recently I heard a former student of mine singing a major role in a major opera at a major opera house and thought, 'This can't be the same person I used to teach'. Admittedly, it's been a while since he sang for me, and I have no idea what viscissitudes of life and health he has gone through in the meanwhile, but I didn't recognize the voice at all. What I remember as a strong, free, sonorous instrument sounded pushed, covered, especially at the top, and raw.

Whew!

What a rude awakening. I can remember Mrs. Neidlinger, my first voice teacher in New York City in the fifties, saying that when her 'Stars' came back to her after a tour (this was back in the days when the Met toured every year), she had to scrape the rust off their voices. They had fallen into bad habits while dashing around the country singing, singing, singing. Probably not always thinking what they were doing. And, believe me, she had a number of stars.

But this man's voice is way beyond the point where a little vocal de-rusting is all that is needed. It makes me very sad to hear something like this happening to a voice that I have worked with and loved.

All of us as singers have to try to keep the rust off our pipes. Each of us is responsible for preparing whatever we plan to sing so carefully that a moment of nerves doesn't haul goblins out of our vocal closet. We must also make sure that we are well rested and filled with energy every time we perform. A tired singer can be a bad singer. Muscle memory can be a good or a bad thing. In this case, it did the dirt.

I find that if one prepares a new song technically and emotionally in a free and honest way from the beginning, old muscle memories can't butt in when we're under pressure. A song or aria that we have sung for a long time can have many bad habits attached to it if we are not constantly aware that just because it used to work in a certain way, it won't always be there unless we constantly pay attention to what we are doing.

When working with Lorraine, if she had a passage that was not working well, we would try this and then try that and then try the other thing, until we found an easy way to solve the problem. Then, on the spot, she would sing it over many times, one after another, until she was satisfied that any bad karma, aka muscle memory, had been tossed into the trash. It had become a part of her DNA. Then, when I would hear her sing the role on the stage of the Met or the Salle Garnier, or the Santa Fe Opera, she would sing it exactly as when we solved the problem. The technique was so much a part of her being that you didn't realise it was a technique. The technique, the musicality, and the emotion had become one. It seemed that no matter how many times I had heard her sing something in the studio, and she always, even within a lesson, sang completely involved musically, technically, and emotionally, when she sang the same thing on stage it sent shivers up and down my spine. She was able to add that magical thing that can only happen on stage when one unleashes all those wonderful forces each of us has within us. She had thrown out the garbage and kept the gold. It belonged to her. Even as she became very ill at the end of her all too brief life, this was the way she sang. She had an amazing strength within in her that is very rare. Hearing her sing the Neruda Songs by her dear husband Peter Lieberson with the BSO a couple of months before her death, somehow that stength of purpose was still there in full bloom. She simply pushed the cancer aside and sang.

Nervousness has to be channeled into excitement rather than being allowed to knock our vocal feet out from under us. This can only happen when we have so carefully prepared what we are planning to sing to the nth degree and have learned to channel our mind and voice and body into a well organized singing spot that we know it will work.

Olga Averino used to say, 'Think what it is you want to happen, and it probably will.'

I realise that everyone is different and that while some people can channel their nervousness in this way, others are not able to do this. To be a consistent performer you must find a way for this to happen. If you make wrong choices vocally at the time of performance, you're dead. What worked at home won't work on stage unless you refuse to give it other choices at the moment of truth. Because that is what every performance really must be!

With my student's singing the other day I thought, 'I wish I could have done something to help you.' Of course, you can't call up a former student and say 'Honey, you need a couple of rust-scraping lessons before you take on this major challenge', can you?

In real estate it's 'Location, Location,Location'. In singing it's 'Preparation, Preparation, Preparation!'

You'd better believe it!!

Home is the traveler

2011-02-11T17:40:00.000-05:00

I returned home from Isla Verde late Wednesday night to find that my email was not working. Verizon- UGH!

I wrote a few blogs while I was in Puerto Rico. If you are interested in reading them, please begin with the one from January 20th to be chronological.

The Party's Over

2011-02-09T07:29:00.000-05:00

'The candles gutter and dim'.... No candles, just sand in my shoes, which I will have to shake out before I fly back to Sandisfield tonight. This has been a wonderful three weeks in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico. Brilliant sunshine every day but one, ocean breezes wafting through my windows, my favorite palm tree under which I can sit and read...

It's too sad, I'll be crying in a minute!

I have fallen in love with this place. It is the fourth time that I have been here and I plan to come back. It's not that I don't love my home in Sandisfield, high on Rood Hill Road, surrounded by fields and trees with the pond at the foot of the lawn, but three weeks without ice and snow, runny nose and eyes, all the winter aches and pains, makes me fickle about the whole thing.

I recommend it! Try it, you'll like it!

O, say can you sing?

2011-02-08T07:27:00.004-05:00

Since I have never been a fan of most sports, I was not glued to my TV for the Super Bowl on Sunday, thereby missing the butchering of the National Anthem by Christina Aguilera. However since it was repeated on every news show for the next two days I caught up with it multiple times.

Apparently the 'I'll sing it my way' approach to singing the National Anthem at a public event began at least as far back as when Roseanne Barr sang it while scratching her crotch. One would think that was as low as one could go to ruin what is basically an unsingable song to begin with.

But Christina managed not only to re-write the melody to suit herself, she re-wrote the lyrics. What talent. Francis Scott Key's grave must have been heaving.

Aretha Franklin came a close second to this performance when she sang it at Obama's inauguration, but her hat distracted everyone so much that no one really noticed the singing.

I probably shouldn't even be trying to analyse this kind of singing. It merely shows my age and predjudice, but, what the hell, sue me! To me this falls in the vocal range of caterwauling.

I remember an age when we simply tried to sing the tune as written. Admittedly it has a wide range and the end goes pretty high for many voices. In World War II when I was in high school, I played the organ (a four manual Skinner in the Kellogg Auditorium) at every assembly. After I had played the kids into the room with numbers like 'Tico-Tico' and 'I'll be seeing you', we all sang the National Anthem, as written. Admittedly, in those days we put the key down to A flat so the high note was an E flat, not a high F, but we sang it lustily.

This rage for reinventing the melody and words to suit one's 'style' is really pretty dumb.

Alexander Wolcott once said that the National Anthem should NEVER be sung, only recited by a boy whose voice is changing.

Maybe that's the answer, Christina.

Now it becomes clear

2011-02-04T14:44:00.004-05:00

A while back in this Puerto Rican series of blogs, I wrote lamenting the apparent lack of classical singers here in the island. Today the fog has finally lifted from my brain. Every afternoon I generally go to the beach, which is right outside the door of the Water Club, have the young man charge of beach chairs place one for me in the shade of a couple of palm trees, where I sit to read, do a crossword puzzle, or just watch my fellow beach-combers. To sleep, perchance to dream.

Today a group of young men arrived as I was still sitting on the front balcony, getting ready for my beach experience, bringing with them the Mother of what we used to call Ghetto Blasters. Blasting it was, at the highest possible decibels. The music, if it can be called that, was probably Salsa, Raegae, Rap, some such. None of them is a part of my musical vocabulary or interest. I realize that I am 'out of it' when it comes to 'Pop music. There was an incessant, possibly electronic, noisy beat going interminably, with a sort of Anglican Chant, I wouldn't call it singing, repeating the same words and monotone over and over. Hardly the Robert Shaw Chorale! Phillip Glass and John Adams meet Puerto Rico.

I have an incredibly one-track mind when it comes to reading a book. If there is music playing, no matter how annoying it may be, or how un-musical, I feel compelled to listen. Also, the volume at which this is played offends my poor ear drums; I'd like them to last another few years if possible.

I have heard the same kind of cacophony emitting from cars that drive up and down Calle Loisa, the main street a block behind the hotel. This, I guess, is the national music of Puerto Rico. I am too old and too square to understand it or enjoy it. The overall desire seems to be for repetition and volume.

The amazing thing about the young men on the beach with the Ghetto Blaster is that no one was paying any attention to it. They were talking, tossing a ball around, and when some young women showed up after a while, no one danced or moved to the sounds. I think this is a part of the modern fear of silence in so many young people. They all simply stood there, talking, as if the sound was not deafeningly going on- and on! We see them everywhere with ear buds plugged into their ears while walking, texting, and talking on their cell phones, often getting hit by cars, since they can't hear them coming. The idea that one could sit and read, or sit and think, quietly, apparently is archaic to them.

So it's no wonder that there are no opera singers from here. It's just not in the blood. Either that, or they have all lost their hearing.

P.S. This cacophony began at about 1:00 p.m. At 5:00 p.m. I heard them begin to leave the beach. They departed up the walkway, which is right under my windows, from the beach to Calle Loisa. I could hear the loud sounds long after they reached the main street. I predict a whole generation of deaf people in the next few years! What a boon for the hearing aid companies.

P.P.S. The same thing happened again yesterday all afternoon (Saturday) and into the evening. I wonder the neighbors don't complain. Today is the super bowl so maybe they, and their Ghetto Blaster will be glued to their TVs. Or maybe they'll bring a TV to the beach. Enough, already!

War in your living room

2011-02-03T07:50:00.001-05:00

In the Revolutionary War it took days or weeks for reports from the battlefield to reach the citizens of the country. In the Civil War a few brave reporters, photographers, and artists went into the field to send reports, photos and drawings to newspapers. In World War II my family and I sat around the radio and read Extras from our local newspapers to catch up on what was happening in Europe and in the Pacific.

Last night, in the comfort of my hotel room in Isla Verde, I witnessed at first hand the brave reporting of Richard Engel and Brian Williams perched high above the conflict going on in the streets of Cairo. Their cameras detailed Molotov Cocktails being thrown, bullets being fired, men on horses and camels with machetes and whips riding through the crowd of freedom seekers attacking them, tanks belching smoke screens to allow some of these attackers to escape, a truck pulled over and the driver beaten- Well, I was watching war live at my bedside.

It scares the hell out of me to see this happening in a country that for five thousand years has had an incredible history, parts of which were being destroyed in the Cairo Museum yesterday.

Our world is becoming more and more violent from the recent massacre in Arizona to the hate-filled rhetoric coming out of Washington to this frightening conflict in Egypt.

Somehow people must learn that violence only breeds more violence. We don't have to love everyone in the world, but we must be civil to them.

What are the chances of this happening?

Puerto Rico to Prague

2011-02-01T08:46:00.004-05:00

Yes, I am exploring every place that begins with a 'P'.

I will be flying to Prague in late March to visit my good friend Will, who is really a prince of a fellow and a real Prince. I mean really. His family, the Lobkowiczes go back seven hundred years in Bohemian and Czech history. He, with his family, has been in Prague for a number of years reclaiming and restoring a number of castles and works of art that were taken from the family in World War II and were given back in 1991 at the peaceful split up of the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The properties include a number of Castles, including the Lobkowicz Palace which stands next to the Royal Palace in Prague. Will studied voice with me at Harvard in the 80s and we have always kept in touch. While he is technically a Prince, he does not use the title. Titles are no longer being used in the Czech Republic. But he's still a prince to me.

The last time I was in Prague was in 1975. John Ferris and I were in Vienna checking up on the Hradetzky pipe organ that had been built for my church in Red Bank, NJ, and decided to visit East Germany and Czechoslovakia while we were there.

We obtained the proper visas and drove first to Leipzig, where Wilhelm Hoffman had arranged for us to visit a number of 'Bach' organs in the area. These are organs on which the great Baroque master had actually performed. It was a once in a lifetime experience. Everywhere we visited a church and its organ, the people would say to us, 'If only the Americans had not pulled back,we would be in West Germany!' So sad.

Leipzig was gloomy with long lines forming at every small shop for bread, meat, whatever. When the shop ran out of provisions, it closed for the day, leaving some people still in line.

Wilhelm invited us to his apartment for dinner one night. When I asked for driving directions, he told us to meet him at his church, the Nicolai Kirche, and walk with him to the apartment. He was planning to serve wine and told us that if we were stopped with wine on our breaths while driving, we would be arrested. When we were ready to go back to our hotel, he suggested that we walk through the enormous train station which was very near to our hotel. He said 'When you go through the station, remember that some people can actually get on a train and leave the country.'

From Leipzig we went on to Dresden, which was still largely in ruins from the war. Both cities were depressing, gray and unhappy.

Then we set out for Prague, which was still under Communist rule. When we reached the East German-Czech border, we got through German security without much of a problem, but when we drove on a bit to the Czech security point, it was a different story. We were pulled to one side while our documents and car were given a thorough examination. On the back seat of the car was our Czech guide book, Fodor or some such. The guard said to us 'I would like to see that book.' I handed it to him and he walked away. He was gone for at least twenty minutes. Eventually he returned and when I asked for my guidebook back he said 'I keep book, you go to Prague, I give you book, you go back to East Germany'.

We didn't have a choice. Of course, I had carefully mapped out our stay in Czechoslovakia in the book and was lost without it. At our hotel I bought another guide book in English but published in Czechoslovakia. It had almost none of the sites listed that we wanted to see. Lots of Russian monuments were there.

There was a youth festival going on in Prague at the time, and the sight of these bright young people skipping around hand in hand reminded me of Hitler Jügend, a youth movement in Nazi Germany during the war. It was scary.

Discouraged, we decided to cut short our stay and go back to Austria. Since we had had to pay in advance for our hotels, we had a hard time getting our money returned. They said they would mail it to us in the US. I think eventually a check did arrive; not for the full amount.

As we started driving out of Prague, heading for Austria, we were in a lot of traffic. It was the weekend and many citizens were heading into the countryside in their tiny little Russian built autos.

The nearer we got to the Czech-Austrian border, the fewer cars there were going our way. For the last several miles we were alone on the road. All by ourselves we crossed over the border into Austria. The name of the town was Freiburg. I nearly got out to kiss the ground!

That was a long time ago. I am looking forward to my trip back to Prague with much happier expectations. And to seeing my Prince and his lovely family.

The Skaters' Walze

2011-01-31T08:02:00.006-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I watched the men's Figure Skating Championship battle for the national prize. I must say that overall, the men's level of performance was more consistently higher than the women's the day before. I have no idea why this should be true- and what do I know about figure skating? I have an eye for the combination of technique and emotion, whether it's on the operatic stage or the ice rink. Maybe that's my criterion.

The first three young men who skated were each amazing. I don't think any of them made a mistake. I will never understand the grading system for figure skating. The 27 year old man that won did not complete either of his Quads in good shape. Each time he had to put down a hand to steady himself. Other than that he skated very well. I hated the music he chose to skate to, however.

The thing that really impressed me is that while I have been comparing figure skating to singing viv-a-vis technique and artistry, it is obviously more closely allied to ballet. In both cases someone is writing a choreography for the skater or the dancer to perform to some kind of music. I think that perhaps the reason it doesn't work as well in skating as in ballet, is that in ballet the choreographer fits the dance steps to a pre-ordained score, while in skating, with its obligatory figures that must be performed, the choreographer starts with the choreography and then tries to find music to fit.

This seems to result in having a mishmash of music from the same composer, or even different composers, fitted to a series of jumps and twirls. Once in a while this works, but often, in what I've seen in the past two days, it becomes disjointed and annoying musically.

I remember seeing ballets choreographed by the great George Ballanchine, where the dancer and the music were one from beginning to end. The ballerina went on point at exactly the moment that the music called for this to happen. The great dance choreographers were also great musicians and understood how dance and music must step together. Not always on the beat, which for a long time was the watchword of Mark Morris, but in line with the musical energy.

Years ago, when I was a church organist, I established in my church in Red Bank, New Jersey, a Sacred Dance Group which performed in church. Dance in church goes very far back in history. The altar boys in the cathedral in Seville danced a ritual on certain high holidays. The remarkable woman who was my choreographer, Winifred Widener, had danced under Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, and Doris Huymphrey, the three great originators of the modern dance movement. She choreographed works like Messiaen's Les Anges from his great organ suite La Nativité. The combination of great music and great choreography in my local church set people on their ear! Winifred often would say to her young dancers (these were teen-agers) 'move against the music, not always with it'. She produced magical results and our dance group performed in Barbados, Trinidad, and Tobago.

I seldom see this kind of greatness on the ice rink. Perhaps the skaters should just do all their jumps and leave the music to the dancers.

Ice skating in Puerto Rico

2011-01-30T08:02:00.002-05:00

Last night I had to take a break from the grim news coming out of Egypt. One of my Smith students has been spending some time in Egypt this year. I hope and pray that she was only there for the fall term. I spoke with a colleague at Smith yesterday asking her to check up on my former student to make sure that she is home and safe.

Last night, to get a reprieve from the bad news, I watched the US Women's Figure Skating Competition. Again I am struck with the similarity of performing as a figure skater and performing as a singer. I have not been on ice skates since I was in high school. And I was no figure skater! A few of us would go to McCamley Park in Battle Creek and stagger around the frozen pond. Since it was only about two feet deep, there was no fear of falling through the ice. None of us tried to be Sonja Henie, who was the great skater of the day.

In both singing and skating there are a few common points to observe if you want to achieve success. First of all, you must make your technique a second nature, so that when you perform you can forget thinking about the technique and just go for it.

Last night I especially enjoyed Scott Hamilton's quiet comments while the young women were on the ice. I don't know if he teaches, but he would be a great teacher. He would exult when they pulled off a difficult triple something or other, and be sad for them when they fell on their butt.

It's the way I feel when listening to one of my students perform, especially when I am not at the piano with them. It's not too big a secret that the pianist has a lot to do with what happens with any singer or instrumentalist, in spite of the fact that in newspaper reviews we are generally given one line indicating that we were there!

One young woman, who won first place last night, skated above the ice. She floated through a complicated program and made it look easy. A fine singer does the same thing. Both need to so completely absorb the technical aspects of their art that one doesn't watch or listen to technique, the listener simply smiles in amazement at how simple and inevitable everything looks. Clarity, ease, precision, perfection.

Several of the skaters were all about the technique and seemed to be hitting the viewer over the head with how difficult everything was. It made me tired to watch them. They looked clumsy and uncomfortable on the ice. You knew ahead of time when they were going to take a fall.

I have seen the same thing happen with singers who try so hard to sing that it becomes a burden. I find that at any level a wise singer should make singing look easy.

'Art is the emotion played on the technique'. This motto can work for both singers and skaters. Both face the same fear of falling on their butts, literally or figuratively.

So singers should watch the really great figure skaters as well as the really great singers to see how it can be done. Then absorb your technique and 'just sing the damned song!!'

Another Puerto Rican singer or two

2011-01-29T08:18:00.004-05:00

With a little help from Wikipedia I have found two more classical singers from Puerto Rico, Amalia and Antonio Paoli, sister and brother. (Sounds Italian, right? The father was from Corsica (like Napoleon) and the mother from an island off the coast of Venezuela.) They grew up in Ponce, a Spanish colonial city, in the south of Puerto Rico. I visited Ponce several years ago. It is a charming city and a great producer of Puerto Rican rum.

Antonio had the more brilliant career of the two. He was born in 1871, dying in 1946 in San Juan. He was called 'The King of Tenors' and 'The Tenor of Kings'. He sang before many crowned heads of Europe during his career. Amalia was born in 1861 and became well known in Puerto Rico as a fine singer, receiving a scholarship to study in Spain. She was a soprano.

She managed to bring her entire family to Spain with her. Her brother, whose full name was Antonio Emilio Paoli y Marcano, was under the protection of Isabel de Bourbon, Princess of Asturias, the sister of the king of Spain. Thanks to Queen Maria Christina, Queen of Spain, he was given a scholarship to study in Italy. At one point he served the Queen as guard to her son, King Alfonso XIII. He studied at the Academia de Canto La Scala in Milano.

He made his major operatic début in Paris in William Tell of Rossini. The French newspapers declared that he should be named ' The Tenor of France'. During his career he was often compared to Enrico Caruso, singing throughout Europe, the Americas, and world-wide. Just before World War I he lost his voice and had a career as a boxer! Later the voice returned and he continued to sing and to teach voice.

Eventually, he returned to Puerto Rico where he attempted to start a Conservatory of Music which never came to fruition. This may explain the dearth of opera singers from Puerto Rico.

Justino Diaz was born in 1944, nearly one hundred years after Amalia Paoli, and has had a major operatic career. So far, these seem to be the major opera singers Puerto Rico has produced.

Sing a tropical song?

2011-01-28T07:43:00.000-05:00

I have been scratching my head to think of opera singers who have come from Puerto Rico. I checked it out on the web and found only the name of Justino Diaz who has had a real career. A couple of the other singers listed had Italian names, which makes sense. (I am Italian, so may be biased!) But none was familiar to me.

What made me consider this is that some years ago John Ferris and I taught in the British West Indies. We worked with church organists and with church choirs in Barbados, St. Vincent, Trinidad, and Tobago. The singing was simply beautiful. These singers could stay right on pitch while singing a capella for hours on end. We attributed their lovely voices and abilities to the salubrious weather. The sound they produced was effortless and wonderful. Puerto Rico certainly has the same glorious weather so I'd like to hear some singers here to see if the same thing is true.

I'm sure that Puerto Rico has produced many singers. Certainly in the ethnic and pop fields there are several who are well-known, but where are the classical singers? It may be that there has not been a tradition of opera or classical singing in the Island.

I'll keep looking for others besides Diaz who have had major careers and let you know what I find.

Amor mio!

2011-01-27T17:47:00.001-05:00

I have fallen in love with Walgreens!

As embarrassing as it is to write that sentence, it is the gospel truth. As a depression baby, I admit to looking for ways to save money, especially when I am staying at an expensive vacation hotel. I am also looking forward to spending next January and February in a condo next door to this hotel next winter and I like to plan ahead.

While there are several nice restaurants withing walking distance to the hotel, and while I dine there from time to time, once in a while I just want a sandwich for supper.

The Walgreens just down the block from the hotel, and right across the street from next year's condo, is simply amazing in the variety of items it stocks. Maybe all Walgreens have this same combination of things we can't live without, but since this is the first Walgreens I've been in for a while, I was amazed!

I get my continental breakfast here at the hotel: a Quesita and a Majorca with tea and pineapple juice. But from there I'm on my own. I find I can get lunch and the occasional supper from Walgreens right across the street. Once I'm living here next winter, I can add breakfast to the items I can buy there. Cereal, eggs, milk, cheese, lettuce, you name it

There is a Super Mercado about a fifteen minite walk from here where I went today to get fresh fruit and a few other items, but other than that, it's Walgreens for me! The walk is good for me, but I don't want to carry too heavy a load of groceries home with me. Next winter I will call a cab to come home from the Mercado when I have too much to carry.

There are two very nice restaurants within walking distance: Mi Casita and a Chinese restaurant. Mi Casita is muy tipico. We had lunch there on Sunday when my friends from Connecticut, Elisa and Joe, joined me for the day. Their cruise ship docked early that morning in old San Juan and their flight to Bradley didn't leave until 7:00 p.m. that night. At Mi Casita Elisa and I had a wonderful grilled chicken salad with a pitcher of delicious Sangria, and Joe had chicken with rice and beans. Everything was great. We sat on the beach, we sat on the balcony, we strolled around, and had a great time together. The other night I ate at the Chinese restaurant and had a very good Orange Chicken. I seem to be on a chicken frenzy! There are a couple of other restaurants withing walking distance which I will try in the next few days.

But tonight it was a ham and cheese sandwich from Walgreens.

God, I love that place!

Morning sounds

2011-01-27T07:48:00.000-05:00

It's delightful to waken here in Isla Verde to the sounds of a Puertorican morning. My windows, I have eight facing the sea, are always open and in the otherwise silent morning hours, the sounds of the sea, rolling up against the white sandy beach, a distant rooster sounding the alarm, reminding me of summer in Sandisfield, and a little brown dog in the private house under my window coming out and barking to wake anyone who missed the rooster's cry, are my alarm clock.

There are three elegant private homes next to the hotel, still standing among all the glamorous high-rises that line the beach. They are immaculately maintained and I'm sure are worth a fortune. The property must be worth several million dollars. I wonder how long they will last?

My morning ritual begins with turning on WNBC from New York City to see how many feet of snow fell last night (often one or more!). Then after my shower, I go to the fitness room downstairs and spend fifteen or twenty minutes on the treadmill to get my heart started. At home, after about seven minutes on the treadmill, I begin to wheeze.

Then, today at least, come to the Business Room to check my email and write today's blog.

The amazing thing about this salubrious climate is that all my winter respiratory symptoms, runny eyes, runny nose, wheezy lungs, have disappeared! I wonder if I can take the trip off my income tax as a medical benefit?

Fat chance!!

I'm hooked!

2011-01-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

Call me crazy, but I just put a deposit on a condo here on the beach for next January and February! Someone had to do it.

Paradise lost?

2011-01-26T11:33:00.002-05:00

Even Paradise has its drawbacks, apparently. Today I decided to take the public bus down to Old San Juan. I've been there a number of times during previous trips, but I thought I would pay the old town another visit. I've always taken the bus in the past. The bus stop is just a block from the Water Club so I strode over there expecting to board and ride it to the old city. There were about eight people waiting at the Parada. Apparently, they had already been there for a while. After about twenty minutes, a taxi slowed down in front of us in the street and held up three fingers; this meant he would charge each of us three dollars to take us to Old San Juan. I decided to wait for the bus thinking that as soon as they sped off in the taxi, the bus would come.

Actually, it did. Packed to the doors! I decided to skip the bus ride and the old town and return to the hotel. I often sit on a large balcony over the entrance where I can enjoy the breezes and read a book in peace and quiet. For two days a man with a large cigar has shown up when I was there, filling the ocean breeze with something besides the aroma of seaweed! Today he has apparently gone his smokey way. Instead, I got a cigarette smoker. The Hotel is smoke free so I guess that this is the hangout for the lung cancer seekers.

Apparently the buses do not run on a schedule of any kind. "Not even of any kind!', as the valet said in The Importance of Being Earnest', when Algernon had eaten all the cucumber sandwiches promised to Lady Bracknell, and Ernest asked him if there were no cucumbers in the market..

There are only two buses for this route: the T5. One comes from either end of the long route. You can wait up to an hour for it to arrive.

I've seen the millions of gift shops in Old San Juan enough that I may just decide to stay here in pleasant Isla Verde and skip the bus and another visit to the old city.

Guilt trip?

2011-01-24T14:07:00.002-05:00

I have been speaking to and emailing friends back in the frozen north and have learned that they are having night time temperatures that are far below zero and daytime readings that are not much above that point.

I really feel a little guilty basking in daytime temperatures in the 80s and nights that don't go much below 70.

But not too much!

C'est la vie! You bet!

2011-01-21T12:27:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I looked at a couple of rentals in the tall apartment building right next to The Water Club. I'm thinking that next winter I may spend an extended time here in Isla Verde. The one I liked is on the 16th floor with amazing views in every direction and soft breezes blowing in every window.

The beach here is extraordinary. It stretches for miles in both directions in one long, gentle curve. You can see all the way to Old San Juan to the west. This afternoon, stretched out in my beach chair, watching the various shapes and sizes strolling by or tanning, I found I was getting the rear view of a young woman in a bikini who should have looked in a rear-view mirror before putting on that particular number. Rolls upon rolls.

The neighborhood has lots of shops and restaurants and, of course, apartment buildings. I find the people here to be very sweet, gentle folk.

I'm catching up on my reading under a couple of palm trees. At my age, this is the life!

Warm is better than cold

2011-01-20T15:28:00.000-05:00

I am spending the next three weeks in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico at the Water Club Hotel. Already the winter in Massachusetts smacks too much of Greenland. The tropical breezes on this white sandy beach, just steps from the front door of the hotel, lure me to recline in a beach chair with a good book and a crossword puzzle watching all the people wearing swim suits they should not be wearing. I am fairly modest in shorts, sandals, and a shirt, staying under some palm trees to avoid turning bright red. Not a lot of musical opportunities here, but I am storing up heat for my return in three weeks.

Keep cool up north!

Teacher! Teacher!

2011-01-15T16:28:00.010-05:00

I had another wonderful afternoon's conversation with my friend whom we shall call 'The Other Voice Teacher'. It is amazing how many things we agree on! Imagine, two voice teachers agreeing on anything? She has had an even longer career as performer and teacher than I and we enjoy getting together and talking SINGING and SINGERS!

Today, one of the topics was the use of imagery in teaching voice. Both of us use it extensively in our own work. When a friend and student of mine was writing her doctoral dissertation some time ago, she chose the topic The Use of Imagery in Teaching Singing. She interviewed a number of singers and teachers on the subject, including my friend and myself, and came up with a wonderful study of this part of a singing teacher's arsenal.

I told my teacher-friend of a German mezzo-soprano who was singing the alto part in the St. Matthew Passion of Bach in a performance at which I was playing organ continuo and at which a student of mine was singing the soprano solos. This mezzo, in the first rehearsal, asked the conductor, 'Do you want this with or without emotion?' She managed to sing everything on the flat side of the pitch so I assume that she was singing 'without'. Maybe imagery would have helped her performance and her pitch. My student, who has perfect pitch, had a great time in the duet trying to tune to this unemotional tuning!

My doctoral student interviewed one singer, a tenor at the Met, who said he never used imagery; neither did his teacher. Both my friend and I agreed that singing , or teaching, without using imagery is a lot harder that singing and teaching with it. I think that singers who don't use imagery as a part of their technique must have a much more difficult time producing beautiful, free sounds. It must be boring just to sing the notes 'without emotion', which imagery surely inspires.

Olga Averino, with whom both of us had studied at various times, always said that she assumed that every singer wanted to make clear, free, beautiful sounds. Obviously, this doesn't always happen. If you are producing your voice simply from a physical to-do list, it is just not going to work as well as using your own set of images. Olga often said, 'If you think what you want to happen before you do it, it's very apt to happen'.

We also got on the subject of wobble-itis and decibel-itis, which seem to be popular parts of so many vocal techniques in today's operatic world. My friend and Mentor, Searle Wright, when wishing someone well before a concert always said: 'Sing Good! If you can't sing good, sing loud!!' Too many singers take only the last part of this to heart.

I remember asking my dear friend, the late, great dramatic soprano, Lucilla Udovich in Rome, why so many sopranos were wobbling these days. Lucille had a wonderful, sonorous voice without a sign of a wobble. You can hear her on the VCR of Turandot opposite Franco Correlli as proof. She replied, 'I guess they think that's what opera singers are supposed to sound like'. You can find out more about this wonderful singer whose career was shortened by back trouble, on Wikipedia. In the 80's she and I did concerts together in this country with her sitting down to sing. At that point she was not able to stand for any length of time. What a voice! She also did Master Classes for my students in New Jersey and at Harvard while she was in the USA.

This afternoon we went on to talk about body position- posture. My friend said when she saw a singer's chest push down when they were going for a high note, she knew it was going to be a catastrophe. You must keep your body in a line at all times. I brought up a famous diva whose beautiful voice turned sour because, in my humble opinion, of the tight-fitting gowns she insisted on wearing. There was just no place for the air to go. She was taking gasping, high breaths with heaving shoulders and chest. No-no!

We talked about how everyone's voice changes as one matures. The wise singer changes with it. Otherwise it will have disastrous consequences. She reminded me of the joint concert Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano did years ago which ended both of their careers. It was hard to pick who sang worse. They both had had wonderful instruments, but they were at a point in their lives when they should have retooled. My friend told me that when she had sung with de Stefano in Vienna, he would often have to quit after the first act! Just pooped out. Not good!

I heard a tenor do this in a performance of Turandot that Sarah Caldwell put on at the Boston Opera House. Eva Marton was the Princess. In Act II, when she sang 'Straniero! and turned her face side to side to reach every corner of the hall, the first three rows of audience fainted from the gorgeous blast. I had never heard such a loud, and beautiful, voice. Unfortunately for the tenor, he tried to match her, decibel for decibel, a sort of operatic 'Anything you can sing, I can sing louder!' Well, he couldn't. And by 'Nessun dorma', he was whispereing. The love duet became a soprano solo with him gasping in the sidelines.

All in all it was a great afternoon. We're going to get together again when I return from Puerto Rico at which time she has offered to hear one of my students, who is preparing for a major audition, sing an aria that my friend premièred and is still the unquestioned definitive portrayer of that role.

On the way home I caught the last part of the Met's broadcast of La Traviata on my car radio. I was underwhelmed with the singing. As I told my friend, upon leaving, 'I'm getting to the point where I just don't like singers, just like Olga Averino!' At least not many at the Met these days.

Grumpy old man!!

Doggone!

2011-01-14T23:42:00.001-05:00

Lady, Laddie, Benjy, Taffy, Toulouse II, Sissy (Hüpferl von Ferchensee), Benjy, Zumba, Casha.

These have been the dogs in my life. I miss them all. They just break your heart by dying before you do.

Fela, musician, composer, activist

2011-01-13T19:37:00.003-05:00

I spent this afternoon at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington at the invitation of my friends Ben and Susie. The Mahaiwe is a 1905 theatre that has been beautifully restored in every aspect except the heating. On this frigid January afternoon I had to put my outside coat back on at the intermission to keep my teeth from chattering.

The whole purpose of this trip was to see the live telecast from London of Fela, a musical theatre piece presented by the English National Theatre, which had been presented in New York City and around the world earlier. It is based on the tragic and frustrating life of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who was a Nigerian multi-instrument musician and composer, pioneer of afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick. (Wikipedia-source)

Born in 1938 into a family where his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a feminist activist, and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was a protestant minister, he went to London to study medicine in 1958 but studied music instead at the Trinity College of Music. He later went to Ghana to find new musical direction and was the inventor of 'afrobeat'.

This play, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, is a musical journey through his life as a musician and as an activist. Coming to the United States in 1969, he became influenced by the 'Black Panther Movement', which greatly influenced his views on life and on freedom.

This play with music begins before it begins, with a sort of 'Hello Symphony'. Actors and musicians are on stage in the gloom doing various things including speaking, singing quietly, and playing various instruments before the action actually begins.

Since there is no curtain for the stage, there is nothing to go up to signify the play is on. But the real action finally begins. The person portraying Fela, a lithe, muscular young man, played and sang the title role with incredible energy and stamina. I have never seen anyone sweat this much on stage since I witnessed Elliot Gould's Broadway début ( with his soon-to-be wife, Barbra Streisand in I can get it for you Wholesale) at which time sweat poured off him every time he moved. This is often called 'Flop-Sweat!. It is a danger to your co-actors. In this case, I don't think it was flop-sweat; simply the result of incredible physical and emotional energy being released. This part demands that the title character is on stage the entire time, singing, dancing, emoting, leaping about, all of which this man did wonderfully well. He must lose five pounds at every performance.

To me, the first act went on too long, in spite of the eleven Tonies it achieved on Broadway. The incessant 'afrobeat' music after a while becomes like the Japanese 'Water Torture Technique'. I would have confessed to almost anything to have it stop. A large cast of beautiful and talented dancers, who occasionally sing, surrounded the star. But he is the steel at the center of this production.

In the Interval, as the British would have it, nothing really stopped. Someone was playing the same five notes on a finger harp for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Whew! Thank you, John Adams. There nearly went my sanity. As you can tell, I have a short fuse when it comes to mindless repetition of the same few notes.

The second act was more emotionally connective for me, at any rate, and not as frenetic as the first act. The woman who sang the part of Fela's mother has an extraordinary voice and an unbelievable vocal range- (see Yma Sumac!) This act detailed the beatings and imprisonment that Fela endured as an activist (he attempted to run, unsuccessfully, for President of Nigeria) in his struggle for a free country. His mother was defenestrated and mortally injured during this period. The second act goes into a 'Dream' sequence in which his ghostly mother sings an unbelievably beautiful aria with about a four octave range!

All in all this was an energetic afternoon watching a musical idiom that is not exactly my cup of tea, but which, eventually, with the help of this amazing cast, drew me into the pathos of this story.

At the end, Bill T. Jones, bare from the waist up, lept onto the stage and proved that he can still do something besides choreograph. You should probably see this!

Let it Snow!!!

2011-01-12T14:21:00.003-05:00

'The weather outside is frightful!' We had two feet of snow here at Rood Hill Farm last night. It was up to my knees! No problem! This morning not one, but three of my dear neighbors arrived to tunnel me out. One, with a huge tractor and enormous snow blower (it looked like what happens at Butternut Basin when they are making snow for skiing, except this was happening in my driveway!), one with a snow plow, and my young 'technical assistant for the computer' to dig out my snow-smothered car.

I guess they thought that I would perish in the snow storm high atop Rood Hill, like poor Baby Doe Tabor did up there in the Rockies all those years ago. (Listen to Douglas Moore's opera of the same name, based on a true story. For some reason, he was called 'Peaches' when I was getting my degree in the Music School at Columbia all those years ago. He was the head of the department at the time.)

Do I have great neighbors, or what!!??

The Gilded Stage

2011-01-02T22:35:00.003-05:00

I am in the midst of reading a fascinating book entitled The Gilded Stage, A Social History of Opera by Daniel Snowman. This is a Christmas gift from one of my voice students and I simply love it!.

It traces the world of opera from Monteverdi and before to the present. I am at the moment entranced by the world of Beethoven and Napoléon. The author, as the title suggests, not only covers operas from various musical and historical eras, but comments on what was going on in the world socially and politically at the same time. Beethoven, whose hero was Napoléon at one point in his life, later denounced the Emperor and changed the symphony he was planning to dedicate to Bonaparte to the Eroica or Heroic Symphony. He also changed the dedication from Napoleon to Prince Lobkowicz.

Interestingly enough, the present Prince Lobkowicz (if they still have princes in the Czech Republic) is a former voice student of mine, William Lobkowicz. He studied voice with me at Harvard, has a beautiful baritone voice, and we did a number of concerts together. Will visited me in Sandisfield this summer with his lovely wife Sandra. They have lived in Prague for the past twenty years reclaiming and refurbishing a number of castles that were taken from the family in World War I, in World War II again, and yet again by the Russians during the Cold War. Will told me that they are currently constructing a large library to hold seven hundred years of Lobkowicz documents.

Beethoven also dedicated the Missa Solemnis and his fifth and sixth symphonies to the earlier Prince Lobkowicz, who was one of his greatest patrons. William is carrying on the family tradition of supporting music by presenting a number of concerts in the Lobkowicz Palace next to the Royal Palace in Prague.

It just tickles me how history can suddenly catch your breath! Bringing the past right into your living room.

William is doing a marvelous job pulling together the Lobkowicz collection which includes musical scores, priceless works of art, and many, many historical documents. Good work! Will! I hope that you are still singing!!

What's going on?

2010-12-20T19:38:00.009-05:00

I had an interesting conversation today with a friend of mine who is also a voice teacher about the current state of the art of teaching. We agreed that too many singers are coming out of music schools without an idea of how to sing.

I have had any number of singers come to me after years of study, either private or in music school, who when asked about breathing, shrug their shoulders and give me a pathetic look. My friend said that she has had the same experience.

To me, the knowledge of how to sing begins with the knowledge of how to breathe. Not just every day ho-hum breathing, but deep singing breathing. How anyone can complete a degree from a reputable music school and still not know this technique is beyond me.

I begin every first lesson with a full explanation and demonstration of what I consider a good singing breath. I advocate listening to the sound the air makes as it passes down your throat. One should hear 'ah' or 'aw', never 'ih'. The latter sound means that the singer is not allowing the larynx to relax with the inhalation. When one inhales with the 'ah' or 'aw' sound in the air passage, one gets a deep breath and allows the larynx to relax.

To me, Ça va sans dire. The deep relaxing breath solves a multitude of vocal problems. Rather than try to solve each problem separately, this kind of breath is a panacea, a way to breath and sing with flexibility and ease.

One student of mine, who had worked with me for only a year when I had to close my New York and New Jersey studios, told me that she was studying with a new voice teacher who 'taught just like you do!' When she sang for me, all the work we had done together was lost. She was right back where she started. I asked her what her new teacher had said about breathing, since hers had deteriorated radically since I last had heard her. She told me that after several lessons she asked him why he had never mentioned breathing to her. He answered, "I never will'. I ask you!

We discussed how teachers are hired by music schools. Often it is on the basis of having had a career in opera or concert singing. Does anyone ever ask to see the person actually teach a lesson? Many fine singers make rotten teachers, simply because while they know how they sing, present them with a student who has problems, and they are lost as to how to solve them.

I find that as soon as a student learns how to take a deep, open breath, and the larynx relaxes, ten other problems disappear at once. It's not magic, it's technique.

Someone once said: 'Art is the emotion expressed on the technique'. This is true if one is a painter, a dancer, or a singer. Without a good technical background, the most beautiful voice will have a short career. Wonderful singers who had to face this problem include Renata Tebaldi and Renata Scotto. They both started with extraordinary voices that simply didn't hold up. I heard each of them scream out a high note on the stage of the Met toward the end of their careers.

My friend and I agreed that a woman's voice has a harder time stabilizing after menopause than a man's voice at the same age. Régine Crespin for instance, after having had a long career as a dramatic soprano, and, on experiencing some difficulties in her vocal range, after some time off, retooled, came back and had a long career as a mezzo. Not everyone is this wise.

We agreed that as the voice matures, very often the singer, either male or female, may need to change their repertoire to fit the current state of their instrument.

One of my pet peeves is the amount of vibrato I hear in many soprano voices today. Listening to the Met last Saturday, I had to turn off the radio. The soprano's vibrato was making me dizzy. If you listen to singers back a generation or so, you never, or seldom heard this kind of vibrato in a trained voice. Maria Callas, in her later days of singing, developed a vibrato you could drive a truck through. She, and some others, were 'natural singers' who were wonderful until something happened in their life to upset their equilibrium. I doubt if they ever really knew how they sang.

It would be so fine if voice teachers learned how to transmit this kind of information to young singers. The singers would have longer careers and I would get fewer head-aches!

A new Mantra for those over 30!

2010-12-15T08:39:00.000-05:00

My dear friend Mary Carter gave this mantra to several of us who all turned 80 this year.

"Old is our game. Mere failure to be young in not interesting!"

Here, here!!

Hey! I'm on Youtube! At my age.

2010-12-10T21:24:00.002-05:00

Thanks to a very bright young friend of mine, Ryan Salame, I am now on Youtube. Ryan has been my technical advisor on all things electronic since he was about 13 and still is at the advanced age of 17. I have no idea what he does, but it always works!

I asked him if he could put a DVD that was made in 2005 on the web and here it is. It is my farewell performance as a concert organist. The reason for my coming out of retirement to do this concert was that it was the thirtieth anniversary of the installation of the magnificent tracker organ built for the First Methodist Church of Red Bank, NJ, under my supervision, by the wonderful Austrian organ builder Gerhard Hradetsky.

For twenty-one years I was the Director of Music and Fine Arts at the church. I had met Gerhard in 1970 when performing at Stefansdom in Vienna, heard some of his organs, and determined that this was the man I wanted to build the new tracker organ for the church. It was installed in 1975. It is a marvelous instrument.

I have played organ concerts throughout the United States and in Haderslev and Copenhagen, Denmark, Hamburg and Berlin, Germany, Vienna, Austria, and at the Basilique du Sacré Coeur in Paris. I have made organ tours of the British West Indies, performing in Barbados, St. Vincent, Trinidad, and Tobago. I appeared with Gertrude Neidlinger, concert comedienne in Bemuda following my Carnegie Hall début with her in 1967. I was at the piano for the performances with her. I stopped performing publicly on the organ in the late 1990's. I emerged from retirement in 2000 to play the twenty-fifth anniversary of the organ and again in 2005 for its thirtieth birthday party.

The composition I chose to play, Clérambault's Suite du Deuxième Ton, was the first composition to be heard publically on this instrument at its dedication in 1975. It opened the morning service which included a brass quartet and a chorus of one hundred singers. My own choir was joined by The Shrewsbury Chorale under Paul Grammer, for which I had served as organist for many years. It was a glorious day!

The movements of the suite are Plein Jeu, Duo, Trio, Basse de Cromorne, Flûtes, Récit de Nazard, and Sur les Grands Jeux. As in most live recordings of concerts, someone had to have a coughing fit during the softest piece: Flûtes. The choir, as you will see, at this performance, was seated all around me in the rear gallery of the church, and the culprit was evidently right in front of the mike! 'C'est la vie', as Clérambault himself might have said. I don't appear even to hear him as I played. Concentration!

If you would like to view this DVD,go to http://www.youtube.com/ to the Search line at the top of the page and type Herbert Burtis organist. If God is good, this should get you to the right place. Enjoy!

Reinvention

2010-12-08T16:51:00.013-05:00

As I look back over my 80 1/2 years, I seem to be always reinventing myself. I've decided that's the way to stay young.

To many people today I am known as a voice teacher. A new student is sometimes surprised that I can sit down at the piano and play whatever song they bring to sing for me.

I started life in Battle Creek, Michigan as a pianist at age 9. It was the depression, so I couldn't start lessons until we could spend the dollar a week. I worked hard at my craft and began performing concerts throughout my high school years. I often accompanied singers in their recitals.

Then I went to Michigan State College for two years and became an organ major. I still played the piano, of course, and I accompanied for one of the voice faculty who was preparing a concert. A member of the piano faculty played the concert; and not terribly well!

I had begun studying voice in high school with Maylon Searns, a Scandinavian tenor who would have me stand on his stomach to show me how strong those muscles should be to sing. I'm not kidding! It's a wonder I didn't kill him. I was good sized even then

I continued studying voice at Michigan State with Harriet Hiller Birchall. I was never asked to stand on her stomach. She was a good teacher. I majored in organ under Helen Roberts Sholl, a great teacher.

I came to New York City in 1950 to continue my undergraduate work at Columbia University. I studied organ with Claire Coci and Vernon de Tar. I studied voice with Mrs. Neidlinger, a good teacher if a bit crazy. But then, aren't we all? I also studied harpsichord with the great Gustav Leonhardt. In a moment of madness, I studied harp with Nancy Shank and actually played a few times in public. I had no shame, apparently.

A bit later I started accompanying lessons for
Anna Hamlin, a very good teacher, with whom I also studied. She was the head of the voice department at Smith and came to New York every weekend to teach mostly former Smithies, most notably, Judith Raskin. Judy was a lovely soprano and died much too young. She would sometimes coach with me after her lessons with Anna.

I had a series of church jobs, but the best and most rewarding was as Searle Wright's Assistant Organist and Choirmaster at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia. I did that until about 1958. At this point I began coaching and teaching singing to some of the members of the St. Paul's choir. I also worked with a very fine mezzo-soprano, Pamela Munson, who wound up at the Met.

I went on to get my Master of Sacred Music Degree at The School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, right across Broadway from Columbia. I came under the spell of many musicians and great theologians who were teaching there.

I continued in church music in Red Bank, NJ for twenty-one years, teaching piano, voice, and organ. Students in all of these fields often went on to music schools and careers in music. I was a general factotum, also directing plays, hanging art shows, and doing organ recitals. Twice I performed the complete organ works of Bach; once in Red Bank in sixteen concerts, and a year later at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia, in fourteen concerts in fifteen weeks.I also conducted the St. John Passion of Bach in Red Bank and played a total of sixty organ concerts that year.At the same time I directed and produced Tennesse William's The Glass Menagerie. Whew! It was quite a year.

Through all of this I continued to teach voice. In 1979 I left Red Bank and taught voice at Harvard University for ten years. I left Harvard in 1990 and kept teaching voice in New Jersey (flying down once a month for forty-four students) and at Harvard for twenty-eight students. I opened a New York City studio on West 90th Street off Broadway where I taught another twelve or so singers.

At this time I did some vocal work with the amazing and fascinating Olga Averino. I didn't always agree with her technically, but she was an inspiration to me as a friend and mentor.

In 2005 my life partner, John Ferris became very ill with Parkinson's disease and I had to close both the New Jersey and New York studios. I did a little teaching at my home, Rood Hill Farm, in Sandisfield, MA. After John's death in 2008, Jane Bryden, a long-time student and friend who was on the voice faculty at Smith College, asked me to teach there; which I did until this fall. I now teach exclusively at my home in Sandisfield.

In the meantime, six of my students have sung at the Met and other major opera houses throughout the world, most notably, the late, very dear, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

So reinvention is my game, voice teacher is my name- for the moment. So far it has worked just fine. Try it!

The fabulous Elektra Ensemble

2010-12-02T18:52:00.006-05:00

The Ferris-Burtis Foundation of the Berkshire-Taconic Foundation, is pleased to announce that The Elektra Ensemble is being added to the roster of young artists whom we assist in furthering their careers. A brilliant trio, they will be a welcome addition to this list. http://elektraensemble.org/

The three extraordinary musicians are Brunilda Myftaraj, violin, Melissa Morgan, 'cello, and Igor Lovchinsky, piano.

Ms. Myftari is the first prize winner of the Van Rooy Competition, the Emerson Quartet Competition, and has been a finalist in the Young Artist Guild of New York, the Indianapolis International Violin Competition, and the Lipitzer Competition in Gorizia, Italy. Her teachers have included Piero Faulli of the Quartetto Italiano, Alberto Lissy, Phil Setzer, Eugene Drucker, Rafael Druian, and Renato Bonacini.

Melissa Morgan has performed throughout the United States and Canada as a member of the Bella Cosi String Quartet, at the Piano and Friends Chamber Music Series in Tucson, Arizona, the Mostly Mozart Series in Napa Valley, and the Shubert Club in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has also been featured on radio stations in New York, Conecticut, and Massachusetts. Her teachers include Stephen Doane and Bonnie Hampton. She has studied chamber music with Isaac Stern, Isadore Cohen, Daniel Asholomov, Paul Katz, the Juilliard String Quartet, the Guarneri String Quartet, and the Saint Louis String Quartet.

Igor Levchinsky has been hailed by Gramophone Magazine as 'a star of the future', by Germany's Piano Magazine as 'Having elegance and rapturous beauty in his musicianship.' He has performed at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall, the Bushnell Center in Hartford, CT, and the Ohio Theatre. He has played solo piano recitals in Warsaw, Beijing, and Calgary among other international engagements.

The Ferris-Burtis Foundation will help support this exciting trio in their musical career. The Foundation was established in 1987 by the late John Ferris, University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard for thirty-two years, and by Herbert Burtis. Mr. Burtis's career includes teaching voice at Harvard and at Smith College, and an international career as a pianist and organist. He is a well-known voice teacher, whose student, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sang throughout the world. Six of his students have performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

The Foundation encourages interested people to help us support these young artists, who with violinist, Yevgeny Kutik, also under the Foundation, are in emerging careers at the highest musical level.

Tax-free gifts are welcome. If you would like to assist the Foundation in its work, you may contact the Berkshire-Taconic Foundation, Ferris-Burtis Foundation at 800 North Main Street, Sheffield, MA, 1257-0400, or on line at: http://www.berkshiretaconic.org/.

For Phyllis

2010-11-25T15:09:00.004-05:00

This seems to be my day to blog! Three, or two and a half, in 12 hours. It's the Prednisone!

A friend in New York City sent me a message this morning after reading my Sondheim blog, about the time she was taken backstage at City Opera to meet Phyllis Curtin after a performance of Carlyle Floyd's Susannah. She had been enchanted by Phyllis's performance. Well, who wasn't enchanted by Phyllis? Anyway, I forwarded Lily's email to Phyllis at once and got a sweet reply. Susannah has been playing a part in my life recently since one of my students has been performing 'Ain't it a pretty night' in concert with me.

Phyllis and I have been friends for a good long time. I heard many of her performances at City Opera and at the Met as well as places like Sanders Theatre at Harvard. She may shoot me for telling this story, but at Sanders,some years ago, she was performing Pierrot Lunaire. For some reason I was seated in the front row, just at the level of her feet. With her usual elegance she sailed through that difficult work with blazing colors, looking cool as a cucumber. I was impressed that in the open-toed shoes she was wearing, I could see her great toe keeping accurate time throughout the performance. The ultimate artist, but you still have to count.

I heard Phyllis sing Vittorio Giannini's Taming of the Shrew more times that just about any one, I think. My good friend, Dorothy Fee, a composer and kindergarten teacher in Newark at the time, was Vittorio's librettist for the opera. Actually, of course, Shakespeare was the librettist.

Dorothy told Vittorio that she was not going to try to match words with the Immortal Bard. So she lifted words from Romeo and Juliet, and from the Sonnets when Vittorio would call and say, 'Dottie, I have to have more words. The music is still happening in this aria and I'm out of words!'. Dorothy would go on a poetic search through the works of The Bard of Avon (whoever he really was) and come up with appropriate texts.

The reason I saw Shrew so many times is that Dorothy attended every performance that year and I went along as her escort. I think that Phyllis sang every performance but one, when the wife of the baritone (whose name I can't remember) sang, not all that well. I heard them all.

I also saw her in Susannah many times that same season. I can still see her leaning back on the rooftop of the house, her long dark hair trailing, singing 'Ain't it a pretty night?', stage moonlight giving her a warm glow that was matched by her golden voice.

Later I saw her at the Met and other venues, got to know her personally, and often attended her master classes at Tanglewood. Several of my students were in those classes over the years. So we have shared teaching responsibilities.

We also shared the same teacher. Olga Averino, whose name has appeared many times in these pages was a great mentor to me, as I'm sure she was to Phyllis. There is a wonderful tribute to Olga on You Tube now, if you'd like to take a look. It was put together by her grandsons.

Phyllis will be celebrating her birthday on December 3rd. Why don't you all send her a Happy Birthday card? She is an amazing musician and I feel lucky to have known her all these years.

Phyllis this is my birthday card to you! Happy, Happy, Birthday!! Go girl!

PS

2010-11-25T07:29:00.002-05:00

After going back to bed for a while at about 5:30 a.m., it occurred to me that since imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, it could be that the gasping ladies in my blog about the Stephen Sondheim birthday bash last night are trying to emulate Elaine Stritch's shtick. If so, they missed the mark. She is the alpha and omega of this style of performing.

It is the same thing that happened with Edith Evans, who did the definitive Lady Bracknell in the first film version of The Importance of Being Earnest Ever since then, everyone has tried to outdo her rendition of the phrase 'A handbag?????'. No one ever has. She and Elaine would make a great pair.

Judy Dench wisely avoided comparison by sort of muttering the phrase in the more recent film version.

Read on below-