Hats off!

'Hats off, gentlemen, a genius' said Robert Schumann of Chopin's Variations on 'La ci darem la mano'  from Mozart's Don Giovanni. I re-echo this thought on hearing Yevgeny Kutik play tonight in Lenox Massachusetts.

I have been listening to Yevgeny's performances for about nine years now and he has gone from an extremely talented teen-ager to a 26 year old genius of the violin. His playing goes far beyond his amazing technique, his inate musicality, and his exquisite sense of pitch; it emanates from the soil of his native Minsk, comes up through his young body and his soul, and enters the mundane world, turning it into a place of infinite passion and beauty. He is damn good!


Tonight's concert at Kimball Farms in Lenox was a dress rehearsal for the concert he will play on Tuesday, April 10th at the New Center for Arts and Culture in Boston. The program will be narrated by well-known classical radio personality, Martin Bookspan. It will reflect the Jewish influences on American music.

In tonight's concert Yevgeny, with his brilliant pianist, Timothy Bozarth,began with the Brahms Sonata #3 in D minor, Op. 108. This gorgeous work was played by both performers with great warmth and excitement. It was followed by Baal Shem of Ernst Bloch, Maurice Ravel's Kadish, Max Bruch's Kol Nidre, and George Gershwin's 'It ain't necessarily so'. Afterwards I told Yevgeny that in this last piece he sounded like the great jazz violinist Stéphane Grapelli. As an encore, he dashed off the fiendishly difficult last movement of the Shostakovich Concerto. This is a stunning player!

I have been listening to violinists for the past seventy years, at least, not counting my grandfather, who played square dance music on the fiddle. Heifetz, Morinni, Menuhin, I heard them all. Yevgeny fits right into this category of genius performers.

We had dinner together in Boston last Monday evening. I was in town for the GLAD vs DOMA trial which was on the 4th. We had time to talk about the state of classical music in general and Yevgeny's career in particular. His busy spring includes concerts in Boston, Poland, Maine, Weston, MA, Atlanta, GA, Rostock, Germany, The Lobkowicz Palace in Prague Castle, Washington, DC, Sandisfield, MA (a benefit for the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation) Nantucket, and Germany again.

I think that it's about time that a college or university snapped this young man up as Artist in Residence while they can still get him!



Yevgeny's exciting CD 'Sounds of Defiance' may be ordered at www.marquisclassics.com  If you haven't heard it, you should!

I have been so happy, as Director of the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation, to be able to help Yevgeny in his education and career in whatever way I can. I know that John Ferris would be as delighted as I am that we began this relationship nine years ago and continue to follow this brilliant artist as he heads for the stars!

This was the week that was!

I have spent more time at Smith College this week than I did when I taught there. At the moment, two voice faculty members and one undergraduate are studying with me. They all had performances this week!

It began with my attending two rehearsals for Suor Angelica, the second part of Il Trittico by Puccini. The Womens' Chorus was presenting this with the Smith Orchestra, which was enlarged with some professional players.

Judith Gray, who is on the Smith voice faculty sang the title role in the opera with great passion and drama. Her glorious voice soared above the orchestra.

Katie Weiser, a junior in the College, sang the role of Suor Genevieffa in a lovely high soprano voice. The orchestra, conducted by Jonathan Hirsh, and the chorus, conducted by Gregory Brown, performed admirably. I told Greg that his women sounded better than the Met chorus. This isn't saying a lot, I admit, but I meant it as a compliment. They sang freely with a lovely sound. The concert was Sunday afternoon.

In the second half of the concert they were joined by the Men's Chorus from Amherst College, just up the road. These hearty young men sang with vigor on a number of opera choruses, but men's voices at this age are just not in the same field as women's. It was a youthful, rather raw sound. But they performed with gusto.

Today I attended a noonday concert by Karen Smith Emerson, who is also on the Smith voice faculty. Karen has studied with me for several years and sang an all Debussy program that was exquisite. She ended with the Air de Lia, from L'Enfant Prodigue. Which received a large ovation.

My relationshhip with Smith goes back many years when I accompanied lessons for Anna Hamlin, who was the head of the Smith voice department in the 40's and 50's and who came to New York City to teach on weekends. I also studied with Anna and often coached some of her students including the wonderful Judith Raskin.

After the death of my spouse, John Ferris, in 2008, Jane Bryden, also a student of mine and a member of the Smith voice faculty, asked me to teach at Smith, which I did for several years. I will be teaching a vocal master class there on April 17th. So the connection, which has been going on for over sixty years, continues.

At the master class, I guess you could say, I will be teaching my grandchildren.

Over easy.

I have been working for a while with a student who is preparing a major operatic role. She has been in rehearsal for a while and has told me that she has been 'Trying to avoid over singing' to save the voice. We had a discussion about this and about what she means by avoiding over singing.

If by over singing she means pushing,  then I'm all for avoiding that. But if she is what I call under singing, that may be just as big a problem. To my way of thinking, under singing is simply holding back on the voice. Holding is never a good idea. Trying to sing while holding back is like trying to drive your car up a hill while stepping on the brakes. You're not going to get very far and you're very apt to break something.

Marking is a good alternative to holding back. In marking, the singer sings everything down an octave softly, leaving all the high notes out of the possibility of being pushed. Obviously, with the repetition necessary to get the benefit of a rehearsal, one cannot sing full out the whole time without tiring the voice. But under singing, holding back one's energy will do as much damage to the voice as pushing.

I suggested that she simply sing. Sing the way she plans to perform the work. Fully and easily. Beautifully. Then upon having to repeat sections or the whole thing, MARK! This will keep the voice much healthier.

She did this at the next rehearsal and sounded and felt wonderful.

Once one has figured out the best way to sing comfortably and beautifully, just do it. Don't monkey around with almost singing. Almost singing will get you nowhere, and it may give you vocal stress.

Any rehearsal period is stressful. You are constantly changing staging or tempi until you find just the right way to do whatever it is you are doing. You must be wise as you go through this period.

So here are my rules for repeated rehearsals:
Do not push the voice.
Do not under sing. In short use your energy!
Do sing as you want to perform.
Mark when necessary.

By holding back on the voice you are stymieing your energy. Energy is a singer's best friend. Our air is our energy. Take a deep breath and use it.

If you follow these rules you should be able to sing beautifully for many years.

It's the pits!

There was an article in today's New York Times that stated that in some Broadway theatres the orchestra for Musicals now plays from the basement of the building or even from another building blocks away, thereby divorcing it from the singers and dancers who are on stage. The conductor of one such musical,  Spiderman, said that she can't really see the actors all that well on the screen she's watching, but she hopes they have done it enough times to be in sync. Her orchestra is apparently situated in two separate rooms, the guitars and keyboards in her room and the rest of the instruments in another.

It was bad enough when Broadway singers had to be amplified to be heard. I often have trouble figuring out who it is that is actually singing if there is a large cast on stage. I am old enough to remember that when Ethel Merman was singing on 44th Street she could be heard without amplification on 42nd Street. But people could sing in those days!

This new concept takes the idea of 'live' performance to a ghastly new low. Eventually we can just do away with live performers altogether, I guess. Perhaps this will at least lower prices on Broadway.

The article said that at last year's Tony awards, the orchestra was several blocks down Broadway from the Beacon Theatre, where the awards were held. The reason Spiderman adopted this 'long-distance' method of performance was so that more 'flying' equipment could be put in the orchestra pit. Even that didn't help the show much, according to reports I have heard.

Soon, undoubtedly, the Met orchestra will be playing in a studio on 23rd Street while Aida is being performed at Lincoln Center to make room for the elephants!



Grrrr!

Hear, Hear!

There is a dinner-cinema in a town just south of Rood Hill Farm that I have enjoyed attending for a number of years. You can order a cocktail, a light supper or snack, and enjoy the film.

Recently, however, the volume of their sound system is turned up so loud that I have simply stopped going there. It is painful to me to be blasted with deafening sound coming from the speakers while trying to enjoy the movie. The last time I was there, months ago, I asked the waitress if the sound could be lowered. For about two minutes they complied and then it was blasting away again.

Yesterday I decided to take matters into my own hands. I wanted to see Meryl Streep in 'The Iron Lady', which was playing there, so in the afternoon I went to the pharmacy and bought myself a pair of ear plugs! I felt a little odd sitting there with these in my ears, but I could hear everything perfectly well without fear of losing my hearing.
         Put a plug in it!
I have had a similar problem at wedding receptions where, again, apparently everyone but me is deaf. Volume that makes my teeth ache seems to be the norm in these situations. I had to resort to stuffing bits of napkin in my ears on that occasion, which looked even funnier than the ear plugs.

It is not unusual to pass someone on the street who is using ear buds and hearing what they are hearing. When I was recently in Puerto Rico, cars would drive past my condo playing the radio so loud I couldn't hear my own television. And I was on the sixth floor on the side of the building away from the street.

Hearing is a sense that should be preserved not shattered, especially for a musician. I feel very fortunate at age 82 that my hearing is still is very good shape. I just want to keep it that way.

I think that we will have an entire generation of deaf people if this concept of louder is better continues.

So get yourselves some earplugs and go to the movies!

Email List

If you are a follower of my blog and have not been getting email notices about new ones, please feel free to send me your email address and tell me you would like to be added to the list.

My computer recently had a mental break-down and lost a lot of my email addresses.

Thanks, Herb

WOW!

After about one hundred years of listening to singers and teaching them, it is very hard for a new singer to blow me away. Until last night, that is. Kate Lindsey, a young mezzo, who has sung at the Met and various other venues, did just that. In spades!


She sang a vocal recital of French music at Smith College that was perfection in every way. Her insight into the songs was complete and her vocal technique easy and varied. The timbre of her voice and her complete involvement in everything she sang reminded me of the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberman. She has a dark rich low register which moves easily into the top of the voice. Only occasionally did she become a bit shrill up there. Afterwards I told her that I hadn't heard singing like that in a long time. And I really meant it.

Her program began with a number of songs by Claude Debussy including both the Chanson de Bilitis and Fetes Galantes cycles. The second half of the program contained songs by other French composers who lived in Debussy's Paris. The entire weekend of programs at the college entitled 'Music in Debussy's Paris' was fashioned by Jane Bryden, a Professor of Voice at Smith.

Ms. Lindsey's pianist was Craig Terry, who was equally accomplished and involved. He played several solo works of Debussy between groups of songs. This is a tradition that goes back several decades. As a young person, attending Community Concerts at the Kellogg Auditorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, I remember that whenever there was a vocal recital, it was de riguer that the pianist perform a solo group.

Today Ms. Lindsey returned to Smith to present a master class for some of the vocal students in the School of Music. She had some very good interpretive advice for these young singers. But they are young. As Auntie Mame said to Agnes Gooch, 'You've got to live, Agnes, live!' Of course after Agnes had lived, she came home pregnant. So, young singers, that is not necessary to gain experience.

I was less happy with some of the physical things she had the singers try. Often she would have another singer come forward so the performer had a live person to react with in the presentation of the text. This worked fine.

However she got very physically involved with the students as well, massaging their backs and shoulders, standing behind them with an arm around them in a sort of musical bear hug while they leaned on her to achieve the pelvic tilt she was after. Anna Hamlin, my long ago voice teacher and former head of the voice faculty at Smith, had a much easier way to achieve this pelvic tilt, if that's what you want. She simply said 'Sink in your pants, girls!' I know that were I to lay hands on a student in this way I would probably be arrested. I guess it's a 'girl on girl' thing.

Ms. Lindsey is a very talented young singer and I look forward to following her career with interest.