Where did I come from?

There is that delightful story about the little boy who went to his father one day and asked 'Daddy, where did I come from?'. The father decided it was probably time to have that serious conversation with his son about the way babies are made and went step by step through the reproduction process. The boy then said, 'Oh. I know that! Billy came from Cincinnati; where did I come from?'

Where I came from as a vocal teacher is probably a much more complicated story than the one about conception. But I will try to write a tell-all history of how I became the teacher I am today. If anyone in interested. Even if you're not!

I'll start with a question I asked Olga Averino many years ago. By now, if you have been following this blog, you will have heard this name many times. Olga was one of the most amazing and interesting people I have ever known and she made a profound impression on my life as a musician and teacher. She was Sheherezade when it came to telling stories of her escape from Tsarist Russia; crossing the continent to Siberia with her infant in her arms; riding on whatever kind of train she could get on; going into China; singing in the Western Opera in China; eventually coming to San Francisco and New York; meeting her father, whom she had not seen since their escape, on Broadway one day; finally coming to Boston where her husband Paul, played in the Boston Symphony; becoming Kousivitzky's favorite singer; singing the first U.S performance of Lulu..... Well you get the idea. Not your average life.

I asked Olga, 'Was there any one teacher who established your concept of how to sing and to teach?' She said that there wasn't; it evolved over time and she basically figured it out for herself.

I adored Olga and we spent many a cocktail party at her apartment in Cambridge, sitting on her sofa talking about singers and singing while everyone else exchanged Harvard gossip. I studied with her for a while, but in spite of the fact I thought she was an incredible musician and person, our ideas on vocal technique went about so far in the same line and then she went one way and I went the other. I never felt that she taught the way she sang. Her bright clear voice was still working just fine at age 91! She certainly produced remarkable results: Phyllis Curtin, for one!

All of this is a preamble to my trying to put into words my vocal genealogy. As a child I sang in school and church choirs. Miss Carly came once a week to Roosevelt Elementary School on Capital Avenue in Battle Creek to teach singing to all of us children. I started studying piano at age 9. I started studying organ at about 15. When I was about 16 or 17 I decided that I wanted to study singing. By now I was singing in the Adult Choir in the Presbyterian Church in Battle Creek. An elderly man, Mahlon Searns, (probably much younger than I am now, but in his seventies I would guess) was the lead tenor. And whatever his age he could belt out a high C on any occasion, and did. He became my first voice teacher. He would come to our home after church on Sunday to give me my singing lesson. He kept goats, and always had a certain farm-fresh (?) aura swirling about him.

Mr. Searns did not play the piano. So at every lesson after he warmed me up, I would then sit at the piano and play and sing while he sat in a chair and, sometimes I think, dosed off from time to time. Face it, I was no Domingo! Sitting and singing is probably not the best way to learn how to sing. His concept of technique was Strength! He would lie on the floor on his back, have me stand on his stomach, and lift me up and down with his abdominal muscles! I was six feet three and a half inches and no lightweight, so that man had some set of muscles. Fortunately, he never reversed the process with me on the bottom!

What a strange beginning to vocal instruction, you may say. Damn right!

All through my Junior High and Senior High School days I accompanied a number of young singers at their lessons and in performance. I was a member of a group of young people whom the USO signed up to entertain the troops in the area during the Second World War. 'The END of the Second World War', as Beatrice Lillie would say.

When I entered college as a piano and organ major, I also took voice lessons with Harriet Hillier Birchall, whom I remember as a very good teacher. In 1950 I came to New York City to complete my degree at Columbia and began studying with Mrs. William E. Neidlinger. (You've heard me mention this lady before who had a Bull Dog tied to the piano leg during our lessons.)

Later, when I was Searle Wright's Assistant University Organist at St. Paul's Chapel Columbia, I began to study with the remarkable Anna Hamlin, who came down every weekend from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, to teach in the city. I may have been the only male student Anna ever taught! I also accompanied all of her lessons for the women singers she worked with. Each one was better than the other. Anna was a little whiffy, as most voice teachers tend to be, but she knew how to teach a person to sing. I think one has to be a little crazy to be a voice teacher. It's always worked for me!

By this time I was becoming a vocal coach in the city and worked with a number of Anna's students, including the wonderful Judith Raskin. As a side point, one of my students at Smith, will be singing in a recreation of Judy's senior recital at Smith from 1949 this coming April. To continue the 'Smith Connection', Anna was the head of the voice faculty there at that time; many years later, my own student, the wonderful Jane Bryden, had that position while she was studying with me and then, after John's death in 2008, she invited me to teach at Smith, saving my emotional life! 'I'm not making this up, you know!' (Anna Russell's remark in her exploitation of Wagner's Ring Cycle.) What a wonderful cycle of singing teachers! I will call it the Sing Cycle!

I started life in New York City as a vocal coach, and in those days that's what a coach did: COACH. More recently vocal coaches are often found getting into teaching vocal technique when usually, they should leave technique to the voice teachers! But I digress.

One of my first coaching students was a mezzo-soprano who sang in my church choir in Closter, NJ. A person once asked me where my church job was. When I answered, 'Closter, New Jersey', they asked 'How close?' No kidding! Anyway, Hilda, had an amazing voice. A gorgeous sound and a range that went from tenor middle E to the E above C in alt! She was studying voice with someone at the Mannes School, which was on East 73rd Street in those days, but coached with me. She said to me one day, 'You are really helping me more than my voice teacher; can I just study voice with you?' I said, 'Sure, why not?'. What did I know? She was a Mezzo, but her best warm-up was to sing the fifth movement from the Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem, a high soprano role. She had several auditions at the Met (the old one on Broadway and 40th Street) that I played for, and she was given a contract. My first Met star! I was about 24 at the time. She was a bit older than I. And that, children is how Uncle Herbert became a voice teacher.

Well, I taught and I taught: voice, piano, organ, harpsichord- the works. And the more I taught the more it became obvious to me that I was doing something right. My singers could sing beautifully with a free technique and perform well in various venues. Over the years I have no idea how many singers I have worked with. I mentioned in an earlier piece my work with Judy and with Jerome Hines. From then on it's like the last scene in the movie Goodbye, Mr. Chips. If all of my past students were to pass before my eyes today it would take a long, long time.

And then came Lorraine.

I was teaching voice (sub rosa) at Harvard in those days. Harvard does not have an applied music department but I taught Harvard students who were subsidized by the University, in the choir room at Memorial Church where John was the University Organist and Choirmaster for thirty-two years. I also had studios in New York City and New Jersey to which I commuted from time to time. A fine baritone student of mine said to me, 'My ex-girl friend is in a big career and having trouble with high notes so I told her to get in touch with you.' And she did. I still remember that November day when Lorraine drove out to Rood Hill Farm in Sandisfield to sing for me the first time. My life was never the same after that encounter. Yesterday was her birthday. I learned as much from this wonderful woman, musician, friend, as she did from me. From her star power, I suddenly was a hot item in the voice teaching world. I was pretty much doing the same thing I had been doing for a long time, but I had a Diva. So I must be good.

By today's writing six of my students have sung at the Met. I guess that's some sort of record. I have a few on the way who may end up there as well!

I have no idea why I teach the way I do except it seems to work. My teaching method is obviously a combination of all the teachers and coaches I have worked with that has produced this rather odd commodity called 'Herb'. Perhaps, like Theodor Leschetizky, "I have no method!'

The wonderfully funny, dear Madeleine Marshall was my diction teacher, a very good friend, and a tremendous influence on my teaching. Her study of singing diction has helped me as a teacher beyond measure. We used to do workshops together and spend much of our time telling stories and laughing at the foibles of singers and the way they pronounced words. She coined the phrase 'singer's English', a language spoken by no known tribe! She was a 'oner', as they say in the crossword puzzles.

Olga Averino once said to me, 'To be a voice teacher, one must be obsessed with the human voice'. I think that she hit the nail on the head. I am!