Albertitalks: Preview "Workshop in New York City"

Albertitalks: Preview "Workshop in New York City"

Workshop in New York City

I was recently asked to present a vocal workshop for the New York Singing Teacher's Association at Teachers College, Columbia University. I am a graduate of Columbia and it was interesting to come back to teach on the campus where I spent several very happy years.

After graduating from the College, I stayed on to get my Master of Sacred Music Degree at the School of Sacred Music of Union Theological Seminary right across the street from Teachers College. At the same time, I became the Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia, under Searle Wright.

So this was a sort of very belated home-coming for me.

After having invited one of my students from Smith College to participate (The Association asked me to work with one of my current students), I found that they wanted me to speak on 'Teaching the Male Voice'. Well, I've taught plenty of men in my day, but we decided that since my current male students are in professional careers and are living in London, Montréal, and various other ports of call, I would have my Smith student sing, followed by two baritones chosen by the Association.

I had been given a list of questions they wanted me to discuss before working with the singers. Some of the questions I could answer in a few sentences, but for the ones concerning vocalization and breathing, I used my student to demonstrate my theory on these principles. We did several vocalises taken from my book, Vocalizing from the Ground Up!

I then had the class stand and join us in some breathing and relaxation exercises, and then my Smith student -- a very fine soprano -- sang 'Als Luisa die Briefe' of Mozart and 'Io son l'umile ancella' from Adriana Lecouvreur of Cilea.

She sang beautifully, making me very proud of her and the work we have done together for the past two years at Smith.

Then came the men.

The first baritone sang 'Bob's Aria' from The Old Maid and the Thief of Menotti for me. He had a fine natural voice and sang with a certain amount of ease. We worked together to encourage him to see where his sound was going. In other words, I was trying to get him to move the vocal line easily to a distant point, in this case, through the windows at the back of the room to the back windows of the apartments on the next block. He was fairly successful in getting this idea. We also worked on having a more natural use of the text; emphasis on the correct syllable and clarity in diction. All in all, this is a fine young voice that, with work, can become excellent.

The second young man then stood up to sing for me. He is also a baritone or bass-baritone. I had met when him I arrived early at the hall. We spoke for a few minutes and I was very impressed with his rich speaking voice. Interestingly, when he sang, none of that richness was in the sound. I told him that I felt his voice was stuck, and he agreed with me.

Now, how does one 'unstick' a voice in twenty-five minutes?

In a previous post I have spoken about the difficulty of teaching these 'Hit and Run' Master Classes, where one works with a singer for a brief time, giving information that may help them, after which they depart and you may never see or hear them again. One hopes, as I do, that our brief work together will help the singer release what is obviously a very good natural instrument.

The second baritone and I worked on focusing the instrument, which sounded held back in the throat. I used what I call the 'Duck Call' exercise which gives the singer a great sensation of the overtones apparent in the voice. He was able to do a fine Duck Call and I tried to have him incorporate these overtones into various vowels and into the text of the aria. We had only moderate success.

He also has a habit of biting off the end of phrases, pulling the sound back into his body rather than releasing it. He needs to feel the extension of the vowel before adding the final consonant.

All in all, this could become a fine voice but he has a lot of work to do.

Perhaps some day a wealthy University or group will invite me to do the kind of workshop I feel would be far more beneficial to the singer: several days of classes hearing the same singers and giving them time to absorb and practice the ideas I am giving to them. Some may describe me as a maverick voice teacher. And it's true: I do not always teach  the party line. Yet six of my students have sung at the Met, which just may suggest that being a bit of a maverick is a good thing. My dear, belated Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was a maverick, as well. She was called the anti-Prima Donna and 'Maria Callas with a vocal technique.'  I guess that I am the anti-anything that does not encourage the voice to sing clearly, easily, and beautifully. That is my aim!

Multi-day workshops would be far more beneficial for the student than these hit and run workshops. Any takers?

And all that Jazz!

I recently spent a week in steamy New Orleans with a dear friend; my first visit. We lucked out in having the room we booked at a very posh hotel be turned into a suite by some Hotel Fairy Godmother. I am going to have to send a dozen roses to my travel agent who did the booking.

We did the usual tourist things: the French Quarter, the Garden District, and so on, but what really turned us on was three nights of New Orleans jazz.

The first night we went to Irvin Mayfield's Jazz Playhouse on Bourbon Street. Irvin himself was performing with his combo that night and they were amazing. I haven't heard Dixieland Jazz like that since the 50's in New York City, when we used to go down to Nick's in the Village to hear Phil Napoleon and his Dixieland Band. Once, when we were there, someone slipped Phil a dollar or two to play 'Happy Birthday' to me in 'Two-Beat style'. I think I must have been 21. A highlight of my ill-spent youth!

Irvin is an exceptional trumpeter with an amazing technique and a vivid imagination. He made the horn sing, talk, weep and laugh. He also sang a couple of numbers very well. The trombonist was also excellent and sang, too, as did the pianist. Actually, there were two pianists. The first one had a brilliant technique and could handle anything Irvin threw at him. The second pianist was a younger man who could really play 'Stride Piano'. The bass and drums were also top notch. This was the real McCoy. From time to time Irvin would lift his glass (of water) and ask us all to make a toast: 'Jazz is back on Bourbon Street'. At the end he also toasted many of the Jazz greats who had gone before him. He is quite a guy!

The opening act was a female singer who sang with the mike between her teeth. You couldn't understand a word she sang and the voice was definitely C-. Where do these people come from?

The next night we went to hear jazz at the Ritz Hotel. Well, that was another story. It was afternoon tea time and the music was too loud to talk through (although most of the people were talking, unlike the night before at the Jazz Playhouse) and it was not good enough for people not to talk while pretending to listen. This was not authentic jazz. One couple actually got up and danced a kind of Fox Trot. Again, a trumpeter, but a mush-mouthed one, who sang in staccato snippets in a nasal whiney voice. The rest of the ensemble should have stayed at home. We left at the first break.

Then, the third night, we went back to Mayfield's Jazz Playhouse to hear Leon 'Kid Chocolate' Brown. He is a very good trumpeter, but was not up to Irvin. His ensemble was good but not great. But they made the bunch at the Ritz look like amateurs!The opening act was also a stride piano player who was great. Some woman in the audience, who had probably been drinking since about 8:00 a.m., kept trying to sing along with him in a raucous voice. Mama mia!!! She went up to him afterwards and bugged the hell out of him, as far as I could tell. He was talking on his cell the whole time.

It was fascinating to hear these three groups on three consecutive nights and find how differently Dixieland Jazz is performed in the city of it's birth. It certainly runs the gamut. I think we were spoiled the first night by the sensational Irvin Mayfield. He is a hard act to follow. He has won several Grammys.

Bourbon Street, where the Jazz Playhouse is located, is a Zoo! From every bar comes the sound of jazz, or faux jazz, amplified to the pain threshold. Ear plugs are in order when walking down the street. You may also get hit by the semi-naked woman on the swing, who sails in and out of a window from one of the clubs. This kind of jazz has nothing to do with what I learned to love in the 50's.

But Irvin and Kid Chocolate are keeping the tradition alive. I loved it!

Blue Roses are in bloom

On a wet afternoon in New York City I was transported on wings of music to the city of St. Louis of years gone by, and to the home of the Winfield Family. The wings were provided by my dear friend Nancy Ford who composed the sensitive, evocative score for her transformation of Tennessee Williams's great play The Glass Menagerie into a piece of extraordinary musical theatre. In this form it has become Blue Roses. For those of you familiar with the play, 'Blue Roses' is what Jim, the gentleman caller, called Laura, the lame, pathetic daughter of the family, when they were in school together. She had been out of school, sick with Pleurosis, and when he asked what had been the problem, he thought she replied Blue Roses. So that's what he called her from then on. Nancy's beautiful score intensifies the wonder of Williams's play, and the libretto of Mimi Turque amplifies the original dialogue, much of which is retained in this production.

An excellent, all-Equity cast, portrayed the four characters admirably in this reading of the work at Chelsea Studios. Anita Gillette was Amanda to the teeth! The aging southern belle brought low by circumstance. She sang with a lovely voice that could become harsh when necessary. She became the role. I told her afterwards that while even I am not quite old enough to have seen Laurette Taylor in the premiere of the play, I did see Helen Hayes in a revival in the 50's, and that she was a match for them. A beautiful reading.

Tom was portrayed by Jason Danieley, a handsome intense young actor who brought all the sense of Tom's frustration to bear on the role. He has a splendid singing voice and used it very well. He also impressed me with his silent participation in the drama when he was seated at one side of the stage, theoretically uninvolved in the action. He was as involved as if he had had lines to speak. It was fascinating to watch varying emotions cross his face as the other characters spoke.

Jim, the gentleman caller, who had labeled Laura as 'Blue Roses' years before, was sung and acted by the excellent Edwin Cahill. He was the overly enthusiastic ex-high school jock who had also sung in school productions. Laura had been secretly in love with him all these years. Of course, it turns out that he is already engaged to Betty, thwarting Amanda's hopes for a husband for Laura. When he breaks the horn off Laura's glass unicorn, part of her glass menagerie, he is touchingly sympathetic. He sweetly kisses her.

Laura was Piper Goodeve, who had all the shyness and embarrassment needed for this pathetic woman. She has a sweet singing voice, but needs to learn how to project low, soft sounds. (Here speaks the voice teacher.) She was appropriately brave when she learns that Jim is engaged to be married to another woman.

I feel a personal connection to the work having produced and directed the play years ago in Red Bank, NJ with an exceptional amateur cast.

The excellent music director and pianist was Jamie Schmidt, aided and abetted by the 'cellist, Summer Boggess. The reader, who kept the audience up to date on the stage directions was Adam Gerber and the stage manager was Norman Meranus.

I had heard much of the music from this show a few years ago when Nancy was studying voice with me in my New York studio. It was a treat to hear the finished product so beautifully presented.

Theatrical backers take notice! This is going to be a winner. Run, do not walk, to the nearest phone and give Nancy and Mimi a call!

Why I'm GLAD

This post is not about music. It's about life. Read it if you wish.

One of the most exciting and important things I have done with my life began in November of 2008. I was asked to become a plaintiff in the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders' lawsuit against DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, which was passed in Congress in 1996.

When my life partner, and legal spouse, John Ferris died in 2008, I became an activist for the first time in my life in some cause besides music. I felt it was necessary at age 78 to take a stand for future generations of gay people to state that DOMA is unfair, unequal, and, I think, unconstitutional.

Same sex married couples are denied over one thousand Federal benefits that other married couple have without thinking. The Federal government has never interfered with State laws concerning marriage until this time. Some states forbade marriage between persons of different races. The Feds did nothing. Some states had laws about the legal age for marriage that differed from state to state. The Feds did nothing. Some states had laws about consanguinity in marriage. The Feds did nothing.

But when it was thought that Hawaii was going to pass a law permitting same sex marriage, the Feds got busy and passed DOMA. 'Marriage is only defined as between a man and a woman'. Period. Gays keep out!

Well, the Hawaiians never did pass that law. It was Massachusetts, in 2004, that was the first state to pass a same sex marriage law. John and I took advantage of it after what we called 'our 55 year engagement'.

After John's death, I discovered that I was not eligible to receive his Social Security benefit, which was higher than mine, or the death benefit that any other married couple expects without question.

That is only one of the many Federal benefits that GLAD is trying to equalize. I have always thought that 'All men (and women) are created equal' included me. I found out, that as far as the Feds were concerned, I was apparently created very un-equal! At that moment I decided to do something about it.

My participation in this suit, along with my wonderful co-plaintiffs, is one of the proudest things I have done with my life. Our legal staff, led by the indomitable Mary Bonauto, has done a magnificent job of bringing our cause to Federal Court on May 6th of this year. I was proud to be in the courtroom with my friends from GLAD. I hope that it will bear fruit for the generations of young gay people who come along, long after I have gone to whatever reward there may be.

Getting it together

I have been working with my students at Smith on various recitals they are presenting this spring as the school year comes to a close. Having worked with professional singers for a long time, it somehow didn't occur to me how many things besides singing a young performer has to learn to appear on the concert stage. And it's up to the teacher to help them learn these techniques. Mea culpa!

Naturally, first and foremost, the vocal apparatus must be in good working order; the technique secure, the musicality in place, and the songs well-memorized. But beyond that, one also has to know how to walk on and off the stage without looking strange, bow, and interact with the audience in a convincing manner. How to acknowledge the accompanist in a graceful manner. I think next term I shall offer a class in stage deportment in addition to the language classes I gave this past year.

There is also the question of what to do with these two things hanging down at our sides while we sing. Arms and hands seem sometimes not to want to be a part of the performance. We really have to watch ourselves in a mirror as we prepare to sing a program, deciding whether we are doing anything expressive with our arms and hands, or too much. Have we turned into a whirling dervish? Do we look like a plaster Saint? Are we frozen into place?

I have seen examples of all of these characteristics, and not just with amateurs. Lorraine had a wonderful sense of calm on stage in concert. No matter how violent the text she was singing her movements were always appropriate but never over done. In opera, especially the Peter Sellers stagings that she did, she often had to roll around on the stage while singing coloratura melismas in Handel; but in concert it was the calm assurance that she was certain that what she was going to do was going to be wonderful that always carried her through.

I remember seeing a Russian mezzo some years ago in Carnegie Hall. She was indeed a very great singer but her stance in the first group of Bach songs she sang, holding her two hands pointed outstretched in front of her, looked as if she were about to make a swan dive into the orchestra. After that group, she used her hands in a perfectly normal way. Perhaps that is a Russian tradition when singing Bach?

Our facial expression must also evoke the words we are singing. I think that sometimes one is thinking so much about what comes next that it is easy to get a blank expression on the face just trying to concentrate. Again, I don't want to see one 'making faces', but if one watches in a mirror as one sings a song, the face should reflect sadness, joy, misery, whatever the text calls for. And in an easy natural way.

One thing that helps all of these extra-singing movements to feel free and easy, is to be absolutely sure of the notes and words and emotions one is singing long before the performance. When one is trying desperately to remember what comes next, it is very easy to get this blank stare of concentration on the face that does not convey much to the listener. The answer to this is LEARN YOUR MUSIC WELL IN ADVANCE!

Every singer should take a course in acting. Where, when merely speaking, one learns to convey emotion both in the voice and in the body. This kind of body-language is just as important for the singer if not more so.

It is probably easier to achieve this ease in characterization when one is singing an operatic role. For here, your character is delineated as is your movement on stage. You also are the same character for the entire opera. In a song recital, your character changes with each song. You must play a variety of roles. This is obviously more difficult.

It's like doing a one-person show where you keep changing characters. Years ago, I saw Ruth Draper, the great monologist, do such a performance on Broadway. She slipped easily from character to character within the same scene and you were convinced that there were many other people on the stage with her, even though she was all alone up there. Cornelia Otis Skinner did the same sort of thing as did Joyce Grenfell, the British actress. I guess this sort of performance isn't seen much anymore. We see one-woman shows, but these earlier actresses were acting out complete scenes populated by numerous others who just weren't there!

In a song recital, the singer must be Ruth Draper, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Joyce Grenfell, Montserrat Caballe, Maria Callas, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson all wrapped into one!

Preparation must include every single thing you will do on stage: walking, bowing, expressing, and singing!

There was only one!

I've been under the weather for a few days following what is now called 'Oral Surgery'. We used to call it 'having a tooth pulled', and that is still what it is basically. Since mine was a more than usually difficult tooth to pull, I've been taking it easy for several days.

This afternoon, to help pass the time (when I should have been teaching at Smith!), I watched some old Turner Classic Movies. And the winner was Deep in my Heart, a very sentimental telling of the career of Sigmund Romberg. It literally had a cast of thousands, Ann Miller, Tony Martin, Cyd Charise, Jane Powell, and on and on. But the real star for me was that incredible woman: Helen Traubel.

It's not that I had forgotten how wonderfully she always sang, but hearing her sing these Romberg songs brought me back many years when I first heard her sing on the Community Concerts Series in Battle Creek, Michigan at the W.K. Kellogg Auditorium. The lid of the piano was all the way up when this strawberry blond, sizable woman strode on stage and stole my heart forever.

The glory and majesty of her voice has seldom been heard since. Singers just don't sing like that anymore. She was a mid-western native and she sang with a mid-western directness that was awe inspiring. And that glorious sound. High, low, loud, soft, always steady. To me that is the way sopranos should sing. Unfortunately, few of them do that anymore. She never quite got her due at the Met because Kirsten Flagstad was still singing most of the Wagner. But her every appearance was remarkable. She was offered a Met contract in 1923, but didn't sign until 1936. She made up her own mind when to do things.

Today, glamour and designer dresses have often replaced good honest singing. It is a great loss.

I have a CD of her singing Wagner that ends with 'Take me out to the ballgame!' She was a fan. She had a fight with Rudolph Bing (I think it was) when she appeared on Jimmy Durante's TV show and he fired her. Big mistake. She did a couple of Broadway shows and several movies.
She also sang in night clubs. A woman of great variety.

But there was always that voice! Rich, warm, true, and expressive. Every singer of the present generation should listen to some of her recordings. They would get an education. They might even begin to sing better!