An Upcoming Performance and The Need for Acting

I'll start with the big news first.  In September I will be singing my first leading tenor role, Ferrando, in Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" with the Metro Opera Workshop of Detroit.  This has been a long time in coming for me and I see it as the fruition of the work I have put in to make this transformation from a baritone to a tenor.  I also have a couple of additional auditions upcoming which will hopefully bring more happy results.  I will also be singing as a part of Finger Lakes Opera's inaugural production of Carmen this summer, which will star J'nai Bridges as Carmen and Gregory Kunde as Don Jose.  

While I am not singing a role in this production, this has proven to be a great opportunity for me in two ways.  First, I will be able to watch Mr. Kunde go through his process and pick his brain a little about my own career.  Mr. Kunde, or Greg, and I have known each other for a number of years and the first half of his career was spent singing the roles that I am hoping to sing as my career gets going.  He is therefore an invaluable source of information and advice.  Secondly, I was able to get feedback from an audition for the first time as a tenor.  Beginning with the good, I was told that my voice is developing nicely and that I am on the right track in regards to vocal technique.  Kudos to my teacher, Jean-Ronald LaFond, for his expert guidance in this regard!  I was also told that I need to work on being more aware of my body.  For those of you who don't know me, I am little over six feet tall and am not slight of frame.  I was told that I can be imposing, but the auditor was not sure that I knew how to be.  This has been a persistent problem for me and something I need to figure out how to address.  It was suggested that I take a physical acting class to try to get more in touch with my body and enable myself to use my body to interpret the words of the pieces that I am singing.

I was reading a set posts on a group page on Facebook that my teacher had added me too and they were discussing performance.  One of the singers mentioned that once she is on stage, it is all about the words and that she just has to trust that all of the preparation she has done vocally will suffice.  I have heard this many times, but in light of what I had recently been told in my audition this really hit home for me.  I have never trusted that my preparation and technique were going to be there in auditions or performances.  Therefore I also was focusing on my technique and not on the character.  I can point to a clear reason for this speed bump in my career.  My years in undergrad and immediately following were only spent focusing on vocal technique, and not the technique of performance.  I had teachers, whom I love very much and am forever grateful for the assistance they gave me to get to where I am today, who believed that the voice was all that was needed.  In a way this is an old philosophy, but even in the age that this was prevalent, it was still an incomplete one.  Singers must be complete performers.  The auditor of my audition summed it up the best saying that there are a lot of singers out there who are singing really well, what sets them apart is their ability to portray a character.

One small post-script:  If you are a singer and are looking for a summer program to do, please consider the Summer Opera Academy at Härnösands Folkhogskola in cooperation with Kashu-do Studios.  It looks to be a wonderful program and is run by my teacher, Jean-Ronald LaFond.  

Strength is coming!

There's not a whole lot to report on the language front this time around.  I am still plugging away and making progress daily.  There have not been any new big breakthroughs.  The only noteworthy thing is that I will be finish MT before my next post, which means I will then go back to Assimil.

My vocal studies are where the more interesting things have been happening lately.  A couple of weeks ago at church I was singing at the 8:30 mass and went for a G4 which I can normally hit in a rough way that early in the morning.  This time around, however everything happened the way it was supposed to:  the F turned on the [o] vowel and then the [a] vowel turned ideally on the G producing a nice, easy, free flowing pitch.  I took this accomplishment to mean that I have begun to build significant strength through my passaggio so that these acoustical things can happen correctly and automatically.  The second thing happened to me this past evening at a rehearsal for an ecumenical choir concert that I am participating in.  We had just finished rehearsing a men's choir piece which took the tenors up to an Ab4.  I sang this easily the few times we went through it without giving it much thought.  As we were going back to join up with the rest of the choir one of the other tenors made a remark to me that I was "one of those high tenors that sings that Pavarotti high C."  I laughed and answered that I was working on it.  It amused me because a year ago at this concert I was told be one of these singers that I was a "2nd tenor" and now after a year of work on my part I am being told that I am a "high tenor."  Ultimately these people are amateur singers and their thoughts on my vocal classification have little merit in my life.  It is nice however to see that my work is paying dividends.

I have come to realize over the course of my vocal studies that things happen at a slower pace for me in this medium than they did when I was a saxophonist.  Luckily I have learned to be patient and trust that the process will get me to my end goal eventually.  When I started down this path as a singer I did not realize how hard I was going to have to work to attain my dreams.  Everything else I had ever done in music came easily.  Now, though I have broken through so man apparent glass ceilings that I have very little that can stand in my way.  I had a goal set in front of me by JRL at my last lesson that by this time next year I need to have a workable C5 so I can work on Faust and Rodolfo.  I take these challenges very seriously and am closing in now an my B4, just a half step away from the famed "Pavarotti high C."  If my voice continues along the path it is currently on I anticipate not only reaching the goal of a workable high C, but hope to achieve it earlier than the date set forward by my teacher.

This fall I am going to be auditioning for a few summer programs and possibly one or two programs for the following year.  The following fall my sights are set on the MONCA competition.  This especially is a lofty goal, but I am confident that my work ethic and faith will see me through.

Faith: The Most Necessary Virtue!

I have made some good progress this month, both with my German and with my singing.  In German I am at approximately 1750 words known on LingQ and I have noticed that I am beginning to be able to follow some of the dialogue on the radio station I listen to, Radio Horeb.  There is still a lot that I miss, however I am still encouraged by the process that I am making.  I have about twenty days left with my Michel Thomas program and then I will be coming back to Assimil to finish that.  This being said, it is apparent to me that I am going to be hitting a few milestones in the next month.  My plans for the next two weeks is to start using my German more in certain areas of my life.  Primarily, I am going to start praying my Rosary in German at least three days a week.  I find that this has been very helpful for me in the past, as I can grow from the Rosary into personal prayers and really force the activation of a lot of the vocabulary I know.  I am one-third of the way through my German year and find myself at a very good place.

Vocally things have been a roller coaster ride of sorts.  A few weeks back I had a minor vocal crisis where I began to show the signs of a hole in my passaggio.  Luckily, after a brief correspondence with JRL, I have patched up that problem and moved on to considerably more exciting things.  Specifically, this week I have consistently sang my exercises up to a high C (and occasionally a C#), and today I was able to sing the C with vibrato.  To my mind, this means that I am starting to coordinate the note well enough that it is beginning to release.  I routinely practice at my former college, Roberts Wesleyan, which happens to be where both of my future sisters-in-law go to school currently.  I was informed by one of the sisters that I have a bit of a fan base among her fellow classmates.  One even went so far as to figure out the note that I "always crack on," which was a Bb4 for those who are interested.  While this is amusing, it also gave me great motivation to get past that Bb4, which I can say I have done now.  Instead I crack on the B4 or C5 now!

I am quite humbled by having a "fanclub" at my former school.  It is quite a different scene than when I was going to school here from 2003-2007.  At that time, the majority of the department was confused as to why I was a performance major.  Now the current student population thinks that I am an advanced singer.  This goes to a larger point that I was discussing with my language partner, Ernest, yesterday.  I have known from the time I became a voice major that I was going to be a singer, and a successful one at that.  Despite the dissensions from everyone from classmates to family to professionals, I am nearing the point of my process where I am going to begin my career.  If you have faith in your own path you will always achieve your goals.  The process may take you through deserts and mountains, however you will always come out on the other side if you maintain your faith.  As a Christian, I have put my life's path into God's hands and am confident that, while it may not happen in the timeline of my choosing, everything I have asked of God for my life will occur as it is supposed to.  Regardless of whether you are Christian or not, faith is one of the most important character traits we possess.  Believe and know that your aspirations will always happen as long as you continue to persevere faithfully.

Big Progress!

I had my first lesson in quite a while this past Friday with Jean-Ronald LaFond.  My lesson this time around was one of discovery and great advancement for my part.  During the course of the lesson I felt myself singing in a way I never had before and I liked it.  It was a great experience for me and we even talked about me doing auditions in the fall if I can get a few more things to line up vocally.  Since I've been home, I have continued to work with the new concepts I was given and can employ them fairly well in my vocalises (at least I think I do), however I am struggling to put these things through into my repertoire work.  This is especially frustrating since I was singing so well at my lesson.  I chalk up my difficulties to the fact that I am not in front of JRL receiving guidance as I am singing.  I will ultimately figure out how to incorporate and synthesize these concepts into my singing and know that if I continue with the work ethic I have been developping that I will be fine.

Linguistically, however, is a different story.  I have had a rough couple of weeks with my language learning time.  This is mainly due to a largely increased workload at my actual job which results in less time for study.  I am hoping that things will slow back down to normal at work next week and that I will be able to get back to my normal routine, otherwise I am going to have to find a new time to study.  This is very frustrating to me because I was on such a good pace with German and now I feel as though I have skidded to a stop.  Luckily I still do manage to get in at least a little time with the language, mostly my Michel Thomas recordings.  Again my mantra is, as always:  Slow and steady wins the race.

Back from the abyss

I had a rough week last week in German.  I was very busy at work and very tired when I wasn't busy, so I was not able to do much.  Life is a little bit easier this week though and I have got back into my routine, thankfully.  The advantage with French was that I had a base in the language prior to my intensive work.  While I am not progress at the same rate in German, I do still have somewhat of a base in the language due to being a native English speaker.  There are a vast number of German words which change pronunciation from English very predictably, which makes learning those words vastly easier than a language that doesn't share common roots.

In general, it is said that the more languages you know the easier it is to learn more.  I see this more and more as I progress through languages.  Not only do your methods of learning become more efficient, but the shared vocabulary among the world's languages provides a wonderful base to springboard off of.

I just barely crossed over the 1,000 word mark on LingQ and hope to add about 500 words to that total this week.  The difficult thing about LingQ at this point in my learning is that there are so many words I don't know that I get easily frustrated at how long it takes to get through one story, so I end up only doing one story a day, which does not help my word count.

In other news, I am finally going to get down for a lesson on the 17th of this month.  It has been a long while since my last lesson and I am anxious to see how my progress measures up.  I find myself often frustrated that I am not progressing at a faster pace, but constantly have to remind myself that quality takes time and that if I trust the process it will work for me.  There have been great steps forward in the last few weeks with certain "problem" arias falling into place and feeling comfortable as well as new arias beginning to show signs of growth as well.  Hopefully this will continue into my lesson and I can continue to grow towards being YAP audition ready in the fall, which is my goal.

End of the Year Update and Next Year's Plans

LANGUAGE:  Well, the year is coming to an end and I think I can successfully say that I have accomplished my goal for French.  In my two reading test at the end of this year I have averaged a 97% comprehension rate.  I do have one more test planned for next week so I can have a three score average to more accurately rate my ability.  Additionally, I feel pretty comfortable in conversation in French and feel as though I can express myself pretty well.  I am very pleased with the last eight months of work in French.  Admittedly, I was not always as consistent in my work as I would have liked to be, but it provides me with goals for the coming year.

2012 brings in an entire year devoted to German for me.  My system will be similar to what I did for French, since it seems to have been the most effective for me.  This includes working through Michel Thomas, Assimil and LingQ on a daily basis during the work week, taking the weekends off from studying to allow things to work themselves out subconsciously.  In addition I will again be consulting my friend Ernest for conversational practice beginning early on in the process.  My goal for the coming year is to be more consistent in my studying - making sure that I get in all three phases of my work, five days a week.  Based on the results I saw with French after only eight months, I am hoping to be even farther along in German by this time next year with the extra four months of work.

MUSIC:  This has been an enlightening year for me musically.  I have grown much as a singer and artist, however I also encountered some setbacks that varied from minor annoyances to things that made me step back and think about what it is I am undertaking.  Overall I am better for all of my experiences as they have led me to discover new interests and paths in which I can explore my own artistry.

The most difficult part of this year was the culminating recital, my first as a tenor in nearly ten years.  I had some successes and some failures throughout the performance which I meant to talk about here but never got around to it until now.  The positives from the recital were that I made it through all of my repertoire without feeling fatigued at the end or ever really feeling in danger of cracking.  The negatives were that I never really loosened up during the entire performance and thus my singing came out pressed and my artistic performance suffered for it.  I blame these issues mostly on nerves from not singing that high in public in many years.  I remember as a baritone that I had similar issues for a number of years until I had enough performances and faith in my voice through performing that I no longer suffered from the fright. 

The other challenge this year has been that I do not feel I have progressed as much as I should have this year.  I take the sole blame for this and have already begun to plan how to address this issue in the coming year.

After my recital, I began to contemplate if this was really the field for me to focus on and began taking choral conducting lessons with the plan of going to grad school for choral conducting.  Much to my delight, I have found that I really enjoy the study of choral conducting and have found myself doing what I do when I become truly interested in something:  researching and absorbing as much information as I can about the subject.  Ultimately this has not pulled away from my desire to perform and performing is still my primary goal, but I am still considering a MM in choral conducting, since an MM in vocal performance is not necessary for my goals.


For the coming year I really need to focus on more directed, intensive practice.  Difficulties abound due to my schedule, namely that I work overnights, however I have to figure out ways to be more productive and push myself if I want to make my dreams realities.  It is a challenge only being able to have lessons once every couple of months, but I cannot let that be an excuse for my not progressing.  This year I truly have to take my fate in my own hands and constantly remind myself that achieving my goals is a responsibility that rests solely on my shoulders and nobody else.


I am looking forward to 2012!  I can already tell that it will be a year of great growth for me as a person and artist.  Highlights of the coming year include planning a recital for the fall and my wedding, as well as figuring out where I will be relocating to in 2013.  Have a happy holiday season and I will be back in January!

A Response

Today, I read a blog post by my teacher, JRL, which dealt with faith.  I found this post to be very poignant, and to a certain extent I felt like it was directed towards me.  With out going to much into the specifics of the situation, my last lesson with Ron was a challenging one for me, and I sense for him as well.  I came out of the lesson questioning whether I had the ability to make this all consuming dream of mine a reality.  Ultimately, my faith in myself got the better of me and a reaffirmed myself to my work ethic and the knowledge that my own perseverance has won out in the past and will ultimately win out again.  It seems to me that things always must become more difficult before they get easier.  Such is the case currently as I am struggling mightily with my voice.  

Things I thought I had finally overcome  have come back and new struggles have accompanied them.  This is particularly disconcerting as I am singing in a recital in less then ten days, and  I feel that I will not be as well prepared technically as I felt I was going to be originally.  The difficult aspect of this situation is that I am presented with two choices:  1.)  Allow myself to go back to what I was doing prior to my lesson so that I can get through the recital, or 2.)  Work as hard as possible with these "new" concepts that I have been struggling with and hope for the best when I get to the recital.  Ultimately the choice is an easy one to make.  Option number one serves a solely selfish purpose and does not benefit me in the least, or my audience.  Option number two, while considerably more difficult at the moment will be more subservient to my final goal and a step in the right direction, even if my current level is mediocre.  In general, one must always move with forward progress, even if it feels backwards at the time.  

In his post, Ron talks about the time it takes for a singer to develop their instrument.  In fact, this is a common theme in Ron's writing which more singers need to hear.  The truth of my situation is that I am in no rush to get out and perform, outside of the fact that I really dislike my day job.  My main goal is to become a complete singer who can be the best at his art.  At 27 I am still on the  young side of this business, but I am beginning to feel some pressure as young artist program age limits are beginning to creep nearer.  However, if I develop my instrument completely, I can still forge a career without the help of these stepping stones.  

The Kashu-do mantra that heads Ron's blog is the perfect statement about my life and my path in music throughout my musical life.  I believe wholeheartedly that I will make it as a singer, and even though I have faced many tribulations in this field already my faith, patience and hard work have always paid dividends in the long run and will continue to do so into the future.

Mid October

I am nearing the end of my intensive time with French and can say that I am very happy with where I am.  I am understanding the vast majority of what I read now and will try and do a reading test from a newspaper before the year is over.  My listening is still a bit behind everything else, especially when listening to the radio, however I have begun to work intensively on my reading and listening abilities so hopefully they will both come up in level before the end of the year.

To increase my levels in those two areas I have begun to use LingQ almost exclusively. I even upgraded from the free version so that I could use the program more effectively.  I have to admit that I find it to be very helpful.  I love the concept of extensive/intensive listening and reading, but it is very difficult to read when having to flip back and forth from a book to a dictionary.  LingQ eliminates this by having a pop-up dictionary always present.  I have talked about LingQ before so I do not want to spend much time here on it except to tell you all to try it out.  As much as I liked the idea of using it for free, I do not feel that one gets the full benefit of the program until you upgrade to a pay version (and come on, it is only ten dollars a month!).

I am currently on the train on the way home from NYC, where I had a lesson with JRL.  Today's lesson was a very frustrating one for both of us I am sure.  Lessons like the one I had today are huge tests of courage and perseverance.  I have gone through a range of emotions in the six and a half hours since my lesson and have landed on a huge desire to get into a practice room and work.  It may be perseverance, or it may be ego, however I cannot have another lesson go by like this one did.  So I will spend the next month fixing my issues and come back better than I was today.

The largest frustration to me is that I spent the last two months working very hard and came in today feeling pretty good about myself.  Unfortunately during those two months I seemed to have regressed on a certain bad habit that I honestly was not paying as much attention to in the time between lessons as I was other technical things.  It would appear that I overdid to the point of misunderstanding a certain idea I was given last time and now I must go back and fix those issues which were not plaguing me at my lesson but came back with a vengeance today.  If this teaches one anything, it should be that we must always be vigilant!  Complacency can only lead to disaster.

You are what you do!

"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Today I want to break down this statement by Aristotle.  I cam across this while reading ChiRunning by Danny Dreyer and I feel it really speaks to my life.  So much so that it has been my quote of the week.

Part I:  We are what we repeatedly do.

The great thing about this part of the quote is that it is a statement of unequivocal fact.  Michael Jordan became a phenomenal basketball player because he practiced so much that the game just became part of him.  Likewise, the cello is simply an extension of Yo-Yo Ma because of the endless hours of time put into learning and perfecting his art.  In all fields, one can find similar stories that all follow a similar path.  This same point that Aristotle points out so eloquently has recently been elaborated on through the 10,000 hour rule, which has been popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers (a book which I highly recommend).  The basic premise is that if a person reaches 10,000 hours spent performing a specific skill or activity that they will be a master at it.  This equates to three hours a day over the course of ten years.  The truth is in the results.  Gladwell points out that the number of hours is not a magic number, and that one may become a master before reaching 10,000 hours, but that the process of constant, consistent work towards a goal will eventually reach its fruition.  

One thing that this rule, and Aristotle's original statement allow for is gradual progress.  The road to mastery is a long path and thusly progress will not be in large leaps, but in small steps.  Every once in a while there will be a "breakthrough moment," but these are really just a culmination of many little adjustments over time fusing together to create the current product.  This process of slow growth is not often embraced today, however the effects are considerably more lasting than quick fix practices.  

For myself, coming to realize this slow process has been a lesson in patience.  I first started my transition from baritone to tenor about two years ago.  Apart from my obvious issues of distance from my teacher, the process has been very slow as in not nearly done.  I have just recently come into possession of a high A and Bb, and they are still fickle at best.  The process has been, for me, one that seems to move at such a pace that I do not really feel like I am progressing at all, but feedback from others and those few moments affirm that I am on the right path.  Faith is a key component to this as well, for without faith that I am a singer, I would never have pursued this path this far.

Part 2:  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Using the example of Michael Jordan again, he practiced his shot so much over the years that it was second nature for him.  The same goes for Tiger Woods at his peak, or Michael Phelps, or Luciano Pavarotti.  This ties into my last post, but when we put the time in to make something a part of ourselves, we have no choice but for it to appear easy.  If we practice with the goal of attaining the highest level possible then excellence will occur.  It has no choice.  

Aristotle's quote as a whole is really an if-then scenario.  If we repeatedly do something to the point that it becomes a part of us, then excellence is to be expected.  There is a concept in endurance sports that essentially states:  If you want to be a better runner, go run.  If you want to be a better swimmer, go swim.  Excellence can only occur when you focus on a task.  What do you want to become excellent at?