'Still Falls the Rain' was released yesterday...oddly enough, it was a rather Still-Falls-the-Rainy day here in New York City yesterday, as well. It seemed rather appropriate and was hopefully an auspicious sign...
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People often ask me, "What are you thinking about while you are sitting in front of the orchestra, waiting to sing?"
Tonight, I was thinking about how the bassoon countermelody - when the violas first come in with the Ode to Joy theme - in the last movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony is one of the most happy and joyful countermelodies I've ever heard.
It makes me smile every time I hear it. I daresay, it is my favorite part of the Ludwig's 9th Symphony.
As I was in Europe for the first week of the Olympics this year, I was in the right time zone to catch a lot of the events on TV in between stops on our concert tour. Even though I’m not really a huge sports fan, I’ve been fascinated (like most of the world) with the Olympics since I was a kid. There is something utterly awe-inspiring watching the extraordinary feats a human body can accomplish. Whether it’s watching someone swimming or running faster than one can imagine, or doing the most intricate series of twists and backflips flying through the air after having jumped off a 10-meter platform into the water, watching what these athletes are able to do with their bodies never ceases to amaze me.
There is an element of this kind of athleticism and jaw-dropping physical virtuosity to opera, as well. All musicians at the highest levels train just as vigorously as these Olympic athletes do, we must in order to achieve the same level of mastery that these athletes must achieve in order to make it to the Olympic level of competition. I know that the stereotype about singers is that we are all fat ladies wearing breastplates and carrying spears. And, yes, in some cases, that stereotype holds true. But singers, just like all humans, come in all shapes and sizes, and just like these athletes, our bodies are our instruments. The physical demands required of any singer to project their voice over a 150 piece orchestra into a 2000 – 4000 seat theater without any amplification all while running around on stage are quite strenuous. So, like athletes, singers must train like athletes in order to perform the amazing feats that are performed on stages like the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and the Royal Opera House. I just can’t help but see the similarities when watching the Olympics, and I think that this is a large part of what makes going to the opera so exciting. I think of it as vocal figure skating or gymnastics – we watch people dressed up in costumes, moving around to music, waiting to see if they will land their vocal equivalent of a triple axle or double back flip.... (read more)
I know that I am generally the vocal music correspondent for the Ecstatic Living Room, but I had to veer a bit from my normal realm of responsibility to talk about the movie Moonrise Kingdom.
I went to go see Wes Anderson’s latest film a few days ago at the suggestion of a friend, who was just sure that I was going to love it. That friend knows my taste well — I was completely enraptured from the first scene. In the opening montage of the film, the cameras wander from room to room of a house on a rainy day — in one of the rooms, a group of children are playing around a record player, listening to Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which becomes the opening soundtrack to the film. The montage is at once nostalgic and sweet, and yet, at the same time, an incredibly sophisticated shot, seamlessly moving through each room of the house, introducing us quietly to each of the film’s main characters and transforming the mundane idleness of a rainy afternoon into a visually stunning work of art. Britten’s music is woven in throughout the rest of the film’s soundtrack, providing a musical backdrop that is the perfect reflection of the wacky misadventures of the the movie’s two child protagonists.
In the film, the film’s two lead characters are a young boy and young girl who are in love, and who concoct an elaborate and sophisticated plan to run away together sometime in 1965. The two embark on a complex and wild journey into the wilds of the island they are living on, managing to outsmart, outwit, and elude the adults who are supposed to be their caretakers at almost every step along the way. Much of the music that was chosen for the film was music Britten had composed for young people as a way to introduce them to the art form. Something that has always impressed me about Britten’s music for young people is that it is always incredibly sophisticated. Britten was fascinated with youth and the precious value of innocence his entire life, and it is clear that he knew that children have much more sophisticated minds that most adults give them credit for.
Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is an elaborate set of a theme and variations that takes the listener through the various sections of the orchestra, showcasing what each instrument and section does and the variety of sounds that they make. The piece begins with the entire orchestra playing an arrangement of a theme by Purcell, and then Britten tours the orchestra through each following variation on that theme. The piece ends with the entire orchestra playing an incredibly complex fugue, climaxing to an exciting finish. Britten never simplifies or assumes that his intended audience won’t be able to understand, just because they are young. The piece is just as intricate and complex as any of his other compositions — he assumes intelligence and a sophisticated capability of understanding.
A key piece of his music that features prominently in the film is his church parable, Noye’s Fludde. Britten composed the piece with the intention that it be performed by a mostly-amateur cast in a church or a large hall — most of the roles in the opera are written for children, and it is at a local church production of the piece (in which Wes Anderson’s leading lady is dressed up adorably as a raven) that the film’s two lead characters meet and fall in love.
Another part of “pop” culture that I have been taking in lately is HBO’s new show The Newsroom. At the beginning of the series’ pilot episode, the show’s lead character, news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) sounds off at a Q and A session at Northwestern University about how, once-upon-a-time-not-too-long-ago, American people used to value intelligence, not stupidity, and celebrated the power of knowledge. The show has gone on pursuing this theme, by dramatizing the production of a news show, musing on the importance of an informed, educated electorate. It’s a theme I completely subscribe to when I consider my life as a performing classical musician.
I learned my lesson about this a long time ago the very first time I programmed Britten on a recital in Kirksville, Missouri. I worried that a small, American town might not appreciate his music, and programmed a lot of lighter, more “accessible” fare around it. In the end, it turned out that the music that drew in that midwestern audience was Britten’s music — not the lighter, less complex, less intricate music that surrounded it. Seeing Wes Anderson’s nostalgic take on a bygone era, and hearing and seeing how he so tenderly and lovingly wove Britten’s music throughout the film, I was reminded why I am drawn to his music both as a listener and as a performer. He assumes and celebrates the power of the human mind while never losing touch with the intricacies of the human heart. He ignites the imagination through his music — reminding us that this music, like all music, truly is for everybody.
So here's the latest "Still Falls the Rain" update - we just chose an album cover yesterday!
I'm very excited about it! Now that this step is done, we can start progressing with the rest of the CD booklet design.
To those of you who have contributed to the album's Kickstarter campaign: Many, many thanks for your continued support and generosity! We are half way there with five days to go! If you think about it, only 100 more $50 pledges, and we will have hit our goal - so please keep spreading the word! If you haven't pre-ordered your advance copy of the album by pledging your support you - do so now before the campaign is over!
Happy 4th to all of you who are celebrating Independence Day today!
I hope you are all enjoying fantastic fireworks and grilled meats of every variety. I'm celebrating in Eugene, Oregon, in between moments of frantic St. Matthew Passion studying...
In case you haven't had a chance to pledge your support for the "Still Falls The Rain" Kickstarter campaign yet, we are only 6 days away from the finish line now and about 40% of the way there! The catch with Kickstarter is that if we don't raise 100% of the fundraising goal, we will lose ALL of the money pledged so far. So it is important that we reach that finish line in time!
Pledging your support is not only a fantastic opportunity to help bring some extraordinarily moving music to the world, but it's also a great opportunity to pre-order your own advance copy of the album. In case you haven't checked the album's Kickstarter page out yet, every pledge-level reward includes an advance download or advance CD - a pledge as low as $50 includes both! We're only 120 $50 pledges away from reaching our goal, and this blog gets about 100 visits a day. If everyone who visited this blog in the next 24 hours stopped by Kickstarter and pre-ordered a copy of the album by pledging their support - just imagine how much closer we would be towards that goal and bringing this album out into the world!
To those of you who have already pledged - I cannot thank you enough for your support and generosity! Please help to continue to spread the word! Many, many thanks and Happy Independence Day!
I just thought I would check in here with a little update about my latest recording project!
Let me start off by saying a big THANK YOU to all of the backers who have pledged so far to the Kickstarter campaign for Still Falls the Rain! We're just short of 35% of the fundraising goal with a little over a week to go - so if you haven't joined the list of people who have already pre-ordered an advance copy of the album by pledging their support, there is still a little time left to do so. If we don't raise 100% of the fundraising goal - we lose all of the money pledged - so it is imperative that we get there in the next 8 days! No pledge is too small, and every little bit helps!
photo by Francis Hills
The latest update regarding the album is that last Friday, we recorded the final tracks of the album! There are a few readings of Edith Sitwell's poetry that are interspersed throughout Britten's piece, The Heart of the Matter. I am excited to report that the phenomenal actor, Alan Cumming, was kind enough to do the readings for the album. Alan is currently performing a one-man production of Macbeth at the National Theater of Scotland, and was generous enough to take some time out of his busy rehearsal/performance schedule to record the tracks in a studio in Glasgow, Scotland. Through the wonders of the internet, the album's producer was patched in to the Scottish studio from a studio in NYC, and we were able to quickly get the final tracks of the album down. Alan's readings of this poetry are incredibly moving - it's stunning poetry, and even more stunning to hear Alan's expressive delivery of the text. Now that this final piece of the puzzle has come into place, I am even more excited for you all to hear the finished piece!
Again - I am so grateful for your support of this project. I am so excited that we are nearing the finish line, and it is YOUR support that is nudging us closer and closer to our goal. In the meantime, if you have already pledged your support, please keep spreading the word about this campaign by posting about it on your Twitter feeds/Facebook pages, etc., I would be eternally grateful. This is a fantastic chance for any Britten-lover you know who will enjoy this album to pre-order their advance copy of the album!
Just as I was starting to prepare myself for some serious summer downtime, life took one of it's usual unexpected turns, and I am off now to step in for an ill colleague at the Oregon Bach Festival for some Bach and Mendelssohn over the next few weeks. So, while I had initially planned on spending this week exploring new recipes in my kitchen and catching up on entire seasons of TV that I've missed via Netflix in between casual study sessions of Brahms and Schubert, I'm instead hurtling across the country in a flying steel tube with wings a few weeks earlier than I expected. While I am already a little homesick (a perpetual state of being bittersweetly combined with gratitude for the fact that I get to sing for a living), I'm very much excited to get to spend some extra time in the Pacific Northwest. I think it is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and I can't wait for some time to explore and enjoy it a bit more.
The Mendelssohn piece I'm jumping in for this weekend actually is providing me with an opportunity to sing a piece that I have been dreaming of performing since college. Die erste Walpurgisnacht is a secular cantata that is a setting of a Goethe text that Mendelssohn set in 1831. The piece completely captured my imagination, hitting all of my sweet spots when I was as a 19-year-old sophomore in the University of Michigan Chamber Choir. Between singing about druids and pagan rituals and the fact that it is German Romantic music at it's most exciting and dramatic - both the history nerd AND the angst-ridden, teen drama queen inside me were having a heyday.
There is a nice tenor solo in the piece - at first, the tenor portrays one of the druid priests calling for the start of the Walpurgisnacht rites that everyone is there to celebrate.
When I first saw how beautiful and exciting the opening tenor solo was at our first read through of the piece in college, I fell in love with the piece and ran straight to a practice room to properly learn it so that I could start working on it at my next lesson and sing it for the upcoming audition for the solo. In the end, to my great disappointment, they gave the solo to one of the fantastic Doctoral students that were studying at Michigan at the time (there was a plethora of very talented tenors studying at Michigan while I was there). Being a 19 year old with a very limited perspective on life and music, I remember feeling so sure that I would never have the opportunity to sing those fantastic opening lines ever again. I swallowed my disappointment and sang my heart out in the chorus for the concerts, nevertheless enjoying the chance to get to know the piece during the weeks that we rehearsed it that semester.
Since getting the call to jump in at the Bach Festival, it's been great fun to reminisce about my college excitement about the piece and be reminded about the passionate curiosity for music that drew me to this wandering minstrel's life. I wish my ailing colleague a very speedy recovery, and I offer him profuse thanks for giving my disappointed inner 19-year-old self the opportunity for a bit of delayed gratification.
When I went to repost my latest guest post from the Ecstatic Living Room here, I took a peek over at my blog archive and realized that I've been a bit neglectful of this blog during the first six months of this year. It was completely unintentional - life and music just overtook me, as they can do sometimes, and there just hasn't been much opportunity to write about it. It's summertime now - so I'm hoping to jump back on the bandwagon...
One of the projects that has kept me a bit busy has been recording my second Britten album for Avie. You can see a bit of footage from our recording sessions in the video above. After recording Winter Words, which focused mainly on the music the resulted from the relationship between Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, I felt that the next step was to explore some of his other relationships that inspired his composition. After becoming fast friends and exploring Britten's music extensively together during our summers at the Marlboro Music Festival, the harpist Sivan Magen and I decided to record all of his harp/tenor compositions for the Welsh harpist, Osian Ellis, and Pears from the end of his life. And after performing Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings a few times over the past couple of years, I found myself also fascinated by his musical friendship with the horn player, Dennis Brain. Horn player, Jennifer Montone, and I became friends after performing his Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain a few years back on her Carnegie Hall debut recital, and it seemed a natural fit to record the piece together along with some other music he wrote for Brain and Pears to round out this album about Britten's other muses.
I've recently launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help raise some funding to ensure the album is finished properly in time for it's release date this fall. You can read more details about the recording project and the concept behind the album there, as well as basically pre-order a copy of the album. A kickstarter pledge as little as $25 will not only get you an advance copy of the physical CD of the album, but it will also make you an important part of bringing this music to audiences around the world. Sivan, Jen, and Myra (my good friend and beautiful pianist-collaborator from Winter Words) are all incredibly proud of the work we did at the recording sessions in January, and we are very anxious to push this album to the release date finish line. We are incredibly grateful for your generosity and any support that you can give!
In the meantime, I promise that my accidental blogging hiatus is over, and I look forward to being back here on a more regular basis...
