This month the Sydney MacDonalds Performing Arts Challenge hits its stride with many of the most hotly-contested vocal sections running in July. Classical and contemporary singers in age-limited or open sections slug it out for prizes ranging from a medal (don't knock the medals, they are nice and you can keep 'em forever!) to $30,000. It's an extremely challenging arena for performance. There are commonly thirty or more entrants from all over Australia competing in each event. To place at Sydney, you really need to present immaculately from the first moment; to sing brilliantly and musically; and to demonstrate that you are au fait with the performance conventions appropriate to the material. And you need to be lucky: the adjudicator has to happen to agree with your reading of your song, and not be annoyed by your hairdo.
So far I've been along to hear several former and current ACTT students compete in the intermediate 17-25 age group, in the Lieder and the Italian Song sections, and they did very well in their first outing. Winners are almost always "battle-hardened": they are experienced competitors, ready to show everything they can do and command the room from the get-go, rather than warming into their work as they go, as the promising rookies tend to do. Although it costs up to $25 per section to enter, it is a great way for young singers to see how they are going compared to others in their cohort, and to get a detailed report from a highly-qualified judge on their performance.
My favourite section so far has been #59: Singer-Songwriter, held on Tuesday Night at Petersham RSL. You had to sing your own song and accompany yourself. There was one composer who was nine years old - she had written a creditable Avril Levigne-style ditty about how she has Passion for Everything she Does, and everyone sat there in shock thinking, "Nine! NINE!!" as she belted her way through it with tremendous aplomb. There was quite a cluster of twelve- and thirteen- year old girls and their excellent output ranged from self-revelatory description set to an Alicia Keyes-esque accompaniment; through literary response in the form of a terrific song from the point of view of Shakespeare's Juliet; to quite mad humour, with one girl singing about school, "Oh well...L-O-L...". Someone older won it with a very accomplished country ballad that was less quirky but very well crafted and performed.
It was a night of excellent singing - the entrants sang much more robustly, expressively and precisely than those in, say, the Open Contemporary Song event. There was a great supportive atmosphere, and the evening was serious fun and not at all plastic, perhaps because there were no pre-recorded backing tracks allowed (those feature heavily in all the Contemporary sections). Perhaps it was also because no-one alive could fail to respect the efforts of the kids, or the adults, who if the truth be told, had a dauntinger job than the youngsters. We licence children and teens to express themselves and try things and to be goofy and amateurish in our culture. By the time you are grown-up you are meant to be either a professional performer, or sitting quietly at home in front of Criminal Intent doing your taxes and getting fat. But that's mental. People aren't finished learning things when they are eighteen. And singing and songwriting are things you can continually improve at till you are a very old crock, if you keep working and sharing with whatever public you can access.
I remember crying my eyes out at sixteen because I realised I was too old ever to play Annie (in Annie, obviously, not in Annie Get Your Gun). Rather than feeling discouraged because you have failed to become a child prodigy, if you feel you might have a few songs in you, you had better start growing them and getting them out there as soon as possible! It's a big task to acquire the music theory necessary to write down the accompaniment, or to big up your instrumental skills to perform the accompaniment yourself, but it is possible, and the practice is its own reward. The lesson to take away from hearing spectacularly young and proficient performers is not that there's no point trying - rather, that we should emulate their adventurousness and their lack of inhibiting personal architecture just by choosing to sing our own songs, rather than to not.
Clare
Clare teaches singing in the Full-time Core and the Diploma, as well as privately, through the ACTT. She has recently started to include a songwriting activity in the Core singing programme courses!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
sick sick sick
It's winter, time for bulky woollens, riding boots and in the world of singing, inconvenient sickness, with its attendant agonising decision-making! I'm no doctor - but I have a lot of experience of being sick, and working sick, so for what it's worth, here are my answers to the sickness FAQs.
FAQ: I think I'm getting a cold! I have a lesson and a short rehearsal today for a performance tomorrow and a little bit of a sore throat, at the back of my mouth! And a runny nose and maybe a fever! What should I do?
A: I'd probably skip the lesson. (You should still pay for it if your teacher has only hours' notice, but see if she can schedule a make-up extra lesson for you the next week in a cancellation!) Go to your rehearsal, and don't bother with the doctor - you have a virus and they will be advising rest and plenty of liquids - awesome advice if you didn't have a performance tomorrow! Get to the chemist and get hold of 1. a herbal runny-nose remedy called Respatona Head Cold, and 2. a steamer (humidifier) and run it all night near your bed on full. No screaming, not much talking and when you are singing go for clarity and focus. Stay off Codral and away from fierce nasal sprays like Otrivin and Sinex. They dry out the fine membranes of your larynx and make hoarseness a probability. Gargle Betadine if you can get it, or salt-water in a weakish concentration if you can't. Lemon and honey taste nice in hot water and don't do you any harm. Keep super-warm!
FAQ: My cold went a week ago, but now I've got an awful feeling that someone is gripping my throat down near my larynx and I am a bit hoarse. I've coughed up some nasty-tasting green and yellow stuff too. But I don't really feel sick, or have much of a runny nose. I have a lesson and a rehearsal today for a performance the day after tomorrow.
A: Oh-oh. Get thee to the doc. Tell him about the phlegm and its colour. Now is a great time for a course of the toughest antibiotic he will give you. Garlic, lemon, honey: they give you a great feeling of virtue and may help a bit - eg the lemon and honey will help cut the phlegm to make it cough-upable - but seriously: if you want to make your singing commitment and the doc thinks they may help, eat up your pills! Again, you can risk taking an anti-inflammatory like aspirin when you AREN'T using your voice - like now. No lesson, and no rehearsing on this pipe, especially if you aren't sure you can reach the notes. No Codral, no Otrivin or Sinex spray. Sit in front of your steamer all day and steam yourself. Run your steamer all night. Gargle Betadine every three hours. You may well make it but if you have an understudy it might be worth giving them a heads up. With any luck the antibiotics will kick in and the swelling in the larynx will go down and you will sail through your sing after a super-careful warm up with lots of intercostal stretching and humming!
FAQ: Three weeks ago I had laryngitis and I sang a big concert on the last little bit of it and I feel my voice hasn't been quite right since! I don't have a regular singing lesson but should I try to go to a specialist? What if I have a nodule or tearing or something?
A: OK. Firstly: if you feel that there is something really wrong in your pipe, don't let anyone tell you that you are wrong and everything's fine UNLESS they are an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat specialist) and you are both looking at a recent clean laryngoscopy. I have been confidently told (many many years ago!) by a very experienced singing teacher, then by a good ENT that I didn't have a nodule - until he got a camera down the pipe and said, "Oh, except that little one right there!" Here are some tells for problems: you might have lost range at either end, especially at the top, over a long period of time; starting the sound takes a massive effort and still sometimes it fails to "speak"; there is unprecendented breathiness, or another noise - sometimes a metallic sound - in the voice. You are in a unique position to know if something has changed for the worse down the pipe.
HOWEVER: don't rush to a negative conclusion. When you feel that you really have to work sick you will probably do it.Then you may feel a certain terror that you have buggered your instrument and you have brought it all on yourself! You will never sing again! It's ruined and it turns out to be all you ever cared about...
Well my darling: you headed for the right profession! But now you should calm right down, especially if it really has been less than a month. It's probably worth contacting your old voice teacher or your singing teacher for them to have a listen. It is very probable that having been hoarse for a while you have developed some idiosyncratic work-arounds that you are now having trouble abandoning. Even if it's all by yourself, go back to your basics; run your breath drills and sirens and hums. See if by consciously opening out any protective postures you might have adopted in your throat you can find your clear, energised voice again. Repeat this for a few days and see if your register transitions get any smoother. If you are getting better, be patient.
Final note: if you do turn out to have an injury, don't go mental over it. If Rafa Nadal had thrown himself off a bridge when someone first said to him, "Gee that knee looks a bit iffy mate!" then he'd be down about four Grand Slam titles. Nodules can be trained off with the aid of a speech pathologist, and it is highly unlikely that you will be told you will never sing again - and if you are told any such thing, get a second opinion! Just as elite sports people are usually working off an injury or surgery or strengthening up to stave something off, singers can't realistically expect absolutely perfect function at the physical extreme of human potential from their instruments every single day of their lives. People cough on you on the bus and you get things. No guiltifying! No spurious psychopathologising of a poorly timed cold, people! Stuff happens. Try to make sure you are in good shape for the next performance. Get some rest.
Clare Heuston
FAQ: I think I'm getting a cold! I have a lesson and a short rehearsal today for a performance tomorrow and a little bit of a sore throat, at the back of my mouth! And a runny nose and maybe a fever! What should I do?
A: I'd probably skip the lesson. (You should still pay for it if your teacher has only hours' notice, but see if she can schedule a make-up extra lesson for you the next week in a cancellation!) Go to your rehearsal, and don't bother with the doctor - you have a virus and they will be advising rest and plenty of liquids - awesome advice if you didn't have a performance tomorrow! Get to the chemist and get hold of 1. a herbal runny-nose remedy called Respatona Head Cold, and 2. a steamer (humidifier) and run it all night near your bed on full. No screaming, not much talking and when you are singing go for clarity and focus. Stay off Codral and away from fierce nasal sprays like Otrivin and Sinex. They dry out the fine membranes of your larynx and make hoarseness a probability. Gargle Betadine if you can get it, or salt-water in a weakish concentration if you can't. Lemon and honey taste nice in hot water and don't do you any harm. Keep super-warm!
FAQ: My cold went a week ago, but now I've got an awful feeling that someone is gripping my throat down near my larynx and I am a bit hoarse. I've coughed up some nasty-tasting green and yellow stuff too. But I don't really feel sick, or have much of a runny nose. I have a lesson and a rehearsal today for a performance the day after tomorrow.
A: Oh-oh. Get thee to the doc. Tell him about the phlegm and its colour. Now is a great time for a course of the toughest antibiotic he will give you. Garlic, lemon, honey: they give you a great feeling of virtue and may help a bit - eg the lemon and honey will help cut the phlegm to make it cough-upable - but seriously: if you want to make your singing commitment and the doc thinks they may help, eat up your pills! Again, you can risk taking an anti-inflammatory like aspirin when you AREN'T using your voice - like now. No lesson, and no rehearsing on this pipe, especially if you aren't sure you can reach the notes. No Codral, no Otrivin or Sinex spray. Sit in front of your steamer all day and steam yourself. Run your steamer all night. Gargle Betadine every three hours. You may well make it but if you have an understudy it might be worth giving them a heads up. With any luck the antibiotics will kick in and the swelling in the larynx will go down and you will sail through your sing after a super-careful warm up with lots of intercostal stretching and humming!
FAQ: Three weeks ago I had laryngitis and I sang a big concert on the last little bit of it and I feel my voice hasn't been quite right since! I don't have a regular singing lesson but should I try to go to a specialist? What if I have a nodule or tearing or something?
A: OK. Firstly: if you feel that there is something really wrong in your pipe, don't let anyone tell you that you are wrong and everything's fine UNLESS they are an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat specialist) and you are both looking at a recent clean laryngoscopy. I have been confidently told (many many years ago!) by a very experienced singing teacher, then by a good ENT that I didn't have a nodule - until he got a camera down the pipe and said, "Oh, except that little one right there!" Here are some tells for problems: you might have lost range at either end, especially at the top, over a long period of time; starting the sound takes a massive effort and still sometimes it fails to "speak"; there is unprecendented breathiness, or another noise - sometimes a metallic sound - in the voice. You are in a unique position to know if something has changed for the worse down the pipe.
HOWEVER: don't rush to a negative conclusion. When you feel that you really have to work sick you will probably do it.Then you may feel a certain terror that you have buggered your instrument and you have brought it all on yourself! You will never sing again! It's ruined and it turns out to be all you ever cared about...
Well my darling: you headed for the right profession! But now you should calm right down, especially if it really has been less than a month. It's probably worth contacting your old voice teacher or your singing teacher for them to have a listen. It is very probable that having been hoarse for a while you have developed some idiosyncratic work-arounds that you are now having trouble abandoning. Even if it's all by yourself, go back to your basics; run your breath drills and sirens and hums. See if by consciously opening out any protective postures you might have adopted in your throat you can find your clear, energised voice again. Repeat this for a few days and see if your register transitions get any smoother. If you are getting better, be patient.
Final note: if you do turn out to have an injury, don't go mental over it. If Rafa Nadal had thrown himself off a bridge when someone first said to him, "Gee that knee looks a bit iffy mate!" then he'd be down about four Grand Slam titles. Nodules can be trained off with the aid of a speech pathologist, and it is highly unlikely that you will be told you will never sing again - and if you are told any such thing, get a second opinion! Just as elite sports people are usually working off an injury or surgery or strengthening up to stave something off, singers can't realistically expect absolutely perfect function at the physical extreme of human potential from their instruments every single day of their lives. People cough on you on the bus and you get things. No guiltifying! No spurious psychopathologising of a poorly timed cold, people! Stuff happens. Try to make sure you are in good shape for the next performance. Get some rest.
Clare Heuston
An idiotic libretto for an opera that you compose as you go
I like to run this goofy exercise where I give out a bunch of little libretti and groups of people can perform it as a modernist opera, improvising the music as they go, with or without my atonal accompaniment on the piano. The trick to being good at it is this: you have to look at your text and work out what is recitative and what can be a little aria. Then you need the gall to repeat text and to strive for different musical feels for different bits of text.
This one came out of the Paul McCartney song Golden Slumbers, in a way. Apparently he knew there is an old song called Golden Slumbers, and he knew a few of the words, but he didn't know the song. So, as in a dream when you dream an episode of your favourite TV show but IT'S A NEW EPISODE that you made up - AWESOME! and a bit odd in some ways maybe - he just wrote what he thought Golden Slumbers would be like. So this one is kind of stuff I can half-remember about Chekhov except mad and wrong.
MODERNIST OPERA EXERCISE: RUSSIAN SCENE
Cast: three sisters, Ivana, Anna and Natasha; their Father, Ivan Semionovitch; Natasha's lover, Captain Petrova.
Ivana, Anna, Natasha (trio): Life is so dull! How tedious it all is, here in the countryside!
Ivana: Why can't we go back to Moscow!
Anna: There is no-one interesting here in the country!
Natasha: There were such nice gentlemen in Moscow!
Ivana, Anna, Natasha (trio): Life is so dull! How teeeeeeeeeeedious it all is,
Ivana: Here
Anna: - - in the
Natasha: - - - countryside!
Father: (bursting in angrily) My daughters, my daughters! Are you all sitting about complaining again? (happy reverie) The orchard is in bloom, the peasants are dancing in the fields, and the brook sings so happily at the bottom of the garden! (angrily) Why are you all complaining again?
Ivana, Anna, Natasha (trio): We are so lonely!
Ivana: All our friends are away!
Anna: No-one comes to see us!
Natasha: Life is soooooooooo dull!
Father: But Captain Petrova is coming to see you this morning Natasha! In fact, here he is now!
Natasha: O I shall faint!
Ivana: Pinch your cheeks so they are red!
Anna: Stand up straight so you look taller!
Captain Petrova (off): Where are you, dear ladies? Are you there, Sir?
Father: Come through, dear Captain! The girls are all here waiting! (the girls shush their father angrily)
Captain Petrova: What a delightful estate you have here, Sir! Though smaller than my father's, it is much more beautiful. As I came up, the birds were singing, and the little lambs in the fields were whiter than apple blossom! And today is the perfect Spring day - (to Natasha) do you not think so Miss Semionovitch?
Natasha: Yes indeed! the brook sings so happily at the bottom of the garden!
Anna: The peasants are dancing in the fields!
Ivana: The or-or-or-orchard is in bloooooooooom!
This exercise was designed as a way to get nervous Nellies and Ninos to lift their voices and to experiment with the control of theatrical and musical time. I'm about to try it in a new class where there is an excellent Korean student whose English is a bit iffy. I'm not sure how it will work. Anyway.
Clare
This one came out of the Paul McCartney song Golden Slumbers, in a way. Apparently he knew there is an old song called Golden Slumbers, and he knew a few of the words, but he didn't know the song. So, as in a dream when you dream an episode of your favourite TV show but IT'S A NEW EPISODE that you made up - AWESOME! and a bit odd in some ways maybe - he just wrote what he thought Golden Slumbers would be like. So this one is kind of stuff I can half-remember about Chekhov except mad and wrong.
MODERNIST OPERA EXERCISE: RUSSIAN SCENE
Cast: three sisters, Ivana, Anna and Natasha; their Father, Ivan Semionovitch; Natasha's lover, Captain Petrova.
Ivana, Anna, Natasha (trio): Life is so dull! How tedious it all is, here in the countryside!
Ivana: Why can't we go back to Moscow!
Anna: There is no-one interesting here in the country!
Natasha: There were such nice gentlemen in Moscow!
Ivana, Anna, Natasha (trio): Life is so dull! How teeeeeeeeeeedious it all is,
Ivana: Here
Anna: - - in the
Natasha: - - - countryside!
Father: (bursting in angrily) My daughters, my daughters! Are you all sitting about complaining again? (happy reverie) The orchard is in bloom, the peasants are dancing in the fields, and the brook sings so happily at the bottom of the garden! (angrily) Why are you all complaining again?
Ivana, Anna, Natasha (trio): We are so lonely!
Ivana: All our friends are away!
Anna: No-one comes to see us!
Natasha: Life is soooooooooo dull!
Father: But Captain Petrova is coming to see you this morning Natasha! In fact, here he is now!
Natasha: O I shall faint!
Ivana: Pinch your cheeks so they are red!
Anna: Stand up straight so you look taller!
Captain Petrova (off): Where are you, dear ladies? Are you there, Sir?
Father: Come through, dear Captain! The girls are all here waiting! (the girls shush their father angrily)
Captain Petrova: What a delightful estate you have here, Sir! Though smaller than my father's, it is much more beautiful. As I came up, the birds were singing, and the little lambs in the fields were whiter than apple blossom! And today is the perfect Spring day - (to Natasha) do you not think so Miss Semionovitch?
Natasha: Yes indeed! the brook sings so happily at the bottom of the garden!
Anna: The peasants are dancing in the fields!
Ivana: The or-or-or-orchard is in bloooooooooom!
This exercise was designed as a way to get nervous Nellies and Ninos to lift their voices and to experiment with the control of theatrical and musical time. I'm about to try it in a new class where there is an excellent Korean student whose English is a bit iffy. I'm not sure how it will work. Anyway.
Clare
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)