And once again, ladies and gentlemen, Kristen Barnes! This time, though, I’m not talking about her senior voice recital but rather her presence as guinea pig voice student. We are in the midst of hiring at least one additional part time voice teacher at Carthage- and we hosted a couple of applicants earlier this week who met with several of us on the faculty to be interviewed, to sing for us, and to teach a sample voice lesson for us. (Kristen was one of two “sample students” for these lessons.) I appreciate the thoroughness with which we are approaching this because we have such a fine chemistry between us right now and we want someone who will benefit our students and department and with whom we will feel completely comfortable.
Needless to say I am not saying a single word about anyone we met in this process – but I want to say that I certainly appreciate how difficult it would be to teach a voice lesson to a complete stranger while other complete strangers- who are voice teachers themselves – are right there, sitting in judgment. That’s a gauntlet I never had to run myself. I guess you could say that I entered Carthage’s music faculty through the back door in 1991.
It was Friday, April 12th, and it had been a dark day because the headline in that morning’s Kenosha News proclaimed the news that Gateway Technical College was going to pursue talks to turn WGTD over to Wisconsin Public Radio- a move which would almost certainly result in drastic cuts in staff and programming. It was really scary. (And nobody except for the general manager knew anything about it until we saw the paper that morning- which was a lovely way to find out such news.) Anyway, that very evening Kathy and I (not yet married) had supper at Polly’s apartment- and she mentioned at one point, almost in passing, “Oh Greg, Steve Smith wants you to call him about doing some part-time voice teaching at Carthage this fall.” I am still amazed at the timing of that announcement. It was incredibly welcome news, to say the least! The head of voice at Carthage, Richard Sjoerdsma, was going to be on leave that fall and they asked me to step in and teach his students. . . and to make a long story short, I just never left. There were so many voice students enrolled at that point that i was still needed even after Dr. Sjoerdsma returned, and i got busier and busier until i was finally made full time in 1995.
But at the time I was initially hired I was simply offered the position without so much as an interview – and certainly without having to show them what kind of a teacher I was by teaching a sample lesson. And it’s probably a good thing, too, because at that point my teaching experience was quite limited. But I was fortunate in that I had learned voice from a series of truly superb voice teachers – and at both Luther and the University of Nebraska, I was an accompanist for multiple students and teachers . . . so I had spent more time in a wider array of voice studios than your typical singer, and that, almost more than anything, is what saved my butt and made it possible for me to be a decent teacher at first and a good teacher eventually. I had seen a lot of good teachers in action with an amazing range of students, and at least some of that seeped into my being. But no one at Carthage had any way of knowing that; they had simply seen me and heard me sing with the Kenosha Symphony and knew I was a skilled singer and pianist – and had perhaps heard me speak and knew that I had some musical know-how. But I was never asked to come and teach a sample voice lesson, and if I had been, I wonder how that would have gone and if I would have still been given this opportunity. And if that back door hadn’t opened to me then, where would I be now? Flipping burgers at White Castle? Selling insurance? Just thinking about that makes me a little sick to my stomach and makes me SO grateful that Professor Steve Smith apparently decided to just go with his gut and hire me. “It’s for just one semester,” he probably thought to himself. “If he bombs, how much harm can he do? He’ll be gone by January.”
Not quite.
pictured: one of the sample lessons in question, with Kristen Barnes as guinea pig student. By the way, our good friend Jackie Drummer was the guinea pig student when Dr. Sjoerdsma was hired back in 1968.