It’s actually Friday as I type this, and I am catching my breath in the midst of what is always one of the most exciting and exhausting days of the whole year…. Day #1 of NATS, the annual fall competition sponsored by the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. The competition pits singers from every college and university across the state against each other, so little ol’ Carthage College is head-to-head with UW-Madison, Lawrence University, etc. (The dad of someone I played for this morning asked if they split up NATS according to division I, II and III, like they do in football. Now that’s a good idea! But no, they don’t.) It’s stressful and demanding- and more often than not, the competition is held in some far-flung locale like Eau Clare or Stevens Point. But this year, saints be praised, it’s in Milwaukee- and it is great to start the day without the depletion of having just driven three or four or five hours. (This is the closest to home field advantage that Carthage will ever have.)
NATS is the second of two big projects for me this week. The first was Tuesday night’s Musical Theater Workshop performance, in which 22 students delivered a series of scenes around the theme of Domestic Disputes. That was fun but in a sort of harrowing way. Shepherding all of those small projects was SO much harder than if we had “just” mounted a full-fledged opera. . . and the fact that we had so many students made it all the trickier to handle. What made it as positive and successful as it was is mostly due to the work of my collaborator, Matt Boresi, who was the stage director. Matt is wonderful at what he does, breathing invigorating fresh air into everything he does and using such a lovely light touch in working with our students. . . but Matt is also fully capable of delivering a blistering “quit screwing around!” lecture when necessary. As for the students, some came through with Flying Colors while for others it was more like Crawling Colors, but we made it…. and as the entire ensemble took the stage for our finale, “It’s the Little Things” from Company, I was breathing an enormous sigh of relief. Among the lessons learned:
- It’s a thrill to have so many talented students in workshop, and so many students who were so gung-ho to learn… learning to be more skilled, assured, and expressive performers – and embracing what it means to be that kind of singer. But it’s also true that. . .
- It’s a headache to have so many talented students in workshop, because there weren’t enough minutes in the day to spend with each and every student as much as one wanted, which means. . .
- Our students need to learn how to fly on their own, and we as faculty are putting our heads together, trying to find ways to prepare our students to be self-sufficient musicians. In other words, we need to do a better job of teaching them to fly so we can shove them out of the nest and know that they won’t go splat, musically or otherwise.
- I was reminded that some of the most gratifying joys come when someone surprises you- and that happened most dramatically this time around with several guys who have done very little solo singing before this, but who for various reasons wanted to have this experience. A couple of them, Matt and Ian, are dancers wanting to improve as singers- and a third, Chris, has gone out of his way to be as well-rounded as possible…. and I was absolutely delighted at how well they did.
- I was pleased that we wove opera and musical theater together in one night because it’s so important that our singers have an appreciation for the other side of the fence. In fact, it’s out-of-line to talk about a fence dividing opera and musical theater because we’re really all in the same corral. . . we’re just gravitating to different ends of it. And actually there are a lot of us who graze contentedly from one end to the other, and derive pleasure and satisfaction from both. (I actually sang more musical theater than opera on my faculty recital this year, which probably left some people in a dead faint on the floor.) I loved looking out at the audience and seeing musical theater students utterly transfixed by the dramatic duets from Il Tabarro and Trouble in Tahiti, looking neither bored nor bewildered. . . and those same opera students seemed equally enthralled by what they were seeing from Wicked, Hairspray, A Little Night Music, and others. At least from where I was sitting (on the piano bench onstage) we were all one big, happy, mutually supportive family…. maybe not quite The Waltons but pretty darned close. Or maybe another way to look at it is that we felt like we were all on the same football team. Some were playing offense and others defense (and lots of our students can and do play both ways) but in the end it was our combined efforts that made it all happen.
pictured above: Matt Boresi stages the workshop finale, “It’s the Little Things,” from Stephen Sondheim’s Company. The wonderful lyrics are a long list of the various things which supposedly make “marriage a joy” and contribute to “perfect relationships.” For instance:
It’s becoming a cliche together
Growing old and gray together
Withering away together
that make marriage a joy.