I’ve never experienced Whiplash,  and for that I am extremely grateful.   The closest I’ve come was in an accident I suffered in my last Honda several years ago when  I was hit by a pickup truck and trailer while I was sitting at an intersection in the pouring rain.  The driver hydro-planed as he was taking the corner (driving way too fast) and he plowed right into me- but struck the front corner of my car and not right into the driver’s door.  Otherwise,  I might be typing this with a halo glowing over my head.  Anyway,  the impact was so strong that I was thrown upwards and actually hit my head on the ceiling (despite having my seat belt on) –  but if anything, that just loosened up what had been a stiff neck and I felt better than I did before the accident.   Is that ridiculous or what?

I experienced Whiplash last night – and then again today – but fortunately it was Whiplash that had nothing whatsoever to do with physical pain or careless driving or anything of the sort.  My whiplash was musical – and while a bit jarring it was also incredibly exciting and fun.  The first instance happened last night when I found myself at the Racine Theater Guild, seated in front of a Kurzweil electric keyboard,  playing for the musical Chicago.  Do you know the show?  “All that Jazz”?  “He had it Comin’”? “Razzle Dazzle”? And the song “Class” with that immortal line: “now no one even says ‘oops’ when they’re passin’ their gas!  Whatever happened to class?”     Nope, not exactly The Sound of Music.  But what an amazing, incredible, show,  and we are blessed with a cast of stupendous talent.  And what is going to make the show even more incredible is that it’s being done with a 12-piece band…. and I was playing keyboard last night and having the time of my life – perched right beside Ann Heide’s violin and Bjorn Hansen’s banjo.  What a fabulous time we had, under the assured baton of Doug Johnson- and you could just feel the electricity in the room because the cast was so excited to finally have the band they have been waiting for!  There were rough moments and a lot of coordination issues yet to sort out, but it was still a blast.

It also gave me whiplash – in the best possible way – because just the day before,  I was playing Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in our second performance…… trying to do my best imitation of a Mozartean orchestra with one piano.   Musically, Chicago and Figaro are poles apart.  They were also drastically different experiences in terms of my role.  For Figaro,  I was orchestra/conductor/prompter rolled into one.  But for Chicago,  although I am the music director of the production,  for most of the night I was really just the piano player. . . mostly because I was where I could scarcely hear a thing beside my own piano (its amp was right behind me and ear-splittingly loud)  and the banjo/mandolin player beside me.   So really,  the cast could have been singing “Carmina Burana” and I wouldn’t have known the difference.  So for all intents and purposes, I was just the pianist- just one little component in a 12-piece band –  and having an absolute ball.   It made me realize that there’s something fun and very healthy about wearing different musical hats and for relinquishing the baton every once in awhile and joining the band, so to speak. We are better musicians for it.  I tasted that in the other direction during my first five or six years at Holy Communion when Bill Dieckhoff, the much admired choral director at Park High School here in Racine, was the mainstay of the tenor section in my church choir.  I was mighty green back then and there had to have been plenty of times when my inexperience and occasional ineptitude drove him crazy, but he couldn’t have been more patient or gracious.  And years later he told me how he thought all choir directors, if at all possible,  should themselves sing in a choir or choral ensemble of some time, if only to be reminded of what it’s like to be on the other end of the baton.  So after Figaro,  it felt really good last night to be a member of the band.

Whiplash case #2 was today,  and because it happened in the course of a couple of hours,  it felt was a real doozy!  At 10:00 a.m. I was playing piano for four young opera singers auditioning for the Milwaukee Florentine’s general manager in the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music’s elegant recital hall (something straight out of “Amadeus.”)    By 12 noon I was at Schulte Elementary School,  accompanying Kathy’s 4th and  5th grade chorus in “I Need A Vacation!”   Think of it-   jumping from an aria from La Traviata to a song about the perils of summer camp.  And what was really funny was when I mentally compared those divas and divos with these youngsters…..  the sound could not have been a wilder

contrast,  but the intensity of expression and the sheer joy of the singing was remarkably similar.   At the most basic level, singing is singing…. and in this case, there was the extra intensity of singing with the hopes of pleasing someone else: for the opera singers who were desperate to impress an impressario who might hire them in the future…. and the Schulte youngsters anxious to impress and please their music teacher.   And the twinkle you get in your eye when you’ve just poured out the best singing you can do and been given a warm compliment for it is pretty much the same twinkle, whether you’re a 5th grader or a countertenor who has sung all over the world.  And lucky me, I was on hand for both.

There are fleeting moments when my life gets a little too crazy even for me, when I long for a 9-5 job that I could leave in a tidy compartment.  But most of the time,  I could not be more grateful for the wonderfully complicated life which is mine,  and the stimulating, invigorating Whiplash that I get to experience when life gets especially crazy.  Mozart one day and “He had it coming” the next?  Puccini opera arias one hour and “Help! I Need a Vacation” an hour later?  That’s life at its most flavorful!  Bring it on!

pictured above:  Bjorn Hansen, who is playing banjo/mandolin for Chicago at the RTG.  He’s terrific and also a lot of fun.

P.S. –  It just occurred to me that Carthage student Amanda Soos should know exactly what I’m talking about.  She was Cherubino in Carthage’s Figaro production,  and is one of the Cell Block Girls in RTG’s Chicago.  And on top of the huge shift between the two works is the fact that in Figaro she actually played the role of a teenage boy- and Chicago, her character is all woman, to put it mildly.  So if anyone should be  blogging about musical whiplash, it’s Amanda!