7:35 p.m.
I am sitting backstage at Reuther High School Auditorium- the hall where the Kenosha Symphony plays its concerts- but this is not a night of Tchaikovsky symphonies. I am here to play piano for a singer who is competing in the first annual Kenosha’s Got Talent competition- and I can hardly believe what I’m seeing and hearing. The first competitor was a Michael Jackson impersonator (dressed for that famous Billie Jean moonwalking number) – the second was four high school kids dancing (I guess it was dancing, although to me it looked more like crawling around on the ground) – and there’s a stand-up comedian, a ukulele player, a gymnast, and every variety of singer you can imagine. The vocalist I’m singing for is a high school student with a beautiful operatic voice….. but I have my doubts that “O luce di quest anima” is going to compete all that well with “Billie Jean.” It’s a classic case of Apples vs. Oranges vs. Aardvarks. How in the world do you compare a stunning opera singer with a dazzling baton twirler? It’s hard enough to compare twelve opera singers with each other . . . or twelve baton twirlers- although that would be child’s play compared to the crap shoot which a talent show like this represents.
Two competitions come to mind- One are the recently completed auditions at Carthage for our annual honors recital. In a special preliminary round, three of us were charged with ranking twelve aspiring singers, and advancing six to the final round. That was INCREDIBLY challenging – and we’re pretty much talking about a dozen classically-trained singers singing classical stuff. (There was one Broadway “belter” in the mix.) Just judging between them – basically Apples vs. Apples – was tricky enough (as evidenced by a couple of the singers where we read off our respective rankings, and had spreads like “3. . . 7. . .11.”) I can’t imagine how much harder it would have been if we’d all kinds of different musicians in the mix (that was someone else’s challenge in the finals) . . . let alone throwing ballroom dancers and standup comedians into the fray. The thought of that makes my head explode.
And yet, a long long time ago, my brother Steve and I stepped willingly into exactly that kind of crazy quite competition. It was a talent show at the Winneshiek County Fair in Decorah, and I’m pretty sure it was during one of the summers while we were both students at Luther. We sang a pop duet, “I won’t last a day without you” by the Carpenters. It wasn’t exactly Heavy Metal, but for someone like me it felt incredibly daring and even reckless to be singing something like that. And we felt pretty good about how we did- and felt even better after we heard the nasal-voiced singer that came right after us sing a Sesame Street song called “The Rainbow Connection.” We heard him and started writing our “we want to thank all of the little people who helped us win this” speech. But the joke was on us…. that nasal-sounding singer was impersonating Kermit the Frog and he actually won the whole thing- and Steve and I didn’t even rate Honorable Mention in a field of ten competitors. That was a whole bakery’s worth of Humble Pie for my brother and me.
In the end, a talent contest like this is rather meaningless because you are not being judged against peers in your field of endeavor. . . . nor are you being judged by panelists with a thorough knowledge of what you’re doing . . . . and so much of this is likely to come down to what turns on (and turns off) a given judge. If Judge X gets the flu from listening to opera, then the talented young woman I played for doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in you-know-where of advancing. And that bias runs the other way- if Judge Y was as stuffy as I am – then this amazing moonwalking Michael Jackson impersonator would be out of luck. So it all ends up being frustratingly capricious and hardly worth worrying about.
8:44 p.m.
Except that the young woman I played for has advanced to the semi-finals. . . . and suddenly this competition doesn’t seem like such a Crock of Crisco after all. And I’m realizing that if anything unites all six semi-finalists, it’s that they went out on that stage and did their thing without succumbing to nerves. And I’m especially proud of my singer because if anyone was out of their comfort zone tonight, it was her. (Just having to sing into a microphone had to be weird for her.) The semi’s features a quartet of high school street dancers, a gospel singer, the Michael Jackson impersonator, a folk singer, an American Idol belter, and the opera singer. And who knows how “O mio babbino caro” will go over in a field like that? I guess the point is that no one can possibly know- and all she can do is go out and sing the very best she can, and do all she can to sell the song. . . and then just leave it in the hands of those panelists. I’m reminded of when I interviewed the two authors of a neat book called “A Star is Found.” They own one of the premiere casting agencies in Hollywood and they said that one of the best things an aspiring actor can do who’s making the rounds of auditions is to treat those auditions and the acting you do in those auditions as the actual work. . . and relish the opportunity to practice your craft. . . . and if an actual acting job results from the audition, that’s like a wonderful, unexpected cherry on top of the sundae. The singer I’ve played for tonight has surely gained so much in terms of poise and determination just by doing this competition and weathering its uncertainties and vagaries. Anything she wins at the end of the evening will be a wonderful, invigorating surprise.
9:25 p.m.
My singer just finished her semi-final performance (of Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro”) and let’s just say that it was a wild ride. She sang the first phrase gorgeously, and then managed to skip a page and a half of music – effectively cutting in half what was already a rather short piece- and forgetting 90% of her words. But she sounded beautiful all the same and this group of judges might not have even known the difference. And it’s another lesson learned. . . whatever the calamity, keep going! Which she did!
9:35 p.m.
And it’s look like we have to stay a little longer. She made it into the finals! O luce di quest anima, here we come! What is odd is that she is going on right after the high school urban street dancers/singers (that’s what someone else called them) and if I was a judge I would be suffering a major case of whiplash by now! (I’m getting a bit of whiplash just watching her chat amiably with the rock singer with tattoos covering every inch of both of his arms.)
9:50 p.m.
Someone saw me texting and asked me if I was voting in tonight’s competition. That’s when I first caught wind that at least one aspect of this contest involved audience members texting in their votes. Which made it all the more incredible to me that an opera singer would be in their swinging with the rappers.
10:02 p.m.
And this long and strange night has ended with the opera singer winning first place and a check for $500. And remember everything I wrote earlier about this sort of crazy quilt competition being essentially meaningless? I think I’m going to have to rethink that whole line of reasoning.
pictured above: The competitors accept the applause of the audience before hearing who was going to be advancing to the semi-final round.