A big part of the wildness with which I contend every spring is the plethora of recitals which pepper the calendar – the recitals for which I’m pianist, the recitals for which I’m a jurist, and those recitals that I simply want to attend. Add all of that up and I’m left with scarcely enough time to clear my throat. This spring was especially busy and crazy, and thanks to some changes in the calendar, I ended up actually missing several recitals that I had really looked forward to hearing. (Sorry, Jessica. Sorry, Kristi and Tess. Sorry, Talia.) Even crazier, out of the four recitals which were to be sung by my voice students during the last three weeks of the semester, three of those ended up being either cancelled or postponed, for one reason or another. What was especially weird about that is that the only one of those four recitals which ended up happening as scheduled was with the only non-music major in the bunch! How’s that for a head scratcher?
Actually, I was not a bit surprised because Andrew Spinelli may officially be a math major, but his heart is all music major. Andrew loves to sing and has worked so hard over the last four years to be an even better singer than he was when he got here as a freshman. From the beginning he had a powerful, rich baritone voice – but like many young baritones, he tended to make the sound artificially dark by swallowing it rather than projecting it with brilliance. (To the typical young baritone, it sounds better that way to them- because we don’t really hear how we sound.) We got to work right away on helping him to achieve just the right balance between warmth and brilliance – voice teachers call it chiaroscuro – and unlike some young baritones who resist such direction, fearing that you’re trying to turn them into a jr. high tenor, Andrew was fully responsive to my every suggestion. There is nothing more gratifying for a teacher than to have that kind of trust from a student- and to see that trust rewarded.
So even though Andrew is a math major, he continued to take voice lessons even past the four semesters required by his music scholarship. . . and this year, even though he was contending with all the challenges of his senior year plus preparing for the gauntlet of actuary exams, he still wanted very much to present a senior voice recital. And he did not exactly choose the easy route in terms of repertoire. His program included Schubert’s demanding “Erlkonig”, a set of three baroque pieces by Purcell and Handel, three songs by Richard Strauss, and a set of Samuel Barber songs culminating in the titanic “I hear an Army.” And for an encore, how about the title song from “Phantom of the Opera”? It was a challenging program, worthy of a music major. And because it sprang out of Andrew’s own artistic and personal desires and hopes, it made the whole thing an absolute labor of love.
The current fad at Carthage is for recital programs to be constructed like a musical autobiography – but Andrew’s was basically a straight ahead voice recital, touching on various eras of music history – and various languages – and resulting in a most impressive display of assured and skilled singing. And yet, Andrew found a couple of ways to make it uniquely his own. One came in the encore, “Phantom of the Opera,” in which Andrew played along on electric guitar, as though that was the instrument with which he was casting his spell over the young Christine. Another came in the “Erlkonig,” which is Schubert’s setting of a Goethe poem in which a man rides frantically through the night with his young son, trying to evade the mysterious Erlkonig, who is trying to entice him in order to kill him. One of Andrew’s new hobbies is something called Contact Juggling, which involves – believe it or not – juggling with one ball which never loses contact with your hands. By manipulating the ball (mostly in very precise rubbing) you can actually make it look like the ball in floating in the air. It’s incredible. (You can see some astonishing examples of it on Youtube.) Andrew came up with the idea of using Contact Juggling for those moments in the song when he is the Erlkonig, imploring the young boy to come play with him. At the risk of overstating it, I thought it was a stroke of genius – and I’m sure anyone who was there would agree. It was a neat way for Andrew to make the song his own, while also remaining absolutely true to the song and its story.
I’ve been teaching at Carthage for 20 years now, and I have no idea how many recitals I’ve been a part of as teacher/ accompanist over that time, but Andrew’s certainly ranks among the most gratifying and exciting of them all. . .for many reasons, but especially because of how it so fully embodied what a liberal arts college should be all about. I love it when a star of the volleyball team also plays string bass in the orchestra – or when a music and history double major finds exciting ways to blend those two loves together – or when one of our best math majors delivers one of the finest recitals of the year.
pictured above: Andrew Spinelli and the ball with which he does Contact Juggling.