It is next to impossible in words to fully convey the crazy mix of excitement and tedium, triumph and disappointment, mastery and mediocrity, & humor and pathos that are part and parcel of voice juries. I’m talking about what amounts to the semester-ending final exam for anyone taking private voice lessons. From the brand new freshmen to the grizzled super seniors, every voice student has to step in front of the entire voice faculty and sing two songs by memory. . . preferably without fainting, weeping, or throwing up. That’s a stern enough challenge, especially for our more nervous performers, and it comes on top of the final exams in their other courses, final projects, and everything else that tends to complicate the final week of the semester. If anything separates the great juries from the not-so-great, it’s in what kind of work a given singer has or hasn’t done in the weeks and months leading up to juries. For those who have been working hard all along, juries are no problem at all. But for those who were lazy most of the way (or distracted or overwhelmed or whatever) and then try to play a desperate game of catch-up at the end of the semester, you can never predict just what will happen – unexpected triumph, embarrassing catastrophe or some mix of both.
Carthage is now full to the brim with really fine singers, and our juries are now a spectacular celebration of fine singing – and for that matter, fine teaching. As I listen to the juries thru those two long days, I find myself impressed not only with the students but also with the great guidance they’ve received from my colleagues on the voice faculty, a really capable and compassionate group of teachers who each do such good work, albeit in their own unique way. And while we all collectively delight in the overall excellence of all of our young singers, we each take particular joy in what our own voice students manage to do up on that stage. And by that measure, the December 2011 voice juries were for me the best ever. Every one of my voice students sang extremely well, and several of them sang better than I had ever heard them sing before. And as I told them in an email, there is nothing more thrilling for me than when a student exceeds my expectations and theirs.
The highlights? I hardly know where to begin.
I am so proud of all of them, whether they delivered what amounted to an essentially perfect jury…. or recovered from some sort of mishap in time to deliver a thrilling finish …. or managed to deliver the best present a voice teacher can receive: a pleasant surprise! In juries, when a student finishes singing for us and we’re done writing our critiques, you often hear someone ask “whose was this?” – in other words, which of us is this particular student’s teacher. This year was one of those rather rare occasions when with each and every student, without exception, I couldn’t have been prouder to say “Mine. This one’s mine.” It’s the best feeling in the world.
pictured above: One of my freshmen, Fletcher Paulsen, faces his jurists: Amy Haines, Klaus Georg, Allison Hull, Corinne Ness, Sarah Gorke, and Lorian Schwaber.
Here we are again: GB, Amy H, KG, ?, Allison H, CN, LS, and SG.
