Most singers and voice teachers (including me) have quite a love-hate relationship with the annual voice competition sponsored by NATS- the National Association of Teachers of Singing. In Wisconsin, it’s the first weekend in November that the best singers from nearly all of the state’s colleges, universities and conservatories converge on one designated campus for a highly competitive contest which yields glory to a tiny handful of singers- and disappointment and sometimes even heartbreak to the rest. Unlike the typical Solo & Ensemble contest for high school students, where ‘I’ ratings can be given to whoever deserves them, NATS only names first, second and third place winners in each division; one can sing amazingly well, perhaps the best you’ve ever sung, do everything right and nothing wrong, and still come away with nothing in the way of official honor or recognition. It is a sobering experience for fine young singers accustomed to accolades whenever they open their mouths to find themselves in this kind of competition where there simply aren’t enough awards to go around . . . and the vast majority of participants go home empty-handed, save for their judge’s written comments, which might or might not give them some idea of what they might have done better or should work on. And by the way, it’s also drastically different from Solo & Ensemble in that it almost always involves significant expense for a singer, between registration fee, accompanist fee, lodging, meals, etc. – so NATS is not the kind of contest that very many singers do as a lark. It’s a serious undertaking, which means that just about everyone who competes there is a fine singer.
For a small school like Carthage, NATS also means going head to head with the finest singers of much larger institutions. There is one playing field- no Division I, II or III. While Carthage’s football team contends with the likes of Milliken and other schools of its own size, our singers are head-to-head with the best singers from UW-Madison, UW- Milwaukee and other huge schools – so whenever a singer from little ol’ Carthage manages to advance to the semi’s or finals, it’s a Red Letter Day.
Of course, a singer shouldn’t go to NATS chiefly for the purpose of advancing or winning. I believe that- and I say that to every one of my students before, during and after the competition. One should go to NATS for the sake of singing for learned judges and receiving their critique. One should go for the experience of singing in a high-pressure, high-stakes scenario. And one should go for the sake of hearing your peers from other schools sing. And if you happen to advance, that’s just frosting on the cake. I say that and on some level I believe that. And yet, if I’m completely honest, there is something absolutely delicious about having one of your students advance. And if there weren’t, then I wouldn’t be able to rattle off the list of names of my students who have advanced in NATS over the years: Nick, J.D., Jon, Sarah, David, Mike, Andrew, Bob … And if I really stopped to think about it, I could probably rattle off a list of every Carthage singer that has advanced at NATS who were not my own students. It’s just SO cool when those semi-final or final listings are posted and there’s a Carthage name among them. It always feels a little bit like David slew Goliath once again, but with a song by Caldara instead of a slingshot!
Of course, when I look at that list of my students who have advanced at NATS over the years, it reminds me that some of the very finest students I ever taught did not manage to advance for one reason or another. Sometimes they didn’t quite manage to sing their best because they were tired or sick or ill-prepared. And sometimes they did sing their best but were simply outsung by other singers from other schools. And sometimes, to be perfectly frank, they deserved to advance and were ripped off. I try to be mature and civil about such things, but it’s very rare for me to walk away from a NATS competition without being bitterly disappointed about at least one of my singers being left out of finals and not knowing what to do with all of my pent up frustration and grief. (Honestly, there have been cases when the student in question would find themselves trying to comfort me. How strange is that?)
My skin may not be much thicker than it used to be, but at least I’m a little wiser now than I used to be, and I try to go into NATS with only the most modest of expectations, so that any tangible success which Carthage experiences will be an exciting surprise. And most of the time, at least one or two of our singers will manage to advance -which is very nice. It’s the exceptional instance when we come away completely empty-handed, as happened several years ago when the competition happened to be held in faraway La Crosse. (That was a really long drive home.)
This year, NATS was up north in Stevens Point – and because it fell on the weekend when Carthage was doing its fall musical (there was no other place for it in the calendar) it meant that very few of our singers would be available to go. Ultimately, this year’s Carthage contingent going to NATS consisted of me and three of my guys – Mike Anderle, Max Dinan, Nick Huff. (Typically we would have five times that many.) It felt strange to be transporting everyone in one compact car rather than in a van (or two) but there was also something a bit simpler about the enterprise that I appreciated. And because these three guys are so much fun and so interesting to be around, I knew it would be an enjoyable weekend no matter what: and it was. Our topics of discussion ranged from Socrates to Smart Phones- we shared some good meals together- slept in some comfortable beds (thanks, EconoLodge)- and got to hear some superb singing …. they as contestants and me as a judge.
One stroke of bad luck is that my three guys had to sing Friday morning at 9:20, 9:30 and 9:40 – so they had to be up at the crack of dawn to have even a fighting chance of being truly warmed up and ready to go. And lo and behold, they managed to sing quite well ….. and Mike sang well enough to advance to the finals in an exceptionally tough, exceptionally competitive division! By the way, I am going to hang on to the text which Max Dinan sent me to let me know. It read: Mike is advancing. 🙂 That little smiley face emoticon may not seem like a big deal to you, but for me it is a symbol of what superb colleagues Max and Nick were. For whatever disappointment they might have felt for themselves, they were both genuinely thrilled for Mike and could not have been more supportive or helpful. Nick in particular played a couple of crucial roles- turning pages for Mike’s wonderful pianist, Fumi Nakayama- serving as a sounding board, and being backstage with Mike to keep him grounded and focused for the task at hand.
(One thing that was really tricky is that in the finals, believe it or not, you only get to sing for five minutes …. half the time you have in the preliminary round …. so it really makes sense to carefully calculate how best to fill that time. Mike and I decided that he should sing his Schubert song in its entirety and portions of his Finzi song and Handel aria. So it was really important to make sure all of that was going to fit into the time- and that not a second would be wasted in the transition between each. That’s why I was so glad that Nick was turning pages and helping to facilitate that whole matter of moving quickly from piece to piece. And it worked!)
Our Saturday morning began at 9 with me serving as one of the judges for the Freshman Women final…. and the four of us stuck around for more than an hour after that to watch the other finals unfold- which helped give Mike a good sense of how things worked and what he was about to experience himself. It might have been intimidating but it just got Mike more excited. At about 10:30 we headed up to the practice rooms to get him warmed up and to do some rehearsal with Fumi- and it was thrilling to hear Mike sounding so good. But when the finals for his division began and the first two singers came out and performed, I feared that Mike might hear those mammoth voices singing with such skill and lose his confidence and sing scared – or try too hard and oversing. But no! When it was his turn, Mike strode out on that stage like he had sung there a hundred times before, and proceeded to sing about as well as I have ever heard him sing …. from the bitter anger of the Schubert to the jaunty, saucy fun of the Finzi to the high-powered intensity of the Handel, complete with an interpolated high F at the end of it! By the time he was done, I felt like Mike had brought great honor to himself and to Carthage by singing so brilliantly in the face of such fierce competition. We joked afterwards that if he hadn’t sung well, I would have coughed loudly as they announced “student of Gregory Berg” so my good name wouldn’t be associated with such a horrific performance. But no, I was really glad for everyone to know that I was this guy’s teacher.
A couple of other things made me even happier to be there with these three guys. I can remember a couple of times, especially in the distant past, when I would walk out of the last NATS finals only to discover that every single Carthage student along on the trip had spent the finals resting or relaxing or messing around in one of the lounges rather than listening to the finals … which of course feature the best singers in the competition. It would grieve me whenever our students would show such little interest in listening to the finest of their peers (and usually to myself I would think, ‘and you call yourself a serious singer? This is one reason why you’re not singing in finals.’) By no means was it all or even most of the time, but I had that disheartening experience more than once, back in the day. But it’s gratifying that more and more of our singers are really serious about singing- and it was so gratifying to observe how intently Max, Mike and Nick listened to the finalists perform …. and in how intelligently they assessed what they both heard and saw from those singers. As talented and skilled as these three guys are, they all know that they have much to learn, and I could tell that they wanted this trip to be about learning and growing.
Lastly, the guys could not have been kinder to me when I said that I wanted to alter our route home so we could pass through Madison and I could visit Nathan in the hospital. They cut me off just as I was saying that I would keep the visit very short . . . insisting that I take as much as I thought I needed and reassuring me that what I was doing was the most important thing. It was a reminder to me that for as proud as I am of these three young men as singers and as musicians, I am even prouder of them as human beings. And that goes for the other great guys I get to teach at Carthage. I may not have a window in my office – nor my own parking space – but who needs dumb little perks like that when I get to teach students like Nick and Max and Mike and all the rest?
Pictured above: Mike and I embrace after he (and Nick) joined me in singing a song for my most recent faculty voice recital.