The day-to-day experiences of a college or conservatory student (other than making music) don’t have much in common with the experiences and challenges facing a professional opera singer—nor should they. College is a time for us to grow up, learn about ourselves, and begin to understand how we function in the world as autonomous beings. It is a time for us to begin to establish our identity both as a person and as an artist. That doesn’t mean, however, that you cannot use your education to your full advantage, not only to gain the tools necessary to improve as a performer and a musician, but also to prepare yourself for your future journey in the professional world.
Follow these eight suggestions while a college student to better prepare for your professional life.
1. Take Time to Discover Your Artistic Fingerprint
One of the most important pieces of advice that I can give to any young singer, whether you’re a student or a young professional, is to discover your identity as an artist and figure out what it is that you want to say. Music school is the perfect opportunity for you to begin to find your artistic voice.
As you are establishing your understanding of yourself, you should ask yourself why you have chosen this path, this art form, and this strange life. You should spend time discovering the repertoire that most inspires you and the singers and performers that make you feel something—and why. You have to know that this profession is more competitive than ever, with more singers entering the field and not enough opportunities to go around.
While you are in school, though, the perils of the professional world aren’t sitting there bopping you on the nose, so you have an opportunity—perhaps one of the only such opportunities in your life as a singer—to know what it means to be an artist without the pressures of figuring out how to turn that artistry into cold hard cash. Instead, you have the amazing opportunity to delve deeply into your own artistic perspective—your artistic fingerprint, as it were—and to discover who you are as an artist and how you will use your voice to distinguish yourself from the masses.
Take advantage of this time to find your voice, both literally and figuratively, so that when you get out into the real world you will be certain that you have something to say.
2. Use Your Resources
When I was a student at Juilliard, we had access to some absolutely world-class coaches who were on faculty there. Each week we had the opportunity to sign up for coachings if we so desired, and each week there would be several unfilled coaching slots. After I got out of school and realized just how much private coachings cost and how necessary they were to not only learning roles but developing as an artist, I could have kicked myself for all those un-signed-up-for hours on that coaching board that I didn’t personally snap up. Ditto for voice lessons, although those are generally mandatory.
It’s so easy to get caught up in your life and start to take for granted all that comes with your education. You have access to top-notch music libraries, practice rooms, teachers, coaches, performance spaces, not to mention performances, lectures, and student discounts at all the cultural institutions in your city. In some ways these things seem like no brainers—except it’s sometimes hard to remember that when you get out of school you won’t have access to all of this and you’ll have to pay $20 every time you want to rent a practice room.
You are paying a tuition, so obviously these artistic opportunities aren’t free, but they are available to you in an all-you-can-eat buffet kind of way and they never will be again, so don’t squander this opportunity to use what you have while you can.
3. Create Your Own Opportunities
Another delicious part of being a student is that you can essentially write your own story. If you didn’t get cast in the opera and you really want to perform, you can put on your own recital—just reserve the recital hall and find some friends who also want to put on a performance. I once put on a recital of staged opera duets with various friends and asked another student to direct us just because I wanted to perform. The recital hall was free, my friends and pianist sang and played for free, and we had a packed house of fellow students and family members ready to cheer us on. I learned a lot from that experience, not only about performing but also about organizing my own opportunities.
In the professional world, more and more artists are becoming entrepreneurs in order to create the types of opportunities and even companies that best showcase their talents and serve their communities. While you’re in college you have the opportunity to get a jump-start on your arts entrepreneurship by using the facilities and performers available to you to create whatever performance experiences you can dream about.
4. If You Learn Nothing Else, Learn Languages and the Piano
I know, it’s not sexy for me to tell you that you really need to study in college, but there are two skills which will help you as a professional singer so tremendously that if you take nothing else away from your education, make these two things a priority. As a singer you are almost certainly going to have to study at least one semester of a foreign language and have some level of proficiency in piano. Take these classes seriously.
Learning to speak another language (one of the languages in which most operas are composed, specifically) will really save you time and give you such a leg up in performing repertoire composed in that language. In that same category, I highly encourage you to go abroad for a semester or a summer if your college or conservatory offers you that opportunity. Opera is incredibly international, and speaking another language opens doors and gets you so much closer to what you are performing.
As for the piano, I’m sure it goes without saying why that will help you, but nobody can tell you enough times. Learning music, sight-reading, confidence in musical rehearsals—all of these things will improve dramatically the better you are at playing the piano. Just do it.
5. Be a Good Colleague Even before You Can Call Yourself a Colleague
I’m not going to lie—some students in music school can be catty and backbiting. Don’t take part in that. One of the most important parts of getting rehired by an opera company is to be a good colleague, one who knows their music, comes on time, and treats everyone around them with respect.
Start your adulting early when it comes to interacting with other artists. Treat everyone with equal respect, believe in your own talent, and don’t get sucked into empty negativity. It’s challenging, but you can do it! Think of it as an investment in your future professional self.
6. Relish in Your Failures
There is a lot that goes into learning how to sing operatically. A lot. It’s not just learning good technique or to get in touch with your emotions or to articulate in a foreign language or to sing the correct rhythm while still expressing feelings. It’s all of these things and more. Therefore, you must give yourself the opportunity to fail, and fail big.
Your studies are the perfect time for you to not only take risks that lead to failure but to also figure out how to deal with failure, rejection, and anxiety and still believe in yourself as an artist. These are all lessons you will continue to learn for your entire life, but college is the place to begin that journey and start to understand for yourself how to grow from these places of hardship and pain.
7. Learn How to Teach Yourself to Sing
Too often we rely on our teachers and coaches to give us every morsel of information and we don’t take any responsibility for understanding our own vocal mechanisms. One of the most helpful experiences I had as a singer was when I started teaching voice lessons and was forced to listen critically and put into words the basics of vocal technique.
We all know what it’s like to spend time in a practice room, but the sooner you can take responsibility for your voice, the better off you will be. This is not to say that you don’t need voice lessons—of course you do, because you can never hear yourself from the outside. But you can start early to listen critically to yourself and others and start putting into words for yourself the “how” of singing. If you have any non-singer friends who want voice lessons, offer them some free time working on their voices.
The sooner you can gain a critical ear and the necessary language and tools for understanding technique on your own, the better for the years ahead when you will be on the road and won’t always have easy or regular access to a voice teacher. This also gives you a greater toolbox for solving problems when they arise and discussing these problems with your voice teacher.
8. Know that There Are Many Career Paths
So many student singers I run into are obsessed with one thing: singing at the Met. Short of that, they insist, they will be failures. I understand this mentality and I certainly subscribed to that idea in my younger years. But what I have learned from being in the business is that success comes in many forms and fulfillment comes in many other forms. There is not one specific place you can sing or conductor you can work with or competition you can win which will guarantee you success, happiness, or artistic fulfillment.
The more you over focus on a particular outcome that you feel is the indicator of your ultimate success, the more you will drive yourself crazy and get further from your artistic perspective. Of course it’s very important to have drive and to believe in yourself—just make sure to cut yourself some slack and allow your dreams to be flexible.
Don’t wait until college is over to begin the transition from student to professional. Make the most of your college years by using every resource and opportunity to prepare yourself now to be a successful, professional singer.
