Dear Erda,
I am almost 30 and have a Bachelors and Masters in music education. I thought I wanted to teach music in a public school, but after student teaching I discovered that career wasn’t something I enjoyed. I wanted to be a solo singer, so I got a church job (I have no operatic language skills and no interest in opera anyway) yet solo singing isn’t fulfilling me. The one constant in my life is the fact that I’ve always loved choral singing and have plenty of experience with it, and lately I’ve begun to seriously think about a career as a professional chorister, but nobody knows how to help me get started.
Can you give me advice as to how my résumé should look, audition material, etc.? I’d love to do the pro-chorister thing and teach voice privately.
Also, I perform a lot, but it’s mostly the dreaded V word (volunteer) and my church job pays me next to nothing, with no hope of a raise, though I’ve asked about a million times. How can I politely insist that I perform gigs for money? If I do too many volunteer things (which I’ve done for the past 3 years) people think, “Great! She’ll sing for free!” I usually get the “we’d love to pay you, but we can’t.” Any advice? I’ve paid my dues long enough! But if I have to pay them longer, at least I’ll know I’m normal and that’ll give me some perspective so I don’t get frustrated. Thanks for your valuable insight!
Angie
Hi Angie,
First of all, do you live in an area where there are professional choruses? Most of the ones that pay a living wage with benefits are the big house opera choruses, such as the Met or San Francisco. Some others pay enough that you could get by supplementing the income with teaching: big city symphony choruses such as Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chorus, for example. There are other smaller pro choruses, as well, such as the Santa Fe Desert Chorale (which operates only part of the year). Your first step should be to learn what and where the pro choruses are. To do that, find a copy of the Musical America directory (university fine arts libraries sometimes have it; Classical Singer subscribers’ can order it from the online Bookstore for a 10 percent discount at www.classicalsinger.com/store) and do some research.
Pro choruses, especially the good ones, are highly competitive. Some of the opera choruses take years to get into because they are very good union jobs. Not only is job security great, so that it’s very hard to get fired; but pay and benefits are often very good, so people tend to hang on to these jobs. There is often a hierarchy of extra chorus and supplementary chorus jobs a singer must take to work his or her way through the system to the main chorus—but there are no guarantees of making it into the main chorus. And some people jump right to the top. Just as with solo singing, patience and perseverance are necessary skills.
Other skills you will need include languages (even if you’re not singing in an opera chorus). The standards are the same as for soloists—German, Italian, French, Latin, and of course, English. If your languages are weak, I suggest you take a diction course at your local university. You will also need music theory skills. Many of the better choruses ask you to take a music theory test, and sometimes your pay is linked to how well you do! Needless to say, you also need good sight-reading skills as well as good vocal technique. The better choruses feature singers who have solo-quality voices and continue to train and maintain their instruments. Choral singing can be just as demanding on the voice as soloing, so it’s only wise to take care of your instrument.
Your résumé, any résumé, should always highlight the experience you have which is most relevant to the work you’re trying to get. Your first step in developing your résumé is to think about what might be important to people hiring for choruses. Choral experience, obviously, is going to trump solo experience in this case. Language skills and music theory skills will be important.
Start by listing, chronologically, all the choral experience you have. Next list other performing experience, including solo. Next have a category for Education and Training, where you can list your degrees and any other special training you might have. Finally, you might want to include a list of teachers, coaches, and conductors you’ve worked with.
As for audition material, the choruses you audition for will specify what they want to hear. Opera and symphony choruses will most likely ask for one or two opera or oratorio arias, one of which they will probably want in a foreign language. Other choruses may ask for art song or excerpts from choral works. It is very likely that you will be asked to sight-read, so if your skills are rusty, you might want to brush up.
Now, on to getting paid for your work. Uneducated people are often misinformed on the value of professional singing. Almost everybody likes singing, and almost everybody can make some sort of songlike vocal noise. Therefore, because they can do it, and because they like it and like listening to it, they think that you like it, it’s easy for you, and you should do it for free. People are especially weird when it comes to singing for worship services; sometimes they feel quite strongly that your ability is a gift from God and therefore should be your gift to God. (Yet they will pay the preacher a very good salary, and if he’s not working for God, well, who is?) It becomes necessary, then, for the singer to educate her audiences about the value of professionally produced music. Which brings me to my next point.
People always value what they must pay for more than freebies. They think that if they’re getting it free, it must not be worth that much. It’s just human nature. My dear, have you never heard that awful saying, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” You’ve been passing out the dairy products with abandon, and you’ve conditioned your audiences to expect—yea, feel entitled to—free samples. There’s only one way to stop that, and that is to stop giving it away immediately. You must stop singing for free entirely.
You didn’t say what kind of venues you were performing in. If you have been, for example, singing on local concert series, the next time someone approaches you about doing it say, “I’d love to. Is there an honorarium?” Then explain that you have decided to go professional, and you are limiting your donated performances and have already designated the ones you’ll be doing this year. If they pull the “we’d love to pay you, but we can’t” line, stay calm and nonconfrontational. You don’t want to burn bridges, after all.
Point out that they’re paying for the venue, the pianist, the refreshments, the salaries of the organizers—whatever they’re paying for—everything but the headliner, you. They will likely say, “But you’ve always done it for free!” Smile, and confirm, “Yes, I’ve donated a great deal of my professional talent and time to you. And I would be willing to do it again in the future; but this time I want to be paid for my expertise.”
They may say, “But God gave you this gift, don’t you want to share it?” Respond, “Of course I do. God gave me this gift, and I developed it through many years of detailed training. It’s no different than any other gift: the gift for healing people, the gift for teaching, the gift for speaking, the gift for understanding law. People develop their gifts and turn them into professions, and that is what I have done. Singing in church is one professional as well as spiritual outlet for my gift.”
You should also continue to look for paid opportunities both within and outside of your community. If you can begin to get some paid work, you can hold it up as evidence that there are people out there who value your work and are willing to pay for it. This may help the people who want to enjoy your expertise but don’t want to pay for it to understand that it has monetary value. It’s very important to stay humble throughout this process, and stay visible in the community. You are not abandoning them; you’re simply educating them and asking to be fairly compensated for your work.
You may have a difficult road ahead, convincing people for whom you have sung for the past three years for free that you should now be compensated. You must be prepared to lose some of your performing outlets—at least for a while. You must concentrate on changing your image, similar to a politician changing parties or an actor seeking a different kind of role. Undoubtedly some people will be annoyed with you and will find it hard to understand why you now want to be paid for your work. Be patient and kind, and explain as often as needed that you feel you have paid your dues and offered a great deal to the community over the past three years, but now you are going in a different direction. It will help soothe hurt feelings if you reassure people that you do intend to continue donating some of your time and talent to the community—just not all of it.
Good luck!
—Cindy
