Meet the New Yorkers
Name: Mark Schreiner
Contact: marktenor@hotmail.com
From: Rolling Stone, Minn. by way of Houston and New Orleans
Voice Part: Lyric tenor
Time in New York: Two years
Moved: Upon getting management.
Name: Erin Shields
Contact: ekshields@gmail.com
From: Central Illinois
Voice part: Coloratura mezzo
Time in New York: Five years
Moved: Right after receiving her undergrad at Indiana University, with her roommate from Long Island.
Name: Matthew Kreger
Contact: knsastenor@aol.com
From: Topeka, Kan. by way of Houston
Voice part: Heldentenor
Time in New York: Two years
Moved: After 12 years of singing in the Houston Grand Opera chorus.
First Impressions
Erin Shields (ES): I drove in with a friend of mine, and basically, I had this truck I rented that had all my possessions in it, and I had to drive through Manhattan, which was probably one of the most frightening experiences—plus I had no idea how to get from Manhattan to Queens. And somehow, I just magically found the way.
We’re driving in, and I see Queens. I see the 7 train, and then I find the apartment, finally. … Our apartment is right on the flight path of LaGuardia, right next to the 7 express train and the local train, plus the Long Island Railroad is on the other side. So I’m just sitting here going, “I’m from this small little town which is so quiet.”
It just kind of freaked me out, and Queens isn’t exactly the prettiest place. There are all these little dirty alleyways, and I’m thinking, “Um, I’m not exactly frightened, but just a little sketched out.”
But then once I settled in, I found a job really quickly. I had a couple of friends already here. It was always really exciting. I just remember thinking, “There’s so much to do.”
Mark Schreiner (MS): I’ve hardly ever had my own place, and I’ve been really fortunate to have great friends who put up with my freeloading for longer than is humanly natural. I make and design handbags, and I’ve been trying to get that going in New York.
I guess the first impression was always that everybody here is usually from somewhere else, and where they’re from, they’re probably the best and the brightest person. And so the energy of this city—people are sharp here, and beautiful, and I like that.
First Steps
Mathew Kreger (MK): When I first moved here, I didn’t think that I needed a teacher. I thought I was done with that. And through my process of working with people in the city, I realized that I really did need another teacher.
Classical Singer (CS): Working with people in what way?
MK: Doing professional chorus gig pick-ups, with Jacquie Pierce, Martin Donor, and Nancy Wertsch. And it was nice to find that information out once I got here. I had no clue that there were local agents who were doing church jobs, and so I was walking into church jobs trying to get a hold of music directors, saying “Hey, can I sing for you?” and that was totally not protocol.
CS: How did you find out about the agencies?
MK: Just word of mouth. People I would run into in the business would say, “You need to call Jacquie Pierce.”
CS: Back up more, though. How did you meet these people in the business? How did you first get your little toe in the door?
MK: My first apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I lived above an organist for one of the local churches.
He was a nice enough man and gave me that information, without my hardly even asking for it. I just ran into him, and told him I was a singer. He said he was the organist at one of the churches—so it was totally chance. But I realized that in order to do the voice teacher and all of that stuff, I had to have a job. So I went out and got a job within a month. A really good, high-paying office job.
CS: And how did you find it?
MK: I play darts. And I was at a bar one night playing against this guy, and he asked me to be on his dart team, and so I said: “OK, fine.” Two weeks later, he’s like, “We’ve got an opening in our office, you wanna apply for it?” A year and a half later, I just quit that job…because I actually achieved financial success to be able to live in the city and work just doing the gigs that I’m steadily getting for what I project to be about the next two years.
CS: How did you find voice teachers?
MK: By recommendation. I had built up a network doing a lot of these pro gigs, and I was just asking people, “Who’s a good tenor teacher? Who do you recommend?” And I had a lot of names come out, and I’ve actually studied with quite a few. They’re really hard to get a hold of, especially the good ones. And they won’t call you back. They never call you back. You have to continue calling these people. It’s all about the network in the city. You do all these pro gigs, and you run into all these people, and it’s one thing leads to another in this city.
MS: I came here right after I got management, so that made a lot of things much, much, much easier. That’s sort of what helped me get into the scene. I sort of live a weird existence. I sell a handbag every now and then, and if money’s super tight, I take my guitar down to the subway and I sing tangos from the 1920s. I can go down and practice for a few hours, and always make enough to eat every day, if that’s what it’s coming down to. I’ve done massage and I have a friend in Houston who’s a massage therapist, so I got a lot of work through him last year.
CS: Did you get into studying with teachers and coaches when you came here?
MS: I did. I worked with the first coach that I met. I showed up at an audition without a pianist … and then started using one guy just because he was there all the time. Then, at an audition, my normal guy wasn’t there. I met this other guy and he said, “What do you do?” And I said, “Oh, I do massage, I do this, I do that,” and he’s like, “I need a massage. How about a trade?” So, no money exchanging hands, but he’d play auditions, and we’d do a coaching once a week, and I’d give him a massage once a week. So, bartering—I love that. And then friends from other gigs. If I like how they’re singing, I always want to know who their people are. So friends recommended me to a teacher, and I sang a couple lessons with her, and then she actually helped me to get a grant so I could pay her.
ES: When I moved here I was on no money. None. I think I had $500 in my wallet, and I had to borrow money from my roommate, who, thankfully, loves me enough to have lent me money. So that was the first priority. I scoured the New York Times and applied to everything and anything, because I was desperately in need of money. I found a temp agency that got me a job for a wine-distributing company. They let me do their graphic design work for them, which was pretty cool.
CS: Is that something you had experience in?
ES: No. Actually, they trained me. … After I got that job, my roommate lived in New York and Long Island, and she just knew people who knew things, so she told me about Jacquie Pierce and Martin Donor. I auditioned for them and started getting work right away.
I think the problem that I was having, though, was that I was working a full-time job, 9-to-5, and I was having problems. When I first moved here, I didn’t want to do opera, because I was 23 years old. I knew that I was just too young to really be considered, and I didn’t have a master’s or anything. My voice is versatile, so I thought, “I’m going to do a little musical theatre for a while.”
I found out about Backstage through my roommate. I started doing auditions for that, and I started getting cast in mainly things around New York. The first thing I did that I actually got paid for was a recording for a new musical, and that’s where I met my fiancé. He’s actually opened up a lot of doors since then. I left my job, the 9-to-5, to do “waitressing,” because that’s what I heard you’re supposed to do. “Waitressing” is what you do if you want flexibility.
All of a sudden, I was working in Rockefeller Center for 75 hours a week. Everyone kept quitting or taking vacations, and I was going insane. I couldn’t do any auditions, and I was really depressed. So after a few words with my manager, I quit that job, and I was lucky enough that when [fiancé] David moved over here and finally got his work permit and could work, I had a little leeway, so I just took a little time off to figure out what I wanted to do. And I started doing a lot more chorus gigs, because those were things I couldn’t do [before] because I didn’t have the time to do them. So, I’m really starting to now become a free-lance musician, which is what I wanted to be in the first place.
It’s not just through opera. I do jazz gigs, and I do musical theatre, and whoever will pay me to do whatever. I’d rather do that than work in an office any day. One of my jobs is that I’m an actor-trainer for the NYPD recruits, for their EDP (Emotionally Disturbed Program). It’s to teach the recruits how to deal with manics, schizophrenics, borderlines—instead of using force on them physically, just using their speaking voice and learning to talk them down. I got that job through a friend of mine who I met doing a show.
[As for] my teacher … [my friend] said, “Why don’t you just check on the Classical Singer forum, and see if anybody has any suggestions?” So I wrote, and I said, “Look, I’m a coloratura mezzo, and I’m young, and I need some guidance.” A woman e-mailed me and told me about her teacher, who was the voice teacher of one of the coloratura mezzos singing Rosina at the Met. I said, “OK, I’d love to at least meet this person.” And it just clicked instantly. It was a really good thing. I know a lot of people go through Classical Singer just to find out things from other singers, if they’re new.
Advice
MK: If you’re going to move to New York, move as soon as you can. If you’re going to make the choice to live here, live here young. Don’t move here old. Don’t try to get a bunch of experience and move to New York. I would say, move here when you’re 18. If you really want to, go to Juilliard, the Manhattan School, I don’t care. Get as close to the city as possible, because this is the heartbeat of the arts. And it’s not about making yourself famous. It’s about being around other people who will eventually become famous. Working with the best coaches, working with the best voice teachers, who seem to be here, for some reason.
You can just immerse yourself in the arts. There are no limits here, which I think is incredible. I just say, make the jump as soon as you can. I wish I would have done it 10 years before I did, or even 20.
MS: Know yourself and your weaknesses clearly. And if you have to ask whether you think it’s a good idea, it’s probably not such a good idea. But if you’re really thinking, “Yeah, I want to do this.” If you want to sing, then you just have to do it. Clearly. And if you have to sing, you have to be here. But if you start going, “Hmm, I don’t know if I want to,” don’t do it.
ES: My advice would be: just put yourself out there. Do as many auditions [as you can], take risks, just do everything you possibly can. Especially [when] you first move here.
I’m not a big one for pay-to-sings, but the only thing I’ll say about them is that you always meet other singers and other people, and you will make other connections that will hopefully lead you to more work down the road. So, I guess if you are going to move here right after college or right after high school, you’re going to have to do some pay-to-sings, because you’re not going to get any other work right away. Just do as many things as possible.
MK: If you think about the cost of living here compared with the cost of college, there’s really not that much difference.
MS: It’s a better education.
ES: It’s a much better education.
MK: It’s a better education. You can pay a voice teacher and a coach, you can live somewhere in Manhattan, or Queens, or Brooklyn, or wherever you choose to live. And it’s not as much money as a college education, but you learn more here than you do in the middle of wherever.
ES: My biggest regret is getting a full-time job—and that’s part of it, you can’t avoid it. If you can, find something that’s flexible, while you’re looking for chorus work, or church work, or anything else.
MK: I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is that when they move to New York they move either from a program that they’ve been enriched from, or a company that they’ve sung with, or whatever. They think they’re going to be a big fish once they get here.
MS: No.
ES: No.
MK: No. There are 50 million people who are just as good as you standing next to you with résumés and headshots, ready to sing. So I would say: Don’t put as much expectation on yourself to hit the ground running, but give yourself a little bit of leeway to not get every single thing that you feel like you should be getting. And then you have to have fun while you’re here. If you don’t have fun in New York, then you might as well just go home.
