Flip through the pages of this magazine. What do you see? Girls in sparkly costumes advertising graduate programs. Audition notices for Young Artist Programs and mainstage roles. Smiling divas promising to turn you into a star. If you want to sing, it seems, you better know how to sing opera—and sing it really well.
Certainly, operatic training is important to any singer’s development. Through opera, we can master several significant musical styles and hone our stage presence. A healthy operatic technique lets our voices grow to be as large as they can be. And an A-list career in opera means a six-figure salary.
But what if your voice is just not suitable to opera? What if it is, but there is fierce competition in your voice part? What if your interests lie elsewhere or your talents and skills are better suited to more intimate settings? Over this series of articles, we’ll explore the opportunities available to singers who build their careers primarily in genres other than opera, what it takes to compete in those genres, and how you can build your own multi-faceted career.
One excellent way to develop your talents and find out where your interests lie is to attend a summer program. Although there are fewer workshops and festivals for song, early music, and contemporary music than there are for opera, the programs available generally offer more individualized attention and provide wonderful opportunities for networking and collaboration.
One of the frustrations that performers at the beginning of their careers can encounter is that the study of opera can seem like a one-sided experience: our coaches, teachers, and directors have a lot to teach us before we feel we can offer our own artistry on equal footing. But singing chamber music challenges us to rely on our own artistic instincts and collaborate effectively. As a result, many musicians report that some of their must fulfilling music-making experiences have been with chamber music. With that in mind, here are some summer venues where you can work closely with other singers and instrumentalists, explore different genres in-depth, and create compelling performances that are truly your own.
Contemporary music is often one of the more neglected fields of study for young singers. The music tends to be more challenging than standard opera repertoire and performance experiences are not viewed as résumé builders. At the same time, contemporary music strengthens musicianship, and singers who can capably perform complex music become a coveted member of the contemporary performing community, as composers and ensembles seek soloists for new works. Because much of the repertoire involves chamber music, singers can enjoy close collaborative work with composers and fellow performers.
The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival (bangonacan.org/summer_festival) enables singers to do just that. Located in the scenic Berkshire mountains at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Bang on a Can brings together around 35 singers, composers, and a variety of instrumentalists—from guitar to didgeridoo—for three intensive weeks of rehearsals, performances, improvisation, and exploration. Students work on music with the composers who write it and explore other types of music making and composition techniques in special projects seminars, which have included Balinese music workshops and an orchestra comprised of instruments created by the participants.
Performers are encouraged to try their hand at composition, with ample opportunity to collaborate with others to develop, rehearse, and present their works. Faculty rehearse and perform with students, and the intimate size of the festival encourages close communication and lots of informal learning, whether it’s during faculty-led seminars, the daily movement classes, or evening barbecues.
Like many chamber festivals, Bang on a Can yields tangible results. “I have a list that is pages long of all the new commissions, ensembles, festivals, and other projects that are created as a direct result of our festival,” says Philippa Thompson, the festival program manager.
Art songs are often one of the first examples of classical literature that young singers encounter. They are also a powerful tool for developing voices and promoting healthy technique and artistry while allowing the singer to safely build her voice. However, as students, once we move on to opera repertoire and building our audition package, we often relegate our song repertoire to the fulfillment of academic requirements. Nonetheless, mastery of art songs is critical to many singers’ careers and artistic development. In the early stages, singers can easily self-produce recitals to create their own performance opportunities and, at the highest levels, renowned opera singers often incorporate song recitals into their careers.
Among the summer workshops that focus exclusively on art song are the Vancouver International Song Institute (VISI) and the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival. VISI (www.songinstitute.ca) emphasizes a multi-disciplinary approach to all aspects of song performance and teaching with the goal of answering the question “How can audiences feel more engaged in the art song genre?” The two-and-a-half-week course of study includes workshops that bring staging, dramatic recitation, and other innovative techniques to the preparation of song recitals, encouraging participants to develop their own creative ways to connect with the audience. Faculty members include singers, collaborative pianists, and teachers as well as experts in the fields of poetry, philosophy, and even cognitive neuroscience. A concurrent pedagogy workshop brings together teachers to discuss approaches to the interpretation and expressive performance of song.
VISI aims to appeal to a wide range of participants, from singers and pianists to composers, musicologists, and researchers from diverse fields. The summer of 2010 will see a new musicology mentorship program to encourage people with scholarly interests to pursue research into song repertoire. Speaking of the VISI alumni who have gone on to found recital series or duos, artistic director Rena Sharon notes that “summer programs are often the way that people can meet and create musical partnerships that endure.”
The Steans Institute (www.ravinia.org/Steans.aspx) offers an intensive three-week program for singers at a very high level of study. The 15 singers selected for the program have usually completed their studies and at least one Young Artist Program and are establishing themselves as opera singers. But all applicants must demonstrate a strong commitment to singing art song beyond the requirements at the conservatory level. “There’s a special brand of singers that has song recitals mixed into all levels of their careers,” says program director Brian Zeger. “While it’s virtually impossible to build a career singing only song recitals, it is worthwhile to keep it as part of your artistic life if it’s important to you.”
At the Steans Institute, each singer is paired with a professional pianist and collaborate as a duo for the entire festival. They receive coachings from all faculty members and perform in public concerts and masterclasses with renowned guest artists. Each duo is expected to assimilate the different ideas they receive and use them to inform their own artistic choices. Past participants have gone on to collaborate again after the festival, and most singers incorporate song work into their burgeoning opera careers.
Of the many early music festivals in the summer, few feature as much large ensemble work as the Oregon Bach Festival (www.oregonbachfestival.com). Under the leadership of renowned conductor Helmuth Rilling, the festival offers instruction to aspiring conductors who wish to hone their skills in the complex choral music of Bach. The festival hires a professional choir of 54 voices for the conductors to work with during masterclasses and performance seminars. The choir also performs in the main concerts of the festival, which feature works by Bach and other great choral composers from the Baroque until the present day. The festival also hosts a concurrent program for composers, offering even more networking opportunities for all participants. Reflecting the fact that early musicians often “cross over” into contemporary music, the festival commissions and premieres new works by notable living composers.
The festival boasts participants from a range of backgrounds. “Members of both the chorus and the conducting masterclass come from all levels of the profession, as we have [participants from] graduate students just getting their start to established performers and prominent educators,” says David Goudy, festival artistic administrator.
Singers who prefer to avoid choral singing should still consider attending the Oregon Bach Festival. Learning Bach’s challenging choral works in this detailed way builds the kind of musicianship demanded by large and small ensembles across the world. The chance to meet and work with many conductors is always an advantage to a singer and can result in future opportunities. Because a recent trend has favored performing many of Bach’s works one on a part—in other words, each singer as a soloist—learning his music in the relative safety of a choir helps you achieve a greater comfort level with the music. And, unlike opera, the sense of musical style and technical skill you gain by singing in the chorus only makes you more attractive as a soloist in Baroque music.
For music making on a more intimate scale, look into these two Massachusetts offerings: Amherst Early Music (www.amherstearlymusic.org) and the International Baroque Institute at Longy (www.longy.edu/summer/baroque_inst.htm). The largest festival of its kind in the world and perhaps the oldest in North America, Amherst is one of the most enjoyable ways to immerse yourself in the world of historical performance. Singers have masterclasses with experts in the field and learn new repertoire during chamber music coachings, ensemble rehearsals, and student and faculty performances. It is one of the few festivals where participants can study Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music at a very high level. The festival also produces a fully staged and costumed early opera each summer as part of its Baroque Academy.
During the two-week festival, you can become a “compleat” early musician by studying period dance, early notation, rhetoric, historical instruments, and myriad vocal styles. Faculty and students stay on campus together, passing their off-hours with informal jam sessions, chit-chat, and games of historically informed Frisbee.
Longy also offers an intensive course of study in Baroque music, fitting dozens of masterclasses, coachings, rehearsals, and performances into just one week. The festival focuses on a different theme in Baroque music each year, such as the music of J. S. Bach and sons set for 2010 or the 2009 theme of the Venice-Dresden connection, which explored the Italian composers who influenced the work of their North German colleagues. Singers and instrumentalists are placed in chamber ensembles together and are led by faculty who coach them on continuo techniques (the Baroque style of improvising accompaniment) and specific performance practices. All-workshop seminars and opportunities for dance study round out the experience.
In the world of singing, we spend all of our waking hours auditioning, showing off our skills and personalities to anyone willing to listen. At the same time, we have to constantly learn new things and make ourselves open to situations where we’re not experts.
I attended Amherst Early Music soon after college, when I first started singing and before I had ever sung early music extensively. The theme of that summer was French Renaissance and Baroque music. I thought I had come prepared, learning a few arias by “the big three” of the French Baroque opera (Lully, Rameau, and Charpentier), and I assumed I would hear nothing but their music during the festival. As a student of opera, you don’t expect to encounter composers you haven’t already heard of. At Amherst, I discovered entire genres new to me.
Do you know about chamber cantatas? First popular in Italy, Baroque cantatas are operas in proto-form—and in Gallic hands, they are passionate, warm, and dramatic. Have you heard of airs de cour, the beautiful and sometimes bawdy tunes that entertained kings and courtiers? I learned how important the text is to the Baroque aesthetic and how a singer can work with instrumentalists to best bring to life the meaning of each piece. My one summer at Amherst brought me a whole network of contacts, including some that led to future collaboration, and a wealth of knowledge that got me started in early music.
Summer programs that allow for collaborative work not only provide the best kind of networking experience possible—that of making music together—but also the opportunity to work in depth in fields that you may have not had the chance to fully explore as a student.
As students of opera, we are trained to be complete performers: strong technique, connection with the words, compelling acting. But to be truly competitive, we also need to be complete musicians, able to apply our performance skills to a range of styles. Studies at a chamber music workshop let you do just that, laying the groundwork for a varied career that can encompass worlds of music.
