Bass Joel Frederiksen has not only sung opera, oratorio, and concerts around the world, he is also a world class lutenist who has played with many of the most important early music ensembles in Europe and the U.S. His unique and varied career has included everything from teaching choir in the Bronx to leading a jazz ensemble in Germany.
This American, who currently calls Germany home, has now settled into an international career singing and recording both as a soloist and with his current early music group, Ensemble Phoenix Munich. His busy travel schedule finds him hopping from one European country to the next making guest appearances and traveling with his group.
He slowed down long enough recently to speak to CS about the unique career he has carved out for himself, including what advice he has for singers interested in early music careers abroad.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in Sleepy Eye, in southwestern Minnesota, but was raised in Minneapolis. My mother is a contralto with a beautiful voice, so it may be that I inherited some vocal ability from her. She was never a professional singer, but she always sang in church. Later, she became one of the soloists at Pinnacle Peak Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, Arizona. My family was always interested in music. My dad played the piano and sang in the choir. We sang and listened to just about everything without differentiating between pop and classical music.
When did you begin to study music?
At the age of 6, I began singing in the boy’s choir at Christ Presbyterian Church in Edina, Minnesota, and even played the autoharp there. Along with my family, I listened to every kind of music that was available to us. Having been raised in a musical family was an important influence on my development. I started piano lessons early, but didn’t really take to them because I wanted to play guitar. I made my public debut in the sixth grade talent show singing “Proud Mary” and strumming along.
Actually, although I studied folk guitar from about the age of 9 and even played a solid body Blue Kalamazoo in a junior high rock band, it was not until I was in college that I took a more serious look at the guitar as a solo instrument.
Despite the importance of starting music lessons at an early age, I think it is extremely difficult for many American families to do that. In some European countries, even ones that are not particularly wealthy, music lessons are much more easily available for all children than they are in the United States. One of the musicians who plays in my ensemble, viola da gamba player Domen Marincic, is from Ljubljana, Slovenia. When he was growing up in what was then Yugoslavia, music lessons weren’t free, but they were cheap enough to allow almost everyone to study. Children got two or three lessons a week when they were starting, which I think is the way to go. Now, those musicians play with unbelievable facility.
I also work with an English tenor, Timothy Leigh Evans, who sings with me on the compact disc The Elfin Knight. He has a very beautiful voice and he sings with great musicianship. Tim started as a choirboy in the English system. People with that kind of training can sight read anything.
Did you study music in high school and college?
In high school I was in the concert choir and sang with the madrigal singers. I played sports as well as music, and I remember trying to avoid my football friends in the halls while wearing my tights, ballet slippers, and Renaissance costume. I studied voice for a short time while still in high school.
After that, I attended Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Along with voice, guitar, history, theory, and the usual requirements, I enjoyed studying choral conducting. Although I didn’t really expect to make a career of it, choral conducting certainly came in handy some years later. During my twenties, I taught high school music for four years in the Bronx and on Long Island.
In the Bronx you had to win the kids over—but once you did, they were incredibly interested and enjoyed making music. The only problem there was that you had to break through a wall before you could really communicate with them. St. Paul’s School for Boys on Long Island utilized an English system and had an excellent arts program that gave its less streetwise students a good musical background.
When did you switch from guitar to lute?
I started playing the lute after college. Actually, I was in Washington, D.C., having an amazing time studying folk music and working as an intern at the Library of Congress when I heard my first lute recital and fell in love with the instrument. Shortly after that I bought a lute, and for some five years I worked with lute teacher Pat O’Brien in New York.
Playing the lute was not as big a shift as it might have been because I had been playing the repertoire on the guitar, but I did have to change my technique, especially the right hand. Because I wanted to study with renowned lutenist and early music scholar Lyle Nordstrom, I did graduate work at Oakland University in Michigan. After graduating from OU in 1990, I planned on going to Indiana University for my DMA, but I got a call from the Waverly Consort, so I went to work for them in New York instead.
When I was living and working in New York, I found an excellent voice teacher. William [Bill] Schuman really opened up my voice in the first lessons I took from him. He showed me that I had a much wider range than I had ever thought possible. I found I could sing from high G to low C in the bass range. He said I was a true basso profondo but that I would have to just wait a while, because the bass voice takes time to mature. He told me that my voice would not be fully open until about the age of 45.
As a result, I have had to hang in there, studying for a long time. If you exclude my financing my college education by singing in coffee houses and bars, I sang my first professional engagements when I was with the Waverly Consort at the age of 30. In any case, I am not a Verdi bass. I have a different sort of a sound and different abilities. One either has a really open voice with the legato you need for Verdi, or one has an agile and flexible voice that moves easily. You need the latter voice for Rossini and earlier music. There are some exceptions, however. Sam Ramey could always do both kinds of singing.
Tell us about the part of your career you’ve spent
singing opera.
My first experience singing in a German speaking country was participating in Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Salzburg Festival. I had a small role, but I was singing next to people like Dame Gwyneth Jones, Catherine Malfitano and Jerry Hadley. We miss Jerry. He was an amazingly gifted singer and a great guy. While working on that show, I met my partner, choreographer Verena Weiss.
In opera, the bass is often the father or the priest and, just once in a while, the devil, which is the most fun. Although I love many roles such as Mozart’s Osmin and Sarastro, I have spent most of my “bass life” in other music. In the era surrounding the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a fascinating development of virtuosic music for the bass voice. To my mind, the music from this time is some of the most interesting ever written for bass. I have explored and recorded quite a bit of it on the disc O felice morire. I find the era surrounding the year 1600 absolutely captivating.
I had to work quite hard to achieve facility with coloratura. One of the singers who inspired me the most was David Thomas, the English bass. When I heard him in New York some 20 years ago, I realized that I wanted to sing like that. He sang with an enormous amount of color and flexibility. I prefer that sort of singing to the bombast you sometimes hear in opera. One of my all time favorite singers, nevertheless, is the Italian operatic bass, Cesare Siepi. I am still amazed at some of his recordings. He had an incredibly beautiful tone but his voice was also flexible and he had a fabulous range from the highest high to the lowest resonant low. He was a true bass.
Would you ever want to sing a role like Gurnemanz in Parsifal?
It is still a thought for me once in a while. My best answer is a probable “yes.” I would like to do everything that I think I can sing well. For the moment, however, I am having so much fun with my ensemble touring Europe and presenting the programs I have devised that I simply do not have time to do much else. Opera is still a thought but, at the same time, I enjoy the creativity which I can bring to my early music projects. But, then, who knows? Maybe I’ll do Rossini arias with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra one of these days. I’m always interested in new ideas and challenges.
Speaking of your ensemble, how did the name “Phoenix” come about?
Together with another lutenist and soprano/recorder player, I started my first group, L’antica musica, in 1989 while I was in graduate school in Michigan. We did some concerts in Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts before I decided to set up a series in my new home, New York City. For four years beginning in 1997, we performed in the wonderful Florentine Chapel at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue.
When I came to Europe, it was a little bit like starting over again. I had to create something new. That need to re-create something brought to mind the symbol of the phoenix. The symbol of fire is important to me and, of course, there was the fact that my parents were living in the Arizona city of the same name, too—but that was only in the back of my mind. Now, with my group, Ensemble Phoenix Munich, I tour every country of Europe.
Do you ever compose?
I don’t write music any more, but I used to. I wrote for guitar and later for choir. Of course, I’ve made numerous arrangements for the various groups that I have assembled and worked with. For four years, I directed a small choral group called the Munich Blue Notes. I gave them up last year, but I had a great deal of fun working with them. They do challenging jazz arrangements and that was a nice change from early music.
What kind of lutes do you play?
I have four lutes. Three are Renaissance instruments with different tunings, one being a third deeper than the other two. The normal Renaissance lute is tuned in G. The deeper one, with which I accompany myself in many lute songs and which suits my range well, is in E. I also have an archlute, and that is the one I use on the disc O felice morire. It is an instrument with two necks—a really long one, for the deep bass strings which are played open and tuned diatonically, and the shorter one, which is tuned like a Renaissance G lute. This was Giulio Caccini’s
instrument of choice for accompanying the voice in virtuosic and very expressive solo madrigals or “monodies.”
Living in Europe, I have grown to appreciate the high level of musicianship that is common here. In New York, I attended many concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. There, I heard the most important European groups perform early music. The best in the world today are almost all imports from Europe—but, interestingly, one of the most capable groups, Les Arts Florissants, is led by an American from Brooklyn who has made his home in Paris for many years, William Christie. Since I wanted to get to the next artistic level, I thought staying in Europe would help.
What advice do you have for young emerging singers?
Europe has become a lot more challenging of late, although there is no other country like Germany for opera. There are opera houses in every town that need a chorus and an orchestra, but there is a huge amount of competition. When Eastern Europe opened up, singers from those countries who often have excellent musical educations began to compete with everyone else for good jobs in German and other western European opera houses. When the excellent voice teacher with whom I studied when I was working on my master’s degree at Oakland University, John-Paul White, came to Germany in the 1970s, it was much easier to get jobs. He would have gotten a job in any case, but it was not as difficult to find a position then as it is today.
I would advise American singers to be very serious about learning the languages they expect to work in. If you want to audition successfully in German opera houses you have to be able to speak good German. It can get nasty if you don’t! The players and singers with whom I work here in Europe speak not only their own language, but also perfect German, English, French, and Italian. I am constantly working on my languages.
One thing I wish I had known in school is that in order to stay working in music, one has to become as good as one possibly can in all aspects of the art. The more you can do, the more likely you are to work continuously. My work with the Munich Blue Notes is an example of this. Even if you work as hard as you can, you will always meet people who have a bigger range, more perfect pitch, or are better at sight reading than you are. No matter how good you are, you have to continually readjust your goals to a higher level.
Becoming a musician on the world stage requires a huge amount of work. There is an enormous amount to learn. It’s a big challenge, but if you have the passion, you will rise to do it.
How does a singer go about auditioning for early music ensembles, specifically in Europe?
Early music operates in a somewhat different way. It does not involve merely auditioning for the big opera agents. There are, of course, excellent agents who handle early music here. If you want to work here, you really have to come and stay as long as you possibly can, teaching English or doing whatever you can to make some money while you are here. That way, you can keep auditioning and survive until you get enough work.
It may take time for agents to get to know you and see what you can do well. When you stay here, you learn more of the language. I have an American friend by the name of Sarah Yorke. She is a light lyric soprano who has been here for a few years and is really starting to get interesting work. She has already had a great deal of success in operetta. She is attractive, has perfect pitch, speaks excellent German, and plays piano extremely well. That is the competition.
To sing early music, you have to make contacts with the individual groups that perform it. That may be more difficult at first, but it’s also much less formal. One just has to start talking to the people with whom one would like to work. I’ve frequently worked with the Huelgas Ensemble from Belgium, a wonderful group for Renaissance polyphonic music. A newcomer would just have to call them until an audition could be arranged.
Auditions, however, can be very unorthodox. During my audition for Huelgas, I did not sing a single aria. Director Paul Van Nevel played a tuning fork, and I had to sing the words of a sonnet from Petrarch, in Italian, on ascending lines of a tetrachord with the tuning being constantly checked. After that, I was required to read lines of an obscure sixteenth-century text in its original Old French. Then, of course, came sight reading.
When I first came to Europe, I struggled with German, but one just has to keep working at it. If you come with a group, you don’t really practice the way you do when you have to rent your own hotel rooms and get your own train tickets. I had to insist that my partner, who speaks English, keep speaking to me in German because I needed to learn it. Now we speak German all the time. At the beginning, you will find that all the Germans speak more English than you speak German, but you have to insist that they let you practice so that you learn the language.
Where have you been singing more recently?
In October 2008, I made my debut in Paris with works from my first solo CD, Orpheus, I Am. That title works well for me because of the association with the singer accompanying himself on the lyre and the reference to the mythical powers of music. The selections on that disc allow me to show some of my lowest notes and my vocal flexibility.
I had a lot of fun in late 2008 and early 2009 in Lucerne, Switzerland, performing as part of a dance piece choreographed by my partner, Verena Weiss. Then, with my Ensemble Phoenix Munich, I presented music from my Harmonia Mundi CD O felice morire, at the prestigious Prince Regent Theater in Munich. This past May we were in Spain and, in July, Belgium with The Elfin Knight. In October, I gave my first performance in Denmark.
I continue to enjoy appearing as a guest with various groups specializing in early music around Europe. It still fascinates me that in a very short time one can be in a completely different country with a different language, customs, and history. Twice this year I gave concerts in the Baltic, an area to which I had never been, and I have just now returned from two concerts in France and Germany.
I am also continuing, of course, my own Ensemble Phoenix Munich concert series for the third season at Munich’s Bavarian National Museum. I am really looking forward to the first concert, which will be something rather far out: a brand new program that I hope to record sometime called Requiem for a Pink Moon. In this piece, I set parts of the plain-song Requiem Mass and intertwine it with pieces from Nick Drake, an English singer-songwriter of the 1970s. In addition to setting Nick’s songs for Renaissance instruments and voices, I am working with [John] Dowland and [Thomas] Campion songs that have similar themes and bringing it all together. Right now, it is a work in progress.
Do you have any new recordings coming out?
We will record a new disc in May 2010. Harmonia Mundi plans on releasing it in September of the same year. I adore the repertoire which is American music from 1770, the time of William Billings, to the end of the Civil War. I am extremely happy to be with Harmonia Mundi, although they do not issue official contracts. We have made two successful CDs, will make a third in 2010, and are talking about a fourth.
Although the market for classical CDs has suffered tremendously over the past few years, it is still necessary to have discs. Personally, I do not believe it is possible to replace discs with digital downloads. For me, a great CD is a complete art work. The whole product from Harmonia Mundi is absolutely first class from booklet, to photos, to production.
What do you have lined up for the future?
I just said “yes” to a U.S. tour with the Boston Camerata, in which I will be the featured bass soloist and will accompany myself on the Renaissance lute. After that, I have to rush back to Europe for a staged version of Handel’s Joshua, in which I will sing the wonderful role of Caleb with the Orpheus Choir of Munich. For 2010, I have bookings all around Europe, including my first performance in Poland. On May 1, 2010, I will be in Denton, Texas, celebrating the retirement of Lyle Nordstrom, my teacher at Oakland University, with the Bach B Minor Mass.
For more information, visit Frederiksen on the Web at www.joelfrederiksen.com and www.ensemble-phoenix.com.
