“In terms of opera, I followed a kind of traditional trajectory,” says baritone Christopher Herbert. Barely in his 30s, Herbert followed up undergraduate studies at Yale with a masters degree from Harvard, participated in several competitions (including semifinals at the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, finals at the Liederkranz Foundation Competition, and third prize with the Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers), and moved on to Young Artist Programs with Tanglewood, Central City Opera, and Aspen before setting out into the world.
Oh, but did we mention that his BA is a double major in Music and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and his MA is in Middle Eastern Studies? And that in between Yale and Harvard he was a paralegal? And, following that, he balanced studies at places like the Music Academy of the West with work on projects for the likes of the Pentagon? The trajectory just got decidedly un-traditional.
Herbert has long been aware that what had been typical for many singers was not for him, as he enumerates over quiche and frisée salad at a French bistro in Long Island City, Queens. “Like every aspiring young classical singer, you look at opera as the one thing you can do because it’s the path that everybody takes, and it’s easy when you see a path; it’s not easy when you see a forest,” he explains.
Like many musicians, Herbert credits his introduction to music to public school. His mother initially tried to enroll him in choir, which didn’t take. Nor did jazz and tap lessons (“I’m not sure whether to be thankful for that or not,” he laughs). But when his father brought him to see the instruments demonstrated in fifth grade, he was smitten—with some practical qualifications. The cello was too big and the violin too squeaky. But the viola was just right.
Vocal studies came later on in his senior year of high school when Herbert found music hard to sing and, assuming that he probably wasn’t singing correctly, enrolled in voice lessons with a local teacher in his home state of Connecticut. She also helped him put together audition tapes for college, despite Herbert’s insistence that he would be focusing on viola, were he to major in music at all.
“You have to be practical; that was my whole thing,” Herbert says of his uncertainty about his college major. “It was a product of where I grew up: a very alpha town one hour away from New York where everybody’s parents are all lawyers and doctors, really career-minded types.” That Herbert’s family includes one particularly famous career-minded member in Martha Stewart also pushed him toward a more practical approach to education and career considerations.
Still, music wasn’t far from Herbert’s purview in New Haven. He played in the orchestra, sang in the opera program with roles that included the title character in Le nozze di Figaro, and sang in the school’s a cappella group the Whiffenpoofs. Simultaneously, an early interest in Egyptian culture brought on by a trip to the country (with none other than Stewart) led him to pursue studies in Yale’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department. His studies satisfied a number of “Why?” questions, many bearing dramaturgical touches as Herbert sought to understand why different cultures acted the way they did, blending threads of psychology and anthropology, and essentially crafting a unique major with the number of classes that applied to the Near East department.
When Herbert started his senior year in 2001 (once again, senior year proves to be a pivotal moment), he and many of his music department colleagues were affected by the events of September 11. “It was a big shock to everybody, and the need to feel practical and useful was a feeling a lot of my friends had,” he explains. “To go into music seemed frivolous and not important.”
From there, the pendulum continued to swing between music and non-music in Herbert’s life. He spent a year as a paralegal in a midtown Manhattan office while at the same time becoming more politically aware. With the clouds forming over Iraq, he was ultimately moved to pursue a master’s degree at Harvard in Middle Eastern Studies. And then he realized that wasn’t what he wanted to do.
“When you enroll in a program that has completely nothing to do with music and you’re really a musician at heart, that’s when you realize that you need to do music,” he says. He received a grant to finish his graduate studies while taking advantage of Boston’s booming music scene and working with companies like Opera Boston, the Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Baroque, and the Handel and Haydn Society, while also taking some music classes in Cambridge. When Herbert moved back to New York in 2005, he went toward music full-force, supporting his living with odd jobs. It was in a return to Aspen that he met a man at a post-concert party who subsequently gave Herbert a nonmusical dream job.
Working remotely and on his own time, he assisted with the Global Power Barometer, which measured the tonality or candor of numerous news sources to, in Herbert’s words, “determine what thought leaders are overall thinking about the relationship between various global powers and measure on a daily basis how much power various countries—like the U.S., Russia, Israel, Iran—were wielding.” The work Herbert did with the firm brought him into projects with the research and development branch of the Pentagon. Yet when the company went under at the onset of the global financial crisis, Herbert understandably felt a little burned out. However, the burnout came from the music end.
“I was feeling so disenchanted with the music business,” he admits, describing a Sisyphean disappointment following one gig that was an overall positive experience but barely covered the expenses of being away from home for the duration of the opera’s run. “I kind of lost the passion. So I said, ‘OK, Chris, you’re going to go and try it again and you’re going to do something completely nonmusical.’” That resulted in his working for a PR agency that represented the Libyan Ambassador to the United States. And as it was 2009, Herbert was left with the daunting task of managing Muammar Gaddafi’s visit to the United Nations.
“I remember that week my dad called my cell phone to say ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ [And I responded] ‘Ehh . . . it’s going . . . I’m really not that happy.’ And he laughed, ‘And all you really wanted to do was sing.’” Herbert subsequently did marketing and social media work for two years with Sing for Hope, a nonprofit organization where he spearheaded their 2010 and 2011 Pop-Up Pianos initiative, spreading pianos around New York City available for passersby to play. It also taught Herbert a considerable amount about managing online presence as a freelance baritone.
It was around the same time that Herbert also found his ideal vocal vocation. Considering itself a “string quartet for voices,” the all-male foursome New York Polyphony was in the market for a new baritone when founding member Scott Dispensa took a job with the Metropolitan Opera Chorus. Herbert inquired after the position. “It came as a surprise to Craig [Phillips, the ensemble’s bass] that I was interested, because he saw me as only interested in doing opera,” says Herbert, who was last seen on stage as Henrik in St. Louis Opera’s production of A Little Night Music in 2010. Nevertheless, he got the job.
Yet it’s in the non-operatic vocal rep that Herbert flourishes. Early music allows him to maximize his musical potential, especially as his voice becomes more consistent and predictable with age. It also gives Herbert satisfaction as an artist with very few works containing technically troublesome patches and still providing a challenge of endurance. “Maybe the maximum you’ll sing in an opera is 45 minutes,” he says. “In New York Polyphony, we’re onstage for 90 minutes at least, singing continuously.”
On the other hand, the challenge is also the payoff. “It was very liberating the day I joined New York Polyphony and realized I can actually be more stable and have a stronger income by not singing opera, but still being a classical singer. I’ve never been as happy making music as I am now—and I’ve never been as excited to continue doing it as I am now.”
Yet there will still be room for opera in Herbert’s career: next year, New York Polyphony will perform in an opera based on Black Hawk Down, commissioned by Stanford University. Herbert plays the photographer, Phillips sings the soldier, and the other two members (countertenor Geoffrey Williams and tenor Steven Caldicott Wilson) take on other roles alongside soprano Heather Buck.
In the meantime, the balancing act continues, and Herbert is able to also continue enumerating his thoughts on media, spanning everything from Dale Carnegie’s landmark book How to Win Friends and Influence People (“A fantastic book and I highly recommend it”) to a recent New York Times Magazine story about extended adolescence (“I feel that one of the industries that are most characteristic of adolescence ending at 30 is musicianship, especially when it comes to classical singers”). In some ways, he seems to be carrying on the polymath spirit of singers like Thomas Hampson before him, a trend that young artists across the genres are finding to be more and more vital in current times.
He recalls a time during his work with Central City that he, along with the rest of the young artists, were told by a staffer that “We think there are two people in this room who are going to make it. We’re not going to say who it is, but there are two of you. And the rest of you should think about contingencies.”
“And I was like, well that’s rude! Aren’t you supposed to be encouraging us?” Herbert says. “But it was a wakeup call. I do think that the majority of singers, the majority of creative professionals, should have other options on the table. They should have something else in their back pocket. It only does them good to have another skill. How to hone that skill properly and how to not let that skill take over your creative interests, I struggle with that myself.”
Even New York Polyphony carries a double duty, he explains as the dessert menu comes and goes. Each member takes on a different administrative duty, with Herbert putting his familial flair for business to use on the logistics and financial side of the operation. While the singer may have felt disillusioned with the classical music world at the onset of the recession, he is now realizing that it’s provided a prime learning experience in being a more entrepreneurial singer. And, curiously enough, that has brought some of the aspects he loved about corporate life into the creative realm.
“The thing that appeals to me most about the corporate world—and it doesn’t happen in every single company—was the ability to build a long-term team. . . . The ability to work with different team members and create almost a little unit that works toward a common goal, that’s not something that happens too often as a solo singer,” he says. With New York Polyphony treating itself as a string quartet, there is a greater sense of a team or a family among the four singers. It also provides stability, touring with the same people and building a foundation as performers and colleagues.
Herbert’s story is truly a tale in the non-traditional. The T-word comes up a number of times between drink orders and, finally, the check, often used in a sense of what Christopher Herbert has not wanted from his life or career and often used as an antithesis for the sort of projects he has taken on. Each interest is essential, and none is mentioned in embarrassment or as a footnote. And that seems to be the way of the future for the artistically, financially, and spiritually fulfilled artist. And if even Martha Stewart’s nephew can buck tradition, there’s hope for us all.
