Some things stagnate with age, and others improve. The latter is true for the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC). The oldest independent music school in the U.S., it ranks number nine of the top ten vocal programs in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report’s most recent survey. Over the years, thousands of high-caliber opera, Baroque and jazz singers have passed through its historic halls. Yes, historic. NEC is also the only music school to be designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. federal government, which may not be a reason to go there, but it does add a certain appeal.
If you’re looking for reasons, however, they aren’t lacking. Students today are attracted to NEC because it’s easier to get into than Curtis and Julliard, it offers a more intimate environment than university programs like IU, Florida State and University of Michigan, and its location in Boston provides developing singers with a comfortable balance of cultural exposure, professional performance opportunities, and a non-intimidating urban environment in which to grow.
Though, as a smallish private school, NEC’s voice department doesn’t have the resources of some rival programs, it nonetheless offers an appealing combination of funding, faculty, location, one-on-one training and performance opportunities. It also offers a comprehensive menu of degree options to suit the needs of any student singer. In the 2002-2003 school year, 93 graduate and 75 undergraduate students are pursuing these various options. Some choose to focus on early music, art song or jazz. A few, who aim to teach, choose the pedagogy option. But for the majority, not surprisingly, opera is the main draw.
According to Mark St. Laurent, NEC’s voice department chair, the central mission of the vocal program is to prepare students for a career in music, whatever form that may take. “We focus on what their strong points are and where they would be best directed,” says St. Laurent. “Most of our singers have their sights set on opera, but some may not be right for it. That can be the hardest thing—to let them know they may be better suited to Baroque than Verdi.”
Mezzo Millinee McCurdy, who graduated in May of 2002 with two Master’s degrees—one in voice and one in opera—acknowledges that some of her peers were disappointed. “It was an excellent experience overall for me,” she says. “But there was some controversy around the opera program. Not getting into Opera Studies or Opera Theatre really kind of changed your curriculum. A lot of people applied because of the director, John Moriarity, believing they would study with him, but many did not get the chance.”
Out of the 150 or so who audition, from 60 to 80 students make it into Opera Studies each year. A comprehensive, two-year opera training program, Opera Studies is comprised of Opera Studio (OS), with intensive acting and singing and the chance to audition for secondary roles in the school’s two annual opera productions, and Opera Theater (OT), a continuation of OS that is the ticket to audition for major roles. There’s no guarantee that students in either OS or OT will get cast in a production. Opera Studies’ uncast students may get to perform in a series of scenes presented by the department each fall. For those who don’t make the cut for OS or OT, there’s Opera Workshop, a class that teaches basic stage work and gives students a chance to perform in scenes and as chorus members in major productions.
Astafan and others in the voice faculty are aware that some students who don’t get into Opera Studies are dissatisfied with their performance opportunities. They’re addressing this need through masterclasses and the addition of a new class called Opera Seminar that aims to provide more students with an opera experience. “We’re actively doing outreach within the school,” says Astafan. “Now that we have the Opera Seminar and the Opera Workshop, more students are likely to be chosen for Opera Studies because they’ll be better prepared to audition.”
Not surprisingly, the most talented singers generally leave NEC with the best performance experiences and the longest list of credits. For these, the program is exciting and tremendously rewarding. Recent graduate Eugene Summers, a baritone, brought away much that he could use afterwards in launching his career. “My first year was the most amazing,” says Summers. “John Moriarity was still there. [Marc Astafan is currently serving as interim director of Opera Studies.] You want to talk about a personality and someone who knows his stuff! I was lucky I got to sing in several operas under his direction. I sang the Count in Figaro. Later we did Donizetti’s Viva La Mama—a spoof on small theatre life in Italy—and I sang the mother, Mama Agata, a baritone drag role.”
Millinee McCurdy got to sing several juicy roles at NEC, and doing so taught her not only about performance, but about auditioning, stagecraft and working as a team with artists and technical people. “There are a lot of performance opportunities,” she says. “I did get cast a lot my second and third years. But I did chorus my first year. All-in-all, it was a fantastic learning experience.”
Besides the many opera programs, there’s a Bach ensemble, recitals, masterclasses throughout the year (past presenters of which include Barbara Bonnie, Pierre Valet and Diane Richardson from City Opera), chamber choir and chorus. “There’s a whole lot going on at the school—jazz ensembles, concerto competitions, and Simon Carrington doing choir,” says Summers. “I actually didn’t get to work with Simon, but I auditioned with him for a couple of things. Unlike some of his predecessors, he wants to use students for solo opportunities in a big way.”
Carrington does want to use students in a big way, and he has his job cut out for him. He’s perfectly aware that choir places nowhere near the top of the list for voice students. As director of choral activities for NEC, he hopes to transform this perception and coax singers into greater participation in his department, which includes both a large choir of about 100 singers and a chamber choir of 30 singers. Since choir is required for undergrads, there is never a shortage of singers. But Carrington wants graduate students to benefit as well from the “real life skills” that his program has to offer.
“As a professional, I’m aware of the importance of ensemble work,” he says. “Many student singers are not strong in this area. When they come to a place like NEC, their main intent is to try to succeed on the opera stage. But the truth of the matter is that a conservatory will produce only a few golden voices. If you want to work, you have to be fast and flexible.” Carrington should know. Before entering academia, he had a highly successful 25-year career with acclaimed British vocal ensemble The King’s Singers, of which he was founder, member and co-director.
Another thing Carrington would like to see are more male singers in the program. NEC struggles with the age-old problem of voice-type inequity—that is, heavy on the sopranos and extra light on the tenors with just a sprinkling of baritones. Logistically, this makes it difficult to give sopranos the same opportunities to sing, and it makes male roles harder to cast because the pool of candidates is so much shallower. Carrington thinks scholarship funds may be the answer. “This is an old conservatory with a wonderful history, and an excellent faculty with high standards,” he says. “We need to get scholarship money to attract more young male singers.”
For Eugene Summers, money was a draw. NEC offered him a full-tuition, two-year ride and—though Summers was drawn to the program for its reputation, faculty and location—that sealed the deal. He knows how lucky he was to get it. With tuition and fees at approximately $31,000 per year, even singers with three-quarter scholarships must work to get through the program. “I think that the hardest things for students are the cost of tuition and lack of scholarships.”
Voice department chair, Mark St. Laurent, understands that scholarship funds are an issue: “We’re making an effort to raise financial aid rates,” he admits. “Currently, much of our scholarship money is based on talent—from what we hear and see in entrance auditions. But there’s also need-based assistance in the form of student loans and work-study.”
Keith Phares, whose tuition was covered through scholarship funds as well, did work-study at recital halls on campus. He helped set up chairs in Jordan Hall, ushered at smaller halls, and did tech work in opera. “I got to see and hear a lot of music doing this,” he says. Even though NEC was not his first choice for a graduate program (he couldn’t afford Juilliard, which he did attend later), Phares is glad in retrospect that things worked out the way they did.
He now feels that NEC is a better environment for inexperienced singers who need to build confidence. “I didn’t have a clue when I started. But they gave me good tools and method until I could figure out what was going to work for me. NEC also is a warmer, more intimate environment. Had I gone to Juilliard at 21, it might not have been as effective. I might have gotten lost in the shuffle.”
Opera Studies taught Phares what he refers to as a “good work ethic,” i.e., to always be prepared and to be a complete performer. “I was learning new things every day,” he says. “I had make-up and movement, which were very valuable. I had an acting class once a week where we did everything from regular dramatic monologues to musical theatre. And we’d stage our own monologues. They taught you to be self-sufficient. It was all very practical. I don’t know many other programs like that.”
In addition to the classes mentioned above, voice students receive language instruction in French, Italian and German as undergrads, and year of diction in all three. Opera Studies students get other performance-oriented courses such as stage combat and Alexander technique. Every student receives an hour per week from one of the ten full-time voice teachers on the faculty, and all grad students get a half-hour of coaching per week to prepare them for recitals. When cast in an opera, students get as much additional coaching as they need from the three full-time coaches on the Opera Studies staff.
According to St. Laurent, about 70 percent of entering students will have already contacted a voice teacher before beginning their program, and if that teacher makes a commitment the student goes on the teacher’s roster. Unassigned students fill out a request form indicating their top four choices. Most of these students receive one from their four choices.
Summers’ voice teacher was St. Laurent. “I felt Mark could offer me what I was looking for, and it worked out really well. The voice department is aware of the need for good coaches, and they work with the collaborative piano department, which has an incredible staff. Kayo Iwama is a great coach who’s also on the artistic staff at Tanglewood. She was an amazing asset. Between her direction and Mark’s, I found great technical issues [with my voice] and got them figured out.”
While it’s important to have good teachers, the environment they create at a school can be just as influential in a singer’s development. The camaraderie between students and the nurtured feeling they get at NEC are attributable to a faculty that works hard to put students first. According to St. Laurent, they have more or less an open door policy, and they share information and resources with each other. “We have differences of opinion, but we do things together, go to rehearsals together,” he says. “This is such a small campus. We pretty much know who everyone is on a first name basis.”
Astafan agrees and insists that whenever he’s called to recommend a singer, he knows exactly who they are. “We have an intimate sort of family atmosphere,” he says, “it’s almost like a repertory company.”
The flip side of being a small school is that NEC doesn’t have the resources of other institutions. This is manifest in less financial aid, fewer mainstage productions, a shortage of practice rooms, and the fact that Opera Studies doesn’t have its own venue for mainstage productions. “In the case of a program like Indiana University, they have a different situation, financially,” says Astafan. “They have their own theater and the backing of an entire university with a theatre department, dance department and technical support. A conservatory is like having a music department and that’s it. We have to hire out this or rent that. Our mainstage productions have been in different places—Emerson Majestic, Blackman Auditorium at Northeastern University, Jordan Hall. A program as strong as ours deserves its own theatre. But students here get much more individual attention. I think that’s more important.”
And it’s not as if NEC doesn’t have facilities. Brown Hall is a beautiful old venue with wonderful acoustics where opera scenes, orchestra rehearsals and recitals are held. Williams Hall is an intimate 150-seat venue used for chamber music, masterclasses, and student recitals. And then there’s Jordan Hall, the pride of NEC. “Jordan Hall is a fabulous space—one of the best concert halls in the world today,” says St. Laurent. We had an opera performed there after a ten-year hiatus. But it’s always booked up with orchestra concerts, oratorios, and faculty recitals, and it’s also rented out to performance organizations in Boston. Our Artist Diploma students do their recitals there. But I wish that every student here had the opportunity to play and sing in that hall.”
“I was lucky enough to have a couple of performances at Jordan Hall, and to this day that’s the best hall I’ve ever sung in,” says Phares, who has performed with the Met, New York City Opera and other prominent companies.
As for the practice rooms, Laurent says they’re working on resolving that problem: “We’re restructuring studio space this year to free up more spaces. Teachers give out keys to studios so their singers can use the room when not occupied, and that adds a lot of additional space. We have some other plans in the works as well.”
More an inconvenience than an obstacle, the practice room issue won’t ultimately influence how NEC prepares singers for the big scary world outside its institutional walls. The fact that voice students get training in all the key areas—scenes, arias, language, diction, movement, acting and varying degrees of performance—will. Having a place to build confidence in your abilities will come into play as well. And then there are the practical, business issues that very few programs give proper attention to—things like creating a résumé, finding a manager, taking good head shots and lining up auditions. NEC rates better than most in this area.
“There’s so much more to having a career than being able to sing well,” says Astafan. “You have to let people know that you sing and perform well. I guide singers on résumés and headshots, and how to get management. But there is a wonderful Career Services Center here as well.”
Eugene Summers used the Career Services Center often while he was at NEC, and he found it useful and even lucrative. “They help you find competitions and gigs, and you can learn how to write your résumé. It’s great. I got some work out of that. Being paid to sing is a good thing, especially as a student.”
Most students do, in fact, get paid to sing while enrolled at NEC. In order to supplement financial aid, they get jobs singing at churches or doing other types of gigs. Boston has many early music ensembles, Handel and Hayden societies and Baroque societies that are hungry for strong voices. And, according to Astafan, Boston Lyric Opera and Boston Baroque occasionally cast students in their productions. “All of the arts organizations in the area have been very good at cultivating our talent, both while they’re students and after they graduate,” he says.
Combining training, in-school performing opportunities and outside gigs, aggressive students should be able to leave NEC with a solid foundation of technique and experience. But is it enough to make it “out there”?
“Of course, nothing we can do duplicates the real world,” says St. Laurent. “Until you actually get out there and show yourself, you won’t know how ready you are. But we provide very strong academic and vocal teaching, and a healthy competitive atmosphere. A lot of our graduates are out there working today.”
Take, for example, Keith Phares, who only two years out of school (he attended Julliard from 1998-2000, after NEC) has already performed at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. In 2003, he’ll appear with Washington Opera and Utah Opera. His has the kind of steadily climbing career that most singers dream of. Looking back on his NEC experience, Phares rates the program a superlative 10. “Every day I spent there was invaluable,” he says. “What made NEC special was that it was a supporting environment. I felt close to my colleagues, and we had an underlying bond that made life a lot easier. I’ll never forget it.”
Lori Gunnell is a freelance journalist and fiction writer who lives and works in Los Angeles. She only sings in the shower and while driving on crazy Southern California freeways.
POSSIBLE SIDEBAR
The Underdogs of Voice: Simon Carrington Speaks Out for the Choir
From 1968-93 Simon Carrington enjoyed a career as founder, member, co-director, and creative force of the internationally acclaimed British vocal ensemble, The King’s Singers. He then served as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Kansas before joining the NEC faculty in the same capacity in the fall of 2001. Boston Globe’s chief music critic, Richard Dyer, gave Carrington’s first concert leading the NEC Chorus and Chamber Singers a favorable review, and extracts from this concert were featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today.
Having lived the life of a professional singer, Carrington knows what it’s like to fight and scrape for the chance to be heard. He hopes to use his current position to share some of his knowledge with NEC graduate voice students, and help them develop ensemble skills that will improve their chances to succeed as a working singer.
Believing that choir has gotten a pretty bad rap, Carrington is on a mission to dispel some of the misconceptions young singers have about his program’s ability to help them meet professional goals. He’s hoping to draw graduate singers into his choirs—a large choir of 100 singers and a smaller 30-singer chamber choir—and into smaller choral ensembles.
“I’m enjoying myself here very much,” says Carrington. “What I’ve tried to do is suggest that grads can sing with the big choir in one or two rehearsals, giving them that chance to refine their reading skills. I also look out for solo oratorios for them, but I tend to favor those who sing in choir. I’m trying to offer them opportunities, to widen their experiences. It’s important for singers to get this kind of experience.”
Because graduates are not required to take choir, and most are intensely focused on opera, getting them to participate is a tough sell. Besides student resistance, there’s the problem of scheduling. Coordinating choir schedules with graduate classes, seminars, workshops and Opera Studio is difficult and in some cases impossible. This, Carrington feels, is too bad for students because they’re not learning skills that could support them once they leave the nest of NEC.
“We need to refine that here because a lot of graduate students do not get cast in operas,” he says. “I hope that, bit-by-bit, we can get a slightly different balance. I’m concerned for those who maybe won’t have a top line opera career and could succeed in other areas, many of which are extremely rewarding. For example, there are octets, sextets and little groups that go out and sing.”
Carrington’s point is that people actually make whole careers out of this kind of singing, as he did himself, and that it can artistically fulfilling as well as lucrative. But by no means is he trying to discourage students from following their dreams. “It’s important not to take the will and excitement away,” he explains. “I want to add an extra dimension, not replace what they came here to do. But they need to be as skilled as possible.”
Another issue Carrington addresses is whether singing in choir is bad for the voice. “It’s not as long as I don’t make them do weird things,” he laughs. “We do a lot of soft singing, but that is good for them. They learn to sing more subtly. And I follow good vocal technique. The danger that puts out red flags is something called straight tone, which I stay away from. One can sing with a wonderful steady tone without doing that. I do expect them to be able to sing soft high up and I have to help them do this. Singing high without being loud is a challenge. Sophie Van Otter is one I like to refer to as a great example of this talent.”
To give his students exposure to a wide variety of musical styles and periods, Carrington likes to mix it up. “The large choir will sing Baroque music this year. They need that experience. We do a fair amt of 20th century and early Renaissance, small-scale and large-scale pieces. I strive for variety so that they don’t sing everything with exactly the same sounds. There are different colors with every piece and singers need to develop that ability just like a musician. All the singers in the choir, I hope, will learn hands on day-by-day musician skills.”
Even though he is enthusiastically seeking recruits for his program, Carrington has high standards that his singers must meet. Auditioning students must be absolutely prepared. “Anyone who comes in uncertain of their notes, I send away immediately. If they’re just singing but their musicianship skills are good, that’s what I look for. I also look for voices that are flexible. They have to be able to sing unaccompanied and on tune.”
Carrington is now well into his second term at NEC and he’s doing all he can to make his program appealing to all voice students. His own enthusiasm and sincere belief in ensembles is a good start. And being in Boston helps his cause as well. “Boston is a wonderful place for a musician to thrive,” he says. “I know a number of musicians around town who engage singers, and they’re looking for singers of resource. That’s what I’m trying to produce.”
