One typically chilly San Francisco spring day, I slipped out of my car, walked six or seven steps, and landed in front of a narrow gray door. Pushing through it, I entered a small, high-ceilinged warehouse space and was greeted by the sound of beautiful singing wafting through the air. I walked down a short hallway, flanked on one side by a large window through which I viewed what looked like a lunchroom where three women were deep in conversation, and emerged into the open space. Two singers were standing at the piano, working on a scene from La bohème. I looked around to see sewing machines, rolling containers, neatly stacked boxes of fabric, and racks upon racks of petticoats, robes, shirts, colorful costumes, and beautiful hats that graced the perimeters of a rehearsal space that would instantly feel like home to any singer. I had arrived at the Singer’s Gym.
Unlike other gyms you might go to for aerobics or to tone your abs, the Singer’s Gym, as Ben Bernstein, one of its founders, described it, is a place where singers can develop their performance muscles. “It’s a place for singers to work out, try things, experiment, fall and get up, and do it better the next time. Those are all the things you need to do as you’re strengthening yourself as a performer, and we don’t have enough opportunities for that. The Gym is a place where singers can learn how to have that joyous experience of singing that comes from being fully involved with the music and the text.”
Bernstein, along with colleague Kathryn Cathcart, founded the Singer’s Gym (www.singersgym.org) in the mid-1990s to help fill a yawning gap they both felt was evident in the performance training of many classical singers.
“I got tired of falling asleep before the end of the first act in many opera productions I saw,” Bernstein confessed when we spoke. “I’d feel disconnected, not involved. Rather than complain, I decided to do something about it. I realized that in many productions, singers were making beautiful sounds, but they weren’t engaged in what they were singing, who they were portraying, or who they were on stage with. So, the drama and real sense of what they were singing about wasn’t coming through to me.
“At that point, in 1994, I was finishing a master’s in music composition at Mills College. I was introduced to Kathy Cathcart who, at that time, was working for San Francisco Opera in the Opera Center. When we met, we found that we were of similar minds on this topic and we started the Singer’s Gym, which sought to address this whole issue of connection in singing. We did our first workshop about 14 years ago, and we’ve been going ever since.”
The flagship program that Bernstein and Cathcart developed is an audition-only, four-week workshop which is offered twice per year. Ten singers of varying levels are accepted per session. While the working method is group oriented with classmates learning by observing one another’s work, each singer gets individualized attention when working on arias and scenes. Having a mix of experienced and novice singers in each group enhances the process.
Each week of the workshop centers on one key element of concern to performers. The first week is devoted to the score. “We start with the music because it’s the ground plan,” Cathcart explained. “We explore what’s distinctive about the music and what the story is.”
“Each person prepares an aria and brings in the music for everyone in the workshop,” added Bernstein. “As the person sings, we all watch the score. We look at what the composer indicates, what the singer might be missing, and where the opportunities are to get more dramatic and emotional value out of the music by exploiting form, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, and how the words are connected to the music.”
“Space” is the focus of week two.
“It’s about your body in another character in another place,” explained Cathcart. “You learn to have an awareness of what’s around you.” And, as Bernstein made clear, you learn to see the space as something that you can bring alive by how your character interacts with the surrounding environment.
Week three highlights character work—how to find and embody your character, and bring that to life onstage. Week four focuses on aspects of onstage relationships, particularly on listening and being present when others onstage are singing.
Cathcart and Bernstein bring years of experience to their teaching. Aside from being a composer, Bernstein is a licensed PhD psychologist who works on performance issues with both performers and athletes. He also trained with Viola Spolin, the internationally recognized originator of Theater Games, which are the basis of improvisational theater. He uses much of that training in his work with singers.
Cathcart, who is currently music director of the opera program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, trained and worked with Boris Goldovsky and went on to serve on the coaching staffs of the Cologne (Germany) and San Francisco operas. A respected conductor, she has conducted in Europe and both North and South America.
Mega-talented pianist and coach Darryl Cooper join the two in their work. His wit and wicked sense of humor were on full display during the Saturday class I observed, eliciting guffaws of laughter from singers and instructors alike. In addition to being the assistant music director of San Francisco Conservatory’s opera program, Cooper, who is also Goldovsky trained, is on the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, and is a former member of the opera and coaching faculties of the Boston Conservatory, Boston University Theater Institute, and Chautauqua Opera, among others.
To see the three of them work together is sheer fun. No egos prevail here. They hand off the teaching baton with ease, almost as if they can read each other’s minds. And their focus is always to elicit, to encourage, to woo the best from each singer—never to dictate.
“Kathy, Darryl, and I are gently meticulous,” said Bernstein. “We’re not slice-and-dice people. We’re not there to humiliate or lord ourselves over anyone. We view ourselves as fellow artists who are in pursuit together of something great. So, we give meticulous attention to detail.”
It was that philosophy and focus that clearly came through on the day of my visit. As I settled into a comfortable chair to observe the class, the students started to bustle into the main space—a central open area with a well-worn and marked stage floor. Soon thereafter, the three-and-a-half-hour class started with Bernstein coaching them through a “warm-up.”
He had earlier explained to me that each session employs the same basic plan. “Since our program is modeled on a gym, in each session we have a physical warm-up, which I handle, and a vocal warm-up, which Darryl leads. Then we have a ‘workout’ during which we concentrate on coaching the arias and duets. Then a ‘cool-down’ where we talk about the work that was just done. And last, a closing where we sing a song together, followed by a brief meditation.”
During the warm-up, Bernstein led the participants in a stretch. Then, accompanied by Cooper, he got them moving around the room: walking, running, at different tempi, with different body attitudes, going in different directions. “Let the breath ride on the music. Feel the space between your arms and body, and up and down your back.” Cooper, sometimes mischievously, changed the pace of the music and the participants responded. It was fun and spirited.
Since this was the class focused on character development, Bernstein’s next directive was for the singers to stop, close their eyes, and see themselves in their duet scenes as their characters.
“See three different words that describe you in your character,” Bernstein instructed. These three words would be the key to the rest of the day’s work. “Now open your eyes and start walking. Say one of the words you came up with. Feel it in your feet, then your thighs and knees. Your body will respond. Move it up to your abdomen, your chest, your shoulders. Breathe with the word. Now do that with your second word.”
The concentration of the singers was evident. They seemed to be attuning themselves simultaneously to Bernstein’s instructions, the accompanying piano music, and their chosen character words. When they stopped to briefly discuss their experiences and revelations, one said, “My body really changed when I changed my focus from one word to another.”
Coaching the “Letter Duet” (“Canzonetta sull’aria”) from Le nozze di Figaro was next. After an initial sing-through, the singers were asked to choose one of their three character words on which to focus. “Let it go all through your body,” Bernstein exhorted. “Keep that word active and let it move you. Take a moment to center yourself with it before you start to sing.”
As they worked the scene, Cathcart urged the two women to use their character words to determine logical actions and reactions to one another. At varying points, she would say, “Pay attention to what the text says and react in character,” or ask, “What are you doing between your phrases?” or “Can you have more of your inner life come out?”
Each question or gentle directive coaxed nuances from the singers. By the end of the work-through, they had taken a step forward and seemed much more aware of the emotional shifts that define and move the scene.
During the break, I talked with soprano BrieAnne Welch, who sang Susanna in the scene, and asked what she found most helpful about the Gym’s process.
“Being vulnerable in front of people when you’re still hashing it out is a good challenge,” she said. “We have to produce ‘in the moment’ in front of our peers. So it forces me to let go of worrying about making musical mistakes, which allows me to connect with my character.”
The afternoon continued with two more scene coachings. During both, Bernstein, Cathcart, and Cooper prodded the performers to relinquish the hyper-focus on singing each note right and attend rather to connecting with their characters’ intentions, feelings, and self-concepts, as well as to genuinely relating to their scene partners.
“In your text, you say that she looks happy,” Cathcart pointed out to one participant working a scene from Le Cid. “We have to see that you see her.” Cooper, a little later, urged the other singer to be aware of the implication of the music itself on character portrayal. “You have to believably react in the way the music speaks. Massenet gives you clues in the music about how to say the text.”
I asked Bernstein, Cathcart, and Cooper what each most wants the students to glean from the exploring they do at the Gym. “I want them to walk away with a knowledge of the music that’s so in-depth that they can really work from that,” said Cooper, “to grasp the idea that they have to know not just what happens in their aria, for instance, but what happens the moment before, the moment after, as well as in the orchestration.”
Cathcart, without hesitation, responded, “Interpretation. I want everybody to have their own voice, their own distinction. Each voice is individual, but I want them to add their personality to it.”
Bernstein was passionate in saying, “Our hope is that singers leave the Gym with an awareness of what’s possible for them, and with tools. Bottom line is we want people to have the experience of that full-body connection, spontaneity, and vitality that can come with singing.”
There are plans to expand the program, too. “Since we’re now an official 501c3, we’re branching out with a performing arm,” Bernstein shared. “Our first endeavor, this coming December, is an evening of two one-act operas. We also want to eventually have showcases and recitals, and even the Singer’s Gym Singers.”
Their ambitions don’t stop there, though. The space they’re in now is rented.
“The dream,” Bernstein said with excitement in his voice, “is to have our own building where singers can come on a daily or nightly basis to work out their repertoire, a building that will truly be the Singer’s Gym.”
