Singing for my supper

A wonderful new anthology has just been released (one that many of us have been hoping to see for some time)!   

A recent discussion among teachers dipped into the perennial question: should teens and developing singers be encouraged to sing core 18th and 19th century operatic repertoire before their technique is fully developed?  There is no one-size-fits-all answer - there are a handful of exceptional students who are ready to start building their operatic chops as teens, but  in general I personally come down on the side of "no".   I encourage these keen students to become familiar with the  dramatic stage works they love and  maybe even play around singing them for fun, but as performance and audition pieces?  "Not yet....".  They don't love me when I steer them away from O Mio Babbino Caro or Queen of the Night but, if they continue as serious singers, their 30-something selves will thank me for not letting them build youthful insufficiencies into what becomes their mature bread-and-butter repertoire!    Beyond Handel and the 24/26/28, this st...

For this post I'm delighted to pass the baton (keyboard?) to my dear friend and colleague Laura Woolbright Mashburn . Laura is a wonderful singer and teacher with seemingly bottomless knowledge about repertoire:  whenever I feel "stuck", I ping her for a quick Facebook chat and instantly have a dozen suggestions to consider (many of them "new to me" selections)!  So much repertoire out there to explore ... :)

In Part 1 , I shared some of the rationales that I use when selecting repertoire for students; this post explores some specific sources of repertoire for developing classical singers. ( "The Yellow Book" of course refers to the ubiquitous "24 Italian Songs & Arias of the 17th and 18th Centuries" that seems to be a rite of passage for every classical singer!)

As mentioned in yesterday's quick update , teaching now dominates my life, and the thoughts below have been percolating for a while (and, in fact, are why I resurrected the blog!).  I often hear new teachers asking questions about choosing repertoire for younger or developing singers, which prompted me to jot down a few notes that guide my own thinking as I choose pieces for my students at all ages and stages of development.    

(Disclaimer: Mom, I adore you, and am grateful to you for everything you've ever done to educate me to this point, and for allowing me to continue to challenge things, to learn and to grow .... even when you vigorously disagree with my opinion!) It's been typically busy (seems like it's seldom anything else these days, with both the pros and cons which come with it!), but my parents somehow managed to find a date when we could all go and see a splendid production of Sondheim's Into the Woods together.  We all enjoyed it immensely - my husband and I have long been fans of Sondheim's work in general, and particularly this show - it was a treat to take our daughter to a top-notch performance of a work she hadn't seen before,  and even my Sondheim-resistant parents agreed that perhaps they had been hasty in describing him as "tuneless" and "not their thing" as they loved absolutely every minute of the performance as much as we did (kudos to the...

Today: home maintenance as my husband (bless him!) deals with gutters and reapplies the roof-elastomeric glop which (in theory at least) keeps our roof water repellent, kids alternating between playing outside and watching "Glee" upstairs, and I'm working on promotional materials, dates and repertoire for the Poe recital; after the Roof Glopping, we'll squeeze in a quick rehearsal. I think this is what counts for a "normal suburban Sunday" in this household.... (?!?!?!?!) The Poe recital seems to be gathering momentum. We enjoyed our radio interview (recorded last Monday, an edited version to be aired the week before Halloween and the full version to be available here soon) and are gratified that folks seem interested in the concept -we've been excited about it since we started planning it, but it's nice to know we're not alone in finding it an intriguing idea! As we head into the home stretch before the first performances, we find we're fal...

Let's face it - there's a point in a musician's life (ok, in THIS musician's life) where you start to think you're pretty well-versed in repertoire. You've studied, listened and learned. You've been around the business a while and are a self-confessed repertoire-holic (even as a teenager I used to dig through volumes of song and choral rep just because it interested me). And when you're married to a musical polymath as I am, that tends to put even more repertoire in your path so, once you're familiar with most of what's regularly presented, know what's available as a recording, or know what you (or friends and colleagues) have actually performed, you shouldn''t expect too many surprises, right?? WRONG!! It's a particular delight when a previously unheard-of composer comes to light. Deodat de Severac , in this case. Mr Musical Polymath had heard of his piano works in passing, but was entirely UNfamiliar with his output of delic...