Oh God, I Need this Show: An Audition Blog Part 1

I had the great pleasure of attending, during Level III of the CCM Institute both a lecture and masterclass with David Chase.  David has been a musical director, supervisor, and arranger for 25+ Broadway shows including Nice Work If You Can Get It, How to Succeed In Business, Anything Goes, Billie Elliot, Curtains, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Kiss me Kate, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, Music Man and Damn Yankees.  He's currently working on the new production of R&H's Cinderella and will be working on the upcoming Tuck Everlasting. 

"What do I do?  I'm a sculptor and music is my medium.  I'm a storyteller." -David Chase

David was a biology major at Harvard thinking he was going to be a doctor but to him it was all about finding something he was passionate about and doing it.  He has no musical training, but he loves what he does, he's passionate about what he does, and he knows an enormous amount about music and musical theatre (which I can attest to after hearing him talk, the man's a walking encyclopedia).    He says his world isn't based on fact, it's based on ephemera: what is in fashion right now, what do people want to hear, our culture and its expectations.  This is a great point to keep in mind when going into an audition whether it's here in Grand Rapids, in NYC, or around the world.  Musical theatre is still a business, it has to sell, and getting cast is about so much more than if you're a good singer or not. 

 "There are so many aspects to what makes for a successful performer but the only universal is that the singing is done healthfully." - David Chase

As a music director and supervisor David essentially listens to people sing and judges them.  He says he chooses people on various qualities, only one of which is singing ability, but he wants them to be healthy because he needs them to do 8 shows a week.  The same could be said for regional and community theatres where there aren't 8 shows a week, but there also aren't understudies.  It doesn't matter how wonderful your sound is, if you lose your voice or have unhealthy vocal production which leads a musical director to believe you will lose your voice, no one will get to hear you sing.  

"It is our job as artists to communicate and that is mostly what I'm looking for in someone who is singing for me.  Are you communicating, are you telling the story." -David Chase

 David's "3 C's for Communicating" are Character, Context, and Culture. 

• Character: Who is singing?  This doesn't mean just who "you" are or who the "character" in the show is, but knowing all about them.  What's their education level?  Where are they from?  Do they have an accent?  What's their point of view about what they're saying?  Are they being spontaneous in what they're saying? 
• Context: Where are they in the story?  What do they want?  What's the action?  What's going to change from point A to point B (or point C or D depending on how far the song is going to take you.) What is the obstacle to be over come?  There has to be something that somebody learns in the context of singing the song. - That being said there are plenty of songs in the musical theatre cannon that are pop songs, about a stage of being.  A pop song says, "I love her, I love her I love her," vs a theatre song which says "I love her, I love her, but she doesn't love me."   For example in the Music Man when Marion sings "Dream of Love" she's just inhabiting that moment, she's not taking any particular journey, she's just giving us a moment of solace and beauty before all the proverbial stuff hits the fan.  Not to be confused with catalog shows like Mama Mia or Jersey Boys where originally the pop songs didn't have a journey, but now they've been given a context and made into "theatre" songs. Each type of song must be approached differently and it's important to know which is which.  Know the show. 
• Culture: You have to know: when it was written, who sang it first or what show did it come from, who wrote it, what was the original composer/lyricist/book writer's intent.  Part A of culture is knowing the culture of the time it was written and Part B is knowing our current culture and how we perceive that style, that world, now.  For example you cannot sing the song Oklahoma and the words "I know we belong to the land and the land we belong to is grand" unless you know that the show was written during WWII.  That song only makes sense in the context of people defending their land, their home, their country.  My favorite example of this, and you'll know it if you've had a lesson with me in the last week, is Brigadoon which was written immediately post war.  When that audience walked into the theatre in 1947-48 they were seeing a show about two Americans wandering aimlessly in the Scottish countryside.  That audience did not need to be told  that they were ex GI's who had seen the horrors of war and were looking for someplace that was the impossible fantasy of peace and escape.  So you can't do the show at face value anymore unless you can find the cultural moment now that reflects that moment then.  David also gave the example of How to Succeed, when it was written it was the "Producers" of it's time, it made fun of theatrical conventions.  When it was revived in the 90's that had been lost.  If you take Rosemary's song, "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm" at face value it is a very pre-feminist song, but it was never meant to be taken at face value.  It was always meant to be sung tongue-and-cheek, not with the character making fun of it but with the writers making fun of it.  In the 90's revival that had been lost and the song came out as more of an apology, "We know this isn't the way we think today, but it's how things were then."  When it was most recently revived the country had been through Mad Men and could acknowledge that women, at that period, were usually controlling everything behind the scenes.  So now we can sing "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm," with renewed knowledge of the irony of it.  To sing a song like that you have to know the culture of the time it was written and how our currently culture looks on that time and reflects on it.  

Style.  David also talked a lot about style and the disconnect he feels young people have with it.  Throughout the 20's, 30's, and 40's all of the music written for Broadway was pop music, it was the music of the time.  Gershwin was writing the hot music of the 20's.  Now would we sing a Gershwin song as it was sung in the 20's?  Probably not, that wouldn't make any sense to audiences today, but you still need to honor the history.  In the 30's Cole Porter was writing all his witticisms during the Depression, his stories about the rich and the elegant taking ships across the Atlantic came out of the need for the people of the day to go to the theatre to escape.  By the time we've hit the 40's with Rodgers and Hammerstein they've tried to integrate all the elements to tell the complete story.  They started out with Oklahoma and we've been trying to do that ever since.

David gave us an enormous amount of information that I'm going to extend over several blog posts in the coming weeks.  To my students, and those here in West Michigan who are preparing for fall auditions take this information to heart, do your homework, know your history.  Know everything there is to know about the show you're auditioning for, with the wealth of information on the internet (and pirated clips from Broadway shows on youtube) there is no excuse not to know the complete story, all the characters, their relationships, the songs, the style, the time period, the writers' intent, etc...  Knowing all of that is the only way to make an informed choice for an audition song.  We all want to find a song that mirrors the show and character we most want to play and also shows off our voice.  You can't begin looking if you don't know what you're looking for. 

More wisdom to come.  Happy Singing.

CCM Institute Level III - Certified!

So I am back from the institute and ready to get back to teaching!  I can't say enough how much I valued my time there and how much I learned.  Jeanie LoVetri is truly a crusader for singers, for music, and for voice science and I am so grateful that I got to work with her, it definitely won't be the last time.

I have notes upon notes and video upon video that I will be using to write future blog posts getting more in depth particularly with what I learned in Level III from our 2 guest speakers: Dr. Michael Benninger the head of the Head & Neck Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic and David Chase Broadway musical director, arranger, and supervisor.  Dr. Benninger talked about voice science, vocal health, and the new highly improved and amazing techniques used by laryngologists to work with pathological voices.  David Chase talked about his process of sculpting the music for a show, the major things to look at when preparing a song for a show or audition, and how important acting, acting, acting is.  He also gave a master class coaching singers (myself included!) on a 16 bar cut.

On the final day of the institute Jeannie asked to work with me on the song David had coached me on the day before, You Don't Know This Man, from Parade by Jason Robert Brown.  I have a voice recording of the session which I will attempt to post either here or on my website/facebook page.  We didn't do much with my voice technically but she got me to phrase the song more effectively and really get down into my body.  A woman in Lucille's situation wouldn't be pulling up, she'd be pressing down.  It was such an amazing moment to sing not only for Jeanie but for the 90 some other voice professionals that attended the institute.

In other news...I just finished my first day back to teaching using the Solution Sequence (sm) and I cannot tell you how big the smile is on my face.  I reviewed the steps this morning before heading in and used the note cards while teaching to guide me but mostly I really listened, functionally, and watched, functionally, and was aware.  What a difference.  It was a parade of "That was so easy.  The note just came out!" that finished with a new student who was holding jaw tension he wasn't aware of, his mouth barely opened when he was speaking normally, who turned out to have a beautiful crooner tone that he used on Michael Buble's "Home".  What. A. Great. Day.

More vocal health and MT performance specifics to come so check back often!  Happy Singing!

Somatic Voicework the LoVetri Method - Level 2

Hello again!
Proud to say I completed Level 2 of certification training in Somatic Voicework the LoVetri Method yesterday!  I also had a wonderful 1-on-1 lesson with Dr. Barbara Streets from the University of Central Oklahoma.  Knowing of their wonderful Musical Theatre and Voice programs I sought her out early to make sure I got to work with her and I'm so glad I did.  Not only was it great for my voice but she made me basically teach myself, choosing which exercise to use next and where to go from a SVW standpoint.

Level 2 was all about putting the theory from Level 1 into practice.  We had break out sessions where we taught each other in pairs, with help from a faculty member.  We had to warm each other up, and then based on what each singer wanted to work on and what we observed in the warm up decide where to go from there.  Balance is the name of the game.  The methods I've been teaching and using personally which have gotten me a lot of success thus far get to the same place that SVW does, but from a different road.  I've worked from a place of strength.  If an exercise if tough, you make it as easy as you can, but essentially you keep practicing it until you become stronger and it gets easier.  Like I said before, this has worked for me.  I learned to belt using this method.  I can mix an F5 using this method.  SVW takes the opposite approach.  If something is tough you back off, you start small and incrementally add range or intensity or whatever until it gets easier, then repeat.  Imagine you'd like to lift a 50lb weight.  Now you could try, and keep trying, and possibly hurt your back in the process while building strength to lift it or you could start with a 5lb weight..then 10lb..then 15lb..you get the idea.  Once your registers are balanced and the body is supported and relaxed correctly your possibilities are endless.  As I discovered when in small group work I mixed a high C.  And it was easy.  Seriously.

In my lesson I was able to dive deeper into my voice.  Turns out all those years I spent thinking I was singing too legit or in my head voice I wasn't.  I was in a mix.  Then I learned to belt using only strengthening exercises for another few years.  And now I have a voice that is predominately chest register with very little head.  That's not to say I can't sing soprano songs, I can, but it means that the reason I struggle with going from pure chest to mix and through my second passaggio has very little to do with my chest voice and everything to do with my underdeveloped head voice.  They have to balance.  Balance.  Balance. Balance.

It seems like a simple, clear statement except you would not believe the issues singers (and voice teachers) get into getting there.  Classical teachers teach a mix because it creates resonance and many MT teachers have classical training so they don't teach belting or they're confused about what belting is.  So Level 2 was about doing it.  Bring the chest up.  Bring the head down.  Meet them in the middle.

We had a great lecture from Dr. Wendy LeBorgne CCC-SLP who in addition to working with 2 private practices is the Singing Voice Specialist at the Cincinnati Conservatory and was also interviewed in Joan Melton's book that brought me here "Singing in Musical Theatre." (As a VERY COOL side note Joan is also here teaching one of the postcertificate courses.)  #voicegeek  Dr. LeBorgne lectured on Acoustics which for a BFA MT person like me was a lot of new material.  Formants..and hertz..and lots of other things I am going to have to research more to feel like I have a handle on them.  She's here also to teach a postcertificate course on Vocal Pathology..a course I would very much like to take in the future.  Watching Jeannie work with damaged voices has really lit a fire in me to become a Voice Specialist myself and as there's no set path to get there it looks like there's a lot of reading and question asking in my future.  Which is fine with me.

We began Level 3 today, but I'll save that for another blog.  To wrap up my ramblings, I feel like I have been given such a gift and such amazing new tools to add to my tool box.  As I make my schedule for next week I am so excited to get back to working with my students.  As different people here get up to work with Jeannie I can't help but notice similarities in each voice to the voices that I work with and I feel like I will be that much better at helping all the students I work with truly find the sound that is uniquely their's.  And that's pretty fantastic.

Contemporary Commerical Music - Vocal Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah University - Level 1

Greetings!  I feel so lucky to be a part of such an incredible institute and I wanted to share with my friends and singers what's going on..because it's pretty cool.

The CCM Institute takes place each summer at Shenandoah University in Winchester VA and is run by Jeanie LoVetri and her faculty..singers and professors from universities and high schools nation wide.  The institute is intensive training (and as I'm at the end of my 2nd 12 hour day I can honestly say they're not lying when they say intensive) in Jeanie's method of singing: Somatic Voicework.  The root of her work is in creating a UNIQUE voice that the student ENJOYS singing in.  In coming down to the student's level and working there as if you were them.  In letting them take responsibility for their body awareness not in telling them what they're feeling.  In asking lots of questions because saying "Make this lighter" might not mean the same thing to me as it means to my student.  In not using flowery imagery "Imagine there is a rubber band across your hips and it is contracting and lengthening" but in giving a very clear physical command "Contract and release your belly muscles." 

Soma means body, so Somatic Voicework is body oriented voice work.  It is also science based.  Jeanie has studied and worked with leading ENT's and SLP's worldwide and brings her knowledge and experience with them into her work.  As a BFA Musical Theatre major who has self taught vocal anatomy and function it has been so helpful to have anatomy lectures and explanations to exactly what is going on with the voice and the chain reactions that occur.  By far one of the coolest things we've been doing is watching video of the vocal folds..both Jeanie's and others'..in each register.  I knew going into this that the cricothyroid lengthens and thins the vocal folds when head voice is produced but when I first actually saw it happening it was pretty mind blowing.  #vocalnerd

Having studied with both classical and Speech Level Singing teachers I was very excited and interested to see what Somatic Voicework brings to the table.  After listening to lectures this morning I turned on my brightest smile and plopped myself down at the "faculty table" at lunch to ask all my questions.  It's pretty cool having lunch with master teachers, one of whom played Christine in Phantom at the age of 42, yes she's gorgeous, petite, and at 50 looks 30.  The other is actually related to another Doyle family that lives in my home town...small world..but I digress.  The answer to my question about the differences between Somatic Voicework and Speech Level Singing had to do with the head voice.  In SLS it is taught that all voice is created and connected to speech without a separate head register.  In SMV there is certainly a head register (duh) and one of the first functions of SMV is to find and isolate pure head and pure chest register.  SMV also uses a very wide mouth to create a bright sound, which you'll know if you're a student of mine, I have encouraged a much taller mouth to keep the larynx low.

What I'm learning is that the larynx is a joint, just like our elbow, and that that joint will and must move.  It's going to hike when you're in belt or belt/mix and that's ok.  A tall skinny mouth is actually adding more woofer to your sound and giving you a darker vowel..thus the smiling bright vowel and the smiling mouth.  Makes sense.

In our small group work today we had to find pure head and chest registers.  My group was comprised of mostly older, extremely experienced, classical DMA's who hadn't sung in pure chest voice, well mostly ever.  The fact that they were willing, and eventually able, to make such a "non classical" sound was heartening as lots of these teachers work with Musical Theatre majors at their institutions.  As a side note I've had lunch with professors from major universities with well known MT BFA programs who told me that their studio is half classical students and half MT and that they have little to no idea what to do with the MT voices beyond legit, classical musical theatre repertoire.  I could stand on my soap box here and talk for awhile about the disconnect between what is happening in liberal arts BFA programs and what it takes to be a working MT actor but I'll save that for another post.  My point is, change is happening, and the classical world is finally getting hip to it.

My task in small group work was to lighten my chest voice, something I've really struggled with.  We all struggle with the evil first passaggio and I haven't found a great way to go from pure chest into mix without completely changing my sound.  Now I have.  My sound has never felt so light and easy.  I've never experienced mix in the way it is described and worked with here.  As a side note...the first EVER seminar on the mix register was given at the Voice Foundation Symposium in Philadelphia this year!  Change..it's coming.  I am so excited to expand on the foundation that we're building in Level 1 and bring all this new information back to my students.  Get ready!

Other highlights for me have been Jeanie's work with a classical singer whose heart is in contemporary musical theatre.  She worked this dramatic soprano into a Sutton Foster-esque belt in about 20 minutes..very cool..I taped it.  :)  Where my work in LA was about getting results quickly SMV is about "waiting for the bus".  Each exercise elicits a function and the student gives the response.  If the response isn't what you're looking for you don't just move on and forget about it, you keep at it, you "wait for the bus" and give the body a chance to catch up to what the brain is asking it to do.

Another great moment was Jeanie's work with a post-menopausal lyrical soprano who had lost about a fifth off her range and added bass notes she never had before after going through menopause and also a vocal fatigue she had never experienced before.  This is a common problem.  She had worked with Jeanie last summer and was told to focus solely on her pure head voice to combat the fatigue and while it worked she hadn't gotten any of her range back.  Jeanie lightened everything up.  She was squeaking like a mouse, very staccatto, then lots of slides, and at the end of 20ish minutes the woman had a D6 and the a smile to light up the room.

As many of my students are kids and teens, a thing I have in common with many of the teachers here, I was excited to touch on working with them.  SMV works the same for adults and kids.  Jeanie says and there were many heads nodding in agreement, that kids need to sound like kids.  When we get parents (and yes it's mostly parents) pushing kids into sounding like rock belters or huge opera singers we're getting into trouble.  Even the super star kids go through puberty where things will and do change.   We're getting more in depth into working with kids tomorrow...stay tuned. 

I could keep going about the things that I'm learning and the incredible teachers I'm getting exposed to but it's late and there's another 12 hour day tomorrow.  I am so excited to be learning new things, reestablishing my relationship and love of singing and the voice, and making so many connections with professionals worldwide.  I can't wait to get in the practice room and try all these new techniques out..and I still have 8 days to go!  Get ready DVS students!