E.J. is playing tonight at Murphy’s, and he posted a track of him singing (Pardon the hotlink, EJ. I didn’t have the space, and I’ll take it down soon if you want). It’s so cool to hear the singing version of a person’s whose speaking voice you already know. E.J.’s voice is lovely, and I am very excited about hearing him later on. Hearing his voice got me thinking about the singing part of me that lay fallow all year. For those of you who only just met me, I was once an opera singer. Yes, an opera singer. No really! I didn’t mean to be that. I just was. I sang from the time I could talk. In the 4th grade, I began a 6-year stint with the Young Singers of Callanwolde, an experience that honestly shaped me as much as school. I traveled all over the world with them. In high school, I attended a magnet school for performing arts and sang with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus (ASOC) with Robert Shaw my senior year. After that, I got a degree in Vocal Performance from Oberlin Conservatory, where I studied with Daune Mahy, a completely wonderful woman who "got" me and my voice. While I was there, I was basically pushed into opera, when my real love was always choral music. I like the collaboration of a chorus, and solo singing always made me feel really lonely. I can recall singing the lead in a Gilbert & Sullivan opera one time, and none of the chorus people treated me as an equal. They acted like I was untouchable, and I hated it. I was very different in personality from the other singers at Oberlin. I always lacked the diva drive, and while I love being near the center of the action, when all eyes are on me, I just felt pedestalized, weird, pointed at, different. I wanted to be WITH people, not FOR them. I have this overdeveloped pity for celebrities on the cover of gossip magazines, because they must feel so unknown by others. Anyway, I digress. After college, I spent a summer studying with Marlena Malas at the Chautauqua School of Music, then attended the New England Conservatory in Boston. I attended NEC for only one semester. I was so miserable there. I studied voice with Helen Hodam (who had once taught at Oberlin), an old diva with VERY clear ideas about every aria I’d be singing, what I’d be wearing, etc. Ugh. Dreadful personality match.
It was in Boston that I freaked out, left school, met the man that was to be my future ex-husband, temped, and eventually moved back to Atlanta where I rejoined the wonderful ASOC for four more seasons. I took 10 classes in Psych at Georgia State, worked a number of different jobs, lived in my parents’ basement with my ex, then didn’t, then did, worked with kids with ADHD, got married, applied for grad school. But the point is that ASOC was what I loved. Being back, I had 4 more years with Robert Shaw (some of his last), got to sing at Opening Ceremonies and at Carnegie Hall twice. Got to be on lots of recordings. It was choral music I adored then and still adore now. In Bloomington, I was able to be in some great choirs, sing some solos, and some of it was recorded. That’s the kind of singing I like to do now. That plus old Queen, Throwing Muses, and Soundgarden in the car… and Ella. There’s always Ella. Oh, and Joni.
My year in Memphis represents my first year NOT singing in some organized way since I was 4. It’s been weird. I will upload a track or two, and you can see if you can match my speaking voice to my singing voice. You might be surprised.
