A Skiers Guide to Opera Singing 3. Share the Lift Nicely.

Skiers are stupid.  Take for example the risks of riding the Chair Lift:

• You get on a chair that floats through the air 50 feet above the ground
• You share that chair with a friend or a total stranger
• If you don't drop the bar, you could fall out
• If you drop the bar and your chair mate isn't noticing it, you could hit their head and make them fall out
• You have to disembark without killing the person sitting next to you
• You have to load and unload smoothly so that everyone on the chair lift can get up the mountain as efficiently as possible

Opera Singers are stupid.  Take for example the risks of being on stage in an opera:

• You stand on a stage in front of hundreds (or thousands) of people who are looking to be entertained
• You share that stage with a friend or total stranger
• If you don't act safely, you could fall off the set 
• If you act safely and professionally and your colleague is not aware, you could still end up injuring them or negatively affecting the performance
• You have to enter and exit the stage without ruining your colleagues work
• You have to enter and exit the stage to smoothly maintain the efficiency of telling the story

Do you see some similarities?  As I was sitting on the chair lift, I tried to think of the rules that we could apply that would mitigate the challenges for both a skier and a singer:

• Practice- the first time you get on the chair lift or rehearse a scene, it's likely going to be a mess.  Keep working at both and soon you will know how to share the chair lift or stage nicely with your friend.
• Be considerate to strangers.  Sometimes you board a chairlift or share the stage with a new person.  When you do, watch and listen to them and try to communicate as much as possible to make sure that you are both on the same page.  Find compromise and you can find success, even on your first trip on the stage or up the chair lift.
• Lower the bar according to plan.  Once you are sure that you are ready to go out on stage or are safely seated on the lift, lower the bar in coordination with your partner.  It makes for a smoother experience and no hurt feelings.
• Mind your boarding and disembarking.  Both Chairlifts and Stages require that you carefully walk off stage.  For chairlifts, you are throwing yourself down a 10 foot slide.  You have to clear the way for the people behind you.  On stage, you are walking from a brightly lit proscenium to a dark backstage.  There may be people behind you who need to get off the stage quickly.  Don't dilly dally.  You aren't the star of the show (even if you are the star of the show), you are just a piece of the puzzle and other people have to do their jobs.

Letters to my Mentors 4. When you screw up, Improvise.

Dear Mentors,

Back when I was a senior in undergrad, I was having a pretty bad year.  My young voice was still pretty unstable.  I pegged my heart on a couple of roles that I did not get because my voice was a mess.  I turned down opportunities because I had my heart set on roles that I did not get because my voice was really in a bad place.  It was a snowball of challenges that I made for myself.

About a quarter into the year, I realized that I had to make some sort of opportunity for myself.  Outside of my senior recital and required courses, I had absolutely no performing opportunities.  For a music performance major, that is a death knell.

I ended up collaborating with a young conductor to organize a production of Mozart's Requiem.  The vision was to have a student run, conducted and performed full production that would be performed on a weekend when high school seniors would be visiting.

And that is where you all came in.  When I conceived this project, I was feeling pretty bad about myself.  I didn't know what I was going to do with my voice and career and I had watched myself destroy my performance opportunities both by circumstance and action.
You all completely believed in this idea of making this performance.  You agreed to conduct the show.  You joined the chorus.  You played in the orchestra.  You agreed to be the organization sponsors.  You were my fraternity brothers who showed up to set up the room and listened to my fears and concerns in our weekly meetings.  And in the end, all of you combined your efforts to make this the highest attended concert at our school that year.  There were people sitting in the aisles.  The president of the college was in attendance, front and center.

I think that our group made an impact on those future college freshman and it was your generosity of time and talent that helped me turn around my attitude and think that maybe I could make a career in music.

Thank you for being there for me at one of the darkest moments of my career and helping give me the push to keep going.

And so, I am sharing this recording of the full performance.  It is far from perfect and the tenor soloist sounds like he is a very young tenor (pro-tip: it's me).  Besides that?  It is one of my proudest moments of my career, even all these days later.

Sincerely,
Eapen

A Skiers guide to Opera Singing 2. Give up the Poles

It all began when we arrived at the mountain and Kev-lar said, "Why don't you leave your poles?  Helmet Jim has quit using his poles and so have a lot of the rest of the gang."

Keep in mind, the few times that I've skied, I used poles and almost every skier who I watched go by had poles except for the little kids who were snowplowing down the mountain.  My heart went right to my throat.  It seemed impossible to imagine going down such a steep hill without something to aid with balance.

Of course, I remember my poles getting tangled in my skis as I got off the chairlift as a kid.  And then I fell and they had to stop everything.  I also remember falling and getting all tangled up with my poles knocking into my skis and having to trudge around the slope collecting all my gear before I could continue on.

When Kitty went with it, I joined in as well and left the poles leaning against the lodge.

After a few runs down the little bunny area, I started to get the feel of skiing back into my body.  Kev-lar stayed with the Spud and patiently watched her come down the hill and sometimes carried her up the little hill so she would not have to side-step up.

Kitty and I left them behind and crossed a steep intermediate.  From then on we were going down a curvy, relaxed hill.  Yes, I snowplowed like a kid.  But I did not fall.  When I came close, I could just drop my hand, push off and reset myself.

It got me to thinking, what are the poles that I carry in my singing career?  What are the artificial tools that I use to support me?   What are the steps in my learning and studying and performing that I think are completely necessary, but, if I gave them up, would make me a better singer?

What are the poles that I need to leave back in the lodge when I walk out on stage and sing?

Non-Profit Startup 1.3 When the world throws the spaghetti at you

I've been spending the month in NYC doing a show and I'm trying to get my feet under me for our DASP conversion to a non-profit.

Do you know how sometimes the world puts signs at you?  I was connected up to a fellow Rochester native who is our fabulous conductor for Astronaut's Tale.  He has experience running a non-profit in Chicago.  For the low price of taking him out for dinner (feed your local artist), I get to pick his brain on how to approach this particular challenge.

A good friend in NYC connected me up to the founder of an early music group.  I had a very focused conversation with her to get more details about how she started her group and what were some of the challenges.

Finally, I've been chatting with my director and producer to get hints as well.

So what are my big concerns?

• What is it like to get direction from a board?
• What do you do to get your board to help you get funding?
• What kind of mission has the possibility of becoming sustainable?
• How can I help lift up as many Colorado artists as I can with this project?

I'm still collating all of the information I have received so far and continue to get.

For now, they all left me with some key tasks:

• Get a lawyer to help get started (hat tip to a Young Families friend from Mass)
• Make sure someone on your board is an accountant and can help with the financial statements and bookkeeping
• Make a mission statement that is clear and sums up our goals in an elevator talk to potential board members

Future blog posts will document the journey started by these tasks.  It looks like I have some work to do when I get back home to Colorado.

Letters to My Mentors, Part 3. Generosity and Hospitality.

Dear Mentor,

We met when I was a young artist.  You needed a driver to get you around town and I needed a job to help keep me fed.  It is funny how age did not make much of a distance because we ended up spending a great deal of time together.

We would have lunch at your place and then go on trips to multiple grocery stores to shop the sales.  You were buying way too much if you were only buying for yourself.  This is where I learned one of the many lessons you quietly demonstrated: Feeding artists.

Opera singers, when starting out, generally have a whole lot of similarities with each other. We are all generally broke and hungry.  This is where you came in.  For every single rehearsal and performance, you would provide a buffet of crackers and cheese, cookies, apples and pears sliced up and whatever else might have been on sale.  It was hugely generous and it was a way that you gave back to those who performed out our little opera company.  I would bring the buffet over every day and set it up and then tear it down to bring it back for you to refill.  Your generosity was a gift that is missed to this very day back at that company.

In spending all that time driving you around, I also helped you out with entertaining friends and guests.  You had a huge supply of beautiful china and silver and could invite friends over for an evening of dinner.   I would help set up and, thanks to you, I think I set a pretty mean table.

For Christmas one year you gave me an olive spoon 
and I still have it today after so many moves across the country chasing my dreams.

You never had children and were only briefly married.  I wonder if I, and some of the other guys who drove you around, became the sons you never had.  I wonder what kind of father you might have been.

I still think of you often and the endless hours of volunteering that you did for so many organizations in the town where we met.

Thank you for sharing your gifts and time and talent with me.
Sincerely,
Eapen

Repost: Silence in the City

Just after Superstorm Sandy, I wrote this post about getting to work in the city:

As you all know, Kitty and I have spent the last few years living and loving our life in New York City. Our brownstone has been our base of operations for the past five years and many of our adventures have been documented on this blog.

On Monday, our family lived through our very first hurricane.  We were abundantly blessed as we did not have any damage to our home, loss of power or even internet service.  Seeing the devastation of lower Manhattan and New Jersey was an experience is cognitive dissonance.  Our lives have been normal in almost every way, while the lives of friends and co-workers have been disrupted beyond anything I wish to imagine.

Despite our blessings, life has changed dramatically for us in New York City.

On Wednesday I had to get to an appointment and then rehearsal in the city.  As you know, the trains only go so far as Brooklyn near the bridges.  From there, you have to get a shuttle bus to go across a bridge and then get to points in Manhattan.

When I came out in the sunshine of the day at Jay Street Metrotech station, I was greeted by the largest crowd I had ever seen.  All were waiting on line for the shuttle.  I could see the line was moving fairly quickly, but I could not find the end.

I knew that this would be a possibility and I had left the house in running gear and with the minimum supplies for the day.  Armed with that and an opera-singers almost pathological need for self-determination, I turned left and followed Jay Street to the pedestrian entrance to the Manhattan Bridge.

I picked up pace to an easy run and it took about ten minutes to cross the bridge to Canal Street.  Following the vacant thoroughfare of Chinatown to Broadway, I saw every shop gated at 11 a.m.  What should have been a packed street was almost devoid of cars, trucks and people.

I followed Broadway up to East 8th Street, running through the hollow streets to East 8th where I cut west to Greenwich and then up to 8th Avenue and 14th Street.  No traffic lights or significant number of people presented themselves to slow my pace.  In daylight, the city was serene and silent but for the occasional sirens or police convoys.

Only at 31st Street, did I start to see lights of the city again and by 34th Street, the city was almost completely back to normal.  There were more police, but otherwise, business carried on as usual.

I spent the rest of the day alternating between my day job and rehearsal.  I walked out of the rehearsal space at 7:50 p.m.  Darkness had settled over the city and the lights and life of the Lincoln Center area and Broadway prevented any real running pace to be achieved.

I alternated running and walking through the crowds of Columbus Circle, down 8th Avenue where I saw the crane dangling over Carnegie Hall.  The trip to 34th Street and 8th Avenue took almost a half hour because of the crowds and occasional police barricades.

It was again at 31st Street, south of Madison Square Gardens, that I felt the scourge again of the hurricane.  I ran, lit only by the headlamps of cars down to 23rd Street where there was a large police lighting system set up.

On the dark sidewalks I could pick up my pace and I ran by occasional people trying to live a normal life- walking dogs, going for walks with flashlights and talking on their cellphones on the way back to their homes.

The run down 8th Avenue was lit by flares that marked intersections.  Police officers guided traffic.  I retraced my steps down Greenwich.  The whole street was pitch black, there were no flares and the street was completely deserted.  The only lights I saw were Gusto and Fiddlesticks, bars lit entirely by candles.  They were so empty and strangely beautiful and inviting that I nearly stopped to go in.

From there, I continued down the flare-lit Sixth Avenue until Canal Street.  It was near pitch dark as I followed Canal East to the pedestrian entrance to the Manhattan Bridge.  As I moved up the dark west side of the bridge, there were a few more people making the commute in both directions.  Almost halfway across, I met the first lights of Brooklyn.

I finally ended up at the Jay Street Metrotech station where I walked onto a train that then took my the last stretch home.

All in all it took about 1.5 hours each way to do the commute.

In my next post, I'll tell you a bit about my Thursday commute.  Following that, I'd like to share some of our families reflections on how this experience has colored our experiences of New York.

Not the Worst

If you had not heard, we are getting a little snow in New York City right now.

It is still early in the morning and I am getting ready for our "sitzprobe" for The Astronaut's Tale.

 "Sitzprobe" translated from German means "sitting rehearsal".   I swear, I will lay off the quotes for now.  Let's just call it The Sitz.

The Sitz is one of the most important rehearsals because it is an opportunity for the singers to collaborate with the conductor and instrumentalists without moving around on stage and wearing costumes.  A good Sitz gives the musicians an opportunity to fix musical issues in advance of the stress of tech and dress rehearsals.

As I look back the window, I wonder if this is the worst weather I have ever experienced on the day of a rehearsal.  I see a white out of wind and snow and I have to travel on the 7 train (above ground) to the G train (below ground) to get down to BAM by 1 p.m. today.  The walk to the 7 train takes at least 10 minutes and I will have to stand on the platform for awhile before the train arrives.

As bad as this is, I think that the worst day was losing multiple rehearsals with Chelsea Opera to Superstorm Sandy for our production of Abraham and Isaac.  During that run, I was stranded at my apartment in Brooklyn and had to put on my running shoes and run across the Manhattan Bridge, through lower Manhattan and up the West Side to get to rehearsal on 68th Street.  It was a surreal experience.

I expect that today will be one for the record books as well.  I will give myself plenty of time and wear my new ski jacket to keep warm.

For all of you on the East Coast, I hope you are home, drinking cocoa and watching Netflix.  I'll be snapping pictures as I go through this exciting day.