This past fall and FREEZING WINTER I had the opportunity to accompany the opera class "Viva Vocalists", which meets at Queen Anne Christian Church on 3rd W and W Lee on a weekly basis. For me, this was an unexpected but very enjoyable experience. This is only the second true accompanying "gig" I've done in the past 3 years, since I've been doing an intensive self-study in solo performance (and plan to continue it until Aug. 2015). I had been attending some voice lessons for my friend Michelle under her teacher, Shawna Avinger, to get back into practice, but I hadn't actually planned on doing anything large scale yet. A few weeks later, Shawna called me and asked if I would be willing to step in for the autumn since their usual accompanist had needed to drop out . Also, classes started in two weeks... For me, even though I hadn't planned on it, I jumped on it as a chance to accelerate my own performance studies.
I had a bit of a rough start; since I've been studying purely solo classical repertoire and thus had fallen out of tune with working with other people. Many things that I'd taken for granted three years back, such as sightreading, adjusting to the singers' rubato and actual errors, and, believe it or not, rhythm, had simply...disappeared. Quite literally out of practice. This was not only an excellent opportunity to regain these skills, but also to adopt an attitude of humility and learn to trust in the patience of those I was working with.
The one thing I was really not prepared for was the sheer volume of music I suddenly had to learn and record. I had to create a new approach to learning and adjust it until I had something that worked. This took me about six weeks; now that I've got this new method, I can't wait to try it out the next time I have to learn a lot of music. Due to the experimental nature of my learning process, there were quite a few things that were not where I wanted them to be when it came to the actual performance, and I'd love the chance to work on them and get them right.
As I stated above, I enjoyed the music of "Chess" the most. Although the pieces do follow the standard forms, and are downright kitch in some places, not to mention gaggingly romantic, the use of counterpoint in the accompaniment, especially in conjunction with the vocal line, is carefully crafted so that I had to pay special attention to every single note. My favorite of that set was "Heaven Help my Heart", due to the several independent melodic lines that climb around each other and support each other. I highly recommend listening to the soundtrack to this musical.
There was a lot of opportunity for me to explore dynamic extremes and comedic exaggeration in "Little Shop of Horrors". I had obviously heard of this musical, but had never listened to it or even knew the plot of it. First of all, I think it's brilliant. The caricatures of Seymour and Audrey are not only so out of proportion as to negate the extremely dark nature of the plot, but actually made me sympathize with them deeper down. You have to dig through the comedy to reach the very realistic desires in their hearts to simply escape the drudgery they live in and live what they conceive to be "normal" lives. Musically, like "Chess", it's very well crafted and actually somewhat difficult in parts. I found the piano-vocal rhythm to be challenging in "Prologue" and "Skid Row", which forced me to learn to sing the part while playing it in my personal practice--an exercise which seems obvious, but it took me a while to figure it out. I enjoyed the group numbers a lot; something about being connected with the entire group at once stimulates me and brings me unexpected energy.
"Closer Than Ever" was, to be perfectly honest, not my favorite of the group. Although I had a lot of fun with "Want to be My Friend", in general the music was unnecessarily difficult, and I found myself having to rewrite portions of it because it made unrealistic demands on the part of the pianist. End of commentary.
Finally, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" was an absolute treat. The movie, which is Spanish, is very enjoyable, and I found the originality of the plot and the hidden subtext to be very pleasing intellectually. The music itself wasn't anything special, except for "Invisible", the rhythms of which drove me to distraction at first and eventually became very satisfying to play. However, the piece I had the most fun with in the entire program was "Model Behavior", which is a series of phone messages from a frantic model named Candela, who has just discovered that her boyfriend is a terrorist, to her best friend, Pepa, who is dealing with her own problems and doesn't need the extra drama. It has very clever lyrics, and I felt oddly synchronized with the singer (Estrella) during the panic-pace of the piece.
In short, I had quite a lot of fun with this group, and it feels wonderful to be working with singers again. I found myself listening much more carefully than when I play by myself, and as a result the music seemed to flow very naturally in my head. Although I'm glad to have a chance to work on my classical repertoire in the wake of this past term, I'm grateful that I was able to get involved in theater music for a change, and I hope to do more in the future.
Cheers,
-G
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