The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer Read Online Free PDF

ideas existed and I had never known anything about them at all. I sat there, thrilled and silent. I remember everything about that moment: the little classroom where we met, the late-fall light coming in through the windows, William Harper sitting there on his desk listening, his chin down, his eyes closed. Everything in the world froze for a minute, and I felt as if I were hearing music for the first time. All of the interest I’ve had in new music in my life can probably be traced back to that moment, that piece.
    The lessons were encouraging, and yet there was still an unspoken understanding at that time that women didn’t grow up to be real composers. The best we could hope for was to someday write songs, not symphonies, and so I continued writing songs. That same year, however, Mr. Harper introduced me to a woman who would have a profound impact on my relationship to music for years to come, the mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani. I was wildly impressed with the number of scores she was working on. These were not the neat folders of music that were in the piano bench at home, but sprawling, misshapen scores of new music covered with penciled notations. It was almost as if you could hear the piece unfolding just by looking at it on the page. There was nothing static about this work; it was completely, actively in progress. When I sang for her, she listened to me with great seriousness. “Don’t train all the naturalness out of your voice,” she told me. The very fact that she took the time to advise me at all made me feel important.
     
    When it came time to go to college, I auditioned for several vocal programs. I was terrible at auditioning in those days, and would walk into the room looking guilty for taking up the time of the people on the judging committee. I was nervous and self-conscious, qualities I should have gotten out of my system while I was singing in school plays. My mother had really hoped I’d get into Oberlin College, and I did, but I didn’t receive enough financial aid to attend. She was so heartbroken for me that she cried all the way back from Ohio in the car. When I was a child, my family had had to struggle. My father hunted deer and fished to supplement the groceries that his annual schoolteacher’s salary allowed. I grew up eating venison, and I thought we were nothing but rich, which was a real testament to my parents’ positive attitude. But by the time I was through with high school, we had become a part of the classic middle-class paradox: we didn’t have enough money to secure a spot for me in a top-flight conservatory, yet we were no longer poor enough to qualify for some much-needed financial aid—which is how I ended up at the Crane School of Music of the State University of New York, Potsdam. That turned out to be the first great break of my career.

CHAPTER TWO
    EDUCATION
     
     
     
     
    T HERE ARE SO MANY THINGS that go into making a singer—not just natural talent and hard work but tenacity, resilience, and luck. When I started my freshman year at the Crane School of Music, I began work with Patricia Misslin. Had I somehow found the money to attend any of the better-known music conservatories I had dreamed of, I probably would have received no more than one private lesson a week. As an undergraduate, I certainly never would have been onstage except as part of a chorus. At Potsdam, I not only had the full attention of a talented, dedicated voice teacher, but by the end of my first month at school I’d been cast as the soprano soloist in the Bach B-minor Mass. A freshman! No one was more surprised than I at this upset.
    Even though I had garnered a lot of attention as a singer in high school and was now studying music in college, I was here at Crane because this was the path of least resistance. I had no burning desire in my gut to sing, no moment of recognition that led me to this particular destiny. I don’t recall my parents’ ever having cultivated much of an independent