Laurel Massé

Introducing...

 

There is something special about the sibling bond, and when sisters, brothers, or sisters and brothers sing together, you not only sense it, you hear it. I am thinking of the McGarrigles, and the Roches, of the Boswell Sisters, of Ann and Nancy Wilson, of the Taylor clan (James, Livingston, Kate, Alex). And, of course, the Everly Brothers. The blend of their voices comes not only from practice, but from their blood and bones.

My career has included a hefty portion of group singing - in choral groups, The Manhattan Transfer, Moxie, and now JaLaLa, but it is only recently that I have become one-half of an authentic sibling duo. My sister Babette and I started singing together a month or so ago, and we did our first public performance during my concert at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, Connecticut this past May 14th.

Ladies and gents: The Massé Sisters, with Tex Arnold at the piano.

 

 

Do not cling to me, but go

The stone has been rolled away.

The grave is empty.

And Mary Magdalene has seen the living Christ.

In the gospels, Jesus appears first to the women who have been his followers. All four evangelists specifically mention Mary Magdalene; in John's account, Jesus calls her by name, asks her not to hold on to him, and sends her to tell the men what she has seen. She goes, and does so.

The men don't believe her.

I've been thinking about this a lot as I've gazed at paintings, icons, and frescoes of Jesus' appearance to Mary, and listened to and sung music written for Easter. So many visionaries over the centuries have tried to catch the Uncatchable in paint, in stone, words, music. Then we have framed the pictures, roped off the statues, cleaned up the language, pinned the music to paper. We think we might contain the Holy Spirit like a unicorn in a tapestry.

How hard we work to keep a fence around it! "Come, Holy Spirit," we pray in church, and gesture toward the gate. But do we whole-heartedly open it, welcome her, and offer her a chair? Heavens! Let her sit, and the next thing you know, she'll be taking over! No, we sit, straight-backed and decorously still, while wild songs whisper and clamor in the very stones under our feet.

I have become convinced that some people see and hear differently. They can't help it. They are compelled to track the Wild. Some are saints. The rest of us are artists, and art is how we share what we've seen and heard, in the medium to which we have an affinity. That's our job. We are tour guides, we are reporters, and we do our best to tell the stories. Sometimes it's frightening: some stories are too big.

As the Virgin Mary said "yes" to God, and bore Jesus, the Magdalene said "yes" to Jesus, and bore the too-big story of his resurrection. "Do not cling to me," Jesus said, "but go and tell." Would there have been any gospel according to anyone else had she not run to tell? Was she afraid, giving voice to this impossibly wild song? Was she angered by not being believed? We can't know. We only know that she did it. She did it. She did it. And now it's our turn.

Christ is risen, alleluia, alleluia. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia, alleluia. 

 

Turn the radio on

I had a lovely time this afternoon being interviewed by Sandra Lee Schubert of Wild Woman Network. You can listen here.

 

Tears for Joshua

I have lost a friend to Sister Death.

Here is the Lacrimosa from Mozart's towering Requiem. There are other clips on youtube with interesting visuals, but I just want the music. My young friend Joshua had a sweetness in his soul that only music can express now.

I'll be back tomorow.

 

Holy Women

 

The past 30 days have been astounding. Each time I think, "well, that's the top!", along comes the next thing, o'ertopping the top. So, return with me to St. Bede's Chapel in Greenwich, CT, on November 6, about a month ago, and the performance of Holy Women, a cantata composed by Robert Sirota (music) and Rev. Victoria Sirota (words).

St. Bede's Chapel sits back from the road, on the grounds of what used to be a girl's prep school. Light filters in through exquisite stained glass windows depicting female saints: Sts. Walburga, Catherine of Siena, and Theresa of Avila, mystics all; Sts. Ursula, Barbara and Agnes, martyrs; and Anne and Elizabeth, mothers, and Mary, the Holy Mother). Holy Women was commissioned to honor these windows and the chapel. I am sure an evening of lovely, meditative sacred music was anticipated. And there was loveliness. But the cantata was much bigger that just that. The Sirotas served the saints well. Robert's music was glorious - lush and stark, flowing and jarring, joyous and heart-rending. He and Rev. Vicki, with her libretto, accomplished the difficult task of giving each saint a distinctive voice within the whole. Each had her story to tell, her solo, and in her telling, was supported by other voices as she revealed her history, her devotion, and her wildness. That's the thing about these saints, you know. They're wild. You really can't control holy women. Once you invite them to step down from the containment of the window and let them give voice to their stories, there's no telling what may come of it.

We were 9 singers (I sang Walburga), and 7 musicians (credits below). The photo is one of the two great walls of glass. This one depicts, from left to right, St. Barbara, St. Theresa, St. Agnes, St. Ursula, St. Walburga, and St.Elizabeth, with St. Mary and the infant Jesus above them, epitomising love. I wish I could find a bigger, crisper photo of the windows, as they are truly extraordinary, and the colors are very rich (but Mr. Google has failed me!). The singers were dressed to match their windows as closely as possible; in that, and in movement, we were guided by stage director Dona D. Vaughn, Artistic Director of Opera Programs at Manhattan School of Music. Her contribution helped us make the glass breathe.

There is some talk of recording the cantata, which I hope will happen soon. The music and lyrics are still ringing in my head, and I have a dream of having this work presented in many more venues. They want their stories told, and the saints are nothing if not pushy.

Holy Women, a Cantata with text by Victoria Sirota, and music by Robert Sirota

St. Theresa of Avila, Margaret Peterson

St. Walburga, Laurel Massé

St. Catherine of Siena, Michelle Ripella

St. Ursula, Katya Powder

St. Barbara, Abigail Fischer

St. Agnes, Lindsay RIder

St. Anne, Lisa Chavez

St. Elizabeth, Maeve Höglund

St. Mary, Rina Saporsantos

 

Flute, Christopher James (this name is going to turn up in another post soon)

Oboe, Lauren Blackerby

Bassoon, Kathryn Brooks

Guitar, Jordan Dodson

Organ, Victoria Sirota (a concert organist before she became a priest)

Violin, Nicholas Mann

Cello, David Geber

 

 

Never fell far from the tree

Here's a clip from the Fred Waring Show. My grandfather, Leonard Kranendonk, and my uncle, Robert Kranendonk, were both featured singers with Waring's Pennsylvanians. In my family, being a professional singer was a normal occupation, and a real job.

I am tickled to see my granddad -  a glorious singer but never much of an actor - smiling and mugging for the camera. And they are managing props, too!

It's in the blood. Wait till you hear my sister...

Good people all

Though there is still light in the sky, darkness is settling over this part of the earth. The snow is taking on a blue cast, and I can hear the birds retreating to their roosts. I am getting ready to go out, and make my way down to the Church of the Intercession. I vowed decades ago that I would sing in any church that asked me, and so I will not be at the great Cathedral this night, but at a smaller church, singing with a choir, and soloing on my favorite Christmas song, the Wexford Carol (a gorgeous version here by Alison  Kraus and YoYo Ma).

I know that, all over this city, people are celebrating this night and tomorrow's day in whatever fashion they can - which for some, is not at all. That's understandable. Aside from the fact that there are different faiths, including the faith of no-faith, we Christians have not always proven by our actions that this day is worth celebrating. As I see it, there is no point in just talking about Christmas and the birth of a Savior. Talk is not all that convincing if our deeds in the world, or lack of them, contradict what we are saying. I am not pointing fingers here except at myself. I know what is in my heart, but it is a little too easy for me to be privately devoted, and to stop just short of "going public"  and into action. So that's what I am going to be working on this year.

We can't prove that Christ is born unless he is born in our hearts and hands. So bring the torch, Jeannette Isabelle. Let's light the world.

And God bless us, everyone.

Blossoms in the snow

My life in a song. Blessed advent! The apple tree is about to bloom.

Bloggie goes a walking... to visit ChoralNet

I just discovered that my blog post of June 12, Why SIng? was picked up on ChoralNet. I was quite surprised, and also rather flattered that something I wrote "went choral" (next best thing to going viral).

I checked out the site, which seems a marvelous resource for choral singers of all kinds. There, I also discovered that Hal Leonard Music has purchased Shawnee Press. This pleases me. I am forever talking to students about pronouncing the words so that the listener can understand what the lyrics are about. Now, just maybe, it will be possible to get that helpful little Shawnee Press pamphlet, Tone Syllables, that outlines the techniques I first learned at my grandfather's knee - he was for many the lead baritone with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians - and then had reinforced at Fred Waring's Youth Choral Workshop in 1966 (when I was extremely youthful!). I have never once sung onstage without using what I learned that summer, and I am completely mystified as to why every chorus and choir doesn't use this same concept. If a song has words, there is no reason whatsoever for the words to be unintelligible. I don't mean that lyrics in German should be understandable by non-German speaking listeners, but they certainly should be making sense to Germans! I am especially shocked to hear opera sung in English that is so mangled as to have to be supertitled. For cryin' out loud, folks! I realize there are technical difficulties in producing that incredible volume of sound, and several classical singers (and teachers of same) tell me that it is impossible to clearly enunciate. I might have believed them... had I never heard Rufus Muller.

I was privileged to get a ticket to his recent performance in Jonathan Miller's production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Rufus sang the tenor role ot The Evangelist (the central role) with exquisite control of his voice; able to caress, grieve, whisper, thunder, and inflect with a razor's edge of irony when called for. It was thrilling and gorgeous singing - and I understood every word.

Which proves it can be done, and there, for the moment, I rest my case. Let's have a run on Shawnee Press's Tone Syllables, and change the singing world!

Dreaming dreams

Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, and it landed on a bright, breezy early-summer morning. I sang three services at the Cathedral, starting with the 9 AM. So I was there the whole day, from 8:15 to about 6, a day of much sitting on wooden seats, and even more standing. Standing, standing, standing, and no dancing. I have begun to think my body starts to panic when I have to hold still for a long time. First comes discomfort. Then something - neck, shoulders, back - hurts. Then it's hard to breathe. and sometimes I get dizzy, which can make it hard to read those tiny little notes. All for want of a triple step or a swing-your-partner.

To delay rigor, when we are sitting I scrunch my toes, bend my knees a little, lean over once in a while to pop my lower back (though I have concerns that the pop may be audible in the Cathedral's magnificent acoustical bloom), so that I can listen more carefully and "see" the readings as events happening right now, in front of me.

Yesterday, I imagined the disciples pouring out of the upstairs room where they had been staying since Jesus was crucified, hitting the streets on fire with the Holy Spirit that had descended on them in tongues of flame. I can't imagine that they were particularly still. In my mind's eye, they are vibrating, sizzling with excitement, urgency, and the Word in them exploding their silence and breaking them open like hot steaming bread. They are engulfed in languages. Peter - who has not been the greatest speaker in any of the gospels - erupts into eloquence. It's astounding.

In my mind's ear, I hear something wild, almost raucous. My mom tells me that in her little church, Acts 2:1-21 was read by several readers in different languages - Russian, Greek, Spanish, German,English and French - and all were speaking at the same time. That feels so right. Because who can wait? How do you take turns when you have something so life-changing, so momentous roaring inside you? It astounds me that the readers don't levitate when they are speaking this passage, and that we who are hearing it manage to sit in our seats and hold decorously still. Shouldn't we should be bursting with joy and running out the door with our hearts on fire? Even if maybe we didn't on Easter.

It's never too late...