Laurel Massé

Sweet silence, and Bach

As I am packing my suitcase for a trip to Annapolis and Baltimore, I have found an acorn tucked into a corner of the bag. It was a keepsake from last weekend's inspiring retreat at The Monastery of the Holy Cross, an Anglican Benedictine monastery on the west bluff of the Hudson River just south of Kingston, NY. We spent the weekend alternating between silence and Bach's Jesu, meine Freude, and sinking into the rhythm of fixed-hour prayer that pulses through the brothers' days. It was a privilege to be there, and a great gift.

Our retreat was led by my congregation's vicar, Canon Pastor Victoria Sirota, who is also a musician with an international career as an organist. I will be thinking deeply about the retreat for a long while to come, and intend to follow Rev. Sirota's suggestion to use Bach as a spiritual director as I start to polish several more movements from his suites for unaccompanied cello.

Here is a photo, taken at the retreat by Hal Weiner. An icon of surrender: leaf accepting gravity.

Photo (c) Hal Weiner, www.halweiner.photoworkshop.com

All Saints and Souls

In the fall, when the leaves in the northeast turn yellow and red, and are tossed by the wind and rain to the ground, I miss my dogs more acutely. They loved the leaves swirling and the bite in the air. They glowed in the autumn light. They lifted my heart even as the days grew short and the darkness long. 

So, in their honor and memory, and for every one of you who has been loved by a dog, here is Wendy Francisco's perfect dog song.

Sonya 10/31/1978 - 3/8/1990.   

Shekinah  5/1/1991 - 9/15/2004.   

Shadow  4/28/1993 - 8/9/2006.

Masters, all, of the art of being fully alive. "Amen, bow wow".

Going south

Hello all!

I am going to be singing in Annapolis, Maryland at 49 West Café this coming Friday, November 6th, with guitarist Tom Mitchell. Also on the bandstand will be Robert Redd and Tommy Cecil. The shows are at 8 and 10 PM, cover charge is $20.

49 West Café is located in downtown Annapolis on 49 West St. For more information and to make reservations, call 410.626.9796, or go to the website.

I am looking forward to this very much. Tom is one of my favorite musicians on this or any other planet. He's one of my fellow staff members at Ashokan Western and Swing Week, and swings hard and sweet. 

I'll be hoping to see you there!

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!

Monday morning musing

Yesterday it rained. Today it will rain. It has been raining for two weeks, and that's a lot of grey sky, and a lot of weather to be under. My cat Bobby is doing the sensible thing: sleeping until the sun comes out. I am having a cup of tea, and letting my mind roam in a sort of "puzzley puzzley wonder why" (a John Lennon coinage, as I recall) about a lot of things, in no particular order.

Will the New York Times ever review me?

What would be the state of the world if those of us who claim to be following Christ actually did?

When you fall through a crack, do you land on something, or do you fall forever?

Manhattan is not a very big island - why can't it be car-free?

What exactly is the problem with universal health care?

Was Little Feat really a better band when Lowell was alive? Or did it just have Lowell?

Why are the arts so poorly-supported in this country? Is this somehow related to the health care question? I mean, is there someone actually deciding who and what deserves life and who and what does not? Based on what criteria?

Why are people who are incapable of returning phone calls hired to book venues?

What would happen if I went down into the subway and just started singing what is in my heart?

What would happen if I did the same at a cathedral?

How much longer will the watermelon be sweet this season?

How does one truly surrender?

Will I ever get a handwritten letter again?

Will the New York Times review the JaLaLa cd?

How do we really feel about Facebook? Isn't it a little "let us be your entire universe" creepy?

What's in the refrigerator for dinner?

Untroubled by these and many other questions, Bobby's still sleeping. All his needs are attended to (in aforementioned refrigerator there is lots of cat food, and he has trained me to execute a complicated behavior chain - go to fridge, open same, remove jar of food, close fridge, remove lid from jar, get spoon, put food on spoon, convey food to dish, place dish on floor, put lid back on jar, place jar in fridge, close fridge) and in return he has only to keep breathing, and be himself. He doesn't even have to heel.

Verily, I tell you, it's the cat's meow.

 

Why sing?

This was originally posted on my Songbird Salon blog, but someone just asked me today why I am a singer, so I decided to reiterate. Or perhaps reaffirm is the more precise word.

"Why sing?" There are many possible answers. For me, the easiest answer has been that I sing because I cannot do otherwise. I was born singing, into a singing family. I have never been a non-singer. There is, for me, no greater joy, and no greater sense of connection to God. So, as the Quaker hymn asks, "How can I keep from singing?"

But that only explains why I sing at home. Why do I go out into the world and sing? What is the purpose? What is the singing for?

Ysaye Barnwell, of the women's a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, teaches inspiring workshops in the art of singing, in which she speaks of singing as a way to express profound emotion, to gather in community, and to connect with the Divine. It's hard to improve on that. Three aspects: personal, communal, spiritual.

I believe with all my heart that I am called, that it is my gift, my obligation, my responsibility to sing. To express that which cannot be expressed in words alone, in the company of others. The good songs speak of our shared human experiences, and if I am doing my very best, there is nothing that divides us into performer and performed-for. Rather, we are just "us", and I happen to be the one carrying the melody at that moment as we go along. There are many others doing the same, a family, a community of song. When I am gone, someone else will pick up the melody, as I also believe I am part of a lineage. We'll all keep going along, for humans are born to sing, and that will never end.

New Haven concert

Erv Raible just called to invite me to sing a concert in New Haven this summer as part of my yearly stint at Yale. The date is set now for Saturday, August 1. These concerts always feature two artists; I am paired with my dear friend Amanda McBroom, who has just released Chanson, her new CD of Jacques Brel songs (some in new translations that more faithfully reflect his original lyrics than what has been previously done). I'll post more info as it becomes available, and you can also check out The Cabaret Conference at Yale. Though the events page is still showing last year's concerts, I expect it will be updated soon.

Dream team

Enrique just sent me this link. It takes you to the Amazon.com page of That Ol' Mercer Magic, the debut CD of the trio, JaLaLa. You can listen to samples (!!!!), which I just did. That listening has blown my illusion of keeping cool, and I started dancing around my apartment, a sophisticated and elegant dance, of course, even though it did include some jumping up and down, bubbly little jumps with giggling, like coffee percolating.

Or like champagne.

Apparently you're never to old to become suddenly unblasé. I have been looking forward to this release, but my excitement is taking me by surprise. I have been in the business for 37 years, for heaven's sake!  JaLaLa is the fruition of the idea Janis Siegel and I first dreamed with Cheryl Bentyne, when we sang together as Moxie. When Cheryl bowed out because of time commitments, we called Lauren Kinhan of New York Voices, who said yes, and JaLaLa stepped out of the dream and into the kitchen (thereby obeying the three Rules of Rehearsal: 1: there must be food, 2: the food has to be as good as the music, and 3: save the wine for the end of rehearsal).

My dears, tonight is wine to me. So raise a glass, and cheers!

 

U B U

A singer came to me recently for a little informal coaching, and we looked at some of the material she has been working on lately, songs in the folk and ballad traditions. At some point, our conversation about lyrics reminded her of other music she had sung in the long-ago past, music I was not familiar with. So, to show it to me, she opened her mouth and unleashed an operatic soprano of great power. My whole apartment rang with the sound flowing through her, which was amazing, but more amazing was the physical transformation that came about as she sang this music. She was taller. Her back was broader. Her eyes danced. Her gestures became more expansive and graceful, and I felt that I was seeing HER for the first time. I had known for a while that there was more to her than was evident, but to see and hear it revealed was breathtaking. This was her heart singing.

The ultimate high of teaching, to me, is sniffing out something hidden within the student, something quite extraordinary that has been covered over for oh so many private reasons, and, acting on my tracking instinct, gently helping that extraordinary something break out into the air and rise up singing.

The best part of all is the look on the student's face when realize they have allowed themselves to be seen without disguise, to be heard, to be recognized, and nothing bad has happened. It's a look of joy. Tears too, sometimes (this is not a contradiction). I believe that technique, practice, talent, work ethic, intelligence, and effort are necessary, but they are all for naught if you are hiding behind them. You have to be you. In full color. In your most profound humanity. This, ultimately, is what makes an artist worth listening to. For the teacher, it is an honor to be part of the process.

Teaching, learning, and hot chocolate

Late in January, David Finkle (of Backstage) and I had a long conversation over hot chocolate on the subject on teaching. He has since written an article for the online version of that publication, and you can read it here.