I'm A Singer? Achieving Goals.

Last night I auditioned to be a singer in a New Jersey choral group called The Celebration Singers. This is significant because I have never sung in public before (except in a chorus in 8th grade).

Actually, I once did try recording myself singing “Somewhere” from West Side Story at the Karaoke-type recording studio Sound Tracks that used to be at Downtown Disney in Florida’s Walt Disney World. The result was atrocious–which led everyone who heard it to confirm that I cannot sing. But I always suspected that the fact that the Sound Tracks recording engineer played Barbra Streisand’s high-pitched female voice into my headphones while I performed is the reason I couldn’t find the notes as I tried to sing the song as a deep-voiced male.

Plus, whenever I tried to compose songs by singing into a tape recorder, I thought I sounded okay. And as a pre-adolescent, I took a mail-order course in ventriloquism, which taught me how to project my voice, and how to speak from my diaphragm, and do vocal warm-ups, all of which relate directly to singing.

Finally, I found that singing Brahms’ Lullabye with my wife to our twins over the last three years has been good practice and that if I tried, I could sing it–and other children’s songs–fairly well.

So, I courageously showed up at this audition. The Celebration Singers includes professional singers who have a number of serious accomplishments in their resumes. The conductor who auditioned me is an accomplished professional who knows what he’s doing. What was I doing there?

He had me sing back to him what he played on the piano. Then he changed the key, so I sang higher and lower, to see what my range was. Then he asked me to sing an actual song if I knew one. I sang two verses of “Climb Every Mountain” by Rodgers and Hammerstein, a song I remembered word for word, note for note, for some reason, ever since learning it in music class in Fifth Grade (or was it Third Grade?). I had rehearsed it in the car while driving to the audition, since it’s the only place where I could be alone and wouldn’t disturb my family or embarrass myself. I wanted to continue and sing the middle part but he stopped me.

He said I had a good ear and seemed surprised that I had never sung before.

This morning I received a telephone call inviting me to join their next rehearsal!

I had no expectation that I could actually pass the audition but I thought, why not try. I drove to the hall after putting my children to bed, showing up in the last 15 minutes of the audition period. This is how life-changing events take place. It’s always worth trying if you have a desire.

Here is a link to the web site of The Celebration Singers:
http://www.celebration-singers.org

Interestingly, it started out as the company choir of, and funded by, Standard Oil, or Esso (now Exxon). It is now an independent non-profit organization.

Besides this exciting new adventure, I recently drew some character designs that may be used for an animated version of a bear that promotes children’s TV programming at a local station in Pennsylvania. These kinds of creative endeavors are exactly what I wanted my life to include when I planned to be a Renaissance Man (or at least a multi-talented creative person) during my childhood. It’s true, life gets better as you get older; you get to do what you intended to do, as you keep pursuing your interests over time. Eventually you do achieve your goals as long as you keep trying. (And smaller arenas can eventually lead to larger ones.)

I’m also proud of my interviews on http://www.zigory.solidvox.com. I’ve recorded two programs so far. (I would have done more but I have found scheduling times when guests and producer Prodos and I are all available to be unexpectedly challenging.) Unfortunately my music-related interview with M. Zachary Johnson has not yet been put on the site due to a backlog at the Prodosphere, but I expect it to appear soon.

I will apply all this confidence I’m gaining from these achievements to completing my longer and more ambitious writing projects which are still in progress.

Podcastic! My Music Chat With M. Zachary Johnson

I recently recorded an interview with M. Zachary Johnson, composer and music critic for The Intellectual Activist. Deeply inspired by the ideas of Ayn Rand, he is articulate and thoughtful, answering questions with great intelligence. I learned a few things while chatting with him. Topics included what inspired him when composing pieces on his CD “Saxophone Music of M. Zachary Johnson,” the future of Romanticism in music, Ayn Rand’s hypothesis regarding why a series of tones can create emotions, whether serious music is losing its audience, the misleading distinction between popular and serious (classical) music, and how he first discovered classical music.

To hear samples of M. Zachary Johnson’s music, go to http://www.mzacharyjohnson.com and follow the links.

To hear my conversation with Matt Johnson, look for it to appear in a few days on http://zigory.solidvox.com, where it will be available as an MP3 file for listening, downloading or saving to your MP3 player.

20th Century Classical Music I Like

I’m a layman when it comes to Classical music. I don’t play an instrument and I don’t read music, and I have trouble remembering the titles of pieces when they are numbers instead of evocative words.

That said, I love many Classical pieces. I prefer the Romantics and I love creative, lively, and also somber, tonal music, including choral music. Some of my favorites from the 18th and 19th Centuries are Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Beethoven, Verdi, Rimsky-Korsakov and sometimes Schubert.

Here are some composers I like who composed after the Romantic and tonal-music period had “officially” ended:

Other than the 20th Century holdovers from the 19th Century, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Debussy (from the latter two I only enjoy certain pieces), there are some less-well-known 20th Century composers I like who were influenced by the Romantics and who composed tonal pieces with structure, lush and beautiful sounds, and uplifting emotions well into the 20th Century. These are: Paul Creston (I enjoy his Symphony No. 1 and No. 2), Randall Thompson, and William Grant Still. I like a few of Henry Cowell’s pieces too. My wife happens to play the flute on some Manhattan Chamber Orchestra recordings of a few of these composers, but that has only led me to learn of the works, not to influence my taste.

On to the 21st Century: Online I have heard samples of new compositions by M. Zachary Johnson (http://cdbaby.com/cd/mzacharyjohnson) and I like what I have heard. He is directly trying to revive the spirit of Romanticism and he may well have succeeded.

Terry Teachout, a music critic, has suggested that a return to tonal music and Romanticism by younger composers, whose pieces are being added to the concert performances of today’s orchestras, is a trend. I hope so.

Here are two essays on the subject by Terry Teachout, “Back to the Future” and “Romantics’ Return”.

http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,996278,00.html
http://www.walter-simmons.com/wilderness/reviews/teachout.pdf

I don’t like (nor have I heard) all of the pieces to which he refers, nor do I necessarily agree with all he says, but I think his heart is in the right place.

In the coming week, I expect to have a new podcast available at www.zigory.solidvox.com that will be related to this topic.