Three years ago, Andrew Lunsford was facing the loss of everything he owned. He gave up his credit, his cars, and his home. With the support of family—the only thing left in the 29-year-old’s life—he found his voice.
It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again
At age 29, the only opera Andrew Lunsford had heard was on spaghetti commercials.
He lived in Colorado and owned a granite countertop business that was on track to make $6 million in sales in 2007. Then the economy went bust and Lunsford lost it all—his cars, his home, and his possessions.
With his wife and two sons to support, Lunsford declared personal bankruptcy.
He walked down the stairs and into the basement of a home he no longer owned. He put on a CD he had bought at Target years before on a whim: Lifescapes: Opera. Now, he turned the music on and closed his eyes. It was an escape from the stress of bankruptcy and the feelings of disappointment for putting his family through so much.
He started humming along . . . and then singing. He didn’t understand the Italian words, but singing felt like breathing again.
“So I just tried to sing along,” he said. “I was just trying to imitate how an opera voice was high and loud.” He could do it. Later he would find out he’s a tenor who can sing in three octaves without falsetto.
Lunsford liked singing high. It felt good when everything else in his life didn’t make sense. It was simple. He wanted more.
The next day, he and his dad drove to a music store.
“Have you got any opera songs?” he asked the clerk.
“Do you mean arias?” The clerk corrected him. “Which do you want?”
He hummed the first song that came to his mind.
“I think that’s Puccini’s ‘Nessun dorma,’” the clerk said, walking over to the sheet music. Lunsford had no money, so his dad spotted him $7 for the music.
At home, Lunsford propped the sheet in front of his computer, looked up Pavarotti singing it on YouTube, and followed along. Finger tracing the lines, he started to read the notes. He could sing.
Next Comes the Twist
Lunsford started singing wherever he could.
While in a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie, Lunsford met Amy Stuemky, a fellow singer who just happened to be a partner in a boutique opera talent agency. Lunsford asked Stuemky if she’d listen to him sing. Fortunately, she agreed. She was overwhelmed by the power of his voice.
“I turned to him when he was done,” Stuemky said, “and I said, ‘I don’t know if you believe in this sort of thing or not—I don’t even know if I do—but I think God made me take this gig just so I could meet you.”
She explained that he could take the easy “pop” opera route and make a living with scattered gigs. Or, he could study the true art of opera and have a difficult career with the pay-off of a trained, polished voice capable of performing in opera houses around the world.
Lunsford was ready for the journey, so Stuemky began introducing him to opera singers and teachers in Colorado. That’s how he met Kenneth Cox, a famed bass and voice professor at the University of Denver.
The first time Cox heard Lunsford’s untrained voice, he heard a future. “The basic instrument that I heard when we first got together was singular,” Cox said. “I can’t think of another voice that I’ve heard in raw form with such screaming-huge potential.”
Cox said Lunsford has the comfort in high notes (the famed high C is a breeze) that made Pavarotti the best. As a tenor, Lunsford’s high notes are his money notes.
But Lunsford needed rigorous training to develop his voice. A graduate of Indiana University’s master’s program in music, Cox helped Lunsford arrange an audition at his alma mater.
Lunsford auditioned for a handful of colleges and received scholarship offers to all of them. But he’ll never forget his IU audition. He sang in front of professor and renowned soprano Carol Vaness. Lunsford stood before her with nothing to lose. He’d lost it all already. So he breathed in and let go. When he stopped, Vaness looked at the student assistant sitting next to her. She looked at Lunsford. Then back at the student.
“Can you believe that just happened?” she asked. “I can’t believe that just happened.” Lunsford remembered thinking, “This is either really good or really bad.”
Vaness picked up the phone and called the dean. Lunsford walked away with a full ride to one of the world’s most prestigious music schools. He was ready, and his family supported him. He moved his wife, Kenya, and their two boys away from their extended family and the only home they had ever known in Colorado. They were taking a risk on their dad’s voice. Together.
In fall 2009, Lunsford became the oldest member of his class as a 30-year-old freshman.
The Real Work Begins
Admission is just the start. Lunsford had a grueling climb ahead of him.
Any student who sings at IU can expect a world-class curriculum complete with world-class stress. But many students at the Jacobs School of Music have been preparing to sing opera since they were in high school. They’ve studied the masters and they know which arias fit their voice.
While many singers his age were performing professionally or finessing their voice, Lunsford spent his first year understanding his vocal capabilities and learning basic musicianship. His courses included language, diction, choir, piano, music theory, private lessons, and hours of masterclasses—all on top of a grueling rehearsal schedule each week.
“Andy has skipped a few of those steps, so he’s playing catch up now,” says C. David Higgins, chair of IU’s opera department. “His talent isn’t in any way diminished, but he has a process of getting all the nuts and bolts in place to work professionally.”
First, Lunsford needed to work on lining up his voice, by evening out his top, middle, and low registers. He works with Vaness every week in their private lessons, including in her weekly masterclasses, to blend the three. Other students offer critiques and advice on how to mix his voice seamlessly.
Like his peers, he can now focus on finesse.
The Family Risks It All for Dad
Andy, Kenya, and their two boys live in a quiet Bloomington neighborhood. Colin (10) and Max (6) are in elementary school. Kenya drives Andy and the kids to school every day in the family’s one car. She does side work from home whenever possible.
They’re living on food stamps and planning their meals carefully. A full ride to college isn’t enough to support an entire family. And the boys miss some things that money can’t buy: Colorado, their cousins, and their grandparents.
A keyboard stands between the kitchen and the living room. While the boys play Super Mario Brothers, Kenya pulls banana bread out of the oven. The warm smell swirls around the room.
Dad sits between his two sons, taking a break from the earmarked and pencil-scribbled Faust book that sits on the keyboard: a glimpse into the stress and excitement that would fill the next semester when Lunsford took on his first lead role.
With his business failure, Lunsford feels he’s disappointed his family once. He doesn’t want to let them down again. He knows his voice can take them places. But for now, they’re just a family in a living room that smells like banana bread and sounds like laughter.
IU Trusts Lunsford with the Devil
Lunsford’s college premiere was as the First Man in Armour in IU’s 2009 production of Die Zauberflöte. He was rolled onto the stage on a seven-foot platform, sang his part and was rolled back off. Not exactly enough training for what many would consider one of opera’s most demanding tenor roles, but then the Jacobs School of Music cast Andy in the title role of Faust in IU’s first opera of Spring 2011.
“We were taking a chance on him when he was green,” Higgins said. “He didn’t have the depths of technique, knowing how to move on stage, how to position your body so you project your voice as well as you can, and the nuances of performance and technique. He didn’t have all those things yet, but the only way you can get them is by performing.”
Not only did Lunsford need to prepare his voice for a three-act French marathon, he needed to glide naturally on stage, act, and manage a split-second costume change. Oh, and hit a few of those coveted high Cs that make an audience hold its collective breath.
“The good news is that because it was all fresh to me, I was able to develop great new skill sets without having any bad habits,” he said.
At the final dress rehearsal for Faust, Lunsford stood against the backdrop of red poppies blooming from a spray of flowers. It was Faust’s moment of love and lightheartedness, though he had just sold his soul to the devil.
With themes of age, youth, surrender and redemption, Faust challenged Lunsford at a time when he was struggling with similar ideas. He knew he had a voice, but he was feeling the weight of the school’s trust. He knew that many opera singers can leap too far too early. He didn’t want to prove the school, his family, or himself wrong and give a lackluster performance.
Even after months of rehearsals and coachings with vocal, acting, and language specialists, he was nervous. He stepped on stage for his aria.
“You could feel it on stage—it was electric,” he said. “The chemistry between the cast was so real and honest that it was in the air and everybody knew it. It was making you want to smile, be in love, cry, and be terrified all at once.”
As the orchestra played its final notes and the dress rehearsal ended, director Tomer Zvulun rushed to the stage to tell Andy something huge: “You owned it. Finally.”
“It’s a huge thing to sing Faust,” Zvulun said. “To see him in his aria, turning around and looking at nature, he owned that stage. He finally realized that he can do it and he’s here for a reason. That turn—that was that moment. It always brings to my mind that when you turn on stage, the whole world turns with you.”
A few weeks later, Lunsford was accepted into Opera New Jersey’s Emerging Artist Program. This fall he will begin his final year at Indiana University. He will split time between Bloomington and traveling to concerts and performances around the country.
“He’s a sweet and sometimes shy person with a major gift and he needs to remember that he deserves to be on that stage,” Zvulun said. “He needs to own it. If there’s anybody in the world that deserves to be here, it’s him.”
