As the newly appointed executive director for the Astoria Music Academy, a relatively young pay-to-sing program in Oregon, I have recently enjoyed the opportunity to view a singer’s life from the other side of the audition table. Everything about it is a revelation. One of the biggest revelations (although it really shouldn’t be) is how far a little courtesy will get you—and how much damage a lack of basic manners, however unintentional, can do.
Just writing about this makes me feel old and cranky—but it’s for your own good, so sit back and stay out of the way of my cane. Erda’s about to get crotchety with you young’uns.
Having an e-mail address is no longer an option; it is a business essential. One of the names of the game in this business is availability, and to be available you must be easy to locate. No one has the time or personnel to go down a long list of singers, making multiple phone calls, trying to find little ol’ you. For this reason, you should make sure your contact information is listed on every single piece of material you send out: résumé, bio, cover letter, CD label and jewel case, and headshot.
Your contact information should include your full address (I can’t tell you how many times clients have sent me their résumés sans Zip code on the letterhead), home and cell phone numbers, e-mail address, and website URL, if you have one. For that matter, nothing makes you easier to find than a simple website with a URL that is www.yourname.com. You needn’t have anything splendiferous, fancy, or expensive, but make sure your contact information is easy to find. That way, if someone wants to find you fast, all they need to do is Google you.
I don’t want to hear about how expensive websites are. You can get a nice, inexpensive one from Classical Singer, and there is plenty of free web hosting and design software out there, although those freebie sites don’t look very professional.
To be easily accessible, you must have an e-mail address. E-mail is a much less intrusive, more efficient, cost-effective way of communicating—and it is a boon to busy administrators, who can zip off a note while multi-tasking, rather than having to stop to take or make a phone call or play endless phone tag, which takes much more time. You have a much better chance of getting opera company administrators and managers to answer your e-mail than your voice-mail.
Your e-mail address should be easy-to-remember and logical.
Not pinkprincess@yahoo.com, not spankytenor@aol.com, and for Wotan’s sake, nothing even remotely involving characters from Phantom of the Opera. I don’t care how much you want to be Christine, save the cutesy and clever nicknames for family, friends, and those naughty exchanges you don’t want your mother to see. (We don’t want to know, either.) For your business address, your handle should be,
quite simply, your name:
sljackson@jedimaster.com,
christine@christinedaae.com, brucewayne@hotmail.com.
But it doesn’t stop there! Even your own sensible, boring, but easy-to-locate e-mail address is not enough to make you available. Oh, no. You see, you also have to check that pesky mailbox. Regularly. That means at least every other day.
I am not so far advanced in age that I cannot recall my own poverty-stricken student days. I understand that laptop computers and Internet access are expensive, and that the free or low-cost access that is readily available these days in many libraries, cafes, and universities can be something of a hassle to locate and use. But there are ways to access your e-mail, and there are free accounts available. Are they the best? No. Students rarely have the best. The best is something that comes to you, if you’re lucky, after you’ve worked very hard and earned it. In the meantime, you make do. Besides, if you are enrolled in a university, chances are you have a free e-mail address on the university’s system.
Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail—there are any number of free services out there. No excuses, in the 21st century, for not having an e-mail address and checking it regularly. Being on vacation is no excuse. Being out of the country is no excuse. Internet cafes are everywhere. My singer friends write me from the oddest, most remote locations imaginable. If they can find an Internet cafe in Uzbekistan, you can find one in South Dakota.
Furthermore, goshdarn it, you have to acknowledge and reply when people send you e-mails! Especially when you have applied to a program, a competition, a school, an opera company, or anything at all. Hit the reply button and let people know you got the news, especially if they request it.
We had one student this summer who almost lost a full scholarship because this person didn’t respond to my repeated e-mails. Another came very close to being replaced. Singers who were slow to respond to requests for information ended up being assigned to scenes arbitrarily, rather than having their preferences taken into consideration. Still others made poor impressions because they had to be repeatedly badgered for responses.
The singers who received the most responsibility, the plum musical assignments—and even little goodies, such as the best housing assignments—were the ones who were not only the best singers and actors, but the best, and most prompt, communicators. In other words, they behaved professionally, and we knew we could trust them to fulfill the jobs we had for them, not to mention be sterling guests in the nicest homes.
Finally, I hate to tell you, but everything your mom and your English teacher said about spelling, grammar, and punctuation counts. It counts quite a lot. Ours is a business filled with extraordinarily literate people. Misspellings, poor grammar, bad punctuation, and other signs of carelessness make a terrible impression, even in an e-mail. So does inappropriate informality.
E-mail can be an informal medium when you’re jotting off little jokes and bits of gossip to your friends, or even after you’ve established a relationship with a potential employer; but when you are conducting business via e-mail, you must take more care with the content, form, and tone of your writing. The tone of a business e-mail, especially on first contact, should be formal but not stiff. Treat it like any other business letter, with a respectful salutation, well-thought-out content, and a formal closing.
I had occasion to use e-mail to solicit for a singer to fill certain roles. Some of the responses I got were truly amazing, along the lines of: “Hey, I hear you’re looking for a ‘Role X.’”
Would you call up an opera company and say, “Hey, like, I hear you’re doing ‘Bohème’ next season?” Would you write a cover letter that didn’t begin with “Dear Mr. General Director?” I certainly hope not—and you shouldn’t write such an e-mail either, especially on your first contact. Always take the cue from the person to whom you’re writing. If you address your e-mail to “Ms. Horne” and the reply is signed “Jackie,” you’ve been invited to be informal.
Finally, be careful of your “tone of voice” in an e-mail. Without vocal inflection to color them, perfectly innocent phrases can come out sounding arrogant, angry, or just plain not what you intended. Re-read everything you’ve written before you hit the send button.
E-mail is here to stay, my friends. Embrace the wave of the future. Make e-mail your friend. In my answer to the letter below, you’ll see a perfect example of how e-mail can be a powerful and effective tool for advancing your career.
Hello Erda,
I have just recently started auditioning in New York City. I haven’t auditioned for anything since college and am trying to learn how the audition process works in the real world.
My question is, when a singer goes to an audition—for example, the chorus auditions at the Met or City Opera—do you wait patiently for a response which you may or may not receive, or is it acceptable after a certain amount of time to contact the organization to inquire if the positions have been filled, or when they might be?
I’m just realizing how difficult the waiting process is and wonder if there is a better way.
Thank you for your time,
Anita
Dear Anita,
One skill that every unmanaged singer must learn is how to follow up on auditions. E-mail is an excellent tool for accomplishing this with a minimum of pain and frustration.
Generally speaking, if a company is interested in you they will get back to you right away; but it also depends on what kind of audition you’re doing, or how soon the show they’re casting for is happening. Sometimes there are mitigating factors. I once was hired a full year after my audition, during which time I had heard nothing from the company and had given up! But don’t expect to get a response from most companies if you aren’t being hired. They aren’t being rude; they simply don’t have the personnel to write to every person who auditioned for them.
No news, in this case, is bad news. That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t follow up on your own. You never know why you weren’t hired, and contact is another opportunity to make a good impression. So how do you do that?
Most auditions have a door monitor who is often associated with the company hearing the auditions. You can approach this person while you’re waiting to sing, or after you come out, and ask if there is a time frame in which you can expect to hear about results. You can also ask for the best way to contact the auditions coordinator—get an e-mail address if possible. You can also ask outright when you receive your audition time: “Can you tell me when you expect to be making decisions? I’d like to follow up with you, but I certainly don’t want to pester you!” or “I’d like to follow up with you after the audition—when would be a good time?”
After about one to two weeks (or whenever the deadline is, if you were able to get one), e-mail the auditions coordinator, thank them for hearing you, and ask whether a decision has been made, or when you can expect one.
E-mail is a great way to make contact. It takes up less of your contact’s time, and doesn’t require either of you to have a potentially awkward conversation. You can usually find e-mail information on a company’s website.
On the other hand, if you are a real people person who never met a curmudgeon you couldn’t charm or a conversation you couldn’t start, by all means put those skills to work and pick up the telephone.
If you don’t receive a reply, wait another week or two and try again. If you still don’t receive an answer, wait another couple of weeks and then call the company. If your third attempt at contact goes unanswered … well, in all likelihood you have your answer, and it’s not the one you were looking for. Leave it be. And don’t be discouraged; it’s not personal!
Good luck.
