Not all voice programs are created equal and even among the top schools in the United States, each has its special strengths. One is astounding in the number and quality of opera productions it does each year. Another provides an exceptionally nurturing and intimate environment in which young singers can develop their instruments. Some are geographically ideal, with access (and connections) to top opera houses. Many boast world-renowned faculty members. And still others provide an excellent balance of academic training and enticing performance opportunities.
The University of Michigan School of Music in Ann Arbor fits best into the latter category, with special emphasis on the enticing performance opportunities. Operating continually since 1880, the university has built an incredible reputation for academics. But perhaps even more significant from the singer’s perspective, it has also helped the community around it to develop into a haven for performing arts of all kinds.
“We have a highly rated school in a pleasant environment that offers concert and performance experiences way beyond what you would expect for a town of this size,” says Freda Herseth, who teaches voice and coordinates the voice department at UM. “The students get an amazing number of opportunities.”
For example, University Musical Society, a nonprofit presenting organization affiliated with the university and housed on campus, attracts world-class artists and ensembles to Ann Arbor each year. Recent performances include the Berlin Philharmonic, Joshua Bell, Netherlands Chamber Choir and Frederica van Stade. The community also boasts a Gilbert & Sullivan Society and a Comic Opera Guild, both of which cast students in their productions. And then there are the music school productions.
Joshua Major, who directs opera activities for the voice department, admits that students are often surprised at the quality and quantity of musical opportunities in and around the university. “Ann Arbor is a sophisticated music town,” he says. “And we have something here that no one else does called University Productions—a professional production company that produces ten shows per year—five plays, two musicals, two operas and one dance concert. The company builds the sets, designs the costumes, and sells a subscription series. And, of course, all of the shows are entirely cast with students. Performing in one of our productions is a great experience for them.”
Because the voice program is not huge—there are 110 students total, 32 of which are at the graduate or doctoral levels—most graduate students do get the chance to perform in a mainstage opera at some point in their education. The school produces two fully-staged operas each year, double-cast to maximize the number of roles, and works are chosen based on the existing voice pool. “Twice a year we hold auditions with a few titles in mind, and as we hear the students, they lead us to the repertoire,” says Major.
Adhering to this system means that Major sometimes finds himself directing works that he is not interested in, or struggling to find the right opera, but he feels it’s the best way. “It gives us the advantage of putting students in something that’s appropriate for them, and we have a responsibility to fulfill that part of their education,” he explains. “Still, it’s not always possible to put everyone on the mainstage.”
Those who fall through the cracks of mainstage productions do have other options. As with all good voice programs, there’s plenty of opera workshop, recital, oratorio and ensemble singing to be done. And for those who look, off-campus opportunities abound. Besides local amateur companies and church gigs, there are several professional opera companies—Michigan Opera Theatre, Toledo Opera and Grand Rapids Opera are all within a manageable distance of the university. “I’ve had several students sing with Michigan Opera Theatre,” says Herseth. “And Toledo Opera hires some of our students to sing every year. They also have an outreach program that uses students to go to area schools and sing.”
It is even possible for Michigan voice students to perform professionally for years while still immersed in the graduate program … difficult, but definitely doable.
One such case was tenor Scott Piper, who’s now-burgeoning career began unexpectedly early. “I walked into Opera Workshop, sang the first couple of days, and soon after Josh Major called Michigan Opera Theatre and asked them to hear me,” says Piper. “Josh is respected, so they gave me a private audition.” Piper started singing with MOT in the fall of 1994, while still a beginning graduate student, and continued until 2000. “The company took me under its wing and I basically cut my teeth on that stage. Because of this, my education was not only academic but also professional.”
While Piper is an exception to the rule, he represents the possibilities open to the ambitious and the talented. And professional productions aside, current students still find Ann Arbor to be fertile ground for their aspirations. Megan Bresley, a mezzo and doctoral student at Michigan who recently completed her Master of Music degree, says it’s all out there for those who look. “Community and student-run performances abound,” Bresley says. “And I had the good fortune recently of doing a recording project as a soloist with the School of Music Orchestra and Choir. It is called Excerpts from Jewish Operas and will be released in CD this year as part of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. It was very exciting.”
Despite the art rich ambience of Ann Arbor, Major and Herseth admit that their city of 100,000 people cannot compete with New York or Chicago for sheer number and quality of outside performance opportunities, nor do they think that it matters much. What really counts in the end is the teaching. “If the singer is not paired up with the appropriate teacher, it doesn’t matter where they go,” says Major. “You can find the right teacher at a school that has nothing else and have a great career. You can go to a big school and not find the right teacher and go nowhere.”
Bresley was, in fact, drawn to Michigan’s program three years ago out of a desire to study in Herseth’s studio. Thoroughly pleased with her teacher’s technical, dramatic and interpretive insights, she has equally glowing opinions about the rest of the voice faculty. “I’m really impressed with the teachers here. It’s a strong faculty and they are very present in the growth of their students. A lot of them come to rehearsals for students who are in operas and workshops,” she says.
Beyond the voice teacher, Major feels that the most important component of a good vocal education is stage experience combined with proper guidance in all the vital areas—vocal technique, acting, stage comportment, movement, diction, and so on. “These are all reasons to come here,” he says, “because we really do give students a careful and insightful way of learning to perform on stage. This is not just a competitive, throw them up there and let them figure it out environment.”
Soprano Deborah Osterweis Selig, who is completing a double major in voice performance and English this year, supports this perspective. “I am definitely a better musician now than when I came in,” she says. “I have the skills to learn music on my own, to face an audition, and to be a confident singer.”
Selig attributes her progress to hard work, effective coursework, and great teachers. She even goes as far as to say that her voice teacher of four years, the renowned tenor George Shirley, has changed her life. “He’s given me a lot of guidance and encouragement, and challenged me to be the best I can musically and as an interpreter and performer. It has been amazing,” she says. Achieving honorable mention on her list of excellent experiences are diction classes with Timothy Cheek, Major’s Opera Workshop, and The Interpretation of Art Song with celebrated accompanist Martin Katz. “Katz is incredible—organized and challenging,” she says. “He demands a lot and gives a lot. And he tailors the syllabus to help students work on their strengths and weaknesses. Each day that we meet, about four singers will get paired up with different accompanists and perform. You learn so much about interpretation and a lot of repertoire.”
In the opinion of Rosemary Russell, chair of the Michigan voice department, the closeness of the faculty and their approach to teaching offer something rare—genuine interest in each student’s well-being on many levels. “The School of Music is relatively small so the students can feel that they’re not a part of a mob,” she explains. “And the voice department in particular is in the corner of the student: We want them to improve, and want to support them psychologically. Generally speaking the atmosphere here is very supportive. Teachers really care.”
Whether or not the teachers care may be less important to some than how effective they are at moving their pupils toward a professional stage or recital career. But if you ask Piper, the tenor who started singing professionally while starting graduate school, Michigan’s voice faculty is dependable on both counts. Piper studied with George Shirley and with soprano Shirley Verrett. He enjoyed getting exposure to a variety of coaching and performance styles, and he found the small size of the graduate program to be beneficial. “You develop a personal rapport by the end of the first year with every teacher on the voice faculty,” Piper says. “All of them had their different strengths and they worked well together. I was able to study with several voice teachers and they recommended each other.”
Though still enrolled in the Doctor of Musical Arts program at Michigan, Piper has been so busy performing that he does not know when he will be able to finish up his coursework. Among his recent credits, he has performed with the Florida Grand Opera, Cincinnati Opera and Madison Opera, and is working on a Zeffirelli film version of Verdi’s Aida. He was also pinpointed as a tenor to watch in a Christian Science Monitor article last year titled “Who will replace ‘the three tenors’?” Clearly, Piper’s star is rising and he gives the University of Michigan’s School of Music credit for opening a path. “A great balance of performance and academics made the experience very positive,” he says. “Vocally, Michigan helped give me the tools to learn more about my own singing so that now, when I’m traveling, I can appreciate the learning experience that a career really is.”
According to Russell, academics are the true strength of Michigan’s voice program, with stringent requirements comparable to other top schools such as Eastman, Cincinnati, Northwestern and USC. The program has a core curriculum of musicology, theory, piano, vocal literature and history. If one fails to achieve a “B” in a required course, the course does not count. And students are not allowed to sing in mainstage operas until their junior year—a rule actually based more on physical development than academics. “The degree where performance is most emphasized is the Master of Music,” says Russell. “Our undergrad and doctoral programs are pretty stiff with academics, and all students have to take languages.”
By all accounts, Michigan excels in language training. Besides the standard fare of
English, German, French and Italian, the program offers Latin and even Czech. Diction coach Timothy Cheek, in fact, has written the definitive work on the latter subject: Singing in Czech: A Guide to Czech Lyric Diction and Vocal Repertoire (Scarecrow Press). “With Timothy, our students have been able to do some Janácek in Czech,” says Herseth, the voice teacher. “That’s very rare and interesting. It’s a learning experience like no other.”
It’s easy to see why the University of Michigan School of Music consistently ranks among the top ten programs in the country for voice. Still, there’s always room for improvement. Piper, Besley and Selig, while all satisfied with their training, were unanimous in the opinion that students would be better served if the program offered business coursework for singers. “Students would benefit from hearing about what it’s really like to manage a career,” says Selig. Specifically, she would like to see a class or seminar focusing music business, agents, contracts, the path to a career, how to market yourself, and so on, added to the curriculum.
Having learned by doing, Piper agrees. “A two-week seminar on the business aspects would have been great,” he says. “I felt that all of that was pretty much ignored. I had to get most of it in professional experience.” He would also like to see the program add another opera to its season so that even more students get the chance to experience a simulation of the professional experience.
Major has no problem with that idea.
“In my ideal world, I would add another production and do more contemporary opera and commissions,” he says. “But in terms of the teaching philosophy and substance, how classes work, how we run our scenes and the experience of doing the operas, I think it’s all pretty good.”
Perhaps the greatest obstacle between Major and his desire to add another opera is space—not enough of it, that is. “We would like to do a third opera,” says Russell. “But the music school itself is too small and we’re trying to find ways to expand. The two theatres we have are completely jammed up. There’s an Arthur Miller Theatre in the works, but the location and completion dates are still uncertain. Right now, we are looking at possible locations for practice and rehearsal rooms.”
As for the question of adding a business course, voice-department chair Russell agrees that it would be nice but she also maintains that the school provides students with much of this knowledge in other ways: master classes given by world-renowned artists with Q & A sessions afterward; opera productions that mirror the real world; university course offerings that prepare students for what’s out there in terms of other cultures and people; a travel abroad program that offers students the chance to study in Florence, Italy; and faculty members who have had professional experiences and pass on what they know to students.
The true telling of the program’s success, however, must come from the graduates. And many alumni of the program are well on their way to promising careers, including countertenor David Daniels, sopranos Roberta Alexander and Tiffany Jackson, lyric coloratura Ashley Putnam, and of course Piper. “The percentage of students who come out singing or working is much higher than other places,” says Piper. “I don’t know of any graduates who are not performing professionally or teaching academically at great schools. It’s an excellent program.”
And that, as they say, is that.
