All Articles – Page 337

I have the distinct impression that nobody in the real performing world cares where you went to school, or even if you went to school at all. What they want is someone who can fill the shoes of a working opera singer.

In terms of education, Susan Graham has experienced just about every different type of program available.

Graduate school involves a commitment of time, money, and energy, and may or may not help you to achieve your performance goals.

In addition to vocal technique, singers need to be knowledgeable about languages, music history and theory, drama, business, publicity, and marketing, and a host of other widely varied fields of study. Where can a young singer acquire this bewildering array of tools?

Amanda West* is what you might think of as a “typical” young music student–fresh out of high school, earnest, already determined to improve her art and craft, and ambitious.

. “My school was so small that I was the only freshman voice major that year. Really!” By comparison, the 20 voice majors enrolled last year at Saint Xavier University in Chicago must seem like a bumper crop

There are more people in Sarah Davis’s school than in her entire hometown. Growing up in Sterling, Colorado (population 10,000), she already knew what it was like to be a big fish in a small pond.

con*sor*tium, n. 1 : an agreement, combination, or group formed to undertake an enterprise beyond the resources of any one.

This month Maria Zouves interviewed the world-renowned tenor about young singers, and his own hard-learned lessons over the years.

Experts say benefit recitals are one of the best ways for singers to underwrite their careers. Cynthia Vaughn spoke with one “stage mom” who helped her son raise $6,000 for a prestigious summer program and NY audition trips.

Most of us were taught that it’s rude to ask for money. But when it comes to fund raising, that belief needs to change–and Nora Sands, general director of AIMS, has been teaching singers how for many years.

If you share most musicians’ ideas on the subject, you assume that a patron of the arts is an extraordinarily wealthy individual who doles out lavish sums to a well-connected few, all of whom are less talented and less deserving than you would be.