Friday
Apr232010

Versatile vocalist: admiring Kristin Chenoweth

DateFriday, April 23, 2010 at 10:00PM

Lately, I’ve been on a mission to expand my skills as a singer. For someone trained in opera, musical theater can be a natural direction to take. In an effort to educate myself, I’ve spent countless hours playing through anthologies, listening to recordings, and encountering new voices. One of my favorite discoveries - and certainly one of the most versatile singers performing today - is Kristin Chenoweth. 

Kristin trained as an opera singer, but she’s best known as Glinda in Stephen Schwartz’s Broadway hit, Wicked. Here are a few highlights from her career:

I’ve been aware of Kristin for years now and even saw her sing Wicked on Broadway. I was impressed then by her voice, but was turned off by what I perceived as an air-headed beauty queen persona. That changed last year when I heard Terry Gross interview Kristin on Fresh Air. Terry has a gift for uncovering emotional depth in her interview subjects, but I quickly realized that Kristin didn’t need coaxing. She talked insightfully about many subjects, and I was mesmerized by her apparent self-awareness, intelligence, and sincerity. 

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Sunday
Feb072010

Perfectionism: friend or foe?

DateSunday, February 7, 2010 at 12:44PM

I have several vivid memories from my teenage years of striving for artistic perfection. One such incident came as I was preparing for an art competition. I was painting a self-portrait, and it wasn’t going well. I could see in my mind (and in the mirror) what I wanted to create, but I couldn’t get the paints to do my bidding. The result was an awkward depiction of (as one well-meaning viewer described it) “the way you’ll look when you’re thirty.” I didn’t win the competition, and I was never happy with the portrait. In fact, I was so frustrated by the experience that I decided to give up painting and focus on singing instead. The voice only lasts so long before aging takes effect, I reasoned. Eventually, I would need to stop singing, and I could return to painting then.

Of course, my attempts at vocal perfection were no easier. For years I felt like each practice session was a fight pitting my artistic ideals against the limitations of my voice. I almost gave up when vocal weakness set in, but my stubborn love for singing eventually led me to the right teacher who helped me slowly rediscover my voice.

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Monday
Feb012010

Weathering winter and a chilly economic climate

DateMonday, February 1, 2010 at 9:05AM

How do artists survive in tough economic times? The New York Times and the London Guardian recently ran stories about ways creative people are weathering difficult circumstances. 

New York Times: Chilled by Choice, January 20, 2010

For opera singers, the image of starving artists living in icy attics immediately brings to mind a scene from Puccini’s La boheme. To stay warm, Rodolfo, a poet, and his roommate Marcello, a painter, burn pages from Rodolfo’s latest drama. 

But for some New York artists, this isn’t a romantic story of days gone by. It’s everyday life. 

One of these modern-day Bohemians is Justen Ladda, “a 56-year-old sculptor who has lived heat-free in his Lower East Side loft for three decades.”

Mr. Ladda, whose work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, decided long ago to live without central heating. Proper temperature control, you see, would require insulating his wooden ceiling, and ruining its fine acoustics. “I know this sounds really lame, but I listen to a lot of music and it just sounds better,” he said. Also, the rent on his unimproved live-work loft is only $300, well below many people’s winter utility bills.

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