education, I began piano and voice lessons and participated in community plays and school musicals as both singer and conductor/arranger. As is true for so many people drawn to the arts, this was a way for me to stand out from the crowd.
Good thing; I was never much of a student. My scholastic record was a constant frustration to my highly academic parents, so these previously untapped artistic inclinations provided redemption from outcast status in a realm where grades and achievement were everything. Exhortations of “You better get good grades or you’ll end up digging ditches!” rang in my ears. Only the music drowned them out.
As intimidating as it seems at first glance, musical notation is quite simple. Each of the eighty-eight keys on a standard piano has a unique location on what is called the Grand Staff. Each note represents a specific pitch, and where the notes are placed on the staff determines which key on the piano is played. The types of notes—whole, half, quarter, and so on—determine duration. One plays the pitch indicated, for the length of time indicated, and remains silent when encountering a rest. That’s all there is to it.
Musical notation is perceived and translated differently by every musician, and it has been promulgated that math skills and musical skills are closely aligned. I don’t know where this started, and though this may be the case in some circumstances, it is not, in my experience, the norm. I, for example, am almost anumeric. I have no mind for numbers and possess the least amount of math skills an adult can have and still function in the modern world. For example, I use my fingers for addition and subtraction. Yet I read music fluently.
Sight-readers can look at a piece of music and perform it, never having seen it before. This ability is highly prized among professionals, and few musicians reach professional status without having acquired it. Singers may attain successful careers without reading music, but all instrumentalists must sight-read with a high degree of proficiency. The goal is to comprehend a page of music as fluently as one would read a newspaper.
My first encounter with a great sight-reader was with a pianist friend in college, Jerry Jennings. For entertainment, some us would go to the library and search for the most difficult work we could find, often a symphonic reduction transcribed for piano or a full orchestra score. Then we would seek out Jerry, who was usually practicing diligently, a lock of black hair falling over his eyes. He would sigh at our approach and bark impatiently, “Okay, what is it now?”
“Play this,” we implored, as we put the music in front of him.
He shook his head, peered over his glasses at the pages covered with black notation, and then … he played. We stood spellbound as he whisked through page after page, never pausing, never hesitating despite key changes and accidentals everywhere. A flurry of notes translated to music without preparation. It was miraculous!
Impressed by what I saw Jerry do, I dedicated myself to learning this ability at my own modest level. My sight-reading of vocal music was good—I had a church job that kept my skills well honed—but I wanted the pianistic facility as well. So I borrowed a church hymnal and religiously played at least five hymns a day, every day, never stopping for mistakes, never repeating a hymn.
Hymns are written in common keys, using the standard chord progressions and structure encountered in most basic music. As I worked my way through the hymnal, its predictable patterns and progressions burned themselves into my musical memory. By the time I had completed all six hundred and thirty-three pages, I had taken a giant leap in my music education. Pursuing the life of a musician requires an intimidating, ascetic level of commitment.
Today, more than forty years later, when I sit at the piano or scan an orchestra score, I still see those patterns that were etched into my brain. Like riding a bicycle, once you learn it, you never lose the skill.
I vaguely remember singing in a boys’ choir at a Methodist church in Butler, Pennsylvania. I can scarcely recall this experience, except that we wore little white robes. Costumes and a sense of theatrics appealed to me from an early age.
My next recollection of singing was in junior high. The music teacher paired students, requiring each duo to sing a Christmas carol while she accompanied. She matched me with a guy whose droning monotone was so overwhelming that I couldn’t stay on pitch. I earned a D in music that semester. Incomprehensible! That comedy of errors effectively ended any further desire to sing for the next four years.
It’s funny how minor traumas endure in your memory and build phobias that require a cathartic experience to overcome. Why are life’s terrible events the ones that stay with us in such excruciating detail? Scientists say that adrenaline, along with repeated obsessive thoughts, are the fiends that burn trauma into your memory.
Restoring the gift of song was a monumental event. It also served as the impetus that would initiate one of the toughest decisions of my early life—my first crossroad. I had assumed I would follow the steps of my mentors: go to university, become a working musician, land a symphony gig, and leverage that into a college instructor position, maybe even a professorship. Not a bad life. If I were first-rate, I’d make a few recordings and go on tour occasionally. At least I’d be making music and thriving among my own kind.
But singing brought me attention, and I soon realized there were other options—very enticing options. There was the life of a musician, and there was a life in show business—on stage, the focus of attention, a key player, not just a pawn. I could be one of many in an orchestra, part of a privileged few indeed. Or, I could become one of the elite—a paragon.
It wasn’t until I saw the operas Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci at Pittsburgh Opera that my aspirations finally took shape, funneling my efforts into the first phase of my career.
The tenor, James McCracken, was especially dynamic as Canio in Pagliacci. In the days leading up to opening night, local newspapers were filled with articles about him, and I read them all with great interest. I vividly remember an interview where the writer mentioned Mr. McCracken’s yacht.
Yacht? Oh, my! This opera stuff is worth some serious investigation.
On opening night, I perched with my mother in the peanut gallery, where I sat mesmerized for two hours. At the end of the opera, McCracken stepped out for his curtain call, and the audience went berserk. I turned to my mother and said, “I’m going to be an opera singer.”
Instead of having me measured for a straitjacket, she smiled that polite smile you give people when you want to humor their lunacy. But as the years passed, I’m sure she wished she’d called 911 and had me committed.
Twenty years after that performance, shortly before his death, I had the opportunity to sing twice with James McCracken, first in Samson and Delilah and then, ironically, I Pagliacci. He was one of the most delightful and gracious colleagues I’ve ever encountered.
One day after rehearsal, the cast went out to eat. When we finished our meal the waiter brought the bill and placed it in the center of the table. McCracken and I went for it simultaneously, each insisting that we be allowed to pick up the tab. Hoping to impress him with my financial success, I pulled out my American Express Gold Card and set it on the check. He smiled that beautiful Irish smile of his and trumped his Platinum card over mine. I let him pick up the bill.
The baritone singing Tonio in that same Pagliacci of my childhood was Sherrill Milnes, who shortly thereafter made a quick ascent to the throne, becoming the ruling American baritone of his era. Many years later, I had the rare opportunity to work with Milnes as well. I say rare, because singers of the same voice category infrequently get to know one another. This is partly because of competition, but practically, when singers perform the same parts their paths never cross, except in repertory companies where the operas are double-cast. Even then,