A singer asked me recently if I thought he was ready for a manager. When I asked him how many roles he had ready he confessed: none. A singer approaching a manager to enter the operatic career should have memorized 5 or 6 roles and be ready to sing them at a moment’s notice. How else can a singer be marketable? And how if not would the singer be of interest to the manager? There are no auditions to sing arias. (Well, maybe The Italian Tenor aria in Der Rosenkavalier). Yet, ma

In “Pure” Technique I wrote about senseless practicing: when students repeat and repeat without thinking because they have been told that slow repetition is the way. Perhaps the problem is awkward motions or faulty alignment, so practice actually does more harm than good. I also made the point that practice must include the musical and artistic impulse, that practice must approximate performance. See what young virtuoso Stefan Jackiw, who had been told to practice slowly and

Art Salon, a production of The Opera Atelier. Right to left: Jorge Arcila, Kiley Hernandez, Aime Fiusa, Liliam Teruel. In his insightful article Conductor or Automaton Scott Cantrell refers to performances led by young American conductors that “lack direction” and “do not let the music breath”. The notes are there, the music is not. And that is by no means exclusive of conductors, or American musicians, for that matter… Many classical musicians seem to perform mechanically wi