Can't Resist Those Lists

I am not a fan of those lists of "Top 50 Women Artists" or "Top 10 Young Conductors" or "The 20 Most Powerful Cultural Movers and Shakers" that pop up with alarming frequency in the media.

Having worked for magazines where I've been responsible for compiling these things, I've seen first hand what a subjective and nepotistic game the list-making can be. And, generally speaking, I don't think the people who are responsible for compiling the lists really know the entire pool of potential candidates well enough to make decisions. Plus, very often, the people doing the best work are doing it quietly. Their efforts go unnoticed because they don't necessarily draw attention to themselves. These people are amazing at what they do but don't generally make these sorts of lists because they're not big schmoozers and self-publicists.

That being said, I can't seem to resist reading those lists. Just this morning, ArtsJournal published an article from the BBC about the "inaugural list of 50 women to watch in the arts" in the UK. I think this sort of thing is dumb. And yet for some reason I felt compelled to read the article and check out the list. The question is, why do I bother?

I suppose the main reason is that I'm interested to see if there's anyone on the list whom I know personally or at least whose work I know. I'm also curious to see whether I'd agree with the compilers' decisions and whether there are any glaring omissions.

But I wish I'd boycott the lists. They're bad news.

Trombones on the Beach

While cycling down the coast in Kauai last week, I chanced upon an extraordinary sight. I heard the trombones before I saw them, actually. Brass scales and arpeggios caught my ears as I whooshed along, providing an unusual sonic backdrop for the palm trees, sandy beaches and ocean setting.

Eventually, the perpetrators of the sound came into view: two young men wearing blue floral Hawaiian shirts, black slacks and black shoes were standing next to each other on the path by the beach, playing in the open air.

I couldn't resist stopping. "Is this some kind of art installation or a rehearsal?" I asked. The guys laughed. We got chatting. I found out that they were two members of the Honolulu Symphony's brass section. According to the trombonists, the orchestra is pretty much on its knees financially. In a last gasp to keep its players employed, it has been sending out players to do educational programs and give community concerts in different parts of the islands. The players I met had traveled to Kauai to teach workshops in schools and give a benefit concert for United Way with their colleagues from the Honolulu Brass ensemble.

That evening, I attended the concert, which attracted about 200 people. The ensemble played a lot of light music such as a medley of tunes from John Williams' score for Star Wars. People seemed to enjoy themselves. What I liked best about the performance was its interactivity. The musicians all talked about their instruments and the audiences were given ample opportunity to ask questions throughout. Many questions were asked about everything from technique to repertoire to instrument cleaning methodologies. After the concert, audience members lingered on to talk to the players.

I left feeling quite emotional about the experience of hearing this fine, hardworking group of musicians play. I wonder what awaits them in the coming months? Will they all be out of work by the summer? It can't be easy making a living as a classical musician in Hawaii. One of the trombonists I met is thinking about moving to San Francisco. He says the Bay Area is one of the few parts of the country where a musician can pick up a decent amount of freelance work owing to all the part-time orchestras in the region. The other player is planning on staying in Hawaii. Picking up and moving isn't as easy when your wife has professional responsibilities and you have a small child. Whatever happens to them, I wish my seaside brass players courage and fortune for the future.

Aloha Slack Key

The weather not being all that cooperative in Hawaii last week, I ended up spending quite a bit of time trying to find fun things to do indoors. At the advice of a sweet and avuncular Michigan lawyer names John who was on Kauai vacationing with his wife, I followed a dirt track just outside the center of the town of Hanalei to hear a slack key guitar concert in a local community center given by a couple of Hawaiian old timers, Doug and Sandy McMaster.

Doug is one of the few people remaining on the islands who practices this old school form of guitar playing. Slack guitar is a soloistic style of playing which came into being in the late 1700s. It's purely instrumental and doesn't involve any singing, though originally it was used to accompany hula dancing and chant. It involves alternate tunings to the regular guitar tuning system (around 75 known slack guitar tunings are known of today) and extensive use of the thumb as a self-accomaniment device. The mode of playing was born when Mexican workers, who had come to Hawaii to teach the locals farming techniques (the cow had recently been introduced on the islands) left some of their instruments behind when they went home to Mexico. The locals picked up the Mexicans' guitars but didn't know how to recreate the original tunings, so developed their own systems based on what sounded good to their ears. The resulting effect is extremely melodious, sweet and mellow.

What a double-act the McMasters turned out to be! Sandy, a portly lady with a broad grin and the kind of speaking voice that could soothe the temper of the most harried politician, clearly (or at least in performance mode) wears the trousers in the relationship. She casually and almost inaudibly strums a ukelele in most of the pieces and does pretty much all of the talking, telling mystical-tinged yarns about the development of slack guitar and her and Doug's experiences over the years on the islands. She decides the playlist and tells her partner what to do at every stage. Only at one point during the two and a half hour concert did Doug get a chance to pick a tune and even then he seemed shy to do so and looked for Sandy's approval of his decision.

Doug, a gaunt gentleman with long straggly hair and a low voice, spent the first half of the concert peeping out from behind dark glasses. He has a sheepish aspect about him and a dry, understated sense of humor. He is also a very amazing musician. I was very glad to be sitting in a place where I could see Doug's fingers work the fretboard clearly. He gave the impression that he was hardly moving his thumb at all, but the musical structure was often so dense that it sounded like there should be three pairs of hands playing at once, not just one.

As the music flowed evenly like waves lapping a shore on a beautiful day, I shut my eyes and almost fell into a slumber. It's a good thing that Doug and Sandy serve Oreo cookies and water at intermission -- I needed the sustenance to kick me out of my lovely listening lethargy.

If you're on Kauai, I thoroughly recommend a trip to hear the McMasters play. They perform twice a week, on a Friday at 4pm and Sunday at 3pm in the Hanalei Community Center on Kauai's north shore

Will. Call.

You know how sometimes you look at a once-familiar word, phrase or sentence and it suddenly seems incomprehensible, like it's written in Swahili or Urdu?

That happened to me a couple of nights ago as I was on the plane back from New York staring dumbly at the screen of a passenger seated a couple of rows ahead of me. My neighbor was watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on the in-flight TV service and Larry David was gesticulating in his usual over-the-top fashion at some other guy in front of a theater box office.

All of a sudden, the words "Will Call" came floating into view. Being a frequenter of box offices on an almost daily basis myself, I never pay much attention to these two small words. But seeing them on screen the other day gave me pause for thought. What on earth does "will call" actually mean? And where does the phrase come from? It makes very little sense to me in the context of a box office. A sentence like "I will call you tomorrow" uses the words in a normal way. If anyone out there can shed light on the etymology behind this phrase, I'd love to hear from you.

PS More travels ahead: Lies Like Truth is going on hiatus for ten days or so. I will be blogging again from March 9.

They're Listening

KALW 91.7 FM, the small, scrappy and innovative public radio station which broadcasts my weekly radio show about the art of singing, VoiceBox, is doing really well in terms of listener numbers. I was gladdened to find out that the station, which is tiny and run on a shoestring, came in fourth on the Public Radio Player's list of live radio streams which are accessed most by listeners.

At the top was WBUR (Boston), second was WBEZ (Chicago), KCRW Music (Los Angeles) came in fourth, followed by KALW (San Francisco). KQED, the much bigger and shinier local NPR affiliate here in the Bay Area, came in a distant 17th.

Read more here.

New York Roundup At Lightning Speed

Here's a very quick roundup of some stuff I experienced on my trip to New York over the past few days:

1. Pinball machine exhibition at San Francisco International Airport: I should pay more attention to the exhibitions in the international concourse at the airport. The show on pinball machines at the moment is not only gorgeous to look at thanks to all that chrome and all of those flashing lights, but is also very informative. I might have to visit a pinball convention one of these days. San Francisco appears to be one of the last remaining bastions of interest in these lovely old machines.

2. Fela: I caught the much-talked-about Broadway musical about the Nigerian Afro-jazz musician and activist Fela Kuti as soon as I got into town on Friday night. Although I didn't learn a great deal about the artist's life beyond what I already knew (the musical really only goes into the Wikipedia version of Fela's history and legacy) I appreciated my $27.00 standing place for two reasons: 1) after five hours on a plane it was great to be on my feet, and 2) you can dance so much better from the back of the orchestra than you can from an actual seat. My fellow standers and myself rocked out for two and half hours to the great on-stage band.

3. Iannis Xenakis exhibition at the Drawing Center: Most people know the Greek composer/architect Xenakis for his music, but people often forget that he was an accomplished architect who worked for Le Corbusier for many years. The exhibition made the connection between draftsmanship and music in Xenakis' work and I left all the more informed and entranced for it. I appreciated the iPod I was given at the front desk which enabled me to listen to music by the composer as I looked at his visual work which ranged from oblique scratches on graph paper, to carefully executed plans for sound installations to music manuscript.

4. Radiohole's Whatever Heaven Allows at P.S. 122: I was completely flummoxed by this show by the downtown New York experimental performance bastion. There were just too many in-jokes and the whole thing smacked of self-indulgence. Though there were a few memorable moments, such as when the cast members threw shotglassfuls of what appeared to be Kahlua in their own faces.

5. Mr. and Mrs. Fitch: Douglas Carter Beane's new play about a couple of yuppie middle aged newspaper gossip columnists starring John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle is utterly insufferable. Both Ben Brantley agrees with me so there's no point wasting any more time and space explaining why it's probably among the worst ten plays I've ever sat through in my life. The only mystery is why I bothered seeing it through to the end.

6. A Behanding in Spokane: Martin McDonagh's new play is less multifaceted than any of his previous efforts. The publicity office is making a big deal about the fact that this is the dramatist's first play set in America. But there's nothing intrinsically American about it. It could just as easily (in fact probably more easily given McDonagh's lack of an ear for the American idiom) have been set in Dublin or LondoBut even bad McDonagh is better than the best efforts of most other dramatists. So I quite enjoyed myself in the company of Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Anthony Mackie and Zoe Kazan anyway.

7. Run through of Hoi Polloi's upcoming Three Pianos at the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre: A friend and musician, Dave Malloy, sweetly invited me to pop in on a run-through of his upcoming show based on Schubert's Winterreise song cycle. I didn't get to see the whole thing owing to stops and starts. But the concept, which uses Schubert's lovelorn wintery musical scenes as a backdrop for describing the three musician-actors' modern malaise is promising. I particularly like the way in which the three pianos interact musically and verbally on stage. I wish I was in town to see the final product, which runs from February 25 - March 20.

8. Regret of the trip: Not staying an extra day for the opening of the Whitney Biennial.

Gone Fishin'

I will be traveling until next Wednesday. More dispatches from the world of culture upon return.

White Men Can't Sing

It's a common assumption that if you're a truly great singer, you can sing most anything. But this assumption of course is false. There are amazing lyrical tenors who can't do Wagner. And incredible jazz singers who can't sing folk music. For many experts, fach is everything and knowing your parameters as a vocalist is the best way to become excellent.

In the world of choral singing, however, some groups have earned a reputation for being able to sing in practically any style. The King's Singers is one such group.

But at last night's concert at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, the six-song, all male, a cappella showed that some musical styles may not fit them as well as others. The group breezed beautifully through a bunch of Italian and English madrigals by Schutz, Monteverdi, Weelkes and Bennet, and brought lushness and warmth to a performance of Saint-Saens' Saltarelle.

But the King's Singers' performance of Berkeley composer Gabriela Lena Frank's Tres Mitros de Mi Tierra (a commissioned world premiere) reminded me of hearing the Trinity College Choir from Cambridge, England, attempting gospel music at a concert at Grace Cathedral last summer. They just sounded stiff and "trained" -- they couldn't get under the skin of the music at all.

The same thing happened to the King's Singers at last night's concert: No matter how much accuracy and dexterity the vocalists brought to Frank's rhythmically complex, mystical three-movement piece about three mythical Peruvian characters, they just couldn't quite get into the swing of it. I guess these particular Brits (or maybe Anglo-Saxons in general?) are just too buttoned up to really communicate this ethnic kind of music. The piece, which offsets beautiful, delicate moments with a strident Latino pulse felt mostly quite stiff and formal.

I wonder if it would have sounded more supple if sung by a group more comfortable with Latino and/or folk idioms?

The Outsider-Insider

What's it like to feel like an outsider in your own country? I think a lot of people living here in the so-called "Republic of California" feel like this when they read about pro-life groups gaining headway in the mid-west or the outlawing of the teaching of the Big Bang Theory in southern schools.

Not that the Bay Area way of life, with its yuppie brunches and hipsters fretting over whether their Thanksgiving turkey went to art school before it was humanely put to sleep, is necessarily preferable, mind you.

It is this duality that underpins solo theater artist and writer Dan Hoyle's new show, The Real Americans, currently playing at The Marsh Theatre in San Francisco.

Put off by the hipster brunch crowd, the artist leaves the Bay Area bubble and sets off into the hinterlands in his van to find out what middle America is really like in the hopes of finding something that goes beyond the aforementioned cliches. Sadly for Hoyle -- and for his audiences -- he comes back to the Bay with his stereotypes mostly confirmed.

The show entertains us with its vivid characterizations of various hayseed and christian conservative types. But it ends up confirming typically San Franciscan liberal views about the rest of the country rather than providing any truly new insights into what it means to be a "real American" or if such a thing even exists today.

PS On the subject of national identity and belonging versus feeling like a stranger in your own land, the Akram Kahn dance company is coming to San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this weekend with "Bahok", the group's acclaimed 2008 work which explores similar issues to Hoyle's show. Taking its title from the Bengali word "carrier", the piece mixes Chinese folk dance and Kathak influences with western contemporary and classical ballet techniques. It might be interesting to compare and contrast Hoyle's and Kahn's approaches to the subject of patrimony.

A Skype Conversation with David Hurley of The King's Singers

The fabulous British all-male a cappella vocal ensembleThe King's Singers is in town for one concert tomorrow night, Wednesday 17 February, at The Herbst Theatre under the auspices of SF Performances. I caught up with one of the members, countertenor David Hurley, via skype, for a quick chat...

Chloe Veltman: Hello David.

David Hurley: Hello Chloe.

Chloe Veltman: How are you doing?

David Hurley: Fine thanks.

Chloe Veltman: Did you know that someone's just hacked into the King's Singers website?

David Hurley: Again!

Chloe Veltman: You mean it's happened before?! "Hacked By D3xeR" is the message I'm getting.

David Hurley: It happened last Sunday as well.

Chloe Veltman: There can't be many choral ensembles that get targeted by hackers.

David Hurley: Not the greatest accolade, I think.

Chloe Veltman: I guess it's sort of flattering isn't it?

David Hurley: Maybe!!

Chloe Veltman: Is last sunday the only time this happened before?

David Hurley: Yes - twice in 10 days.

Chloe Veltman: Blimey.

David Hurley: Last time it was sorted quickly, but the hackers obviously weren't satisfied that it was mended so soon.

Chloe Veltman: Now they want revenge. You'll have to up the ante. Hopefully it won't happen again and you'll beat them at their game.

Chloe Veltman: So - on to the music...

David Hurley: Yes!

Chloe Veltman: The last time you came this way was, what, two to three years ago, right? What's happened to the group since then in terms of repertoire, membership and anything else music-related I should know about?

David Hurley: We have a new member - Timothy Wayne Wright - my fellow countertenor. We have many new discs. A grammy!!!!

Chloe Veltman: Congratulations. What do you like best about performing on the west coast?Or is it no different to performing elsewhere?

David Hurley: The weather, the food, the audience. SF Performances is a great presenter as well.

Chloe Veltman: What is it about the audience that you find so engaging?

David Hurley: In SF they understand a cappella - of course Chanticleer is the local star group.

Chloe Veltman: Speaking of Chanticleer, I hear that most if not all of the ensemble is going to be at the Herbst Theatre tomorrow evening to see you in action.

David Hurley: That's great, if rather daunting. They are good friends, and great colleagues.

Chloe Veltman: Do you see the King's Singers ever collaborating with Chanticleer?

David Hurley: We would be outnumbered! But it would be a great sound, I think.

Chloe Veltman: Your sound and approach is completely different to that of Chanticleer - you could do some cool polyphonic stuff as a combined force.

David Hurley: That would be good for us - we are limited to 6 voices live, but in the studio.....

Chloe Veltman: Why are you limited to 6 voices live? Is it a contractual / branding thing that wouldn't permit such a collaboration on stage?

David Hurley: The King's Singers is just the six singers - we are happy to do collaborations. Generally they have been with instruments rather than singers, but we are open to anything.

Chloe Veltman: So maybe we will get to hear both groups performing together at some point in the future then...?

David Hurley: Maybe.

Chloe Veltman: The two groups - King's Singers and Chanticleer - have quite a bit in common despite the difference in size and sound, I think. One thing that springs to mind is your combined interest in commissioning new work. Please can you tell me about the piece you're doing by Gabriela Lena Frank, who has also written for Chanticleer?

David Hurley: This is a wonderful new piece - Tres Mitos de mi Tierra - inspired by the culture of Andean Peru. It is a portrait of three men: a traveller, a painter and a serenader.

Chloe Veltman: Frank's piece sounds intriguing - what kind of challenges does it present to the group?

David Hurley: Rhythm is the main difficulty, but the effect is amazing.

Chloe Veltman: What kinds of rhythmic challenges are there?

David Hurley: Fast passages with rather spiky parts that fit together (hopefully!)

Chloe Veltman: Is the piece sung in Spanish?

David Hurley: It is in English, but with Spanish and Quecha words. We asked for that - Gabi's idea was to give the piece the feel of Spanish language poetry that non-spanish speakers would understand. She wrote the lyrics herself.

Chloe Veltman: What did the composer think of it when she heard the piece in Nashville over the weekend?

David Hurley: She seemed very pleased - she really got us into the feel of it.

Chloe Veltman: What do you look for when you're searching for composers with whom to collaborate?

David Hurley: Someone with an understanding of singers, and especially ensemble singers.

Chloe Veltman: What else is on tonight's program?

David Hurley: Some great English and Italian madrigals - Monteverdi, Gesulado, Weelkes. Plus a wonderful piece by Saint Saens - Saltarelle - and close harmony, of course!

Chloe Veltman: Are your programs always this diverse?

David Hurley: Normally, yes, unless there is a specific theme.

Chloe Veltman: Will you have time to do anything else while in the Bay Area, or are you just in and out for this concert?

David Hurley: I think we are in town for 20 hours - way too short.

Chloe Veltman: Way too short indeed. Time is of the essence so i'll let you loose. Thanks so much for skyping with me, David. I'm looking forward to the concert.

David Hurley: It's been a pleasure.

Spreading the Love at City Hall

Arts events aren't a common occurrence at City Hall in San Francisco. But they should be.

Hundreds of people flocked to the venerable old building on Friday at noon to witness a jubilant Love Everywhere, a new dance-theatre production by local choreographer Erica Chong Shuch.

The piece commemorated the sixth anniversary of the weekend when San Francisco city officials began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Given the current political turmoil surrounding this subject, the event, which was free to the public, couldn't have been more timely. Though conceived in a celebratory mood with a klezmer dance party at the end, a sense of solemnity still hung over the piece.

I've seen Shuch, a prodigiously talented choreographer, do much better work from a purely artistic standpoint -- the choreography, which evoked simple old fashioned dance steps such as the waltz and tango, was predictable and crowd-pleasing and the messaging about happy same-sex couples was heavy-handed.

But there was such an infectious energy to the piece, with its 49-strong cast, 13-piece live band and two singers, and Shuch used the marble-lined enclaves of city hall so inventively, with groups of performers spread all around the space, that Love Everywhere ended up being a galvanizing event nontheless. At the end of the day, Shuch's brilliant was to bring so many people together under the cupola at City Hall rather than create a breathtaking work of art. And there's definitely artistry in that. I felt mobilized by the time I left.

Alone At The Top

At what point in an arts organization's growth does it need to have more than one person at the top? I ask this question in light of the departure of the Magic Theatre's Managing Director, Scott Hawkins. According to an article in The San Francisco Chronicle, Hawkins decided to eliminate his own position:

"Reached by phone, Hawkins said that in his efforts to help restructure the company to cope with its financially straitened circumstances, "after analyzing the budget in December I decided we could no longer afford a managing director's salary. The standard two-headed model at American theaters no longer fit here, and I didn't see the opportunity to rebuild the budget to the point where we could justify that position."...Having a "single person in charge of both the business and artistic sides is not an uncommon structure for organizations of a certain size," Hawkins adds. "The Magic is now that size.""

I wonder how the venerable producer of new plays will cope with only one person to run it? The stress on the Magic's artistic director, Loretta Greco (pictured), must be enormous, even if the company has scaled back operations dramatically over the last couple of years by taking such measures as shuttering one of its two spaces.

I also wonder whether under one leader and a reduced budget, the Magic can even be considered as a "mid-size company" anymore. What does Hawkins mean by "of a certain size"? He uses the same terminology that people use to hide the age of a person in decline. I really hope that his words don't spell the end of one of the very few remaining mid-size theaters in the area.

On The Woes Of Maintaining A Digital Music Collection

Unlike many people who write about music, I keep all of my audio collection on my laptop computer, a MacBook air. The main advantages of doing this are that I have my entire music collection at my fingertips wherever I go, and I save a lot of shelf space that would otherwise be taken up with CDs gathering dust. I also love buying music online - it's so quick and easy - and these days, you can find a surprising amount of unusual stuff via digital download. 

But in truth, maintaining a digital music cache isn't ideal in many ways. Here is a list of some of the main issues I have with my current system:

1. Manual data entry: Many of the CDs that people send me which I  then transfer to my computer's iTunes application don't import their track information automatically. This means I spend many painstaking hours manually entering the names of titles, artists, albums and genres.

2. Limited access to liner notes: Some CDs bought on iTunes come with a downloadable album booklet, but this is the exception rather than the rule. So most of my musical collection is devoid of lyrics and useful background information about the artists and the works on the recordings.

3. Browsing difficulties: The "cover flow" setting in iTunes allows you to "flick" through album covers as you might browse through a CD or vinyl collection on a shelf. But it's not quite the same because so many of the recordings I own aren't commercial recordings, so they show up on the screen as blank squares with no titles or cover art.

4. Incomplete track importing: Sometimes when I try to transfer a CD to my laptop music library, not all the tracks from the CD transfer successfully to the digital format. I end up with a partial album.

5. Backup challenges: I have so much music that my current backup drive can't handle all of the files. I need to find another solution quickly.

The convenience and space saving qualities of buying and maintaining my music via iTunes means that I'm willing to put up with these less-than-optimal conditions. I'm hoping that in time I'll be able to iron out the kinks.

Guest Blog: Soprano Kiera Duffy On Life After 'The Audition'

American soprano Kiera Duffy is a rising star of the opera and concert stage. Since being a finalist in the 2007 Met National Council Auditions -- and as such was featured in Susan Froemke's documentary about the major opera competition, The Audition -- she has gone on to great things. In 2008, she won a Sullivan Foundation grant and has performed with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as at Tanglewood and Carnegie Hall. Kiera took some time out of her busy schedule to pen her thoughts for lies like truth about The Audition's impact on her career...

The 2007 Metropolitan National Council Competition was an enchanting, nerve-wracking and surreal experience, to say the least. Never could I have predicted that a little audition I did on the east side of Manhattan (for which I arrived late and completely flustered--thank you, Madison Avenue traffic) would eventually lead me to sing on the Metropolitan Opera stage with the Met Orchestra on one of the most famous sets in operatic history. I think it's safe to say that this experience would be one of the more overwhelming and incredible moments in any aspiring opera singer's life, but to relive that whole experience while watching a 20-foot version of yourself on a jumbo movie screen? Well, that's just weird.

Working in an industry that is mainly focused on live theater, I've been really taken aback by the power of film and its ability to reach such a vast audience. Since the release of the documentary on national PBS stations this past January, I've been overwhelmed by the response to The Audition. I seem to get at least a handful of new Facebook friend requests every day, not to mention the emails and wall postings and messages on my website from people around the country who were impacted by it. To hear what viewers have had to say after they've watched the movie has been fascinating: "I never realized what it took to be an opera singer!" "I never saw an opera before, but now I want to go to one!" "I'm simply blown away by all of the talent!" I have to admit that I've also gotten quite a bit of: "I was sure you were going to win." Or the slightly more authoritative: "You should have won!" Or, ahem, my father's personal favorite: "You got robbed." Of course, I am touched that people enjoyed my performance, and hey, maybe I could have used some of them at the judges' table, but For. The. Record. I'm actually not sure I should have won, and I definitely don't think I got robbed. Dad.

If I may say this without sounding self-congratulatory, I personally think that the 2007 National Council semi-finalists and finalists were particularly extraordinary, and well yeah, it was "just an honor to be nominated..." (Sorry, but it's Hollywood awards season and I just got back from LA.) Moreover, at the risk of sounding trite, I was not so interested in winning the competition. Though it would have been great, I had a bigger battle to fight, aka performance anxiety.

My nerves are my demons. Always have been. Twice I nearly quit because of them. They're irrational, they're intense, and they're very real. So when I found out that I made it to the semi-finals of the National Council Auditions, I knew I had to make a pact with myself: I was going to do whatever it took to find the mental focus necessary to sing on the Met stage fully present and fully engaged. And I am very proud to say that, after two months of some pretty intense soul searching and mental work, I did that, both in the semis and the finals. So, the emotion that you see when I walk off the stage after the finals performance, while naturally fueled by the incredible adrenaline rush that comes with singing on the Met stage for the first time, was in many ways more due to the fact that I had, at least for those two weeks, conquered my demons. Big money or no big money, I had won the prize.

Since then, life has been a wonderful whirlwind. I made my European debut this past fall at the Wexford Opera Festival in Ireland, which was a blast. And since I'm a Duffy, well, you know...Actually, I am hoping to do more opera work in Europe, as the generally smaller-sized opera houses (as compared to the major houses in the States) are better suited to my voice. To that end, I'm planning a pretty extensive European audition tour this spring.

I am also very lucky to enjoy an extremely fulfilling concert career. I made my debut with the New York Philharmonic last September, which was in many ways akin to my Met experience in its surrealness and in its oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-I'm-singing-here-ness. I was singing a piece by Pierre Boulez under the baton of Lorin Maazel. A few months later I debuted with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and just returned there to sing my first ever Pierrot Lunaire--a favorite piece of mine, despite (or maybe because of) its obvious complexities. I am making my debut with the Atlanta Symphony next week singing Mozart with Roberto Abbado and I join the San Francisco Symphony for the first time next fall singing Messiah.

Incidentally, if you're familiar with the repertoire of people like Boulez and Schoenberg, you might have inferred that I have a particular affinity for 20th century music (aka the hard slash weird stuff), which I in fact do, and which leads me to address a sort of interesting post-The Audition issue that's come up. The arias that I sang in the Met Finals ("Caro nome" and "Tornami a vagheggiar"), while I love them both, are not necessarily indicative of the kind of singer I perceive myself to be (or at least am striving to be). What I mean to say is that the fact that I sang two Italian arias in the finals was sort of anomalous when you compare it to the rest of my career. I don't have what is thought of as a particularly "Italianate voice."

German is my thing. The simplest way I know how to explain this is to say that my voice has a sort of silvery, at times steely, quality that is served well by the sort of silvery, steely quality inherent in the German language. These qualities are also really useful in more modern, avant-garde music, as well as repertoire in English (itself being a Teutonic language), which are also a large part of my repertoire. One thing I've run into within 'the biz' is that based on the Met auditions (and kind of perpetuated by the movie), many music professionals' impressions of me were that of a sort of cute, ingénue type, who sings pretty Italian arias. In reality, though, I'm kind of the anti-ingénue (I mean, the name, Kiera, actually means "little dark one" afterall). Don't get me wrong, I love the war-horses, I do...even the Italian ones (wink). But I am also seduced by a sort of edgier, darker, oft-times German, and not traditionally tonal type of music. So in a business that is increasingly about finding one's niche, I've had to do a little bit of damage control to be sure that, based on the Met finals, I'm not perceived as just another sort of generic light soprano.

All this aside, the fact is I know I have a pretty great life right now. Yes, there are challenges; there are sacrifices (hard to have a love life when you travel as much as I do...just sayin'); there's a lot of singing-business-minutia to navigate through. But the thing is, despite all that I love what I do. Perhaps it's a bit grandiose of me, but if there is such a concept as a soul, mine begins and ends with music. And that's a very good thing.