Week with composer invaluable for singers

By Andrew Adler • aadler@courier-journal.com • October 11, 2009

A couple of Saturdays ago, I spent part of an afternoon occupying my favorite seat in Comstock Concert Hall at the University of Louisville School of Music. The reason? An opportunity to witness the latest fruits of an extraordinary collaboration among Kentucky Opera, the school of music and the Academy of Music at St. Francis.

I've written about this partnership before, explaining how it allows prominent contemporary composers to workshop scores using young singers in Louisville.

Last season, the composer was Jake Heggie. This year, Ben Moore spent a week here, fleshing out scenes from “Enemies, a Love Story,” his operatic adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's 1966 novel about a Holocaust survivor's emotionally turbulent life in New York City. Paul Mazursky wrote and directed the 1989 film.

Because “Enemies” is very much still a work in progress, I'm not going to comment about its artistic merits except to say that it holds considerable promise. But as I sat, watched and listened to the singers rehearsing these semi-staged scenes on the Comstock stage, it was clear that something important was going on.

So many times we talk about the imperative of connecting performers and audiences with living composers. Much too often, this sentiment becomes a poor compromise: a day or two of minor consultation, or perhaps an appearance to take a bow just before the curtain falls. This looks good, but it doesn't accomplish a whole lot.

Compare that to what took place earlier this month at the school of music and elsewhere. Members of Kentucky Opera's young-artist program, singers at the start of their professional careers, were able to take advantage of a composer not terribly removed from their own generation.

And not just for a quick in-and-out visit. Moore spent the week in Louisville, engaging in a process that benefited him and his young colleagues in equal measure. Rather than having to bear the cost of workshopping his piece, Moore had his week subsidized by Kentucky Opera and its partners. Those three groups, in turn, could offer participants vital access to the front lines of opera creation.
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In every way, this was a team effort. At the school of music, it wasn't only singers who participated in preparing the scenes. They were coached and conducted by Kimcherie Lloyd, who leads the school's orchestral program. Michael Ramach, another accomplished veteran, directed the singer-actors.

The entire environment reflected a no-nonsense, practical approach to preparing and staging the scenes. Being a professional singer involves a lot more than merely being able to sing. You have to show up and be ready at the appointed hour, warmed up and in costume. When the conductor or the director tells you to do something, you not only have to be able to respond, but without complaint and with complete mastery.

Maybe this seems obvious. Yet, without an actual process that demands such discipline, it becomes far more theory than practice. And when you're at the beginning of what hopefully will be a long and productive career, you need all the practical experience you can possibly get. Main-stage productions are potentially useful, but there are only three of them each season, and they tend to be dominated by singers further along in their developments.

Having a week to work alongside people like Heggie and Moore, composers who understand how to write compelling music in an idiom that is distinctly American, is a gift that truly keeps on giving. It's a cooperative model worth emulating anywhere that claims to value the art of the here and now.

Reporter Andrew Adler can be reached at (502) 582-4668.