Month Three: Singing along with BROADWAY MUSICALS, BABY!

Oh-to-the-Em-to-the-GEE! It’s BROADWAY MONTH! In case you can’t tell, I am a HUGE musical theatre fan. I have been since I was a wee little kid singing along to Phantom of the Opera at the top of my lungs (no wonder I became an opera singer!). I went from those early one-woman-show days (lol) to being a hardcore theatre nerd in high school, to doing tons of musical theatre singing during my opera studies. Then, like most of the things I’m revisiting this year, I just set that part of myself down and stopped looking at it. Well, mostly.

You see, I have this really fond, fairly recent memory from my corporate days. After I hung up my ballgowns and left my opera singer life, I went back to school and did my law degree and my MBA. This, unsurprisingly, landed me in a big corporation, with a fancy ass title, a key card, and a sweet, modern, glass-walled Cubicle Of The Future (basically the only way I know how to explain it). During my first summer in this job that I felt IMMENSELY grateful to have obtained, I spent a couple hours of nearly every afternoon in exactly the same fashion. I would tuck in at my computer, pop on my headphones, kick off my heels, and put on the Hamilton soundtrack. I was drinking free coffee, making spreadsheets or doing research or processing data, and in my own little world. I had made it. I was in corporate heaven.

Hamilton is what made these moments magical. It’s, strangely, a huge part of what I immediately loved about my job. I love to be engrossed in a story, and I love to use what I’m listening to to help me find a flow state and just crank out work. These afternoons were so memorable, even though I couldn’t for the life of me tell you now what exactly I was working on (though I know I was busting my ever-loving ass). All I remember is Eliza, and Burr, and Angelica, and Alexander. All I remember is “My Shot” and “Dear Theodosia.” All I remember is getting to the end of the show and having to bend down to pat away the mascara tears.

When I reflect back through my life before that time, I can remember many such soundtracks, and where I was when I listened over and over. The ones to which I not only know every word, but I’ve felt every feeling a hundred times over. Listening to RENT on my discman in grade seven. Les Misérables in the backseat of my parents’ minivan on the way to the lake. In the Heights every morning on the bus to downtown Florence the summer I studied in Italy. Then there are the shows I’ve been in, especially in high school. Oliver!. Little Shop of Horrors. Godspell. I am right back in my costume as soon as the opening number rolls.

I can’t wait to spend this month losing myself in these beautiful words and music and stories. I believe that Broadway is so moving for the same reason as opera (or any song, for that matter): the humanness of merging words with music is inherently transcendent. By mixing what is said with the emotion behind it, the creators and performers of musical theatre take us beyond our thinking minds and into a powerful heart space. Not to mention that the medium is larger than life, allowing for really, really big emotions – which I’m all for.

So here’s to musical theatre month! I’ll post the full list of musicals over on Instagram (so check it out!), and I’ll be sure to toss it up here as well. I hope my fellow Broadway nerds will listen along!

My Classical Month Listening List

Whahhh classical music listening month is over and I am SAD, Y’ALL. BUT! (1) Next month is listening to BROADWAY, so it’s definitely not all bad news! Aaaand… (2) I’ve got a full list of what I listened to for you! Like I said at the beginning of the month, I picked two pieces for each day of the month: one from what is called “the canon” (aka, the stuff that gets played all the time) and one that should be “canonized” (especially lots of works by people who aren’t cis-het-dead-white-guys).

I had the most incredible time listening this month, so I hope you will enjoy starting (or continuing!) your classical music listening journey with these amazing works!

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NOT (CURRENTLY!) IN THE CANON

1. Symphony No. 1, Florence Price

2. Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, Joan Tower

3. Nonet in F Minor, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

4. Sinfonia (For Orbiting Spheres), Missy Mazzoli

5. Suite de “La Remambaramba”, Amadeo Roldán

6. Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Clara Schumann

7. The Garden of Earthly Delights, Ian Cusson

8. Entr'acte, Caroline Shaw

9. Piano Trio op. 11, Fanny Mendelssohn

10. Dog Breath Variations, Frank Zappa

11. Violin Concerto, Jennifer Higdon

12. Frontispiece, Unsuk Chin

13. Swing Symphony, Wynton Marsalis

14. Black Swan, Bright Sheng

15. Throughline, Nico Muhly

16. Grand Pianola Music, John Adams

17. Glass Houses, Ann Southam

18. Efflorescence, Keiko Devaux

19. Winter Music, Alison Yun-Fei Jiang

20. Lyric for Strings, George Walker

21. The Rhyme of Taigu, Zhou Long

22. Violin Concerto No. 1, Magnus Lindberg

23. Gaelic Symphony, Amy Beach

24. Yoshiyahu, James Lee III

25. Piano Trio, Reena Esmail

26. The Midnight Hour, Anna Clyne

27. Solace, Jocelyn Morlock

28. Il divertimento barocco, Ana Sokolović

29. De profundis, Raminta Šerkšnytė

30. Tabla Concerto, Dinuk Wijeratne

WORKS FROM THE CANON

1. Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin

2. Firebird, Stravinsky

3. Cello Suite No. 1, Bach

4. Symphony No. 5, Shostavokich

5. Symphony No. 40, Mozart

6. Sonata Op. 106, Beethoven

7. Symphony No. 8, Schubert

8. La mer, Debussy

9. Pines of Rome, Respighi

10. Pictures at an Exhibition, Mussorgsky

11. Souvenir de Florence, Tchaikovsky

12. Piano Concerto, Grieg

13. “The Trout” quintet, Schubert

14. Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2, Chopin

15. Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz

16. String Quartet op. 76 no. 3, Haydn

17. Don Juan, Strauss

18. Violin Concerto, Mendelssohn

19. Symphony No. 2, Mahler

20. 2nd Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff

21. Violin Concerto, Brahms

22. Adagio for Strings, Barber

23. The Four Seasons, Vivaldi

24. Cello Concerto, Elgar

25. Piano Sonata in B Minor, Liszt

26. Concerto for Orchestra, Bartok

27. String Quartet Op. 96, Dvorak

28. Goldberg Variations, Bach

29. Appalachian Spring, Copland

30. Symphony No. 9, Beethoven

Month Two: Classical Music is Underway!

Well, it’s taken half a month to write this post about Month Two getting underway. I could beat myself up about this, but the truth is that I’ve been too busy enjoying myself to sit down and write about how much I’m enjoying myself. Seems like a good reason to procrastinate! Anywho – it’s April 15, so let’s talk Month Two: Listening to Classical Music.

As many readers know, I used to be a classical musician. In fact, I spent my entire life until my late 20s engrossed in classical music. From playing the piano as a five-year-old whose feet dangled under the piano bench to hanging up my ballgowns and heels when I “retired” from being an opera singer as I neared 30, classical music was one of the core pillars of my life. And even though I’m no longer a professional musician, my husband is (Ryan is a trumpet player in a symphony orchestra), so I still spend an enormous amount of my time listening to and thinking about classical music, and I’ve never really left that world. Many, many of our friends are musicians, and we talk music and music-world stuff all the time. In non-COVID times, I’m at concerts multiple times a week. I sit on the board of a classical music ensemble. I put classical music on when I work. It’s still all around me.

However.

When I quit singing, I really slammed the door on my own personal connection to music. When I decided to stop singing and go back to school to do my law degree and MBA, I had just gone through a really painful year of singing highs and lows, triumphs and rejections, enormous failures, opportunities missed, and a real disconnection from why I became a musician in the first place. Most of all, I had fallen out of love with being a musician. It became more painful than rewarding. In order to minimize my suffering, I thought, I needed to make a clean break from music. I stopped singing and would not dabble. I would not sing in an unpaid opera chorus. I would not sing in a community choir. I would not occasionally take a gig “just for fun” because I knew that if I wasn’t practicing every day, maintaining the level of physical ability needed to sing at the level I had become accustomed to, I would not do it. Surely that would be the least painful route.

Well, that might not have been a good idea. I realized recently that I never really took time to mourn the ending of my musical journey – I just moved on to the next thing and shoved all my feelings about being a “failed singer” who abandoned my dream wayyy way down where I wouldn’t have to look at them. I was a successful business woman now! I was a lawyer! I drove a nice car and didn’t have to take the bus across town with a garment bag and a water bottle and a pair of heels!

So imagine my delight this month when I began my commitment to listening to classical music every day and I discovered that this hidden grief did not break open and spill out, but instead blossomed up like a great, hidden joy. It’s really, truly spring here right now, and I can’t help but cling to this metaphor of a hidden bulb, rich with potential, laying dormant through the winter, then emerging as the soil warms and the sun coaxes the bloom upward and open. That’s how classical music is making me feel.

I really thought I would be sad. I still might be later this year when I spend a month devoted to watching opera (okay, I’m certain I will be at least a little sad then). Right now, I just feel enormous vibrance and joy every day as I put on a recording of a well-known piece, then another of a not-so-well-known work. I feel refreshed. I feel awake.

This is marvellous news to me, as I’ve just had a big freelance writing project come through, and I’m already up to my armpits every day chasing our not-really-a-baby-anymore-more-of-a-toddler around the house. When she goes down to nap, I put on a piece of classical music, and I am focused, soothed, and encouraged. I have enthusiasm and energy all day. I find myself somehow getting more done every day than I had hours for, yet my memories of the days are of laying in the sun playing with stuffed animals, or reading that book about the armadillo over and over, or gardening. I’m returning to the best physical and mental and emotional shape of my life rapidly and with what feels like little effort.

Is this all thanks to classical music? Well, obviously not. But, I am so fascinated by the feeling of finally reaching inside myself and opening the box that held something I loved so dearly – something so precious to me that I was afraid to look at it again. I’ve always been a person that walks the line between guarded and very emotional, and I think I feared that if I touched that thing in my heart, it would consume me. It was safer to leave it there, in the past, and view it cooly from a distance. Turns out the exact opposite is true. By grabbing it and holding it out in the sun, I have recaptured its power. It's amazing, to say the least.

Before I go – some logistical points about this month. Before I began, I made a list of 30 pieces of classical music that are very famous and very important and frequently performed, and I scheduled one of these pieces for each day of April. Then, because classical music has a major “big list of dead white guys” problem, I also chose 30 pieces by people not represented in that list, and scheduled them as well. I choose a recording of each piece each day based on what I’m doing and what my mood is – sometimes it’s just audio on Apple Music, sometimes it’s a YouTube video. Sometimes I listen very actively (not multi-tasking), and sometimes I put the piece on in the background as I do something else. Basically, I make it easy, and it’s working so beautifully. At the end of the month, I’ll publish the full listening lists and provide links where I can. In the meantime, if you’re interested, follow me on Instagram, where I’m posting each day’s listening as I do them.

Until the end of the month – I hope you look inside your heart and see if you tucked something away in there that could use a little sunlight.