I'm glad I'm not a critic

I used to think that I would make a good critic, but now I think I've come to the conclusion that not only wouldn't I have, but it would have ruined my life.

Once, when I was in college, I became so super critical that I found that I couldn't enjoy anything. I became severely depressed and that was the point that I decided that I was done with academia and ready for the real world (OK, I had also finished my degree). I left to make my way into the world and got my first apprentice program and began slow to enjoy making music again and listening to it. I learned a whole new way to appreciate it and I began to come out of my critically induced depression.

I swore never to go that way again and a few minor lapses aside, I've held to that. I've been much happier.

But now I've found a new level to my enjoyment, not only to opera and classical music, which after all I was trained to listen to critically and analytically, but to all kinds of music.

With the downloadable MP3 file, I'm like a kid in a candy shop. No longer held back by the constraints of shelf space (only by hard disk space, which is much cheaper and takes less room), I've been exploring all kinds of new worlds. A friend mentions and artist and I can go to iTunes or eMusic and download a song or two and learn what they are talking about.

I've had a great time exploring worlds that I never knew before and even if I'm not blown away by everything I hear, there is the opportunity to open new doors and see where it leads. Often somewhere very interesting.

Isn't music amazing?

Words

I've been spending a lot of time listening to music recently. Mostly vocal music of genres other than opera: blues, folk, rock, popular, and jazz. When I listen closely (which I find it hard not to do), I'm struck by most singers attention to words. They all concentrate not in producing a sound, but in conveying the meaning of a song through the text. And even though I sometimes can't take long doses of their vocal quality despite other compensating talents (I'm sorry, I just can't listen to too much Bob Dylan at one time, despite his genius), I'm almost always (in a good musician) moved by their approach to the text.


It's something that some opera singers forget. One who didn't was Giuseppe DiStefano, which is probably why, among the great tenors of the second part of the last century, he moved me the most. Despite his vocal defects (which increased dramatically in the later part of his short career), he always threw himself into what he was singing and always spent most of his capital trying to put across the text. Of course his career was essentially over before I was born, but the recordings, live and in the studio, all speak to a talent that was natural, unaffected, and joyously exploited. Exploited to the point were it was all gone in just about ten years, but when it was there, it was glorious.

Many people try to analyze his defects: his lack of cover through the passaggio, taking on roles far too heavy for his basic lyric instrument. The truth is that none of it really matters. To take away any of it would have changed the person. A man who obviously loved life, who had an innate natural musicality, and who was born with a glorious instrument, that in its prime could do just about anything.

I'm sure he had no regrets. RIP, Pippo.

Stunning

I'm suffering after a hard drive crash and no backup (yes, I know I should back up). Happily I don't think much was lost apart from my tax returns.

I went to see Ned Rorem's Our Town at the Juilliard School last weekend and experienced one of those things you hear about but you rarely think happen in real life. I was seated next to someone who was obviously a critic. Since I do PR for an opera company I know the signs: carrying a press kit with a pad and pen ready.

This gentleman (who I vaguely recognized but could not place), spent the first ten minutes of the performance sneezing loudly and then promptly fell fast asleep for the remainder of the first act. He woke up in time to applaud at the end of the act and after realizing that there was no intermission between Acts I and II, dozed off again. He slept through Act III and at the conclusion yelled "Bravo" and "Bravi" loudly. I looked at him in wonder. How could he know?

Amazing.