Day 6…

March 15th, 2020

Today wasn’t just our dress rehearsal, it was our Dress Rehearsal. The concert at Caramoor usually feels like a final run before the New York show on Tuesday, but this year it’s different. For one thing, there is no New York show because of the #$%^#&@*@ corona virus. And there will be only a tiny, silent live audience tomorrow at Caramoor. But there will be cameras and microphones for a live stream, which we hope to show again Tuesday as a substitute for the Merkin Hall concert.

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Day 5…

March 14, 2020

This has been a lovely experience, a week of warm feelings, good discussions, support, kindness, and fine music-making. But I’ve been waiting in vain for the Big Breakthrough, the dramatic moment where you know an artist has loosened his or her shackles and is now able to fly higher than they ever did before. I wasn’t sure we were going to get one. 

I think we did today. 

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Day 4…

March 13, 2020

In 2014 Caramoor asked me to include a fifth apprentice artist in the Vocal Rising Stars mix: a pianist. Initially I balked at the suggestion—it meant another mouth to feed, a possible impediment to the intimacy of working with the singers. After the first year (with piano genius Leann Osterkamp) I changed my mind. Each of the pianists has contributed so much to the process, often rehearsing with the singers in the evening hours when I am at home wrestling with this blog. 

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Day 3…

March 12, 2020

Bénédicte Jourdois joined us today. She is one of the premier French coaches in America, a superb pianist, a peerless musician, an assistant conductor at the Met, a colleague of mine at Juilliard.

They don’t call her Bénédicte for nothing — she is a blessing. 

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Day 2…

March 10, 2020

In a week-long residency Tuesday’s rehearsal has a very particular vibe. The Monday honeymoon, the thrill of meeting for the first time, is over. Our first guest teacher, Albert Carbonell, lit up the room yesterday, but today we were left on our own to pull this show together. We don’t yet feel the pressure of a performance nipping at our heels, so no one is freaking out about memorization. In short, a low-key day, time for Michael and me to watch and listen—and figure out what everyone most needs from us.

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Day One…

March 9th, 2020

I was already looking forward to my annual residency at Caramoor, the twelfth season of the Vocal Rising Stars Program. But as the world started to come apart at the seams, my trip to Katonah became more alluring than ever. This year’s program is called “The Art of Pleasure,” a concert I devised originally for Wolf Trap a few years ago. It was meant to remind an increasingly anxious audience about the things that make life worth living, ranging from the usual suspects (love, dreams, the seaside in summer) to less conventional ones (sexual congress on the down-low and a variety of wild self-indulgences). The message is even more timely now than it had been in 2018. The corona virus has everybody freaked out. Just this evening I read that Juilliard, where I teach, is suspending classes until the end of the month.

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