Were you ever a scout? Boy Scout? Girl Scout? Cub Scout? Talent Scout? If you were, then you remember your sash full of merit badges (or, possibly, you remember your friends’ sashes full of merit badges, and your own sad sash with that one lone merit badge you got for carving your name onto a […]
Category Archives: Tenor Tuesday
Music I Wish I Had Written
Have you ever loved something so much that you wish you had created it? It sounds, on the surface, like a very strange thing. Are we not lazy Americans?! Is it not better to have someone else do the work, and then to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor? What is is […]
23 Reasons to Have a Tenor as a Dad
1) If you get lost, you can always hear him over a crowd. 2) Every thing that happens is a new musical adventure. 3) He may be bland, in a romantic sort of way, but at least he is not a bumbling old person, an evil villain, or a doctor. 4) Instead of going to boring […]
The Homophobic Opera Singer, and Other Living Oxymorons
If you were following the news in the opera world over the past week, chances are you came across the story of Georgian soprano Tamar Iveri, who was happily preparing for a show with Opera Australia when suddenly somebody noticed that she had posted a letter online last year that referred to non-heterosexual persons as, […]
What If My Kids Want to Be Musicians?!
So here’s a funny thought. I am a musician by trade, and my children are way too young to know what they want to be yet. They think they know, but I don’t believe “Iron Man” is an actual job. At least not yet. But someday they will have to make career choices, and there […]
Music is the First to Go
It is school budget voting day today here in Burlington. Again. Voters previously rejected the school budget, so now we have to vote on version 2. And a lot of things have happened since version 1. For one thing, we have many new school board members. We didn’t just reject the budget, but the folks […]
Okay, Okay, I’ll Talk About Fat Opera Singers Again
I have spoken before about just how fat opera singers should be, but it seems that my advice did not take hold across America and the world, because we’re at it again. It’s time for another cultural argument about the weight of various opera singers, and pretty much only the female ones (though not entirely only […]
How to Sing When You’re Nervous
I know how to sing when I am sick. Many people tell me. “Oh, I’m not feeling well today. I can’t sing. I have a cold.” But the truth is, professional singers often don’t have that luxury. I would have to be preeeeeety sick to cancel a performance. But the thing is, being sick doesn’t […]
Should You Be an NFL Cheerleader, or an Opera Singer?
A dark and terrible secret has been revealed recently, concerning the NFL and their compensation of cheerleaders. Not only did the cheerleaders receive no benefits, but they received almost no salary. They were responsible for all of their own training, equipment, travel expenses, and pretty much everything else that costs money, and then were required […]
Watchers and Doers, Sitters and Singers
In any arts organization that provides some sort of live production (and probably those that don’t), there is a constant struggle to fill the seats with more butts. For financial reasons, ticket sales are important. For spiritual reasons, audience cultivation gives one a sense of purpose and the hope that perhaps one is not wasting […]