I became a singer before I became an actor. While documented in detail earlier in these posts, it was through church choirs, school choirs, choir festivals, voice lessons, vocal workshops, voice intensives, opera choruses, opera seminars, vocal technique classes and opera performance that I finally, comfortably, sanely arrived at Musical Theatre. In my early school days in Canada, Musical Theatre opportunities were nowhere to be found. There was the occasional production in University (“Oh What A Lovely War” comes to mind), but it wasn’t until Acadia Summer Playhouse in Nova Scotia that my journey forward was cemented and I didn’t look back.

I hit my stride in Portland and while great fulfillment was to be found in so many productions over those years, the intimacy of cabaret and concert performance seemed to feed my soul. In that format I got to chose what, when and where I wanted to sing and to that end I “made” work for myself. Toward the end of my Portland days I developed and presented a cabaret act which evolved even further in New York. Unfortunately, I was lured to the Prairies and the two shows I was working on for “Don’t Tell Mama’s” (a piano bar in NYC) got put firmly aside as my life was overtaken by and committed to the Manitoba Theatre Centre . But that solo performing bug never left me.

While one might think that throwing a few songs together for a show might be an easy task, it isn’t! Aside from the self-indulgence and gratification of being on stage by oneself, there are considerations that limit choices. There’s a long list of questions one must ask oneself before tackling the actual rehearsing process, not the least of which is “WHY am I doing this?” That’s the hard one. There is no esoteric answer. Oh, you can probably make one up, like touching people’s hearts or giving them another human’s point of view about something, but the actual reason is Ego (and maybe, if you’re lucky, demand). Earning a bit of money might fit in there somewhere, but, honestly, it’s the performer’s innate drive to be looked at, listened to and admired. And that’s an admission I take some pleasure in admitting at this point in my life.

I decided to take this need a bit further after the heady MTC days faded and creating work for myself became a major priority. Helping to develop the “Music At Augustine” series lead to an ideal opportunity. It couldn’t be a cabaret-style event … or, at least I came to the conclusion that it couldn’t be, not this time ‘round. This was to be an “In Recital” event, something more formal and structured, something that would bring in more than just a theatre crowd. I set to work.

With the “Why” (and “Where”) questions inwardly answered, the next thing to tackle was the “What”. In the Cabaret world, structure is a lot more informal. There is the expected rapport generated by the sheer force of personality and banter that might (or might not) captivate an audience and lead from one thing to the next. It’s a relaxed atmosphere I liked a lot. But, for a Recital, there seemed to be an ever-narrowing series of elements – periods, styles, languages, content, themes, etc., etc. – that would dictate the performance format.

Through all those lessons and workshops and intensives I had accumulated a substantial library of music. There was the usual repertoire – Schubert, Faure, Strauss, Mahler, Grieg – that challenged me mightily mainly because of the language. I was alright with the French but my German left a great deal to be desired. My Mennonite friends would lower their eyes and smirk when, in German, I would launch into Schubert’s “Erlkonig” massacring Goethe’s words. I had always felt there to be barriers when singing in a foreign language, both between me and the words and the audience and me. In my head, I would be translating the French or German into English in order to give the words some hopefully discernible meaning. The audience would be reading translations in their programs in order to understand what I was singing. Something was being lost in all those “translations”.

The other part of the collection was the English composers. I seemed to gravitate to the music of Vaughan Williams, Quilter, Moore, Ireland, Bennett. They were melodious and struck a chord in my heart. Using this English foundation meant that I could go even further afield and include American Composers as well. There would be no question about accessibility and I would feel most comfortable singing in my own language. “The English Tradition” it was and the first hurdle was crossed.

Over the years, I have experienced any number of accompanists. Some were just pianists, players one encounters at auditions, musicians before whom you set some music and they play it, adequately, functionally, efficiently. They get you by … just. Then there are good accompanists, musicians who go a bit beyond what is written on the page and assume a level of artistry that aids and abets one’s performance. There are a lot of those and I take my hat off to them. But then, there are great accompanists. I’ve worked with precious few of those. These are the rare communicators who use their own humanity to connect with me. These people have taken some time to discover who you are and to understand why you have made a particular choice, musically, emotionally, spiritually. These are people who breathe with you, live with you as you sing. I have mental images of them reaching as I reach, feeling as I feel, all the while making me WANT to sing because they’re translating themselves through the music to me. It’s a conversation being witnessed by an audience that transcends words. We’re on another level. That sounds pretty heady but I can name those few greats with whom I’ve had that experience.

Back in the Portland days, Ron Snyder took my late-night cabaret performances to another level. While things could be pretty haphazard on any particular evening depending on the audience at the Bistro where we performed, Ron would rise to every occasion. He would support, cajole, urge, surprise, insinuate and reward us all with his hands on the piano keys. We were young back then but Ron had a maturity in his playing and an understanding of what it means to “accompany” a performer. He’s still doing it to this day in Pasadena at the Stoney Point Restaurant on Saturday nights and it you want to find out what it’s like to have him on your side while you’re singing, its open mic from 9:30 to 11:30!! *

Two other early vocal mentors were Ruth Dobson and Gibner King. Ruth was both a singer and vocal coach and possessed a musical knowledge that propelled all her students toward performance heights we didn’t think possible. Gibner (at left) was legendary (He looks rather dour in the photo but was anything BUT that.) Even from this vantage point, I didn’t realize how I was lucky enough to have had him in my life. He had been the long-time accompanist for vocal greats like Ezio Pinza, Grace Moore, Eileen Farrell and Jan Peerce and his sensitivity at the piano was the result of years of concert and recital performance around the world. My sessions with him were uplifting and inspiring and I’ve never forgotten his guidance, patience, encouragement and respect as I navigated the pitfalls of Mahler and Strauss.  I had bridged a seemingly wide divide between the Classical music world and Musical Theatre during my time with these wonderful people, a divide that was firmly bridged by their artistry and partnership.

And there was Vera Long. I could probably fill this post with tales of our musical adventures. While we did some concert work from time to time, it was as a Musical Director that I discovered Vera’s inventiveness and generosity. While Musical Directors usually have a number of other musicians to “accompany” a performer, the foundation for the entire musical approach lies securely in their artistic sensibilities. There was“otherworldliness” to Vera’s approach, a spiritual translation of mere notes on a page. In our work together developing the “Messiah” and “Godspell” productions, a close collaboration evolved that continues to be my MD standard to this day. Taking what is familiar and normal and making it new and astonishing was her great strength. Re-imagining Handel in contemporary terms astounded me and energized me as a performer and director. We worked together a lot over the years and I miss those incredibly creative days.

While New York City has accompanists hanging from every lamppost looking for work, aside from those audition pianists I mentioned earlier I didn’t have much occasion to make those connections, with a couple of exceptions. In putting together those ill-fated “Don’t Tell Mama’s” cabarets, I got to work with the wonderful Norma Curley. She is an established teacher and accompanist at AMDA today, but back then was accessible and I was lucky to have her help me develop my song list. And there was Mark Lebowitz (pictured at right), sadly gone now, who could play anything in any style at the drop of a hat. Oh my God, I loved working with him! I met him during “I Only Just Got Here Myself”, that Off B’way show experience documented a few posts back. His playing was so natural, so nuanced and so joyous, and we developed a musical rapport based in a complete trust of and almost-psychic awareness of each other. As an example, the very thought of my taking a breath would make him smile knowingly, as if he was inside my head, and would make his head tilt slightly to the side and his hands hover above the keys for a split second in anticipation of my action. We were completely as one when we rehearsed together and I deeply miss that much-too-short collaboration.

But back to “In Recital” choices. Deciding who to work with was pretty easy. I had worked with Ross Houston during “Side By Side By Sondheim” at MTC a few years earlier and had found him to be great musician, affable and very easy-going. I had also heard of Celoris Miller but hadn’t experienced her proficiency personally. That was to change in a major way in the time to come as we became close friends and collaborators on a number of projects. Celoris continuously reminded me of the importance of musical detail in performing and, while I had a bead on the relationship between the words and the notes on which they’re placed, it was her insistence on clarifying and cementing those connections which, for me, made a phrase come to life and touch the listener. I can see her testing me as we worked on a song, her upper body moving closer to the keyboard and the little finger on her right hand pausing then landing on the piano at the precise moment the vowel gave meaning to the word I was singing. It was always magical for me and for the students we taught together in classes. But more of that later.

Ross was the long serving in-house accompanist for the Company classes at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. While that might sound like a rather mundane job, I discovered that through those years of playing music for ballet dancers to practice positions at the barre or perfect various combinations across the floor, he had a developed a finely tuned musical depth. The short pieces that usually accompany a dance combination repeated over and over again can become almost academic. Ross told me (in one of our long conversations about his job) that he would mentally overlay a narrative dictated by the melody line of the piece fleshed out by the accompanying notes. It was that narrative that gave his playing an defined focus and to which the dancers would physically (and emotionally) respond. For me, it worked … in spades.

Together we began to develop the program. Ross had also been a mainstay as an accompanist for the Winnipeg Music Festivals, playing for singers of all ages and abilities and, as a result, had a broad knowledge of the repertoire. It took a long time to tie down the song choices. Ross introduced me to a number of pieces I’d not heard of and they fast were included in the program and became some of my favourites to sing. We decided to base the approach in a loose chronological order starting with music from “The Arnold Book of Old Songs” gloriously arranged by Roger Quilter and move into mid-century British staples and then jumping the pond to end the first part with a group of Spirituals. I knew I wanted to include some contemporary American music with a more popular flair so ended the concert with the likes of Bernstein, Loesser and Kern. There was, however, a space at the start of the second half that needed filling.

Jon Ted Wynne was a local actor I’d worked with a few times. He was a bit shy and retiring but always produced commendable work on stage. It was purely by accident that I discovered that he was a serious composer. Upon finding out that I was doing this concert, he approached me to consider a Song Cycle he had written as an emotional response to an ill-fated romantic involvement. It had originally been scored for Baritone and Orchestra but he had reduced the instrumentation to a String Quartet. It was called “Songs of Love and Sorrow”. Talk about hiding one’s light under a bushel!! The text had been taken from the Psalms and documented his loss and despair but contrasted with the ecstasy of the affair. It was about fifteen minutes long and would serve as a unique diversion from the otherwise familiar music we were doing.

While this new work was musically challenging and tended, at times, toward the lugubrious, there were also ethereal moments of great beauty. In rehearsals I found myself getting lost in the string quartet accompaniment. Jon Ted was at the piano guiding us through the dynamics and emotional pathways of his piece. I appreciated the amount of work he had put into the piece and hoped that the audience would enter into the experience too. I was very pleased with our program.

The house (church) was full of people when we began on that late Fall Sunday afternoon. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. Here was this Song-and-Dance-Man getting all high-brow in a Recital and I feared that the audience was there out of a morbid curiosity more than anything else. I needn’t have worried. The accessibility of the opening music calmed everyone down (including me) and because it was all very familiar (“Drink To Me Only”, “Barb’ra Allen”, “All Those Endearing Young Charms”, etc.) we all relaxed. I have listened to the tape a few times since then and, objectively, hear a very secure voice with a great musicality and a beautiful tone singing with ease and confidence, even, amazingly, in the Wynn piece. The audience had risen to its feet as one at the end. I’d not prepared an encore (enough is enough, after all) but, at the intermission Ross asked what we would do if they kept calling us back. I thought for a moment as said we would repeat “Oliver Cromwell” by Benjamin Britten, the last verse of which goes “The saddle and bridle they lie on the shelf, Hee-haw, lie on the shelf. If you want any more you can sing it yourself, Hee-haw sing it yourself … sing it yourself!” I thought that was appropriate after all my ninety minutes of sweating for them. I’ve never done another “Recital” like that one. But Ross and I would continue our collaboration, one would that would last for many years in the form of another solo concert called “Shubert Alley”.

I don’t know of a person on earth who has ever had a disparaging, negative or mean thing to say about Robbie Paterson. We had worked together in the early MTC days and developed a close bond. Thirty-five years later, he remains my Best Friend! Robbie is at once generous, kind, patient, funny, gentle caring, gloriously enthusiastic (about everything), compassionate and I (and anyone else, for that matter) could go on and on. We have shared many experiences together both on stage and off. Serving as Deputy Returns Officer with him in downtown Winnipeg for the 1984 Election comes to mind. You get to know someone REAL well sitting for twelve hours talking to each other constantly while sporadically checking in voters and eating egg salad and avocado sandwiches, Greek salad, lots of coffee and smoking cigarettes at the table (ah, those were the days!)!

Robbie had been commissioned to adapt Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince” as a Musical for Manitoba Theatre for Young People to (gulp) tour schools in Winnipeg and the surrounding area. I had been asked to participate. This was a somewhat tortured decision to make after my last School Touring experience, but because MTYP had done a LOT of touring (and we would only be “out” for a week) and because it was Robbie and because it wasn’t Gilbert and Sullivan, I threw my lot in with what became a loving and (most of the time) happy crew! All of us played a number of roles (my main one was “The Fox” pictured above, as well as being on keyboards) and, at the outset, we had a great deal of input into our characters and the music, a rare luxury in the creation process. Robbie was incredibly amenable to any suggestion that came from us (me, the gentle and sweet Jamie Oliviero as The Prince (still delighting kids with his Storytelling to this day), and the delightful Andorlie Hillstrom (my partner “Fiddler” experience). Robbie had also ended up playing the “Pilot”. I wish all theatre preparation could be like this. Craig Walls was the Director and, over the rehearsal period, though fraught at times, the give-and-take, the considerations and the tailoring to everyone’s needs resulted in a great script and our becoming a very tightly knit foursome (plus Lori Montcalm as our Stage Manager) tugging at the bit to get this wonderful catered-to-kids-with-a-message piece on the boards!

Touring in Manitoba in the DEAD of an icy Winter (complete with blizzards) is not all that much fun. After a short sit-down in the Gas Station Theatre in Winnipeg and a few days of run-outs, we were in the van, eating at Chicken Delights and sleeping in old motels that smelled slightly mildew-y and of previous occupants. The saving grace in all this was that we loved each other. A small squabble here and there did nothing to affect our closeness, most of that based in how much we enjoyed doing the play. The kids were always engrossed and responsive because we were speaking on their level and that spurred us on at each performance … well, most of them anyway. There were some performances of really small kids who took to wandering amongst us on the stage while we were performing which made for some really interesting moments. But we got through it. There is something wistful about arriving in a small rural Manitoba town in mid-December. After unloading the van (a routine we eventually got down to a science with Robbie inside the truck calling out the various pieces he passed out to us – I was always concerned about how the “SIM-patizer” (our word for “synthesizer”) had fared from place to place) and setting up the stage, we would take a bit of a break to wander down the very short main street, maybe having some lunch, and getting looks from the locals as we invaded their environs. “City folks” we could hear them say. We would then head back to the “Happy Thoughts” or “Beautiful Flower” Community School and astound the kid with our work. Sometimes, not so much!

I wish that every Producer or Artistic Director of a theatre that presents touring shows be forced to experience an entire tour from beginning to end to truly understand what actors and stage management have to go through from day to day on the road! Sure, there are guidelines for performance conditions and time and travel limitations in the Young Audiences Contract but, always, they seem to go out the window when the Tour is actually happening. Our last performance was at a Christmas party for a car dealership!! Why in heaven’s name would we be booked into the Holiday Chev-Olds Car Showroom to perform? WHY?  Sales staff, their wives and kids were more interested in partying and playing than in listening to a somewhat sensitive and quiet piece of theatre. It was like trying to perform in a theatre lobby at intermission! We were actually competing with our audience! People wandered about chatting and drinking and eating – this was a party after all – and the kids ran back and forth between the cars and onto our “stage”. We sped up this performance taking ten minutes off the show and were out of there and in seventeen minutes flat after it was over, sad that it had ended this way.

I loved doing “The Little Prince”. I loved the characters I played, the play’s message and Robbie’s music. I loved the people I worked with. While I’ll never be a fan of School Touring, this Tour was made bearable by the bonds formed between “we few, we happy few” who endured for the sake of perhaps the occasional life touched in some way we might only find out about later.

But now, it was back to the “real” world! And more Dinner Theatre!!

*Sadly and suddenly, Ron Snyder passed away a couple of days ago. I hope the small paragraph above about him will stand as my tribute to his incredible talent and friendship. Our ultimate fate is to forever live in the memories of those we leave behind. Ron is in my memory.