Factory Made
The questions I left open in Why Garcia? need to be closed before I move on. I complained about the singing I hear today. I said that singers are sounding factory made. Well, I didn’t say that, but it is what I implied.
My friend Ron Carter had this to say about my last blog:
“What people will have a hard time following, in my opinion, is how the luminosity of voice such as yours or Frederica von Stade’s in the early part of her career were not like anyone else. You both had a vocal luminosity and transparency that immediately set you apart. This transparency and luminosity made anyone who sang with you sound veiled and odd in comparison. This is the natural quality I think Garcia mentions in his text.”
In some ways I wish Garcia had written about naturalness, but he actually walked away from defining the individual characteristics of the singer’s voice. I have no choice but to look elsewhere for help with which to explain what it was he refused to discuss and why. In Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy, James Stark gathers together into his second chapter “Chiaroscuro: The Tractable Tract” more than enough stuff from vocal literature to justify Garcia leaving the subject for others to wrangle with. Mr. Stark even gives us a little Garcia to chew on, and, because Stark does such a great job, I have no intent to plow this field at all. For the reader who can/will not afford the cost/effort to read Stark’s book I offer my summary of his second chapter:
“The well trained voice of a gifted person pursuing an operatic career has “Chiaroscuro”; a dual quality that has characteristics that are really hard to describe. Many who have attempted to define this brilliance plus roundness of tone get so hard pressed that they just call it unmistakable to the “conditioned, cultivated or experienced” ear.”
Garcia makes a statement with a similar premise of discernment to anyone who wants to teach singing:
“Often one needs an experienced judgement (sic) to recognize in the voice of the student the germ of the true qualities which it possesses. Generally, these qualities are only in the rudimentary state, or well veiled by numerous faults from which it is necessary to free them. The essential point is to first establish the existence of them; one then manages to complete the development of them by patient and orderly studies.”
translation:Donald Paschke Da Capo Press
By using a portion of the above quote and one from Why Garcia? I’ve built a statement incorporating Garcia’s own words: “one needs an experienced judgement (sic) to recognize in the voice of the student the germ of the true qualities which it possesses” in order to bring them out from behind any vocal faults the student’s voice may present. By so liberating these qualities everyone will be able to appreciate the singers “true qualities” which are the personal “outstanding differences which distinguish the voices of various individuals”. These qualities the experienced teacher should be able to hear as a “germ” in the untrained voice.
Garcia was not writing about Chiaroscuro in some kind of code. It is really unfortunate for the voice student that “The Quest for Chiaroscuro” seems to be the new “Quest for the Holy Grail” in the pedagogical world. I’m not suggesting that there is no value in trying to lasso Chiaroscuro, hog tie it and brand it with some kind of meaningful label. I am suggesting that it has become one of the important confusions in the mind of the pedagogue.
What makes a wonderful voice wonderful is NOT Chiaroscuro. Chiaroscuro is only one quality that all wonderful operatic voices share. What makes a wonderful voice wonderful no one seems to be able to define. Garcia didn’t try. I am perfectly happy to admit that I can’t put it into words. I know a wonderful voice when I hear it. I know great singing when I hear it. Chiaroscuro is just along for the ride. Did I say this is a hearing thing, not a writing thing?
So let’s get back to my implication that many singers today sound factory made. Factories use tools to produce things. When the tools are correctly used the factory produces things of a quality and function that make everyone happy if the product is popular. Garcia gives us the list of tools he used and Chiaroscuro is notably missing. It’s missing because it is not a tool. The tools that Garcia displays on his work bench are few and very effective in their use. I will talk about them in Garcia’s Toolbox.
The books written by “factory workers” hold “Chiaroscuro” in high regard and get all technical about how this ideal may be achieved. No recorded examples are ever included. Notwithstanding all the written advice for the achievement of “Chiaroscuro”, the pedagogical results don’t seem great. What I’ve been hearing is a uniform pleasantness that neither offends nor impresses, like discount no label bulk vanilla ice-cream….. Maybe chocolate would be a better metaphor given what I’m about to assert. The confusion over how to describe “Chiaroscuro” withers into insignificance when one begins to believe that these workers don’t really know what Chiaroscuro sounds like. It seems that the consensus on the assembly line is that the inoffensive/pleasant voice is the correct example of “Chiaroscuro”. WRONG!!! That “inoffensive” voice is a great example of just one of the products that the misuse of a Garcinian tool will give you. That specific tool is Sombre Timbre. Please have a look at what I have to say about it. Tenors, don’t despair. For now, it’s the only tool described in Garcia’s Toolbox.
I have to admit that any tool that gets a quick result can be very useful. Sombre Timbre… Let’s make that a contraction: ST, OK? ST is without a doubt a really quick fix for many vocal inconveniences and its’ use is justifiable if you believe that Band-Aids are good enough for Battle Wounds. It does, however, have a progressively higher price attached to its use. The more ST one applies to the voice the more it covers over the “Chiaro” or brilliance of the voice. That brilliance is recognized in most of the old books as the key feature with which a solo voice can carry a composer’s melodies to the ears of the audience. It is the cutting edge of the Soloists’ voice and as more and more ST is applied to the voice that edge is ever more blunted and the singer has to push harder and harder to be heard in the theatre. That is if the singer wants to be heard in the theatre. When the student manages to apply ST to the max it can even cover the core personal color qualities with which the young singer started even if they were only in “germ” form. Using ST to establish a false “Chiaroscuro” in a young singer is bad factory work in my book! Garcia tells us to use ST but for completely different purposes. Did Garcia foresee this confusion and the logical result? I like to believe it to be so.
I have to thank Mr. Carter again for being so complimentary. His words, transparency and luminosity, really belong to the visual arts as does that pesky term Chiaroscuro. These qualities are achievable via good technique in whatever visual media an artist is manipulating. This is not true in singing. As metaphors, his words are valuable as helps in describing the vocal quality that “Chiaro” (clear) is meant to generally represent. None of these terms can give true understanding to someone who has not heard the voices Ron describes, but I just had to put Ron’s compliments in the blog, because Flicka is one of my very favorite people in the business, a great singer, and a big player in many good memories.
I’ve got to quit here or I might take another month to get it done. I will be visiting this issue again soon.
Read MoreMerry Christmas 2011
Merry Christmas to all. The day is here. We all cheer the snow that may not be here, especially those of us who view our computer screens in Miami or San Diego. Three cheers that the snow is up north somewhere! If we have it, I lend my voice to the cheering. I really love snow. It has become my vision of clean. In the North Country where space is ample and forest hides most everything, we Rock Eaters tend to pile up junk in our back yards among the non-functioning vehicles we are just not ready to send to the junk yard, the fishing shanties that need repair, the fishing boats that leak and the burning barrels that the State of New York used to let us use to keep the piles of junk a little shorter. When I was a little shaver those shanties, unmoving cars that should be pulling the leaky boats, burning barrels and junk piles just didn’t register on my thinker when I looked at them. It was the effect of the first Big Snow every year that made me take notice of all that stuff because the undulating blanket of snow just so beautifully took them out of sight. Now I can’t tell you when I began to think of our back yard as an unpleasant sight, but in a year I can’t name I did begin to suspect there might be a better way to decorate the dirt out back, but I never questioned my developing opinion that the yard, back and front, could never look better than when enough snow fell to redecorate everything. My word for that special beauty that only snow can give the eye is “clean”.
Clean is also a wonderful word to ponder at Christmas. It is exactly the goal each of us Christians wanted to attain, and it is one of the gifts that we are blessed to have from that Wonderful and Marvelous Savior whose birth is the reason this holiday is legally recognized by the State of New York….. You know, those guys and gals in Albany who stole our Rock Eater rights to pollute the air with our burning barrels whenever we want to, no matter who complains about it. At least they haven’t gotten around to Christmas….yet. Anyway, I always have clean in mind when I celebrate the birth of Jesus and even just a little bit of snow dresses up the day in a way no other decoration can achieve for this old man of song.
The word clean always bubbles to the top of my vocabulary as I try to coax voice students toward discovering the gift they have received. My studio is populated with students who suffer various vocal realities that seem, in my mind’s eye, to look a lot like my childhood back yard. Admittedly, the elements are completely different. What would a fishing shanty missing a sled blade have to do with a singers way of phonating? The fact is that the once useful items that populated that old back yard represent, for me, parallels with the ever useful vocal tools that each of my students employ in totally inappropriate ways. The more I am able to dissuade them from these practices the cleaner their voices become.
My Christmas message to all singers and those who wish they were singers is this. You already own a vocal instrument that was gifted to you at conception within your DNA. Except you be mute, you make a noise with it. If the noise your gift produces happens to be a beautiful sound then you have been given a rare gift. No voice teacher is going to give you that. A voice teacher can only guide you, and the best guidance is to do a metaphorical handshake with your gift. Everything your voice can do and will do for the rest of your life rests on the DNA coded structure that started forming when egg and sperm first met. Who do you think you have to thank for the exact configuration of that code donated 50/50 by your mom and dad? Not Professor Gotchaby Thethroat. Not me. Not mom and dad. Especially not yourself. Think of this Christmas as a great opportunity to celebrate the fact that the word “gifted“, if applicable to you, contains no reference to human agency. There is no room for even you to be proud.
I think you can work it out for yourself.
PS. If you’re a tenor, come back later and I will….. Better yet, use the “Please write” page.
Read MoreWhy Garcia?
In the preface of the first edition of Garcia’s
École de Garcia : traité complet de l’art du chant en deux parties Garcia introduces himself.
The son of an artist generally appreciated as a singer, and who is recommended as a master by the merited reputations of several of his students. I have collected his instructions, fruits of a long experience and of a most cultivated musical taste.
It is his method which I have wanted to reproduce by trying to reduce it to a more theoretical form and by attaching the results to the causes.
translation: Donald Paschke Da Capo Press
He says a lot in very few words. I remember thinking “How clumsy can old style language get?” Now, tenors really need to take special care about thinking anything. It took a while, but I realized that my problem was me. There are gems hidden in these preparations for getting down to business.
The understatement of his father’s reputation is so nice to read in this age of hype. It leads me to my indebtedness to James Radomski for his hard work and good writing in Manuel García (1775-1832) Chronicle of the Life of a bel canto Tenor at the Dawn of Romanticism. I already knew that “Daddy Garcia” was really something else before I ever heard his name. When Renata Booth handed me Rossini’s “Barbeire”, I took it home and played a little of it on the clarinet Peru Central School let me use to play in the Band. I reported to Renata: “I can’t sing that, with all those notes the page might as well be all black.” I could not follow the vocal line and assumed that the singer who could follow it had to be a minor god. This is how I was introduced to the music written for Manuel that still stands as an indelible witness to Garcia Senior’s formidable abilities. Dr. Radomski has done me a great service and also for the world of singing by giving us a picture of the person that was Manuel Garcia Sr. The man was not perfect, the singer not universal. His legacy, however, is magnificent and Dr. Radomski’s work puts “Daddy Garcia’s” historical significance into much better focus .
Garcia wanted us to know that his method is not his own invention. Garcia Jr. marked his dad as the real starting point for his observations. Some could say that invoking the authority of another can be a great technique for shielding oneself against criticism. Criticism of Garcia and his “Method” was and still is easy to find, but I believe his attribution of responsibility to his father for the method he published is a humble admission that his dad was primary and the son was secondary.
Moving through life in the big shadow of his dad was, no doubt, difficult in many ways for Manuel Jr.. He could be forgiven for riding youthful rebellion to denunciation of his father. Happily he was faithful to “family values” and carried his father’s efforts forward in such a manner that even today we are arguing about all the same things that surrounded the Garcia “Method” from its first publication. That argument is now much muted by PC concerns and University policy.
The effect of this “party line” consensus does have results. I received a note from a new friend on Face Book that I quote in part:
“Modern singing has developed an idea of what technique is that results in monotone singers: where coloration is tacked-on or added rather than resulting from the freeness of the voice.” Ronald Carter
I think it’s about time to push back on the tide of muted consensus that gives us such notable results.
“The human voice submits to the influence of age, sex, constitution, and undergoes innumerable modifications. Independent of the outstanding differences which distinguish the voices of various individuals, there are also an unlimited number of nuances belonging to the organ of a single individual. In fact, each voice can conform to the inflections of the most varied passions; it can imitate the cries of animals and nearly all the sounds which our ears can perceive.”
(translation: Donald Paschke – Da Capo Press)
“In our considerations, we will not concern ourselves with the different timbres which characterize and differentiate the voices of individuals, but only with the diverse timbres which the voice of the same individual presents.”
(translation: Donald Paschke – Da Capo Press)
Let’s get the words worked out. TIMBRE is really the best word to use in the technical sense, but I really like common language better…. Well, you know where I come from. Let’s just say that TIMBRE equals color. Now I feel better.
What Garcia does with these quotes is to divide the generic category, VOCAL COLORS, into two subsets.
The first subset is the specific color mix belonging to the vocal gift I told everyone about in Merry Christmas 2011. Each voice has its own color mix which distinguishes it from all other voices. If the color mix is beautiful it is a great treasure, indeed. This subset of colors I think of as being as unique as a finger print.
The second subset is the vocal colors artists should use for interpretation. Each singer has at his or her disposal, according to Garcia, an unlimited range of colors with which to interpret. Garcia chose to discuss these colors. This is also the stuff by which artists like Mel Blanc and Bobby McFerren make a living.
I find it meaningful that Garica won’t discuss the identifying characteristics of individual voices. He didn’t need to make a case for what everyone understood. Different voices sound different. And they’re supposed to. Duh!
Which brings me back to Mr. Carter. His lament is understandable. You only need to read just a little of the stuff that comes off the presses of University Publishers to find hints on why he is dissatisfied. One can find books that talk about a new “Tonal Ideal” celebrated as the new “International Standard” of singing. Interesting though they may be, I consider these books to be a real threat to the voice student, because their goal is to unify, homogenize, standardize and ultimately to monotonize voices.
Mr. Carter’s comments are encouraging to me in that he has noticed the same vocal results that I’ve noticed over the span of my career. Today singers are arriving on the stage sounding more and more similar and less and less different.
That’s why: Garcia!
Read MoreHow Garcia?
Who is the guy in the photo? This is Randy Mickelson who gave me my first singing job in New York City. He also introduced me to Garcia and his writings. When we talked about Garcia, Randy mentioned that he was working on his own translation of the Complete Treatise with which he hoped to surpass the only translation then available. His enthusiasm inspired me to read the books, and, being a tenor, I went the quick route and started looking for that available translation.
Tenors are slow, but at least I found and purchased that translation. Now it is a joy to open my copy of Donald Paschke’s collation and translation of Garcia’s work that was published in French so, so long ago. The price was certainly right when I bought the two volumes of A COMPLETE TREATISE ON THE ART OF SINGING at Patelson Music for just over thirty dollars each. Nice to see that even the open market has set a high value on Garcia’s words. Maybe if I had payed the Joseph Patelson Music House the price these two volumes would cost me today on Amazon, Imight still be able to find that store across the street from the Carnegie Hall stage door.
I say the value of Garcia’s books is beyond price. They are the effort of an expert voice teacher to pass on practical knowledge to a world full of expert self promoters. He did a wonderful job in his book and Paschke did me and everyone else a great service by collating two editions. Paschke tells us he intended to reveal the evolution of Garcia’s thinking concerning vocal pedagogy, and I thank him for that effort. But I have an even greater debt to Paschke for making the comparison between the two editions.
I have to admit that it took me many years to come to any understanding of the stuff Garcia seemed intent on revealing. The reality that he was describing seemed distant and confusing to me. When I began to question the operation of my vocal instrument i.e.. “How did I do that?” I was at a loss to explain my abilities to anyone. Tenor that I am I was not very interested in giving away any secrets, but the mechanic in me was very curious about what those secrets might be. At that point of self inspection Garcia began to make sense to me. What I began to discover was that he (Garcia) was describing everything I had learned from my voice teacher, Renata Carisio Booth.
She’s the red head in the photo. I just didn’t know she had taught me a lot of his stuff. Her style of teaching did not include explanation of any of the principles upon which the whole singing thing is based. To her I was a tenor in the rough. Lets say a voice with no accessories. She told me one day that her work was done, and I was on my own to figure out what I had learned. Many years later she reminisced about teaching me and essentially said that I did what she asked. She challenged me and I refused to give up until I met the challenge. I never asked “Why?”, and she never had to tell me a single “Because…..”.
As I dug into Paschke’s translation of Garcia an intellectual understanding began to form in my “Tenor Mind” and it soon dawned on me something that I would have surely missed but for the collation Paschke did of the two editions. Garcia’s 1872 edition was a lot shorter than the 1841 edition. The stuff cut from the later edition did not, at first, seem super important, but even so I thought it strange that Garcia would make these abridgments. Because, in part, a lot of the missing material became really helpful to me, I began to believe that the deletions were made under pressure motivated by Editorial parsimony to which Garcia reluctantly acceded.
I am super convinced that Garcia’s understanding and explanative capabilities increased over his life time. This would not be unique to him. I think it’s normal for anyone in the professions to increase in wisdom as experience accumulates, tenors being the normal exception. Garcia was a baritone by the way. I believe the word count should have increased with each new edition. That the opposite seems to be true is sufficient evidence for this tenor to understand that printing costs money. Tenors don’t want to give away secrets, and publishers can be forgiven for feeling the same about paper.
Now we get to the real “So what?”. So….. I am convinced that Garcia wrote his first edition under the same Editorial Parsimony that I believe resulted in the Condensed Version that followed his original publication. Again “So what?”. The best idea this tenor ever had “Is what!”….. Of course there are other ideas that are closer to #1 on the “Top Ten list of Best Ideas I Ever Had”. I just can’t resist an opportunity for hyperbole. A good example of an even better idea is me asking my wife to marry me. That statement is not hyperbole. Now back to Garcia. I thought I should read Garcia as if it were some sort of Short Hand. That started me really digging in, and now I think I can offer some thoughts on the message that Garcia was trying to compress into way too few pages.
Thank you Donald V. Paschke wherever you are.
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How I started.
I could have been really good at the work I’m playing at in this photo. I kept my car, yes it is the one that has me in it’s jaws, happy for about 20 years. I sold it in 2003 and it may still be running around Plattsburgh for all I know.
Because I was blessed to meet the people I needed exactly when I needed them along the path of my life, I escaped having to get a real job like the one implied by that Photo Opportunity. These strategic arrivals in my life either gave me what I needed or I stole things from them just when the time was right. I admit that it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that I stole things. When a talented person had no intention of helping me, but I could recognize the tools that they were using to obtain their success, they could not avoid my theft, and I expect most of them didn’t notice. I remember many opportunities for larcenies and I’m grateful to these artists even more than their applauding audiences. I still appreciate them and know the reason for that appreciation. I am even more obliged to those who just handed me stuff. The big blessings came from them. If God keeps me here, among the living, long enough I might have opportunity to mention each and every one of them but for now I will list the really important people who just gave me what they had to offer just when I needed it.
It started with my dad Robert who always tolerated me and was always proud of me. I introduce him in Where I come from.
When I got to grade school I was scooped up by two teachers Joanne and Lynn Wilke at Peru Central School. 
They nurtured this little Rock Eater child destined to wear the lesser label Tenor. I loved it. I loved them, and Lynn is still being Lynn even today. A few years before I met the Wilkes, Lynn did a number on his back. The damage he did at Ausable Chasm caught up with him just in time to bring “Red” into my life. Lynn went into traction and I went into training.
Renata Carisio Booth, known to her students as “Red” because of her flaming red hair not to mention her personality, swept into Peru Central School like a wind that the north country had never seen before.
She was the first of her kind that I ever met. Note that Renata is the one in the turban and that she was a true Diva. The framed picture just behind her head is a snap of….. guess who? She had a profound effect on my future. The just in time character of our meeting is beyond compare. The future envisioned by this little Rock Eater quickly changed into something that made keeping my teeth much more important. So I quit trying to knock them out.
Not withstanding my efforts to eliminate from my smile those two front Buck Teeth on two occasions, they are still in there. Broken, but still serving. How can you claim Rock Eater status and not have strong chompers?
It was in Renata’s house a magnificent encounter took place that led me to eventually ask just the right question. My future wife took up taking lessons with Renata. She, for no reason apparent to this tenor, noticed me. That event led to a thread of pure Gold in the fabric of my personal life. Full disclosure will not be part of these pages, but some very personal history is essential to the story of Renata and Rocky. I’ll get back to that story another time.
The next super beneficial meeting to my future life as a tenor was in Washington, DC while I was dodging Vietnam in the U.S. Navy Band Sea Chanters. I entered a vocal competition in which I got noticed by two of the nicest talented people I ever met in the business: Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart.
These lovely people carried stories of me to New York City and mentioned me to their agent, Matthew Epstein, pictured with them here:
I got noticed by other people along the way before my wife Debbie, yes, the beautiful girl that Renata put in my path, and I moved to Yonkers but they will have to wait for another time. It was in those first days of learning the cheapest route from Yonkers to Manhattan and how to do auditions I got noticed by the next big influence in my career.
George London held a cattle call audition for the National Opera Institute at Juilliard School. At his side in the auditorium was one of my new advocates: Evelyn Lear. In good tenor fashion, I did not clearly explain to the pianist where to start the aria I was going to sing. He started in a measure I didn’t expect and egg spread across my face when I forgot to start singing. I stopped the pianist and explained there on the stage what I should have made clear back in the wings. George piped up from the auditorium: “Why don’t you lay out a board and play a few games of checkers while you’re at it?” My dreams of study money instantly vanished, but in short order we got going again this time with this tenor using his voice for singing. I believe Ms. Lear was a calming influence in that audition and my best evidence is that George gave me a grant from the NOI and my operatic debut in Washington, DC. He even threw in a few voice lessons.
This photo is from one of them. No question in my mind. Evelyn sitting next to George was just in time.
Matthew Epstein gave me an audition when I got to Yonkers. He said in a very nice way: “Don’t call me. I’ll call you, and by the way go out and buy a decent suit for auditions. When you look like you don’t need a job, you’re more likely to get one.” That advice is good for anyone. So I spent six months auditioning in my new suit, tie, shirt, shoes and socks….. I think I may have bought a watch too, who can remember these things?… Anyway, with a little more experience and a dapper appearance I sang an audition that Matthew just happened to attend. Was that just in time? Very few days passed before I got the call that I had been hoping for. Down I drove to Manhattan to sign a CAMI management contract with Matthew Epstein.
In those days that event was big enough to be called a good start.
Read MoreWhere I come from.
This is me! I also appear on the Welcome Page proudly posing in front of the family garden. This kid is still having fun even as an old man. These photos give you an idea of what it’s like up north of everybody else in New York State. Black and white photography can capture most of the character of the shiver weather, but mosquito slapping weather here in the north is full of green that escapes that chemical retina.
Back when I was little, we northerners used to be insulated from mass invasion on nearly every side but one. Canada is just a whistle stop or two north of us. Our history has been impacted by this reality for as long as we have had a history to note. Not that we were noticed. That is until the Cold War caused an economic boom in Plattsburgh. Wow I remember my dad putting me on the roof of his car to watch the HUGE earth moving machines creating a runway for B 47s and destroying the insular character of our forest hide away. In the fullness of time, true to form, the Feds lost interest in that Air Force Base and handed it over to local authorities to play with as they saw fit. The damage was already done and we are now no more isolated than any other part of the country on the Interstate Highway System. By the way we are noticed now. TV shows call our town a Hell Hole and the citizens here Rock Eaters. Also by the way, those TV shows who have us on their radar screens originate from New York City. We think of them as to the extreme south. Read my words to mean southerners.
The natural beauty of The North Country goes a long way to recommend this area to prospective citizens, and blessed we are in that department. I’m really happy about this because it was that natural beauty that inspired my wife’s father to settle his family here. Well that’s not the only reason I’m happy God blessed this part of the world with outstanding natural attributes, but it’s a good one.
I want to introduce my Dad:
He and the plastic animals behind him are no longer with us. My Dad died a few years back. I miss him a lot. He supported me in everything I did as a kid until he caught me stealing apples. He was a kind and generous man who didn’t have much, but was open handed none the less. He even provided a pool when his brothers and sisters would come by to visit. My Dad had only one child. That be me. (a little north country speak) The rest of his siblings who got married worked a little harder at populating the Earth. Come to think of it, I believe that even the unmarried ones had a go at this project, and who can say they didn’t surpass my Dad’s efforts?
These kids soaking with me in the canvas pool represent a very small percentage of the cousins I can claim as family. I lost count a long time ago. Tenor that I was to become I knew that front and center was the power position. There I am down center front in profile with the dark hair. Would you look at that hair. Things do change don’t they.
Those shinning simple days in the 50s gave me a rock solid opinion that life as a poor person was certainly blessed, BUT!!! How much fun we all had with near nothing and I had clear evidence that our parents were also well entertained. I acquired an ability to escape a personal predicament that seems to be a national torture in the USA today. Well I will admit that History did not start with my birth and this problem has been with us even longer than the USA has been around. I’ll get to that in the blogs that follow.
Did I mention I’m a tenor? I love tenor jokes. I also suffer from the deficiencies these jokes exploit to make you and me laugh. I’m going to leave the rest of my story to the many Blogs I hope to write as I overcome, little by little, the intrinsic laziness with which we tenors are branded.
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