{"id":2761,"date":"2013-06-07T13:12:08","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T17:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rockwellblake.com\/blog\/?p=2761"},"modified":"2014-11-27T18:39:26","modified_gmt":"2014-11-27T22:39:26","slug":"remembering-a-little-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/07\/remembering-a-little-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering A Little Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time there were two tenors auditioning for a Major Midwest Orchestra.\u00a0 These tenors were not competitors because they did not have similar voices.\u00a0 They were, and still are friendly, in fact able to share a rising star manager whose office had organized the audition in which these two guys were participating.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These tenors, being tenors, were certainly aware of one another. But more than there being another tenor on the scene had little probability of penetrating their concentration on the job at hand.\u00a0 Selling!\u00a0 They were there to sell themselves to the Major Midwest Orchestra.\u00a0 These two were so different in character that the project of selling was like one tenor selling a <\/span>Rolls Royce<\/span><\/a> and the other tenor selling a <\/span>Renegade<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 They will both get the job done, but not the same way.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These tenors were well familiar with the ambiance in which they would make their pitch for a contract at that Major Midwest Orchestra.\u00a0 They had arrived via the normal entrance, back door or stage door, to be nice, on West 65<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup> Street in NYC.\u00a0 One tenor made his way directly to the active center of organization, off stage right, where the chronological audition list was in the hands of the person responsible for shoving all the singers onto the stage one at a time.\u00a0 The other tenor made a quick appearance and quickly departed after he discovered his estimated wait time before his pitch could begin.\u00a0 The tenor still on hand found a chair, almost the only chair available, and sat down in a strategic location.\u00a0 <\/span>He had an unobstructed view of the piano and of the singer who had been shoved onto the stage of <\/span><\/span><\/span>Avery Fisher Hall<\/span><\/a> to audition. Given the fact that the singer auditioning at the time was not a tenor, the seated tenor soon forgot who it was that was making a pitch for a contract\u2026. You know, with that Major Midwest Orchestra.\u00a0 He even forgot which Major Midwest Orchestra was the reason for the audition because he did not get a contract from this Major\u2026 sorry.\u00a0 I expect the other tenor, who was diligently warming up his Rolls Royce (RR) voice, has forgotten the entire affair, but the Renegade salesman never forgot.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the fullness of time the warmed up RR tenor reappeared and proceeded to pace the rather small L shaped hall way that served as waiting area.\u00a0 Auditioning continued on the stage, the seated tenor continued to gather fodder for forgetfulness from the activities in the Hall and the warmed up RR tenor kept legging his way past the seated tenor as he measured the length of that L shaped hall way.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As time began to weigh heavily upon those still waiting, the pacing RR tenor seemed to speed up.\u00a0 Suddenly he stopped in front of the seated tenor and exclaimed: \u201cRocky, will you stop sitting there like that!? \u00a0You\u2019re making me nervous.\u201d Yes, I was sitting there, but what I did at that moment I cannot remember.\u00a0 Memory is so selective.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, time past, singers finished singing, other singers were shepherded onto the stage and finally the RR tenor got his turn.\u00a0 I found myself watching the RR tenor put those very active legs to good use.\u00a0 Out onto the stage he went and he sang gloriously.\u00a0 Then I smiled and understood the challenge.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As often happens, the order of appearance of disparate acts\/skits\/performance artists can be a tremendous disadvantage to the act that follows.\u00a0 There is sage advice that still floats around in the theatre.\u00a0 Never follow a Kids Act or Animal Act.\u00a0 As soon as the RR tenor approached the end of the aria he was so magnificently singing, I was told to get ready to stand and deliver.\u00a0 When\u00a0Neil Shicoff<\/a> finished his aria,\u00a0he<\/span> set his sights on the door, stage right where I was waiting for my turn. I wish I could remember if\/and\/or what I might have said to him as he left the stage, but I do remember that his voice seemed to me to continue to ringing in the theatre as he passed me on his way to the stairway and 65<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup> Street.\u00a0 <\/span>Onto the stage I went to meet the challenge that Neil had left floating in the auditorium for\u00a0me to face.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember what I sang or how I sang, but I do remember the vision of the two individuals in the center of the auditorium. The one we were singing for and the other one, our agent, <\/span>Matthew Epstein<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I guess I was heavily influenced by listening to Neil sing his heart out, because when Matthew got hold of me after the audition he asked me: \u201cWhy did you sing so loud?\u00a0 You sang louder than Neil!!\u201d\u00a0 I will never forget that audition because of the features so far explained, but I have to say that I never quite believed what Matthew said about my singing that day.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The last and, at the time, most important feature to this story was that no contracts ever came to anyone as a result of these auditions.\u00a0 It turned out that the person I remember seeing seated next to Matthew Epstein in the auditorium had no authority to offer contracts from that Major Midwest Orchestra.\u00a0 We singers turned out to be a free afternoon entertainment. \u00a0\u00a0As far as I know that guy who sat with Matthew may never have worked for that Major Midwest Orchestra.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Life is full of satisfactions that cannot be anticipated, and that audition is more valuable to me now for the pleasure it has given me in memory, than anything a contract could have delivered as a consequence of it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time there were two tenors auditioning for a Major Midwest Orchestra.\u00a0 These tenors were not competitors because they did not have similar voices.\u00a0 They were, and still are friendly, in fact able to share a rising star manager whose office had organized the audition in which these two guys were participating. These […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4,55,52,51],"tags":[272,271,269,270],"class_list":["post-2761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-featured","category-living","category-personal-history","category-singing","tag-auditioning","tag-avery-fisher-hall","tag-matthew-epstein","tag-neil-shicoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Avery-Fisher-Hall-Interior-small.jpg?fit=500%2C333&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2kj1l-Ix","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2770,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions\/2770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}