“Gotcha” vs. “I got you”

Bringing your inner amateur into the arena.

On this humid, cloudy morning in Shreveport, Lousiana, I‘m sitting in a coffee shop mainlining espresso three hours before the competition begins. Twenty singers and forty arias from now, the judges and me will head out to dinner and collapse back in our hotel rooms before half of the singers return tomorrow to sing again, hoping to walk away with cash.

Competition gets a bad rap these days for all sorts of good reasons, but I have to admit I‘m still a fan. Give me an afternoon filled with feats of strenth (o hai 90s frens). Ice skaters, gymnasts, musicians, fencers, martial artists, archers, weightlifters, runners - give me all of it, please. The human body rooted and laser focused before the downbeat or the starting shot, then stretched, in flight, in full cry, moving at lightning speed: I never get tired of seeing what people can do.

When I hear a musician performing in top technical and expressive form, it inspires me down at some adrenal level, sends me running to the practice room to challenge my own body again and again. The experience of pushing like that, obsessively honing a set of discrete skills and executing them under pressure - it’s awesome. It‘s also painful, frustrating, and fraught with perils both physical and mental. In an era when we‘re collectively unpacking so much of the damage caused by the systems that have grown up to feed off of human achievement, we‘re struggling to know what to do about competition.

This is a particularly fraught conversation for American musicians, because it seems clear that our culture likes competition much more than it likes…well, music. Even our top performers in our most popular fields know that they‘ll profit from a good rivalry narrative (if you don’t have haters are you even famous?). Of the classical arts, opera‘s still practically synonymous with rivalry, with a long history of sending its vocal gladiators into the arena alone to triumph or fail, then pitting its victors against one another. It‘s part of the reason I loved the Kennedy Center tribute to Renée Fleming, with four sopranos singing Dvorak to her - that was a great picture of diva solidarity, a tiny moment intrepidly counteracting centuries of catty, misogynist stereotype.

Gah, where was I? Oh right: I love playing the piano for a singing competition. It feels like I‘m the pit crew for a succession of race car drivers, except this crew is along for the entire ride. Each of the singers will have traveled to Shreveport (or wherever the random location of a donor‘s or foundation‘s prize money might be), to stay in a hotel, unwrinkle their dress clothes, try to get some sleep, try not to eat badly on the road, try to warm up, try not to doomscroll, try to remember, try not to obsess…and then, to try, in about ten minutes of singing, to rise just enough above their colleagues in some combination of objective and subjective ways, which totally depend on the aesthetics and histories of the several adjudicators, in order to walk away with a prize. It‘s so crazy! It’s so much! But they don‘t do it alone: we pianists are right there with them, and we can use our skills and energies to support and enhance theirs. It‘s thrilling work.

Even without a prize, there are reasons to stand and compete. The industry is watching, sure, but each performer also has the chance to measure themself against themself in a way that just isn’t possible absent the pressure. It takes a lot of work to hone your skills, but it’s another job entirely to learn how to Do The Thing: walk out in front of an audience, access everything you practiced, and then not just hit all your marks, but bring something special, allow your uniqueness to shine through those thousands of calculations.

There are lots of nerves and notes ahead this morning. Back into the arena we go.

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You might think that non-solo singing is free of all that pressure.

In my 2024 Amateur Challenge era (full disclosure: no orchestra this semester, my schedule couldn’t make it work), I’ve been singing with a community choir and allowing myself to get all Call The Midwife about it - neighbors coming together, each vocal gift a valuable part of the whole, etc. And all that’s true, for sure! We had a concert just a few weeks ago and it was wonderful. I stood shakily on the back riser and added my voice to the rest of the altos as we sailed through unapologetically beautiful stuff, a packed audience applauding enthusiastically for each piece. I looked out at the crowd, each person there not because of exclusive repertoire or flawless execution, but because they cared about someone taking part. I wondered what my own bubble of a musical world could learn from it all.

After that, while in Michigan to rehearse an upcoming recital, I attended a concert of combined Greek Orthodox choirs (BIL and SIL sing with one of the represented groups). I sat beneath the stunning iconography of the dome and listened as the voices, some vibrant with youth and others frayed with age, wrapped themselves around chants composed hundreds of years ago or yesterday, dozens of people carrying on the legacy of their ancestors, Christos Anesti right there in St. Clair Shores.

And the day before yesterday, before driving to Shreveport, I played piano with my university’s chamber singers for a giant choral work. These young music majors, on the cusp of careers as educators and performers, were not singing for the fun of it, but as they stepped deftly across centuries and styles, there was so much delight on offer.

In all these groups, the shared dynamic was palpable - communal breath, individual eyes fixed on the conductor, the energy of listening to neighbors and across the group. It’s easy to jump from that community vibe to a comparison between the choral collective and the operatic gladiators, but we mistake if we think that choruses don’t know competition. In Texas we can definitely tell you that ranking such groups early and often is our jam. And what group hasn’t reveled in their state evaluations, rightfully so? Yet just this morning I was reading a friend’s comment thread on the pointlessness of these competitions, how careers can be made and lost on them, and how individual adjudicator’s attitudes can make or break a choir’s (and therefore a choir teacher’s) chances.

Competition over music: in our country, it’s easier for musicians to find a contest than a job.

Maybe the biggest difference between choir and opera isn’t the costumes or the attitude or the style of vibrato. Maybe it’s that the solo route is so very lonely. Classical music has such a “gotcha” practice - wrong note, wrong vowel, wrong style choices, aha, gotcha! Didn’t do your homework, didn’t study with the right teacher, didn’t practice enough! A choir has some solidarity in moments like this, shoulders to cry on and friends to split the tab. A solo singer only has the hotel room and the return ticket; too often, the gotcha is coming from inside the house.

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In choir rehearsal, I never talk.

It’s impossible to describe the joy I feel at not correcting anything or keeping track of mistakes, after almost forty years of doing just that on the regular to make my living. There are many skilled musicians in our choir, and they regularly ask questions and point things out and make us better. I am so thankful for them as I selfishly sit back. My vocal cords come more confidently together with each onset, and I think I’m singing better in tune; step by step, singing comes back to me, and I can start to remember the pleasure of stepping into an ongoing wave of sound, existing as part of a whole and not even understanding how my little noise fits into it. I can’t imagine adding evaluation to this process.

And now, here’s something magic.

Today, I think I experienced playing forty bangers of the opera repertoire in just the same way as I experience choir. I was open, attentive, and free, and I didn’t think for a second about how well anybody was executing, least of all me. I got to revel in the joy of my deep knowledge of this tiny, weird little cul-de-sac of the musical world, and of bringing that expertise to bear on other people’s performances, enhancing their contributions and setting them up to do well.

I’ve enjoyed doing just that many times before. But maybe today, I felt such intense joy because opera isn’t my main job anymore - and for the first time since my teens, I’ve been practicing doing music that isn’t my job, practicing settling into its pleasure.

Musicians, this combination of precision and absolute dumb enjoyment doesn’t just come. We have to look for it. It’s worth the search.

Take the amateur challenge and watch what happens, pro.

Thanks for this one to the competitors of the 2024 Shreveport Opera Competition, the Baylor University Chamber Singers, the Central Texas Choral Society, and Mark and Jean.