Hallelujah in Belgium…?
We are all humans of this world, we all desire the same things: love, happiness and to be understood for who we are. It shouldn’t be so difficult to understand one another, especially not between two countries very close to each other, like for example me from Sweden/Norway and someone from, let’s say Belgium.
Belgium has, for me, been a series of ”banging my head against the wall” experiences.
It all started very well when I sang in the Early Music Competition in picturesque Bruges and came in number three in the finals! Yay!
But then… I’ve be paralysed by fear and scared of singing even the smallest note wrong in a highly acclaimed vocal ensemble. I’ve been told it just was ”not good enough” (and felt it too) after a horrible audition. I’ve been recovering from lost voice/illnes/tiredness, but forced myself into doing a very demanding concert resulting in THE WORST review EVER. A review that knocked down quite a lot of my confidence at the time.
It may sound like nothing, but I really like Belgium, I like the flemish language, the food, the beer, the cute houses and the music tradition and it’s almost like you fancy someone a lot and they just keep telling you to please, go away. Like a sad love story.
My experiences in Belgium have been the ones that I shouldn’t care about. You shouldn’t care about a bad review (even if it’s BAD). A review is something we all know we should stand above and not belittle ourselves with. But I did care. My fault. You also shouldn’t care about a horrible audition. You should just move on to the next one and the next one, I know this. But, auditions bring forth the worst in me, not as a human, but as a singer and it stands for all of the things I don’t appreciate (being judged, being ”best” and so on). This particular one was also an example of how small we performers are and how easy it is for the powerful ones to just disclaim us, as if we really don’t mean anything. No, it might not be like that, but it felt like that. I also might have told them just that afterwards. Not the smartest thing, I agree, but it felt important at the time. Also, why does being smart mean ”keep your mouth shut, even if you feel badly treated” in classical music business? As for the ensemble? I don’t know. It just wasn’t my thing. I wanted it to be my thing, but it wasn’t.
All of these things should be small arrows pointing me in the direction of where I should go and where I’ll find myself. And, maybe they are…
Anyway. On Sunday I have a chance of making amends with Belgium. On Sunday I will sing loud and clear with my own voice together with my favourite people. Maybe it’ll be a Hallelujah this time?
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SCHUMANN!!!
I'll say nothing. Watch what happens when four musicians say Yes to music and No to "rules". I give you: Ensemble Odd Size
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To sing music by dead people. And alive.
A lullaby to start the week
From Sounds, sweet Airs and the Art of Longing with me and Fredrik Bock. Lovely melody by Benedicte Torget.
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When music is scary
On the occasion of Sunday’s concert with Paulus Barokk.
I realise, when I write these posts, that many of them are about what I’ve learned and what I now have to re-learn in my own way. Always having been the good student, doing what the grown-ups told me to do, I think I now understand that I am one of the grown-ups myself, especially since I’m now the one who sometimes teaches and makes young people do what I tell them to do.
One of the things that quite strongly affect my students is Fear. Fear of doing wrong (whatever that is), fear of being wrong, fear of giving away too much, fear of sounding unfamiliar and strange etc etc. I totally sympathise with them, even though my own fear in this area didn’t start to show its ugly face until I was older. Before that, I just opened my mouth and my heart and sang magical music.
The first composer that made me realise that music can be truly magical was Johan Sebastian Bach. I think a lot of musicians' first love is Bach and his open, yet so clear and distinct music. The music is so strong that you can fill it with yourself and it is still Bach. I liked that and for years I just enjoyed the music.
And then I started hearing rumours about how strict he was and how strict the conductors that work with his music are and I kind of began to understand that there was more to it than I thought- it was not good enough to just sing as well as you possibly could. No, there was a whole universe of mathematical rules, of non vibrato rules, of tempo rules, of clear as crystal rules, and some day I must have felt it too, because suddenly I didn’t find the pleasure in his wonderful music any more. I just had to get through it. I felt fear! My throat constricted and my musicality disappeared. I was never as nervous as when I sang in one of the Bach Passions.
Of course, this was a conflict I had created by myself in my own head. No one is to be blamed. But isn’t it strange how some composers, or the tradition following them, trigger these thoughts? That we are not good enough for them? Even if, according to the sources, the singers Bach had in hand weren’t good enough for it either.
And then I sang the Coffee Cantata! Yay!
Kaffeekantata is a secular kantata that Bach wrote together with a man who called himself Picander (his real name was Christian Friedrich Henrici and I agree, Picander is a lot cooler) and is a cute little story about Liesgen who, much to her father, Herr Schlendriand’s, dismay, prefers coffee to…anything. A bit like myself actually. Ask anyone who has to live and/or work with me.
Now, the habit of drinking coffee today is not as looked down upon as it was during the days of Bach. Then coffee was bad. Today coffee is just everywhere. Literally. In our times of superabundance, the only one who can control our cravings is ourselves and if you can’t control it you are a person without integrity and the only one to be blamed. And not being able to control our sugar and caffein cravings today are considered almost as bad as... I don't don't, swearing in church?
When singing Kaffeekantata, it’s impossible to be afraid of Johan Sebastian Bach. It’s impossible to not enjoy it very much. Even though the humour is way out of date, it’s very funny in a strange way (”Give me coffee, or else I’ll be just like a dry old goat's bleating” is very to the point). And since we’re doing it in Swedish, a language I am very familiar with, it’s, for me, very down to earth and reachable. I know that the audience will meet the Johan Sebastian who could laugh at silly things. A man who writes, even though he didn’t do it much, music to silly texts can’t be that scary.
(I think I have to take this thought with me to the next St. John's Passion.)
Here is the lovely Elly Ameling singing the first soprano aria from Kaffeekantata. Ei, wie schmeckt der Coffee... "Coffee, coffee I have to have coffee, and, if someone wants to pamper me, ah, then bring me coffee as a gift!"
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It's not you. It's me. Really.
I’ve just read ”The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. It’s the kind of book that I don’t usually read (just because…), but someone read a quote from it which really provoked me, so I had to read it. ”Never take anything personal”… Well, if that’s not provoking I don’t know what is.
Ruiz writes about the problems that may occur as long as we don’t understand that we all live in our own lives, our own unique worlds and in and with our own dreams. There is no way we can really and truly understand someone else because we have no idea what is going on in their dreams and what happened in their lives.
The four agreements, according to Ruiz, are:
- Be impeccable with your words (words do hurt)
- Never take anything personal (it’s not you, it’s me.)
- Never make assumptions (again, we can never really know why or what. Ask.)
- Always do your best (Yes, your best, but not more than that. Your best is also different if you’re, for example, sick or if you’re in love)
I encourage you to read the book, since the book is clearer on what it’s about than what I am.
Sometimes I work as a model in an art school. I started doing it because I needed the money and I’ve continued doing it because I like the different perspectives it gives me. Just by doing something we normally don’t do, it does just that: gives us a new platform from where our perspectives change. We can leave it right away and observe our familiar surroundings, now a little bit different.
Well. What strikes me most is that when I look at the paintings and sketches that these students have done, it’s clearly a picture of me, but it’s also not. I am the model and they have used my forms and measurements, but it is not a painting of me, it’s themselves. Suddenly it’s very obvious. Their pictures of me depend on where in the room they stand, or if they sit. It depends on their personal taste in colours. And it depends on their life experience and on their level of knowledge. Every picture of ”me” is very different and tells a whole new story. It’s The Four Agreements in pictures.
When I feel too judged or, even, too praised, I try to remember that we see ourselves in others and others see themselves in me. And ”me” could be ”you”. Is You.
Preparing. Puzzle.
Right now: Preparing for the four books of Madrigals, by George Crumb.
Music that’s like a gigantic puzzle. In the beginning it’s just thousands of bits and pieces lying around. No borders, no contours, no clear pictures, just rhythms, words and sounds floating around trying to make sense.
But the thing with the music of a truly fantastic composer, is that however difficult I find it, I also find myself being mesmerised by the score and the sounds that actually come out and I can’t stop practising and slowly, slowly it’s falling into place.
The most important thing is to keep calm. Keep calm and turn on the metronome. One cannot rush this kind of work, it has to work itself.
The words by Lorca are a bit like the music. Fragments in the beginning, but more like little pictures as times goes.
Now, a week before the performance, there are only a few more bits of the puzzle yet to be placed. The picture is getting clearer and I can even see bits of myself and my fellow musicians in it. Who by the way are: Birgitte Volan Håvik (harp), Helen Benson (flute), Dan Styffe (double bass), Terje Viken (percussion). All are from the Oslo philharmonic orchestra.
Music is my religion. Sorry, that’s pretentious. But true.
New sounds in the air
Today I've updated my media site to be more…me. Please visit. Click on music/media.
Ophelia - or (re)Fin(d)ing my voice
In the Autumn 2004 I was a very tired mother of a two-year old, and I had also just received my Konzertexamen-diploma. Twenty-eight years old with a long education behind me and a future I didn't know anything about. Lost and a bit sad.
The musical training I'd obtained was purely classical, with an emphasis on early and contemporary music. I loved classical and romantic music with all my heart, but didn't feel I really belonged in that tradition or that way of singing.
I think my problem was that I always considered myself being a musician first – a musician who happens to use the voice as her instrument- and in the world into which I was raised a singer is a singer and a soprano even more so.
"Please don't think too much! Please don't raise your (own) voice! Please just do what we ask you to."* - is what I felt that world said to me. "Just be perfect enough".
Perfection was and is in demand. Yes, I always aim to refine my technique, work with the little details, improve my tone, making it soft, pure and strong, but I've never aspired to be perfect. There is no such thing as pure perfection, apart from, maybe a newborn baby and a rosebud.
So, back to the Autumn 2004. I had just completed my studies with a successful Debut concert and I felt lost.
In my concert program I included "Drei Lieder der Ophelia" by Richard Strauss. Genius music, perfect if you will, that captures Ophelia's state of complete despair, just before she meets her death in the river. Even though I've lived a quite happy and normal life, I felt that I could easily sympathize with her.
In the process of learning and interpreting the songs, I went to Anne-Lise Berntsen (R.I.P.), a singer who looked for more than what you could see and who always stood up for herself, doing her thing. She opened up new doors in the Ophelia/Elisabeth house, making it bigger and giving me some keys to understand the complexity of her distress. Or, not so complex- she was simply very, very sad, lonely and lost.
Anne Lise also encouraged me to sing the way I felt I had to sing, with the voice I needed to use, even if it wasn't the most beautiful one and that was very liberating for me (to be fair, Barbro Marklund-Petersone, my teacher at the State Academy of Music never tried to oppress that side of me- she always lets me just sing)
A few days before Christmas that same year I saw an announcement for an audition for a new opera- Ophelia. That's about what it said, not much information, but I felt my heart beat fast and my whole body, maybe even the universe, saying: This is it.
Next thing I remember, the big studio at the radio house in Oslo, my nerves on the outside of my body and the floor under my feet very unstable. The blood left my head (I think it went to my heart) and the sheet of music left my hands and landed on the wobbly floor.
And that was it. I went home, thinking it was all over. Of course it was all over. If you sing like that in an audition… Well, it wasn't exactly perfect.
But, of course I got the part! That's what this post is all about. And what happened next is that people started to ask me to sing, scream or whisper from my heart and soul, to dig out all the darkness and ugliness and, by all means, vulnerability. They demanded it! Suddenly there was no perfect way of doing it. Perfection gone. Beautiful opera voice out.
The composer, wonderful Henrik Hellstenius, and I had meetings where he asked me what I could do and we went from there. A lot of the material was written (even with other singers in mind) when I got it, but for me it was my part.
The whole idea with the opera (with libretto by Cecilie Løveid) is to give Ophelia the strong voice. The other characters are Hamlet, Gertrude and three Woodmaidens and they all characterize loneliness, how extremely lonely it can be to be human, and how fragile we all are (maybe not the Woodmaidens…they characterize…other things).
The key word from stage director Jon Tombre: "honesty". In this production I had nowhere to hide. No perfect tone or warm timbre to sing from within. It was an eye opener for me. Or a voice opener. For what happened in the process was that all kinds of singing became easier for me, Bach, Händel, Schönberg… Not that I always "scream" or sing with a strained voice, but once I had found my true, honest voice I felt that this was where I should always start from.
I will always be very, very grateful to Jon and Henrik (and the others around me at that time) for forcing me to open my voice and be honest, no matter what.
I have sung the part of Ophelia three times now. Two on stage and one for a recording. I find new colours in us, in her and in me everytime.
I can see, when I read my own words now, that it's not very easy to follow and it becomes sentimental and "wow, you just have to be true to yourself and everything will go your way"- it's not what I mean. I just mean… Some of us really have to do it our way or we'll get miserable, depressed and awful human beings.