Turn of the Year: Kansas, Brooklyn and Nova Scotia!

This blog has been a long time coming… I keep adding to it, picking up and moving around before I have had a chance to “polish” or post it. So here it is in various parts:

Part 1- The Holidays in the Midwest

The two weeks with my family in Kansas were incredibly restorative. We have played a lot of games, shared many meals, watched a couple of movies and laughed a lot, but I feel especially revived by meaningful conversations and having had the space to exist around others, letting their energy seep into my creative processes and feeling motivated and ready to go towards exciting new projects and opportunities in this new phase of life.

I spent a lot of time working, but in ways that felt exciting and not draining. In thinking about future programming, I dig through repertoire I know or know of and give it shape and life in a way that it becomes emotionally and intellectually accessible. I get so jazzed while doing this work that it can be hard to take a break. I loved having the emotional space and openness to do this work while I was home. Daylight streaming into the living room, open space sometimes crossed by others in the family going from room to room, not worrying about meals or other adulty details of life…

I also planned a home-coming recital for the week before I left- an ambitious and technically challenging program of arias for upcoming auditions and cabaret songs that are both fun and potentially usable for upcoming programs. I challenged myself to memorize the whole thing because I perform better (and sing better!) when I am not tied to a score and I know it is much more engaging for the audience when I am not looking at music- the eyes are access to the heart in performance. But in choosing to memorize the program, I put a lot more work in front of myself. But it came together, I did it and had a wonderful reception from my people in Central Kansas.

In addition to this concert, I sang for the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition in my birthplace of Tulsa, OK. I decided to manifest a win and I really sang my heart out. And I won! This means another trip in my near future, so I will be traveling back to the midwest for the Regional finals next month.

It was very special to visit Tulsa with Dad (and Kendra!) and to hear stories and memories from him about our family and his life there, as I have no memories of it myself. We moved to VA when I was three. We went to a steakhouse that Dad remembered smelling from the highway, we visited our old house, drive past our old church and I finally got to see the campus of Oral Roberts University, where my parents both completed their undergraduate degrees. It was also so wonderful to have the love and support of Dad and Kendra with me as I went to this audition. I felt so much more relaxed and, as they got to be in the audience, I felt more motivated to sing for my people!

The next day, I flew to Harrisburg, where my sister Grace picked me up and I packed up the trusty Honda Civic to move as much from Grace’s basement to Brooklyn as possible.

Part 2- my absurd timing of “in between” time

I moved into my apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and am loving living with my cousin, Graceanne. I have not had a lot of time to discover the area very much between unpacking and organizing, teaching, prepping for upcoming work, reconnecting with friends… 

I even traveled to Maryland to sing an audition that first week... Things are mostly  where I want them to be in my room and the organization helps me feel far less stressed in my space. I still need to acquire a desk, but I am trying to find more peace in patience. I am also looking forward to having a little time to actually settle into my apartment a bit: establish a routine, find places to walk, discover my go-to grocery store and maybe a café where I can work when I need to get out of the apartment, etc.

Part 3- Nova Scotia

I have just returned from a week in Nova Scotia, where I was performing a couple of recitals and various other things with my dear friend, Mary, with whom I have been collaborating since 2017. You may remember that we did a concert together in Stonington, Maine this past August. We are always looking for creative ways to get together and perform and also find fun things to do along the way. This trip was particularly special because we were performing as a duo for the first time at Acadia University, where Mary has been working since 2017, a job she was offered during a rehearsal for our first concert tour in 2017. Things are starting to come full circle as we continue to grow in our lives and our art. It is very exciting to have a partner with whom one has worked over an extended time and see the progress that you both make over years and distance, and if performing some of the same repertoire, it is particularly special to see the ways that you grow into that repertoire, both technically and musically. Mary and I certainly had that experience on this particular trip. We performed Jake Heggie’s “The Deepest Desire,” a powerful piece of chamber music for flute, mezzo-soprano and piano to the poetry of Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, and activist against the death penalty in the US. Where Dead Man Walking (Heggie also penned an opera to this narrative of Sister Helen’s) tells the story, “The Deepest Desire” are four poems that dig into the process of Sister Helen’s spiritual calling to working with the poor and eventually to the activist work that gave her a national platform and that she still does today. The poetry is remarkable and Heggie uses all of the instruments in a beautiful way to mark Sister Helen’s work, personality and the philosophical and spiritual elements of her poetry. When Mary and I first worked on this piece, we performed it with flutist and dear friend, Melissa Mashner, in hometown concert tours during the summers of 2017 and 2018. For our concert in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, we performed with Mary’s colleage Jack Chen. It was so exciting to revisit this music as mature musicians and to perform it with Jack who had such unique perspectives on the flute part that brought out many fresh elements of the score from his perspective. Of course, getting to do this piece again made us miss Melissa, who we were supposed to see for her wedding in 2020, but as we all know…

Mary and I also revisited Poulenc’s Le Travail du Peintre. Our friend, Nora, and I had performed this piece together first in 2019, when we also commissioned a friend to create a projection to accompany the colorful poetry and music describing paintings by 7 significant painters in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a remarkable work of interdisciplinary art and as Paul Eluard’s poetry is more colorful than narrative, it is a wonderful piece to pair with visuals of the work that inspired the poet and composer. All of these artists were friends, of course, as was wont during the turn of the (20th) century in both Paris and Vienna- reasons that I love and feel so drawn to these cities and that period of artistic output in the Western tradition. Mary and I had taken up this piece in November of 2019 for a couple of concerts in Ohio and Indiana. It is quite a dense score, however, and revisiting it 3 years later had made a significant impact on our interpretation and technical capacity for the piece. It was thrilling to perform it with such oomph! Mary is a remarkable pianist and I always feel completely supported by her playing of whatever ridiculous repertoire I may throw her way. This piece was no exception and we got to remount Camilla’s projection of it for the University concert we performed last Thursday.

To round off the program, we performed a selection of songs by Hugo Wolf, from his Spanisches Liederbuch and his Mörike Lieder. We had never done these together, but we were delighted with how well they rounded off the program: a little bit of levity, a little bit of philosophy and a little bit of Wagnerian love. It was fascinating to perform these songs twice: once from the stage, for the University concert, and once in a large room, the kind such pieces were intended to be performed in. We also performed the Poulenc at this second venue, as well as a collection of cabaret songs and some Maritime folk songs, which we revisited from our concert in Maine. In the room concert, the poulenc felt big and dense, where it had felt quite full and appropriate from the stage. The Wolf songs, by contrast, felt remarkably light (Wolf?? Light?? Yes, indeed!) and had more space for subtlety. Mark this up as continuing education on the art of programming for specific spaces!

Mostly, Mary and I worked on this trip. This is not usual for us- we are usually gallivanting all over the place when we perform together: going on kayak adventures, checking out local museums and points of interest. But this time around, Mary had to work, but I also wasn’t feeling well (amazing how these things catch up with you when you push yourself a little too hard). We rehearsed, we worked, we performed, it snowed! And I was feeling much better for our day off on Saturday, when we finally had time to drive around and see some things, eat some things, drink some things and visit some things. It was a perfect day off and really the exclamation point on the trip. I must add though, that these kinds of trips can feel quite intense. Performing does require significant energy- as does traveling. But having friends like Mary makes it all feel natural and easy. We have similar culture (both growing up in the Mennonite Church) and similar enough habits, also we are both type A, but in different ways that happen to compliment each other, so we get along in the same space remarkably well. (I use the word remarkable too much… I hope you are marking and remarking my word ;-).

Part 4- Conclusion (for today)

Takeaways from my time in Canada: great friendship, great music-making, great cider, beautiful snow, creative scene, friendly people… and some other things. I am reflecting and thinking a lot, but that’s not news. I love performing and talking to Mary, who is remarkably perceptive and very concise at communicating her observations, helped me clarify some things about myself, like that I am resourceful and resilient- something I have known, but not really to what extent. I have options, and I have chosen and continue to choose the path I am currently on, despite its challenges. But it is really freeing to see that I have options. Freedom is continuing to choose the path you are on. That’s where I am right now. I am choosing NYC, despite its challenges, and I am choosing my performing, traveling lifestyle, despite its challenges.

I am thankful for my flexible schedule. Sometimes it makes me feel a bit willy-nilly, but it also gives me a lot of remarkable space to take care of myself, to dream, to be flexible (like getting a call yesterday to sing an audition tomorrow!) and to stay connected with people, something I continue to be reminded of how important it is to me. I am leaving on Sunday to fly to Florida for a few days to sing an audition that has been in the making for over a year. I am looking forward to staying with and reconnecting with my aunt Karis and her partner Owen while there, before returning to NYC for a slightly longer period of time.

Much love to all of you sticking with me and reading all of this!

My still apt title, 

Marie on the Road

PS I forgot to mention that my friend Mitchell was in town auditioning for the acting principal Oboe position at the Metropolitan Opera, and not only did I get to spend most of a day with him eating pizza, drinking matcha and hanging out with friends, but he also WON THE AUDITION!!!! Yeehaw!