This Side of Lost

During our season with the Angeles Chorale last year, it became apparent that the Los Angeles Master Chorale was the place to be for a discerning choral singer. The evidence lined up in support of this: their usual performance space was Walt Disney Concert Hall, they back up the LA Phil when needed, they paid their core group of singers (paid! to sing! what a concept), and most tellingly, they held auditions in February. February! And they required the submission of a resume first. How delightfully elitist. Most choirs hold auditions sometime in August or September right before the season starts and seem to be happy if you can carry a tune, much less requiring documentation.

Naturally, we had to try our chances at this. Samantha and I both passed the initial screening and came away from our tough auditions with low expectations. We must have impressed someone though, as we were both asked to join their expanded ranks for The Tristan Project in May of 2007. Additionally, I was called back. After a callback during which I nailed music I had sung in concerts before, I was asked to join the Master Chorale as a "supplemental" singer. This means in a volunteer capacity.

At the time I wasn't too jazzed about it all, as Tristan was inconvenient rehearsal times for comparatively little singing and the performances (or calls, as they refer to them as) I was on were few and far between. As it turned out, Tristan was not representative of the Master Chorale experience, I found two other choirs to fill the gaps in between calls and I would soon have a lot more free time on my hands than I thought I would.

During the Tristan Project, I quickly learned about the sort of people I would be singing with for the next year. The first two dudes I met while sitting around backstage were both on the SACE roster. SACE stands for Standard Artist's Contract of Employment and refers to the collective bargaining agreement between the Master Chorale and AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists, the singer's union) under which all paid singers work. So not only are they paid, but they are paid rather well comparatively. I got a taste of what that salary entails when I was offered a SACE contract for one of the gigs, and I must say it's quite a treat getting paid at that level to do something I would do for free.

But union matters aside, it was clear after a few minutes of conversation with these guys that this is what they do. Like, for a living. I mean, not just the Master Chorale, but the checks from that, along with numerous other regular and sporadic gigs, add up to a full time job. This was further confirmed in getting to know other people in the group: they have church gigs, they direct church choirs, they have teaching studios, they are adjunct music professors, they sing in the opera chorus, they do solo work, they do studio (movie, TV, commercial) gigs, they work at Disneyland, they have caroling gigs during the holidays... on and on. The opportunities for paid singing work in LA are apparently numerous if you know the right folks, belong to the right unions and, of course, have the voice and the skills.

This was an amazing realization to make. I had met professional choral singers. For so long, the mere concept of "Professional Choral Singer" was a pipe dream to me. I remember being at St. Olaf and thinking about it, and laughing at the implausibility of it. In hindsight, I should have realized earlier that, if it's possible to do it anywhere, LA is the place. Albeit, it looks a little different than I imagined it, but I have long since discovered that choral singing takes many different shapes -- shapes that were unfamiliar to a guy raised exclusively in the Lutheran choral tradition.

But anyway, back to the Master Chorale. The word for this group is one I've said a couple of time already so far: professional. The director's a pro, the marketing folks are pros, and the manager's a pro. Especially the manager. Most choirs have a volunteer manager or managers who do things like mark attendance, organize seating charts, attend to logistical details like parking, etc. Well, the Master Chorale does too, and they must pay her well because she's the best choir manager I've ever met. I cannot recall a single time I didn't know where I needed to be, when I needed to be there, and what I needed to be wearing.

And the singers are professionals. And this part is for better and for worse. For the most part, my colleagues were crack sight readers, have excellent senses of pitch, tempo and dynamics, and were incredibly sharp musicians with an eye for the sort of details (cut-offs, pronunciations, musical typos, etc.) that I barely realized were important, much less worth asking about.

All this makes for a very fun group to sing with. But the downside is that they're professionals. They're there to do their job. So many of them appear to show up with the sort of attitude that translates as 'going to the office.' Pleasant, if disinterested, smiles as they come in. Focused, but not engaged, looks on their faces as they rehearse. Cordial, if not quite friendly, in their small talk to me, if we weren't already friendly. It's a workplace. Moreover, it's a workplace with a culture already firmly established and somewhat resistant to new admittees, grown out of the shared professional musician experience many of them share in their lives here in Los Angeles.

Now, this is all fine, and perhaps even to be expected for the setting. It's just not what I'm used to. Probably one of the reasons I am put off by this atmosphere is because I don't get the sort of wide-eyed, "gee golly, thanks for being here" reaction from the 55-year-old guy sitting next to me who's always a quarter-tone flat that I usually get. Instead it's the looking through me to go flirt with this gay tenor they know from the High Holy Days gig in Beverly Hills (person in question doing the flirting may be female or male, gay or straight), ignoring me even though we spoke briefly last week, and the ever-present slightly condescending query, with cup of coffee in hand from the 7-11 down the street: "So, is this your first gig with us?"

Whatever, I can deal with the fact that they all think I'm a noob on my first call hoping to make the SACE roster in a few years if I put in my dues. What is most disappointing to me is that, despite the fact that this was the most professional choral experience I've ever had, it wasn't the most musical. Everyone responds very well to directions about dynamics and phrasing. But beyond that, they seem to glide along on their impressive skill set, sight reading the music every rehearsal with the same high level of musicianship, and fixing the mistakes, but never really improving on the Music, with a capital M. Also, it's not allowed to really enjoy anything we sing. There's always a cynical comment to make or complaints about the range to register. And Grant (the director) also seemed to rely on the group's ability to get by in this fashion. He was always careful about rehearsing some of the technically difficult parts more often. But the music that was technically easy, but could have used some polishing for the actual music making? Yeah, that seldom happened.

I'm sure this isn't an unusual case. Plenty of people have warned me about making a job out of something you love and losing the drive and motivation to do your best, just for the sake of doing it well. But I'd like to think that getting paid to make this music doesn't have to get in the way of the enjoyment of doing it.

Not everyone in the group is a pro -- there were a number of people like me who had regular jobs and this was their only choral commitment. But usually these people were also supplemental singers like me -- just pulling in the $55 stipend instead of union salaries. And usually they would actually be excited about the music and expressing how much they were enjoying the high level of musicianship. I tended to gravitate to these people and I find that most of the folks I want to stay in touch with are in this category.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed my experience with the Master Chorale. I sang some awesome music in a fantastic performance hall with fabulous musicians. But ultimately I'm not sad that I'm leaving them.