Crossover Repertoire (part one)

 Classical Soprano seeking manageable musical theatre song to perform so she can have a glass of wine, eat some chocolate and not worry about singing in another language

cross·o·ver 

/ˈkrôsˌōvər/

noun

1. the process of achieving success in a different field or style, especially in popular music

We’ve all heard the term “crossover artist” before but what does that mean? In laymen’s terms, it means that a performer can be trained and often classified in one “type” of music, i.e. opera, musical theatre, pop, etc. But we’re seeing more and more artists crossover into multiple genres (think Kelli O’Hara at the Met, Sara Bareilles on Broadway, Reneé Fleming recording a jazz album, etc.) 

I’m a big fan of crossover because a) I do it a lot and b) it pushes singers to learn to step outside their comfort zone and learn more about what our incredible instruments can learn to do! 

But perhaps you’re a trained opera singer trying to sing musical theatre? Perhaps you’re a pop singer trying to learn a more legit style? It’s sometimes hard to find the right repertoire to start with in order to get that muscle memory and vocal vocabulary as part of your new and improved “norm”. Switching back and fourth between genres can seem daunting at times, but trust me - it’s all your voice, it’s all the same approach, just with different vowels, different sensations and different diction. 

Let’s start with classical sopranos who want to crossover into musical theatre…

There is a lot of incentive here for classical singers to get in touch with their MT style, since many opera houses are doing musicals as part of their seasons. So let’s start with the most obvious choices for finding good musical theatre repertoire for the classically trained soprano:

• Rodgers and Hammerstein
• Stephen Sondheim
• Jerome Kern
• Marc Blitzstein
• Kurt Weill
• Ricky Ian Gordon
• Lerner and Loewe
• Harnick and Bock
• Schmidt and Jones
• Leonard Bernstein
• Frank Loesser
• Adam Guettel 

Just go on a deep dive into these composers and you’ll find a plethora of songs that are well suited a classical sound. 

But, here are some of my favorites that are slightly more off the beaten path. (It’s okay if you just want to sing “Vanilla Ice Cream” but you better do it damn well, since 500 girls in front of you will be doing the same thing!)

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You just want some schmaltz!!!

"The Song is You" - Music in the Air - Jerome Kern

You've got a little bit of quirk…

"Inside Out" - A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder - Steven Lutvak

You’re the ingenue type…

"What Will It Be For Me?" - Regina - Marc Blitzstein

You’re ready to play the Mom roles...

"Almost Real" - The Bridges of Madison County - Jason Robert Brown

You just want to be peppy!

Wonderful, Wonderful Day - Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Johnny Mercer and Gene DePaul

You want all the drama (hello again Kelli!) 

"Is It Too Late" - My Life with Albertine - Ricky Ian Gordon 

You're just want the most beautiful poetry…

"Tavern" - Will Reynolds (poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

References: 

(available in all voice types)

• Musical Theatre for Classical Singers 
• Sondheim for Singers 
• Bernstein for Singers
• Rodgers and Hammerstein Anthology

Please comment with your favorite videos and tracks for classical crossover sopranos! (more to come for other voice types)

Practically Perfect Practice (Pt. 1 Taking Risks!)

 During this very strange time, where there is little to no performing opportunities, I’ve been exploring ways to keep honing my craft and remembering that I actually enjoy singing (in addition to it being my livelihood)

 So I’ve spent many an evening hunched over my piano (I mean playing with perfect posture) or locked in my walk in closet with my dog, belting out songs I’ve always had in the back of my mind as “one day, I’d really like to sing that song for something”. 

In the absence of a stream of things to prep for specific gigs, auditions, roles, etc it’s opened up my brain to just sing and discover new ways of using my voice that normally I don’t even try because I’m focused on something I have to sing, the next day or the next week. 

But practicing can be very tedious, boring, unfruitful if we don’t get creative! Plus….

Do you ever feel like you do your best performing in your car, your shower, or a practice room? And then ask yourself, why don’t my amazing Christina Aguilera riffs or Cecilia Bartoli ornaments translate into a performance environment.

Here are some thoughts to spice up your practicing and make the ever present stress of WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE RETURN TO IN PERSON AUDITIONS a little bit easier… 

Risky Practicing! 

I was in a show once with the great Wagernian tenor Jay Hunter Morris - in addition to giving me love life advice, he coined the phrase I have carried with me for years “Be Mighty”. He applied that to many walks of the artistic life, including challenging your own skills. Have a little faith that your voice can do more than you think it can, and just give it whirl. Just SEE if you can sing an aria, belt an F, riff like Beyonce. You’ll never know unless you try. 

You know when the best time to crack that belt, squawk that high note or totally butcher a chest to head flip? Probably not onstage with hundreds of people watching or in an audition room where you’re trying to prove to a room full of people you’ll be consistent in your role 8 times a week. 

Let's avoid doing this in an audition room

But, if we always sang in a way that was comfortable, easy, and safe we would become fairly boring, fairly quickly and significantly slow down our ability to learn new skills, expand repertoire and conquer new genres. I’m not saying go into your closet (where I’ve been doing the vast majority of my practice during covid) and belt out something you have no idea how to approach that causes tension, strain or fatigue to your cords, please don’t. But I am talking about these moments. 

“Hmm, I really want to belt that note instead of flipping into my head voice”. 

“I know that to belt I need to adjust the placement, narrow the cords and modify the vowel. We talked about how to do that in lessons.” 

“Now let’s me just see if I can” - attempt #1 - a disaster. *Slight adjustment, looks at notes from lesson. - Attempt #2 - much better, engages the rest of the body and continues to reinforce what feels good and right for a belt at that note and attempt #3 GO FOR IT and LOOK you learned how to belt. 

But it would have been much easier to just flip it right? But then you would have never figured out that you can indeed belt it instead.

All of that is to say, practice being a little risky - its an exciting way to sing. Of course, only with good technique, knowledge and vocal/body awareness, but pushing yourself in lessons and practicing is the only way to keep growing as a singer and gather the confidence you need to make those same seemingly risky decisions in a high pressure situation. Because heck, when push comes to shove if you’re nervous and attempt a vocal maneuver you haven’t hashed out in a practice room - it is VERY likely that will end in a bottle of wine and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s at home in your apartment. (Or a miraculous feat of nature you never expected and can’t figure out how to repeat!) 

So now - off to your cars, your showers and your practice room to find our what amazing new things you can do with your voice so you can blow their socks off when we're back out there singing uncomfortably loud very close to peoples faces. 

You after your amazing audition. 

Hello again....

Since last I blogged in 2018 so much has changed. Namely:

1. I am engaged to be married to my best friend! (less than 1 year till the wedding!)
2. I am an adjunct professor at American University (yes, I do still get mistaken as a student)
3. I am the proud owner of a 10lb Norwich Terrier named Howard
4. I run a small business teaching piano, music theory and voice to 25+ children weekly
5. My new apartment is decorated in the style of “hunting granny” (coming from the combination of my aesthetic “granny chic” and Ian’s “hunting lodge”)
6. I joined Actors Equity Association
7. I have bangs!
8. Oh, and we’re in the middle of a world-wide pandemic and this is the longest period of time I’ve ever gone without being in a theatre
9. I’ve learned how to meditate, eat more mindfully (I CHOOSE to eat that pizza!) and found exercise I actually enjoy (kickboxing)
10. I’m more content and at peace than I’ve ever been

I felt because of all of these changes, it was time to start a new blog but let us pay homage to some of the best highlights from my old blog “Tales of Touring”:

April 28th, 2017

WARNING:

The story I have to share with you is not for the faint of heart.

New York living, Day Two: After coming home from a 2 hour grocery store adventure where I took the subway, two buses and walked almost a mile – aggravating my sprained ankle, dodging pee and crazy people in the streets – I returned to my 3rd floor walk up sore, cold yet sweaty, wet and wind-blown. Then, while trying to use a feminine hygiene product (you’re welcome for my modesty) simultaneously burned my right knee on a scalding pipe in the middle of the floor, and cut my left thigh on the sharp edge of the bathtub. I proceeded to cook my dinner of frozen vegetables, meatballs and cous cous on a hot plate and a microwave currently residing on the floor of the living room, since it was removed when our gas went out. All the while listening to a Latin dance party from the apartment below coming up through the hole in our kitchen floor.’

Jan 5th 2017

as the female swing of “The Secret Garden”…

For weeks I was just calling in to the theatre everyday (or twice a day) and got released since all of the women had arrived happy and healthy to the theatre. However, one week of the run, I swung in for three shows in two different tracks! All of the sudden, tiny things that you would NEVER think about watching the show became a concern – i.e. – which hand does this person hold the tray in? How fast is that exit so she doesn’t get hit by that hedge? Does she cross in front of or behind that bed as it’s moving downstage? Luckily, there is a team of very supportive and informed crew members as well as the cast that had now done the show over 60 times to help with such questions. And thank goodness for the amazing dressers on this show! One track required me to change my costume 10 times in the show, 5 of them in the first 20 minutes of the show. If it were up to me, I would have ended up in just a corset and an apron 90% of the time. There was a close call during one of the shows where a shirt had gone missing and I put on my coat over my corset to find out that it was a very deep v and would have been just slightly too scandalous for a Parisian lady at the turn of the century. The look on Daisy Eagan’s face (yes the youngest Tony-award winner of all time for her role in the original production of The Secret Garden who is currently playing Martha in our show!!) when she saw me in this ensemble waiting in the quick change room for a shirt to be located was priceless.

August 29th 2016 

(Glimmerglass Festival - Sweeney Todd and La Boheme)

Another favorite moment from the summer happened at the opening night party of “The Crucible”, a production featuring world-famous Wagnerian tenor Jay Hunter Morris. In addition to performing, Jay was our “Artist-in-Residence” – also known as the therapist for the young artists. He would have dinner with us once a week and we would tell him our troubles and he would give us sound advice from a man who had been in ‘the biz’ for 30 years. So, when I went up to congratulate him on his opening night performance, I also thanked him for his most recent and very poignant talk on love and marriage in the field (which can be a very difficult thing to juggle). He then asked me if I was married, or had a boyfriend and I when I said no, he took me by the arm and said in his most sincere tone and thick Southern accent “You gotta kiss a lot of frogs, Katherine. He’s out there, you just have to kiss a lot of frogs first. I know I did”. Love advice from a star, ladies and gentleman. (HOPEFULLY I’m DONE KISSING FROGS NOW!)

December 10th 2015

as Fiona in Brigadoon…

Brigadoon began haunting my dreams but took on some strange new forms. In one dream, the director told us to perform the entire show literally. For example during “Almost Like Being in Love”, Tommy would sing “I would swear I was falling” and he would proceed to say a curse word and fall on the ground. In another dream, our cast of Brigadoon was in a relay race against a cast of Evita in which we were loosing because the Scottish characters had banded together with matching blue t-shirts but the two American men refused to join us and we were loosing time in the race by arguing about it.

Eventually those dreams subsided, as the show was preparing for opening night. Before opening, the lassies of Brigadoon did quite a bit of decorating to “the glen” as we call our dressing room (inspired by the popular Scottish soap opera “The Monarchs of the Glen”) We have many stickers and ribbons as well as a quote wall filled with our favorite quotes from the cast and creative team as well as a Scottish terrier mascot named Stuart Dalrymple. We even plotted out an Act Three of Brigadoon on a poster on the wall – the premise includes 18th century Scottish Fiona visiting the 22nd century New York with Tommy.

Summer 2015 

as Rapunzel in “Into the Woods”…

Every show has its moments of a missed lyric, a paraphrased line, a late light cue, most of which go unnoticed by the audience, however sometimes there are accidents that happen onstage that are very clear to the audience and it is up to the actor to keep the show going! For example, last week as I was coming out through the woods with my newborn twins to be reunited with my Prince, I slipped on a stump, face planted and dropped both of my babies. Luckily, I was already crying as part of the scene and Rapunzel has gone a bit nuts anyway so it wasn’t horribly out of character. However, there was an audible “ooohhh” from the audience, but of course my Prince, who is blind by this point in the show, missed the whole thing. Gotta love live theatre!

November 26th, 2014

I have now worked as a camera stand-in two years in a row at the Kennedy Center for this event, last year honoring Carol Burnett and this year Jay Leno. So what does being a camera stand-in entail you ask? Well I’ll tell you. I show up with the rest of the crew and for 6 – 8 hours we slowly work through the entire show on stage with the orchestra. Lighting cues are set, instrumental cues are given and camera angles are experimented with and later finalized. The job of a female camera stand-in is: dress in neutral colors, be an average height and weight, walk out onto the stage when someone tells you, wear a mic and read a prompter. That’s the job. My favorite part of being a stand-in is when the recorded announcer says something like “and now the incomparable Julie Andrews”, the orchestras launches into a booming rendition of “The Sound of Music” and I walk out on stage. The other big plus is during day two of rehearsal when the celebrities start showing up and you get to meet with them and in some cases read with them on stage. For example, last year Julie Andrews was supposed to be in a segment with Tony Bennett, but each celebrity only comes for his or her own time segment so the two were not there together for rehearsal. So, when Tony Bennett got up to sing “The Way You Look Tonight” guess who got to stand onstage and pretend to be Julie listening intently? This chick.

July 26th 2014

as Laurey in Oklahoma…

Of course over the run of the show we collected our fair share of stories about the always unpredictable experience of live theatre. For example, one night during “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” I was hitting Patrick (Curly) with a piece of laundry (Laurey could be quite sassy and difficult when she wanted to be) and he was running around the stage and with one whack of the laundry, his gun popped out of the holster and bounced on the ground across the stage. We met eyes and without skipping a beat Patrick said, “You see what you did Laurey? Thats dangerous!” and proceeded with the song. Another night, one of the girls changed one of the lines by accident from “And to your house a dark clubmen”  (she was telling fortunes at this point in the show) to “And to your house a dark..(LONG PAUSE)…giant”. It took of all of the willpower in the world not to bust out laughing but the girls maintained composure and now we now have a new favorite catchphrase. (In addition to “who put a nickel in you?” and “I smell what you’re stepping in”)

June 1, 2014 

as Mary in “Little House on the Prairie

While in the Midwest we have discovered a new online dating service called Farmers Only: because city folk just don’t understand. It advertises on television, and although we’ve been tempted by the commercials, we have resisted the urge to check it out first hand. After all we are city folk, so we just wouldn’t understand. We also visited Spencer, Wisconsin this week and enjoyed our best meal on tour between shows at the elementary school cafeteria. We all had a nice walk down memory lane over chocolate milk cartons and undercooked pizza. We also made several new 5th grade friends. One of them reported that he had quite a way with women and proceeded to tell me about his refrigerator full of venison and the turkey he shot over the weekend. I suppose that makes the 5th grade girls in Wisconsin weak in the knees. 

And now we pick up our stories in October 2020. 

The view from my kitchen window