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Setting an uptempo vibe
Derrick Goff, onetime vocal coach at the Metropolitan Opera: “I grew up surrounded by church music, choirs, piano playing. I started taking languages. There’s vocal music in other countries, operas, art songs. Italian, French, German, Polish, Russian, English.
“I was in the young artist open applications program at the Met. My second live audition I worked my behind off preparing for. You play the piano while singing at 10:30 a.m. Nerve-wracking. Auditioning was scary.
“You must prepare. I prepared two different acts of two different operas. An hour and a half of music altogether. And I played maybe 20 minutes of that. Then they asked me to sight read. They’ll bring music to you for the first time and you have to play it.
“I was born on a farm in Charlotte, NC. I was like, get me out of here. Moving to Princeton, I went to Jersey’s Westminster Choir College for a bachelor’s degree. During COVID, we ran an online teaching platform. The old Italians would say just sustain one note as long as you can.”
So is training different in Europe than in the United States?
“There’s specific types. Opera houses are smaller. They say American singers sing too loud. Listen, everything’s bigger in America, so maybe we do, maybe we don’t.”
My husband used to work nightclubs. Anytime he drove a comedian or anyone, it was fine. Drive a crappy, lousy singer, she’d want air-conditioning off, the window shut, be a big pain to everyone. Singers can be difficult.
Derrick: “They are their instruments. Non-Americans — not used to air-conditioning — want to go out with friends, go to dinner, have a glass of wine, not worry they’ll not be able to do what a singer does. They’re tough. Not really sick. They just don’t feel like coming in. Or are still at the beach. They say, ‘I’m a little, uh, under the weather, I need to rest so that, you know, we get the best performance.’
“It’s like, ‘I want to be able to live my life. Have fun.’ Give them a little leeway, they’ll give you a little leeway.”
How about us common folk who need to fix our throats when we get a cold or something? What do we do?
Derrick: “Ginger hot honey. Tea with lemon. Also bromelain, which is a kind of anti-irritation, anti-swelling supplement that singers swear by.”
Making a pilgrimage to the Met
Need something to fill in the Thanksgiving non-work days? Museums. Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum has 19th century-smocked actors pretending to build ships. In New York, where Kardashians are dashing around flashing bras, there’s the Met. Push your 32Ds into a designer shmatta and sashay around the mini pyramid room. Visiting us now is “Divine Egypt,” which will be around into next year.
Into food? Do pastrami from Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side. It opened 1888. It’s still there.
Have a safe holiday. Pray for your loved ones — and throw in a good word for our city, our country, our president, our flag and our American way of life . . . and for ME!
Thanks. Love you. And see you again next week.