“What are you willing to give up?”

Today I learned that my first professional (post-college) voice teacher died in 2024. As the “In Memoriam” names were read aloud at the NATS Conference business meeting, I gasped to hear the name “Ronald T. Combs”. Tears rolled down my cheeks as memories filled my mind of Dr. Combs and our lessons in Chicago in the mid 1980s. I arrived in Chicago with a freshly minted masters degree in vocal performance and had already been singing successfully in the San Francisco Bay Area, singing roles with smaller opera companies and receiving the East Bay Opera Young Artist Award. I eagerly relocated to the Chicago area, where my husband had started a new job while I completed my final semester of grad school. I was so excited to continue my singing career in this new city. Before I even started auditioning, I looked for a voice teacher. Dr. Ronald Combs was highly regarded and I was thrilled that he had a spot for me in his studio. I loved my lessons! Unlike my college lessons, which appropriately included a broad range of musicianship skills, languages, and classical genres and repertoire, Dr. Combs specialized in the technical facility and roles that I would specifically audition for and perform as a young light lyric coloratura soubrette soprano. My technique flourished under his tutelage and my confidence soared as I began to audition for Chicago area opera companies, professional choral ensembles, operetta, and professional studio recording. I performed with Opera Works and a children’s opera company that toured the Tri-State, I performed Gilbert & Sullivan leading soprano roles with the Savoy-Aires and Chicago Gilbert & Sullivan Series (which performed the entire 14-show G&S canon in a single season in a black box theater with piano), I sang soprano solos with a few suburban orchestras and choirs, placed in a competition I don’t remember, and was a studio vocalist for choral demos with Hope Publishing. In other words, I was doing well! After I’d studied with Dr. Combs for about a year I asked him, during a lesson, for an honest evaluation. “Do you think I have what it takes for an international singing career?”….

"Ya done good, kid!" That’s what my mother has been saying for 50+ years, after every professional show or concert, college or high school performance, and elementary school music program. My advice to parents of young performers: Don't faun and fuss; don't criticize and compare. Just be there for your kid, drive them to practices, maybe sew a costume, help build a set, bring snacks, and applaud proudly from the audience. Hopefully not behind your phone screen….

““My mother has always been the "gadget lady" who keeps up with current tech trends. When I was younger, that meant we had a mac before they were household names. This thing was super powerful, we're talking 128 megs of RAM(lol). I remember her showing me the computer, how to use it, the basics of typing etc. and just being blown away by it all. She subscribed to a magazine called Mac Addict, which came with a CD-Rom every month with various trial software, considering internet speeds weren't capable of downloading those MASSIVE 20 meg file sizes at the time. But what was also on those discs each month were game demos. I would play those demos over and over, and when the "Try the full game!" window would pop up at the end, it just made my little kid brain go crazy with the possibilities of what the full game would contain. Since, when you're a kid, the thought of paying $10 for a game felt like I had to win the lottery, rent out my room, and sell off a limb just to afford it, I was content playing those demos and having my imagination fill in the rest of the game. It gave me such a sense of wonder about game design, although this is a realization I came to much later in life. Trust me, my little kid imagination version of Exile 3: Ruined World is much better than the original.

I remember my sister and I would bug my mom endlessly to play "Mario teaches typing" so we could watch, since our little dumb kid brains couldn't possibly comprehend how any normal human could type at the speeds needed to complete that game. We really wanted to see Bowser get dropped into that lava pit. We'd sit there and just be amazed at something that is so integral and normal today: typing on a qwerty keyboard. Regardless, it was one of the first challenges that I set for myself, I wanted to be able to type as fast as my mom! Even today, with all of her incredible achievements in the music world, I'm still like "whatever mom, remember when you typed fast enough to beat Bowser?"

Contentment vs Restlessness 💜

Contentment is a relatively new state for me. Most of my life I have been forward-focused and restless for the next goal, project, adventure, or experience. I suppose that comes from having futuristic, maximizer, and ideation in my top 5 Clifton Strengths. However, I am now at a point of having far more years behind me than ahead (unless I live to be 132 year old, which is unlikely.) So, I am allowing myself to look back a bit, look forward a bit, and be content with where I am right now…

Idea fish are  thoughts that come to you just between sleeping and being fully awake. To catch an idea fish, wake gently without an alarm after restful restorative sleep and immediately write the idea on paper or your phone’s notes app. Don’t worry if an idea fish or two get away. Capture the ideas you can with no judgement—even if they seem like goofy ideas. (Have you ever seen a clown fish?) Use a net because you never know what affiliated ideas you’ll scoop up with the big idea fish. Then catch and release.

I have been a teacher since I lined up my childhood dolls and stuffed animals and taught them to “read”. (They were an unruly group, especially the stuffed elephant.) I have been a performer since I won my middle school talent show in 7th grade playing and singing “Jean” from the film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. (A film I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to watch.) I have been a writer since I was poet-laureate and editor-in chief of the Derby Elementary School newspaper. Those were pretty heady titles for a 6th grader. (I imagine I can still smell that purple ink from the mimeograph.) Creativity was in my blood and my parents always encouraged my artistic endeavors, even if they didn’t quite understand it. Over the years, my joy of teaching, acting and singing, and writing has never waned.

🟣 There are circles of thousands and millions.

🟣 There are circles of hundreds.

🟣 There are circles of a few.

🟣There is a circle of me.

I notice the big circles, but I listen most to the trusted few and myself.

For as long as I can remember, I was a proud “night owl”. After my parents were asleep, I would hide under my Barbie blanket with a book and a flashlight until I fell asleep or the battery died. In school I stayed up late studying, perfecting term papers or creative writing assignments. In high school the only time I was grounded was not for breaking curfew or the usual teenage mischief,  but rather for staying up all night to finish a science paper. At 6am, I pretended cheerily that I had just woken up. Mom immediately knew I was lying because, first of all, I never woke up early, and, second of all, I was clearly loopy from lack of sleep. Mom drove me to school to drop off my paper and then took me home to sleep before grounding me for two weeks. 

Between slumber and awake I saw three idea fish near the shore. I caught two of them and one swam away to deeper waters. Perhaps I will remember and catch it in the future… Perhaps it wasn’t for me. Idea fish are slippery. 🐟

Some days being a writer means that you struggle for days to finish an article or chapter. Then you finish it in the evening (or late night) and you sleep on it. The next morning you read it again and decide to start all over. Then the words flow and you find the thoughts you wanted to share. Hit SEND.

In summary, three things I know about writing:

1) Don't wait for inspiration. Just write. (Don't edit. Just write)

2) Absolutely do not hit SEND until the next morning.

3) Don't despair if you have to start all over. Step 1 was not wasted work. It's part of the process.

Mentoring is not only helping someone up the ladder you have already climbed. Often it’s holding the door open for them to pass you to achieve even greater things.

Early in my career, I played the title role in the Cole Porter musical “Kiss Me, Kate” with a summer stock theater—my first paid role. A couple of weeks into rehearsals, the director pulled me aside and said “When you walked onstage I turned to the music director and dismissed you as “Too short!” Then when you auditioned you grew two inches taller.” Over the years I have shared that story with countless students who have told me that they are too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too old, too young, too…whatever.

Procrastannoyance (noun)

The self-rebellious action fo putting something off to the very last minute because you are annoyed that you have to do it at all.

…nothing lifts my mood like grabbing a random book from the shelf and sight reading just for fun. There are no expectations about singing it perfectly or for an audience. The joy is in the doing and mistakes are part of the process and dopamine rush. Sightreading, for me, is temporary, spontaneous, and liberating. Like a “table read” in theater, sightreading is also a precursor for the practice, repetition, ensemble, and memorization needed to prepare for performance. Take a moment to enjoy that first read before worrying about the finished product!

Adjudicators for student vocal competitions or auditions usually fall into one of three categories: The Nice Judge. The Mean Judge. The Neutral Judge. For years, I prided myself on being the Nice Judge. I greeted each singer warmly and tried to give them my full attention and energy. I smiled like a proud mom at a kindergartner's tee ball game. Sometimes, after an audition, I'd overhear a singer in the hallway talking to friends. "Oh! There's the nice judge. She really liked my performance." I'd feel a twinge of guilt if I hadn't passed that singer on to the next round of competition. At the end of the day, after exuding all of that "You've got this!" niceness, I'd be exhausted.

Singing is a natural, energetic release of sound and emotion. When someone from your present or past (director, parent, teacher) tells you to pipe down, it is easy to shush the joy, emotion and vitality along with the sound. Adults can carry the trauma and humiliation of stifling their song for decades. What to do?

I used teach a lot of high school and college students. Now, I teach a lot of adult singers. One thing they have in common is the habit of comparing and predicting an outcome. You could call it self-sabotage. The conversation goes something like this:

Teacher: Great work on your audition piece! You will be really prepared by the audition next week.

Student: Yeah…..but everyone knows __x__ is going to get the role.

So, who is everybody? And what if everybody doesn’t know?

I’ve been traveling the world since 2019 with “Grace”, the little gray case that holds my CPAP machine, cords, cables, and mask. There is a secret code (a knowing little nod) when I pass other passengers carrying their CPAP cases at the airport. Occasionally, I’ll get some side eye from a passenger who wonders why I’m allowed to carry on a third piece of luggage on board. Flight attendants know that Grace is not luggage. She is a cabin approved medical device. Grace is a life saver.

Pursuing perfection will only take you longer, add to your frustration, and you may simply abandon your book, your song, your idea, or your career path. When you are feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, instead of giving up, what if you start with dirty windows and paint something beautiful anyway?

“My choir director doesn’t like me.” I have heard this more times than I can count from my teen voice students. Variations include the drama teacher doesn’t like me or the competition judge doesn’t like me. It sometimes extends to my professional students who bemoan casting directors and producers.