Back to Music Part 1: There Once Was a Tenor From Tennessee

 Nicolai Gedda - Comfort Ye My People . Ev'ry Valley Shall Be Exalted - Messiah G.F. Handel

(This is the first in a randomly-posted series of entries I think I'll do about returning to singing classical music after a long break. I plan to talk more about the music, the preparation, the experience in the future instead of the "me, me, me" stuff below, but an introduction seems necessary.)

Soon after my voice changed my middle school chorus teacher told me she'd never heard anyone like me. It was true that subjectively I knew I could do things with my voice few others around me could do. Mainly be really, really loud.

That loudness is pure physiology and genetics. My Dad is 5'9" with a barrel chest, large head and preternaturally penetrating, powerful voice. My wry, soft-spoken mother's laconic ways didn't pass on to her kids, either. We're a loud family, mostly because we all have big, high voices and being heard in family conversations was a matter of who could best blast over the fray.

Make no mistake--from age 7 on I wanted to be a writer. The attention I began receiving for my big voice and perhaps a certain ease with being in front of crowds (another trait I inherited from my Dad) was too satisfying to ignore. My voice led me into the theater and chorus.

I found out it didn't matter if you were as weak a musician as I was if a director or teacher liked your voice.

So I fell into singing because, well, I could sing.

By the time I was in high school my chorus teacher was a Juilliard-trained tenor. He blew my mind in a voice lesson one day by telling me not only did I have a voice for opera, I should sing opera.

I said, "Uh, okay."

To my everlasting shock, I auditioned for four music programs and four universities offered me, a mostly C student, voice scholarships. Two were full rides. I took the best deal. Even though I could barely sight-read and was terrible at counting rhythm, I was a voice major. It probably helped tremendously that I was a real tenor and could easily sing up to a high A at the time (I still have a C, even though I'm pretty rusty).

I continued being a so-so academic student in college but did very well as a performer. Eventually I sang in multiple churches as a paid soloist, performed with professional opera companies as a chorus member and in secondary tenor roles, and in 1997 won the first round (combined Middle and East Tennessee Districts) of the Metropolitan Opera auditions.

After college, life happened. I got into a full-time ("fall-back") career I liked in the tech end of TV. That and having a family took my time and attention and I never really pushed myself to become more than a good local soloist--the guy who got calls from big churches doing their first Mozart Requiem or Messiah with full orchestra or was sometimes invited to come sing arias for free dinner and $50 in some Italian restaurant with a little community theater-level opera company.

Still, I loved it, most of the time. I love performing in general and do love being the lead soloist when the opportunity arises. It's hard to describe the thrill of singing a solo with a chorus and lofting your voice over the group with a bravura ending high note. Yes, there's ego and vanity involved--music and theater couldn't exist without them--but the joy is more universal than simply salving the psychic wounds left over from some insecure dude's family issues (the aforementioned blasting over the fray).

Singing softly and in tune with 40 other singers can fill a room with a single presence that feels greater than the assembled parts. Singing with the choir, a voice in the blend, was what really kept me going to churches from age 16 on, even though my faith has never been more than shaky, at best. The closest I could ever come to reverence was when I was in the choir loft, singing.

About seven years ago my dumb blogging about crimes with Internet or social media elements led to freelance writing. At the time I was also a paid tenor section leader and soloist at a lovely Presbyterian church in Roswell, Georgia.

I found that the more I received calls to do TV appearances and invitations to write for this or that, the more I neglected singing.

I didn't mean to quit. Didn't think of it as quitting. But by 2007 I was running a blog for Village Voice Media and had backed completely away from the church job. People with whom I'd sung in small local concerts would call me to come do one and I would back out.

Singing receded from my everyday life. I still thought about it. Still listened to stuff I've always loved, including certain tenors, operas and pieces of sacred music. Still let loose sometimes in the shower or being silly around the house. But I had essentially retired as an active, performing tenor.

And I don't think these things are truly connected, but I also got fatter and fatter, which was ironic considering how often I'd joked about me being the prototypical Fat Opera Singer. I'd morphed into the prototypical (in the public's mind, not reality) Fat (Basement-dwelling, Cheeto-eating) Blogger, which didn't seem nearly as funny. Or fun.

Just over a year ago I got sick of the fat part. I began working on that and today I've dropped about 100 lbs and 14 inches from my waistline. I'm about to turn 45 and in the best health of my adult life.

Since we moved to Massachusetts, I have realized how much I miss music. Singing is no longer something I think about at random or with a twinge of jealousy when I watch other classical singers on a YouTube video or on TV. It creeps into dreams. I find myself alone in the car and singing arias full-blast again, like I used to. On Spotify I seek out choral pieces I haven't though about in years, just to hum along with the tenor part.

So... last week I arranged an audition with the director of the Worcester Chorus, which is the closest thing locally (as far as I can tell) to a symphonic choir. The group has gone overseas and sung with the Boston Pops. The audition is at 6:30 next Wednesday.

I decided I would go big or go home and perform the tenor recitative and somewhat aria that opens Handel's Messiah--"Comfort Ye, My People" and "Ev'ry Valley Shall be Exalted." In the video at the top of this post you can hear one of the finest tenors of the late 20th Century, Nicolai Gedda, performing the pieces (at an excruciatingly slow tempo that few but Gedda--a true master of breath control--could manage).

My voice isn't really suited to the spritely, trilling sound many maestros require of tenors singing Baroque music (neither was Gedda's, for that matter). I could probably present myself as a lyric baritone and the director of the Worcester Chorus might think "sounds tenor-y, but okay." My voice is more suited to Puccini, Verdi and Wagner. But I also haven't sung an aria for any kind of real reason in years and am realistic: in spite of all my training and experience, the only sensible way for any singer who's been out of the game for a solid six years to start over is to return to basics. And the basics, in my mind, are singing with a chorus. You network, meet other singers, learn of other opportunities to sing. Chorus work also presents an opportunity to flex musical muscles again, to exert fine control over your instrument. If you're a tenor with a voice suited to blaring over an 80-piece orchestra you can bet you learn fine-grained control of that voice when you have to sing a soft high note in some Bach chorale with five other tenors around you.

Singing the Handel is perhaps symbolic, too--it was the first recitative and aria I ever learned for any reason. I've come back to it time and again, in spite of not being vocally suited, because it's a beautiful exercise, enforcing clear, healthy vocalism in the middle of the voice and something I badly need, flexibility.

To some degree my need to return to music is a way to find a sense of home. I may have fallen stupidly into singing as a teen because I had a needy ego and a big voice, but it eventually became very much an integral part of me. How I see myself, and how I look at life.

I don't like exercising in groups. I can see doing something like a Tough Mudder with a team, where the going is very tough and the urging of a teammate can be just the thing that pushes you over that next obstacle, but I usually prefer to train alone. I need the time in my head, it helps center me.

Singing, though--as much as I prefer to solo, I admit after this many years it's always best done with others. The others can be instrumentalists or fellow vocalists, it doesn't matter. Two or three get together and make noise. Whether the noise is a barbaric yawp or silken baroque tapestry of sound doesn't matter--I always feel like it is lit from within by a spark of joy. The space around the performers is transformed with immanence.

Something invisible. Something great.