Jonathan Lemalu masterclass

Last night Jonathan Lemalu gave a Masterclass at Marama Hall in Dunedin. Three young men - two baritones, Sam Madden and Tyler Neumann, and a bass singer whose name I missed - were given individual coaching on songs they presented to the audience (a much smaller audience than you would have expected, unfortunately).

Tyler was up first with The Roadside Fire from Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel. Like all the singers he was asked what the song was telling us, the audience. What story was he communicating when he sang? How did the accompaniment add to what was being said in the words of the song? How could he portray more by his stance, his intensity, by thinking himself into a kind of dramatic view of the song? And much more. He also sang Bright is the Ring of Words from the same song cycle a little later. 

Lemalu gently worked with each of the young singers, not concerning himself too much with their technique or musicality, but with their storytelling. Sam Madden sang Comfort ye, my people from the Messiah. Even this was seen as a 'character' (in this case, God, or his prophet) telling the audience something specific. 

The bass sang a solo by Dr Malatesta, from Don Pasquale. In his initial rendition of it he gave a 'performance', in Italian, but the message wasn't too clear. It helped to have Lemalu tease out what he was meaning, why Malatesta spoke/sung as he did, how this could be better conveyed through a more dramatised version of the song rather than treating it as an aria. It helped also when Lemalu became a 'character' onstage, helping the focus. 

It was interesting to see how the performers' interpretations changed substantially once they thought about what they were saying and how to put that across. Lemalu gave them all sorts of ideas, and let them hold onto particular ones at different times. It changed the substance of what was being sung considerably. He also played with them including while they were singing, which helped ease tensions but also made them focus differently. 

Lemalu is full of ideas, modest, still learning (he said this), changing approaches that seemed set in stone, being more relaxed while maintaining a very high standard of preparation. He's also a great entertainer. 

HitTails and Memory

Crowl swim,
Athletics foot on fingers
Lloyd Jones Mr Pip
Complete polysyllabic spree
Anna Leese
Jonathan Lemalu
Rosemary tree goudge
Stone hawk battle creek mi
Linkprimalamusica.typepad.com
Brent read sings harry

When you’re investigating ways to improve your memory, one of the techniques that’s taught is to connect random things together in absurd ways. Usually it’s a list of shopping items – e.g. bread, milk, tea, coffee, toilet paper – that have to be connected up in such a way that the brain will enjoy remembering them. ‘I dropped the bread in a huge bowl of creamy, frothing milk with a huge splash, causing the teapot to fall over (hand on hip) and pour scalding tea into the coffee grounds that were roasting with a luxurious aroma in rolls of soft, white toilet paper that were spread throughout the house.’ Okay, that’s the kind of thing. I’m sure you can do better. Let me know if you can!
The HitTails results for this week are a much more difficult list of items to try and connect, because they’re far more disparate than a bunch of household items.
There’s an alternate approach to remembering them – if you were so inclined – and that’s to put them into categories. So in this case we have a literary category for Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip and the Polysyllabic Spree. That’s easy: Pip and Polysyllabic Spree have sharp and sibilant alliteration.
The singers’ category for Anna Leese, Jonathan Lemalu and Brent Read Sings Harry, all being blogged about on that operatic blog: Linkprimalamusica.typepad.com. A soprano, a bass and a tenor in trio. The tongue-twisting blog name is a bit of an issue, though, except that it again has the letters p and s in it, along with m – the first letter of my name.
Which leads onto my name again in the Crowl Swim - which could take place in Battle Creek, where you’d make sure you didn’t infect the water with your athlete’s foot on the fingers.
That just leaves the Rosemary Tree with a great Goudge out of it standing on the bank.
Okay, let’s see if we remember all that tomorrow. Or better still, can you come up with better ways to remember it all, yourself?
I’ve just done another check back on HitTails, and notice that Brent Stavig is leading my keyword list there. That is, more people have looked for Brent Stavig and brought up results that include this site, than any other ‘keyword.’ Anna Leese, however, is running a close second.
Not knowing anything about Brent Stavig, I did a little bit of surfing, and came across a debate between him and a poet called Frederick Glaysher on political issues. The notes from Stavig start quite a way down the page, so use your search box.