A n O r a l H i s t o r y O f C o l u m b i a C o l l e g e C h i c a g o

C a r o l L o v e r d e

This is an interview with CarolLoverde and she is the AssociateDirector of the Music Departmentand Coordinator of Vocal Studieshere at Columbia College.

So i f you cou ld te l l us how you

came to Co lumbia and when?

My first experience with ColumbiaCollege was actually throughWilliam Russo. And in 1979 I wasauditioning for a performance atthe University of Chicago withJames Mack, who is a very, verywell known African Americancomposer and, and conductor andwe call him Mack. Mack and Billknew each other and so I went tothis audition in ‘79 for Jim Mackand he had mentioned thatWilliam Russo was coming inbecause he was looking for singersfor a production in New York. So Imet Bill at this audition and I hadnot really known of him before,because my work is mostly or hasbeen mostly in, in the classical fieldand Bill of course was internation-ally known for his work in Jazz andthen in the eighties still known forhis work in non-jazz idioms. SoBill set up an interview with PaulCarter Harrison who was thenthe—I believe he was the chair ofthe theater music department, buthe was actually outgoing chair andSheldon was coming in. So I hadan interview at Columbia with Billand Paul Carter Harrison and themusic and theatre disciplines atthat time were in one department.So I was engaged as a part timefaculty member in the musicprogram and I taught Techniquesin Singing I and II and you knowthe program grew from there. And

I was engaged to perform in myfirst Columbia College commence-ment at the Auditorium Theatre Ithink it was in 1980. So via anaudition and coming in as a parttime faculty member that’s reallyhow I started in the department.

How was i t in t roduced to you

though to s ta r t teach ing here ?

Because you had ment ioned that

you were aud i t ion ing for a New

York p roduct ion that B i l l Russo

was do ing .

Well I was actually auditioning fora production at the University ofChicago and Bill was looking forsingers for a New York production.I think it was called the Alice B.Took Was Hashish Fudge Review.That was off Broadway. It turns outI could not do the performanceanyway. So then Bill was talkingabout you know asking me if Iwere interested in teaching voice atColumbia and then that—theensuing interview with Paul CarterHarrison.

And had you consi der ed teachi ng

b e f o r e that? I mean is t hat some-

th ing you were in te rested in?

I was interested in teaching always.I had taught part time at LoyolaUniversity and also at MundeleinCollege which is my alma mater.And you know it’s funny because atLoyola I was part time and I wouldoffer a techniques in—I think itwas Singing for Non-Singers at thetime which was a very funny titlewhich I did not make up. That wasthe title given to me. And forexample, one semester I wouldhave 15 nursing students. Wellthere I was and you know 99—99/100th’s of them were nursingstudents and one male so I had to

be you know pretty creative in theway I would approach vocal tech-nique and help these nursingstudents find their voice in anacademic setting. So my interest inteaching was, was both classroomoriented as well as private teachingoriented. I really enjoy and havealways enjoyed a private teachingstudio where I have both ColumbiaCollege students now as well aspeople who are adults working invery different fields. I’ve had a fewchildren you know teenagers, thatsort of person. And it’s a fabulousexperience to be able to have bothopportunities to engage one on onewith students who I probe and tryto find what makes them want tosing and present in a very profes-sional way a way for them, amethodology for them to developtheir singing voice. And I do basi-cally the same thing in a classroomonly it’s on a much larger scale, butthere’s you know textbooks andfilms and opportunities for them toget up and sing in front of class,

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which the private student does nothave. But since the private voicecurriculum and the voice curricu-lum in general is so intertwinedour students to both. They haveboth private lessons and course-work.

Did you—what d id you know

about Co lumbia befo re your inte r-

v iew with Pau l Car ter Har r i s o n ?

Nothing, except I have to tell youwhen I was a teenager one of myfirst boyfriends said to me, well Ithink I want to go to Columbia tostudy TV. And I thought you knowI thought how could he go to aschool I had never heard of. Youknow that was so brash of me, butthere was I because I wasn’t in—you know Columbia was notknown for having any kind oftraditional music department,which is also one of its strengths.And so but I soon learned whatColumbia College meant and I alsokept on seeing—driving down LakeShore Drive I kept on seeing theColumbia College logo on theoutside of the building where itwas at Ohio and Lake Shore Drive.And I would you know I was morecognizant of, of its place inChicago when I was a youngperson, but didn’t really have adeep familiarity with it in anysense. Because I know it was aschool of—originally a school fordrama and radio. And what’s inter-esting about that is that when thetheater and music department usedto be one department we were allhoused at 72 East 11th Streetwhere the theater department stillis, but my—from what I learnedabout Columbia’s history thedrama and radio students used toperform at 72 East 11th 50 yearsago. And it’s formerly I believe the

Jewish Board of Education orJewish Council of Education build-ing. So it’s nice to be part ofColumbia’s history in that way aswell. But now we, we’ve moved tothe music building at 11th andMichigan which is literally aroundthe corner from where we used tobe and that building used to be theSherwood Music School and theyhave since moved south. They arenow located next door to the dancecenter on South Michigan Avenue.

And I ’ l l ask you about t he new

fac i l i t i es , because I want to

come back to t hat , but be fo re we

do that . What do you remember o f

your i nter v iew and you know, I

d o n ’ t know—what was asked and

what your impr essions were ?

My—I don’t remember anythingspecific about the interview exceptthat it was very collegial and PaulCarter Harrison who has recentlyretired and Bill were alreadywonderful friends and you knowthe usual questions about what doyou feel you can contribute andwhat do you want to do. Thosewere asked, but the interview itselfwas informal and you know theyboth made me feel very comfort-able. I had a gut feeling that Iwould be spending more time atColumbia College than at Loyolawhich I had left some years ago—some years previous. So I felt thatColumbia would be a place for meto hang my hat so to speak.

And do you r emember any o f your

f i rs t impressions bei ng her e once

you s ta r ted as a par t t ime

t e a c h e r ?

Yeah, I mean well one of the firstthings was what I began to learnabout Bill and I know that themusic department used to be calledthe Center for New Music. AndBill was already internationallyknown in the jazz field, but then I

believe in the sixties he starteddoing these rock, rock operas andvery popular stage works thatwould be multi media and featureyou know pantomimes and leadsingers, these kind of rock cantatasI guess you would call them. And Icouldn’t quite put together myselfif he was so well known in jazzwhat was he doing with rock? Ididn’t figure it all out and youknow over some period of time wewould have lots of conversationsabout that and one of Bill’s mostfamous works was the Civil Warbased on poems by Paul Horgan, Ithink his name is. And his—Horgan’s book was a collectioncalled—what is it called—Songs onLincoln or Songs After Lincoln.You might be familiar with it, I’mnot sure. Anyway this rock opera orrock cantata, whatever you want tocall it was performed in the latesixties before Martin Luther Kingwas killed and also before the inci-dents surrounding you know thedemocratic national conventionhere in Chicago. And he had greatsuccess with the performances, butwhen these events occurred the, thepopularity of his work just soaredyou know because people werereally interested in understandingthe anti war sentiment that thiswork was giving and showing to allthe people who would come andlisten to it.

So then I learned that Bill wasfacing his own difficulties in thelate sixties with his jazz ensemblesbecause of the Black NationalismMovement. And to make a longstory short, black instrumentalists,jazz instrumentalists did not wantto perform with Bill’s jazz ensem-ble. And Bill was truly very upsetabout this and he could not

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conceive of being a jazz composingperforming jazz works of all greatjazz composers, black and whitewithout the presence of blackinstrumentalists in his ensemble.And so he kind of switched gearsand decided to compose in thedifferent styles, rock, classical stylewhile still maintaining his roots injazz. So what was your question?

You wer e going t o ta lk about

ear ly impress ions wi th—

Oh of, of Columbia.

R i g h t .

Yeah, yeah well other people wholoomed very large in my early yearsat Columbia were obviously MikeAlexandroff, Burt Gall and LyaRosenblum. Lya who you knowspearheaded I believe the generaleducation curriculum that youknow we continue to visit and lookat in terms of helping our studentscomplete their—a four yearsequence in a structured way. MikeI think we felt his presence andBurt’s presence as well because thecollege was relatively small backthen. I don’t really know thestudent population then. Otherimpressions were that I believe inthe eighties chairs had a lot moreleeway in terms of how their owndepartments were run. There wasn’tkind of a centralized overseeingbody like, like there is now. Ibecame much more aware of Mike’scommitment to offering educationcentered in an urban environmentand of course Mike’s biggest contri-bution to what the college is todaywas his concept of open admis-sions. My—I mean and I agreewith his concept that we enablestudents to complete a collegeeducation and we admit studentswith the possibility that they canyou know bypass economic barriersor cultural or even familial barriers

to have you know a liberal educa-tion. And early on I became reallyaware also of Burt’s contributionsto the college because of his hands-on overseeing of all the physicalplant, plus his academic responsi-bilities. You know these—theyreally carried the college on theirshoulders for, for many years.

Also, John and Betty Shiflett theywere at the time spearheading theircreative writing program. Anotherperson who I remember although Ionly met him once or twice wasHarry Bouras, this outstanding artcritic and artist himself who hadyou know his radio program onWFMT. And my understanding isthat he was a brilliant teacher and Iregret not knowing him more. Andover the years the faculty membersin my own department—we are afabulous group of people. We arenot a traditional department inthat we offer lots of training innon-classical styles, although we’regrounded in the classical traditionsand which means that we teachtraditional ways of understandingthe process of sight singing andsight reading and, and harmonyand counterpoint. But we really arecommitted to students finding aclassical or non-classical voice,whatever blossom is inside them tobecome working, creative musi-cians in their field.

Te l l me a l i t t le b i t about when

you went f r om par t t ime to fu l l

t ime. Was that jus t—did i t just—

It was kind of the natural course ofthings. I don’t remember anythingspecific about it other than that itwas offered to me. I also knew thatit would involve a deeper timecommitment to the college interms of committee work. I don’tremember the point at which I wasappointed. You know back then Iwas head of the vocal division. I

don’t remember the point at whichthat was—I was designated or, orasked if I wanted to do that kind ofwork in the department.

Did you s ta r t t o deve lop your own

courses o r your own way o f

teach ing? I mean di d that change

and you know how d id t hat evol ve

h e re at Co lumbia?

Yes, when I first came the musicprogram offered Techniques inSinging I and II and some theoryclasses. Soon after I started teach-ing regularly going from part time,I was also adjunct at one point andI don’t remember the point atwhich adjunct became full time. Iasked and really it was simply aquestion of asking if I could offer aTechniques in Singing III class. Itwas much easier to go to the chairand present you know a plannedcurriculum for an upper level voiceclass. The theory curriculum wasevolving at the time as well. I knewthat a colleague of mine, JimMcDonald who’s now associatedean might be interested in comingto Columbia. So Jim then came onboard and Jim kind of spearheadedevolving the theory curriculum.Before Jim came on board I wasteaching some theory classes aswell. I also simply asked if wecould offer an upper level sightsinging class, which then becameSight Singing and Musicianship III.So I was very interested in takingthe curriculum that we already hadand deepening the standards andthe kind of material that we couldpresent to the students.

The voice curriculum evolved.Bobbi Wilson came on board. Shewas able to work on developingclasses such as Styles for theContemporary Singer, jazz privatelessons. We had the Columbia

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College course which for sometime was fledgling. We wentthrough a period where we justdidn’t seem to find the right teach-ers. Some of them were dying ofAIDS and it was, it was sad and atone point I even taught the courseand I thought this is not—youknow this is not who I am and Idon’t want to do this. I’m nottrained to teach choral music anddeal with vocal technique in thatway. We had some wonderfulsubstitute choral directors and for aperiod of perhaps three years I wascourting, if you will, our currentdirector of choral ensembles BartBradfield to come and operate andteach the vocal ensembles that wehave. So we have chorus vocalperformance ensemble and we haveother vocal ensembles that are actu-ally courses where students performat the end of the semester, thingslike that. So as time went onstudent population grew. Weneeded more courses. We neededreally to develop our four-yearBachelor of Arts program in vocalperformance, instrumentalperformance, composition, andother programs.

So and you sa id when you came

Paul Car te r Har r ison was the

cha i r co r re c t ?

Yes, he—I believe he was chair ofthe music theater department andhe was you know leaving when I—in fact perhaps my interview wasone of the last of his activities. I’mnot really sure because I believeSheldon Tinken became chair in1980.

And when do those depar t m e n t s

become d ist i nct?

1998.

Okay so that ’ s recent so we’ l l

ho ld out on t hat . So the music

side , the s tudents ar e inc r e a s i n g ,

the courses ar e evo lv ing. Wa s

t h e re a par t icula r d i rect ion o r

mission w ithi n the depar tment o f

w h e re i t was go ing wi th i t s

c u rr icu lum and i ts s tudents at

th is t ime o r was i t chang ing at

al l? And i f you cou ld speak to

that a b i t i n the e ight ies and in to

the n inet ies?

We were actively changing our corecurriculum.

Can you say f rom what you know

to what?

To—so that we could both servicestudents who did not have anyexperience with music as well asthe student who came in with someknowledge or even quite a bit ofknowledge. So we added to thecore curriculum what is now essen-tially a remedial course calledIntroduction to Music Theory.Introduction to Music Theorywas—the course material inIntroduction to Music Theory wasa part of another class calledTheory Music and How to Read It.So we separated Theory Music andHow to Read It into Introductionto Music Theory. Then also intotwo other basic courses which arenow known as Sight SingingMusicianship Training I andTheory, Harmony, and Analysis I.We spent many years trying tofigure out how to engage bothtypes of students into our corecurriculum. And our core curricu-lum involves several levels oftheory, which includes SightSinging and Harmony andCounterpoint. Recently we havealso included some specific music

history and analysis classes becausewe have just hired in the past twoyears I think by now a musicolo-gist, Jennifer Jenkins who does thatfor us. But anyway in the voicecurriculum we not only now havethree—had three basic vocal tech-nique classes—Techniques inSinging I, II and III, but we alsoadded other classes such as Stylesfor the Contemporary Singer, VocalJazz.

We have every semester, as do theinstrumentalists voice juries. Thefirst voice jury I had was in 1984.We had eight students and in avoice jury the student sang on ortwo songs and were evaluated byobserving faculty in front of anaudience. That set up has beenchanged over the years where thevoice jury used to be public. Aftersome years we decided the voicejury would be private. In otherwords, the student does not sing infront of an audience, but merely infront of three evaluating faculty. Soyou can imagine, but that’s—youknow in many schools it’s still donethat way. You’re sitting in a hall ora room if there is no proper halland the teachers are writing awayand the student is performing tothe best of their ability. So for someyears we did that. Then we decidedto go back to the students perform-ing in public singing one song,being evaluated by voice facultyand those evaluations are shared.

Now in the past two years we’vestructured the voice jury evenfurther in that we have a privatejury where depending in thestudent’s year in school they haveto memorize a certain number ofsongs. They choose one to sing astheir first number and the faculty

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picks the other one or two,depending on what year they are.Then there is a vote taken by theevaluating faculty as to whetherthey feel this student merits singingin what we now call the singer’sshowcase which is an honorsperformance in public. So whatused to be the private voice juryrecital way back in the eighties isnow back to that format, but alittle bit separate in terms of thejury being private and then theshowcase, which is the publicperformance, is given more prestigefor the students because they arevoted by the faculty. And as part ofColumbia’s assessment process wehire outside faculty evaluators forall of our instrumental and vocaljuries.

Oh re a l l y ?

Yes, money.

Huge expense .

Yes, it is a huge expense, but wellit’s worth it because the studentsget feedback from other profession-als in their field and Columbia hasmore exposure in the generalChicago community and it’s fabu-lous that way. It’s a lot of workthough, organizing and that’s partof my job as an administrator inthe voice division in the voicecurriculum.

And that happens fo r how many

y e a r s ?

Well the whole recital jury processhas been in place since 1984officially.

But is that fo r ever y year the

s tudent is—

Every semester—every semesteryes, if you come by my office nowyou will see outside my door ahuge list of who is singing when.And they get one rehearsal with an

accompanist where before theyused to get two, now they only getone again, because of budget cuts.And we will hear I believe thissemester 32 students on May 14th.You’re welcome to come to theshowcase on the 17th. So youknow I mean we’re—I’m so excitedthat we’re growing as a departmentand all of our—all of the areas inmusic in our department areburgeoning. So much so that wehave to get out of our buildingsoon; we have to have more space.We love the building. It is—itlends itself to, in my opinion anaesthetic—I don’t know how—what to say—an aesthetic atmos-phere providing students with aplace where they can really comeand practice and talk with otherstudents and teachers all the time.We have a beautiful third floorlobby which is a gathering place foreverybody.

But when d id you move in t her e ?

Wa s n ’t i t jus t—

Let’s see, we’ve been in there Ibelieve six years now.

Oh has i t been s ix years?

Yes.

Okay and you ’r e to capac ity.

Yes, we don’t have enough practicerooms. You know which bringsme—and I’ve been thinking aboutthis recently that you know thecollege is spending a lot of moneyon remedial programs. The collegealso has to figure out how tobalance the money they’re spendingon remedial programs with how toservice, how to meet the ends ofthe departments for the studentswho are know what they wantwhen they come here. And to youknow give us the proper technolog-

ical tools we need and practiceroom space. I think that we willface, once our new chair comes inbecause we have in the past fewweeks given our list of finalists tothe president of the college. Somomentarily I expect theannouncement to be made aboutwho our new chair is. But anyway,the new chair will have to presentour case to the administrationbecause we want to becomemembers of the NationalAssociation of Schools of Music.But we are dealing with issues suchas well how many square feet do wehave for practice rooms. Now I’mnot saying that that is—that’s onlyone question and NASM will askof us out of many, many questions.I mean it’s a huge self-study we willhave to do, but you know there’sissues of money and you know thebudget has been cut seriously in alldepartments.

T h a t ’s ver y in te rest ing because

you know what ’s come up in t h is

p ro ject agai n was t he impor t a n c e

of accr ed i t at ion in Nor th Cent ral .

But how impor tant is t hat f or

your depar tment to become

members o f—what were you

s a y i n g —

National Association of Schools ofMusic—well it really will put us onthe map. Incoming students nowask if our department is a member.I think that NASM accreditationwill affirm who we are in theplace—in the world of musiceducation today and we are poisedfor accreditation in lots of ways.We are trying to pull together anew degree called Studio ArtsPerformance. We have a ways to gowith it, but it will offer contempo-rary education for students who donot plan on entering traditionalfields of music once they get out of

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here—performing, teaching. Mostof our students will be looking forsomething that offers work in tech-nology, composing and performing,a combination of those three areas.So we have to be able to accommo-date them.

Maybe you should spend just a

l i t t le more t ime expl ai ning t hat

o r descr ib ing that wher e your

s tudents a r e goi ng . I mean I

th ink—I don ’ t know i f many

peopl e know that o r wou ld be

v e r y in te res ted in what the

s tudents a r e coming here fo r

spec i f ical ly i f i t ’s in a non -t rad i -

t i ona l aspects o f the f ie ld I

g u e s s .

Because of the way technology hasaffected all of us music studentsconsider training in technologymore important to their training asmusicians now than they did a longtime ago. I would say that that’sone of the basic ways in which wecan attract students and offer them.

I s that f o r vocal and ins tru m e n -

t a l ?

Yes, as well as for composing. In2005 we are offering a mastersprogram in composing for film. Sothe music department and the filmdepartment are you know firmlycommitted to offering our studentstraining in composition whichnecessarily requires training with allkinds of—I don’t even know howto describe it because I’m notfamiliar with all of the technologyfor film composing. Students mightbe interested in composing forvideo games. Somebody’s writingthat music we hear on the subwayat Roosevelt Road in the subway.We also have the traditional audi-tion route that we train singers andinstrumentalists for. For singersthat is more the kind of trainingthey will receive if they want to beperformers. One of the wonderful

things about the voice division isthat we have musical theatersingers, classical singers, pop rock,jazz, and they learn how to audi-tion. They get critiqued in all oftheir classes on performance prac-tice in those various styles.

Now that the audio arts andacoustics program is closer to us wewant to devise ways to collaboratewith them and have our voicestudents go over and record. Theyhave to know about what it’s like tobe in a recording studio. If they arejazz singers, to write charts for theiraccompanists who will be withthem in the recording studio.Instrumentalists need to know thatas well. Composers need to have athorough understanding ofcomposing at the computer andthey—when they present theirsenior recitals all of their music ison—is computer generated. Notcomputer composed, but the scoresare computer generated—we havemidi classes for that. We really needto build up our—the technologycomponent of our department andthat’s what we hope the new chairwill do.

How—speaking o f the new cha i r

and you re f e r r ed to the sear c h ,

wh ich you don ’t know how i t ’s — I

mean what t he end resul t is . But

what have the last f ew years

been l ike af te r o r p ri or to—or as

Bi l l Russo was k ind o f t ransi t i on -

ing out o f that leadersh ip ro l e ,

what have been some o f t he cha l -

lenges your depar tment has

faced? And, has i t been d i f f i c u l t

or can you descr ibe i t?

Bill retired in April I believe it wasof 2002. We were instructed byDean Lehrer to choose and actingchair from among the tenuredfaculty and we took a vote and

Gustavo Leone became active chair.Gustavo Achibacus who is ourexecutive director and I met regu-larly throughout the summer andwe still continue to do that now,the three of us as well as with thesenior faculty and full and parttime faculty to keep the depart-ment running smoothly. At thesame time we were also part of asearch committee. Gustavo was notbecause he was also a candidate andAchi was not because he’s not fulltime faculty. The search committeewas formed I believe aroundDecember of 2002 to begin asearch which took two years. Thatwas very difficult. We had prob-lems with the make up of thecommittee itself. We had otherkinds of problems which I’m reallynot at liberty to talk about and all Ican say is that it was very excitingand very difficult at the same time.And Gustavo has remained actingchair and he still is until we findout who the new chair is.

And I want—I ’m jumping a ro u n d

jus t a b i t , but I want i f we cou ld

go back too t o the sp l i t t ing of

the depar tment and how or the

separat i ng , not t he sp l i t t ing. The

separat i ng o f t he depar t m e n t s ,

was that a r esu l t o f gr o w t h ?

Partially, yes.

O r, and i f you can exp la in t hat

and do you st i l l—you must work

close ly together on a lo t o f

l e v e l s .

We do. Bill and Sheldon had a rela-tionship that I think even precededSheldon becoming chair in 1980. Ithink that Bill asked Sheldon todirect one of Bill’s early works,Othello and Bill then became thefirst full time faculty member Ithink in the college around 1965.So Sheldon was chair. AlthoughSheldon was chair of the theaterand music department those two

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entities existed side by side. I don’tknow too much about how budgetwas worked out between the twodivisions. Growing pains and alsothe fact that the music departmentneeded to become an entity on itsown were the reasons why thetheater and music department splitand it was an amicable one. Andthe theater department and themusic department work together alot. Most of our voice students aremusical theater majors and so theyare required—those voice studentsare required to take core curricu-lum theory classes as well as acertain number of semesters ofprivate voice and do juries and allof that sort of thing. We have awonderful collaboration betweenfaculty. Music faculty compose fortheater department productions asdo some qualified students. JoeCerqua who is our productionsupervisor directs works in the Getzproductions in the Getz Theater.Whenever possible usually once ayear the music department puts ona main stage production in theGetz. As coordinator of vocal stud-ies I work closely with BillWilliams and Estelle Specter whocoordinate the musical theatercurriculum and we are constantlyin discussion about the musicaltheater curriculum.

Actually what’s happening in a fewweeks is what’s called CompositionNotebook 2004 where the—somecomposition students’ works will beperformed in the Getz Theater andthere will be collaboration also withthe dance department. So in anideal world music, theater, anddance would have a huge space towork together in. That having beensaid I think we do pretty well or asbest we can with inter curricularcollaboration, because part of the

musical theater major involvesstudents taking courses in thedance curriculum as well.

You know ther e ’s so many t h ings

that I wanted t o ta lk about, but

maybe next i f you cou ld comment

on some o f your act iv i t ies and

ro les in t he la rger co l lege you

know as a f acu l t y member and

some o f the issues that you have

faced you know, s i nce you ’ve

been her e at Col umbia .

I’ve been on many committees.Besides the Search Committee oneof the most recent was also theFaculty Development andSabbatical Committee when it wasstill one committee. I found thatvery exhilarating and gave me achance to see first hand what otherfaculty members around the collegeare doing. And you know we are allseparated and I usually don’t getdown here unless it’s for a commit-tee meeting or to visit. And I likecommittee work that deals withaction more than process. I’m kindof over discussion—you know eter-nal discussions and we—I knowthat that’s necessary, but I guess I’mgetting older and I much prefer acommittee such as FacultyDevelopment and Sabbatical.

One of the more joyous activitiesthat I’ve had is the opportunity topresent a lecture in RoseAnnaMueller’s Italian classes. My back-ground is Italian. My mother isfrom outside Luca in Tuscany andmy father was born in Chicago, buthis family is from Sicily. So I grewup speaking Italian and, andRoseAnna and I you know talkwhenever possible. I know she’svery busy out of the country andshe invited me to present somekind of lecture to her BeginningItalian students talking aboutItalian culture and music. So that’s

a rather broad field so what Idecided to do I narrowed it downand I called my lecture MusicalTrends in Italy, and it begins as asalute to Italian technology wayback in the Renaissance. There wasa particular family who they wereof noble birth, but they becameimpoverished and OtatianoPatruchi was a young man whoactually was the first to invent amovable type to publish poly-phonic music. And he got an exclu-sive contract with an Italian duketo publish Renaissance, vocal andinstrumental music and thePatruchi editions are world famous.I mean everybody knows aboutthem today. So what I did wasbegin with a brief discussion aboutItalian technology beginning in theRenaissance and then introducedItalian terms to the students, mostof them musical terms like youknow allegro and played musicbeginning with the Renaissance allthe way through such artists as youknow we all know Andrea Bocellitoday. So it was an opportunity forme to branch out so to speak fromthe traditional way I deal withmusic and encompass you knowevery—of the whole of who I am.Also being at Columbia I feel soglad that I can bring in all aspectsof what I hear in the news aboutpop culture into my classroombecause I don’t have just classicalstudents who well perhaps tradi-tionally have been a little bitnarrow minded in terms of whatthey accept from pop culture. Youknow for example, that showAmerican Idol. I don’t know if youwatch it or not.

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I have not seen i t , but I know o f

i t .

You know it’s one of the best reflec-tions of pop culture around andmy students talk about it all thetime. And I thought well I have toknow about this show and I’ve onlyseen a little bit of it. But you knowit’s a show in my opinion where thesingers, where they perform as anact of ego rather than as a musicaloffering that has class and style.And one of the reasons is that fromwhat I’ve seen these singers singwith what’s called a lot of malis-mas. Now a malisma—I’m not sureif you’re familiar with that term.

No, p lease—

A malisma is taking one syllable ofa word and singing you know fiveor six notes on one syllable. Youknow what it is.

Ye s .

Right, exactly so there are all thesebudding Mariah Carey’s andWhitney Houston’s on the stageand then plus the fact that you canvote. All of America can vote. Imean that’s so exciting and socrazy. But now this idea about—these ideas that the singer canapply many notes on one syllablekind of disrupts the flow of words.Well you know young kids todayaren’t so concerned about that. Butto me what’s fascinating is thatthere was a song that became a hitall over Europe in 1602 calledAmarelle. This song was written byJulio Cachini who was a very wellknown Roman composer who inhis commentary, in his foreword ofsongs that were—that came out inan edition of a collection of hismusic called Le Neuve Musica—The New Music—The NewMusic’s. That in his forward he saysmy songs have been tattered andtorn with the use of malismas. So

here I am you know I can speak tothis with my students because theyknow about both. I mean some ofthem don’t know about Amarelle,but they know American Idol, theyknow Whitney Houston and all ofthose singers who you know kindof stretch words out for as long aspossible. But this is something thatis not new in Italian—I mean inpopular style. The Italians in the17th century were dealing with it.In fact, Amarelle, it’s a love song, itbecame such a hit that in Englandit was transformed into an instru-mental piece, even a devotionalpiece—same melody but differentwords. It was loved so much.

So you cou ld hear i t in the el eva -

t o r. You cou ld hear i t in you know

l ike Muzak—al l t he d i f f e r e n t

v e r s i o n s .

Yeah, in fact there’s also a manu-script that came out of England, it’scalled the Eggerton Manuscript.Who officially wrote it out Ibelieve is unknown, but theEggerton Manuscript which hasbeen performed takes the melodyof Amarelle Mirabella and applieslots and lots of malismas on thissong and Cachini was very, veryupset and hence wrote his thoughtsin the preface to an edition of hisvocal songs. So it’s not new whatwe’re dealing with, but it’s exciting.

So i t sounds l ike you ’ re sayi ng

that you have the f r eedom or a re

encouraged to b ri ng a l l that in to

your c lassro o m .

Yes, and that is one of the things Ilove about being at Columbia. Youknow another thing what was it—60 Minutes last Sunday there wasan interview with a black SouthAfrican, Tokial Sequali. This manwas in prison with Nelson

Mandela, highly intelligent, verywell educated. It turns out he isone of the richest men in SouthAfrica now trying to help the coun-try increase its wealth on all kindsof levels, education, culture—allsorts of philanthropy. He describesyou know many meetings that hehad with Mandela and otherpeople who were in prison withhim were also interviewed andtalked about how Sequali roseabove the way in which he wasimprisoned and what he was ableto do to help himself and eventu-ally then to help others. Well oneof the places where he spent manyyears of imprisonment was in—atRobin Island. So I had no ideauntil I was watching this programon TV last week and Iwas privileged enough to hearthe Robin Island singers at theColumbia retreat. Do youremember?

Yes, I do .

I was thrilled. Now where elsebesides Columbia College would Ihave this personal experience? AndI remember talking to some of themen, because I was so interested inthe fact that one of the songs theysang was a World War II fascistItalian song. They sang it inItalian—Fecha Tanara it’s called—Black Shirts. And I asked one ofthem how they knew about thissong and they got it from Cuba—some connection. I mean this isincredible how small the world is.And I remember talking about itwith my Techniques in Singing Iclass. So Columbia is a globe untoitself. There are other experiencesas well. In my Techniques inSinging III class for example wehave articles from newspapers,magazines, whatever that I give thestudents and they have to readthem and report on them andthey’re all contemporary. Now I—if

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I were teaching in a traditionalschool in a classical music depart-ment I would be limited somewhatby what I share with the studentsbecause it may or may not pertaindirectly to the art song repertoirewe’re working on or the operaticarias. But since our students haveexperience academically, if not interms of what they want to do withtheir lives with all styles of music—classical and non classical alike Ifeel free enough to share wheneverpossible everything I can withthem. And one of the—I just readan article about a new softwareprogram that actually was devel-oped in Spain. I forgot the name ofthe university. It’s called Vocaloid.Now the human voice I think isthe most difficult sound to repro-duce accurately as a synthesizedsound, to reproduce on computer.So what this software does is that itwill sing—sing in quotes anycombination of notes and voweland consonant sounds that youfeed into it. And so what they aredoing, and I believe this wholeproject is sponsored by Yamaha, isthat they are taking the preservedsounds of famous singers—every-one from Pavarotti to Elvis Presleyto Billy Holiday and cautifyingevery single vowel and consonantsound and note. So that a personcan plug in—I don’t know thecomputer technology that well—plug into their sounds and have forexample, Elvis Presley sing Oops IDid It Again. Now that’s the waythe article attracted me so muchbecause that was part of the title ofthe article I think, but this isfantastic. And what it makes ouryoung singers think about in termsof what’s happening in the worldtoday we have you know American

Idol, we have Vocaloid. We haverecently I think in the past twoyears a cyber contest all on theInternet of classical singers singingonly art songs. And I believe whathappens is they—the contestantssubmit a CD which is then chosenby a committee and the public canhear their work for a period ofmonths. It’s—I—it’s amazing. Ithink that our department is poisedto gather in all of this new technol-ogy and information and ways ofteaching to give our students achance to fly with their dream.Although they have to understandthat it is beautiful to dream andabsolutely essential for their futurethere is work. The work involve thestudents is strict and discipline,formatted in such a way that weyou know we take them step bystep. The downside of some of thistechnology is that the studentsdon’t see the process. There’s youknow an immediate gratification.You can immediately vote. You cantake immediate surveys. You knowthere’s a whole step that we need totake them through. These are all—these are all things that make mevery excited about being on thefaculty here.

Wel l un for t unate ly we have to

end there , but I want to t hank

you ver y much fo r your t ime and

shar ing your thoughts.

Thank you, it was my pleasure.

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