Process: “Inward Journey” Recital Pt. 3

This Saturday, 10/10/20, I will be singing a concert for the Emerging Artists Series at Boston Court Pasadena. The recital is entitled “Inward Journey,” and it will be streaming live at 8pm Pacific. Info here: http://bostoncourtpasadena.org/events/emerging-artists-justin-birchell/ . It will be an hour of music, from memory, in four languages, with staged movement, and with visual images. It has been 8 months in the making. What goes into preparing a recital like this one--especially in the age of COViD? For those who are interested, I thought I’d share a bit about the process behind this recital and bringing together the various elements that make it up.

The first step was when I received a phone call from Mark Saltzman, the director of the Emerging Artists Series. Through the various channels that make singers & classical music producers aware of each other within the greater LA arts community, Mark had picked up my name as a young artist working/studying in LA who might be a good fit for the Emerging Artists Series. He told me about the Series, and especially pitched me its focus on allowing each Emerging Artist their own vision & conception. From everything he told me, it sounded like a really special opportunity on two levels. First of all, since the series paired each singer with a coach-mentor, it would be an opportunity to get input & training from some of the best classical musician / educators in the LA area. And in allowing the Artist to conceive a recital project from their own inspiration, it might allow me to create something that really reflected my own interests & artistic preoccupations (which I believe is the holy grail to any artist--the equivalent of a filmmaker getting to write & direct their own script and have the full funding to do so!).

The next step was to audition for the series. I drove to Pasadena on a February morning and sang two or three selections for the group of mentors and Saltzman (in essence, the “producer” of the series). I was gratified & excited to be one of the four singers chosen for this season, and gratified anew when I was paired with mentor Brent McMunn, who is the Conductor of Opera at the University of Southern California, and has conducting credits with LA Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and New York City Opera. Brent’s reputation as a top-notch musician is well known throughout the LA music community.

An initial meeting to get things rolling was scheduled at just exactly the time that COVID changed all our lives. What was supposed to be a nice get-to-know-you at Saltzman’s house became instead a Zoom meeting where Mark assured us that everything possible would be done to allow the series to go forward. Remarkably, this part has turned out to be true.

In short order, the Series turned from a series of in-person concerts to a run of live-streamed recitals, with social distancing between collaborators, onstage droplet barriers, and an empty house except for the singer, pianist, and cameraman. Meanwhile I gave up my room in LA and moved with family in the Sacramento area. Instead of meeting & gradually preparing over the summer, it would now be a matter of convening in LA a couple weeks prior to the recital and working intensively to get the recital on its feet.

Over the summer, in a series of phone calls, Zoom meetings, and emails, the repertoire for this recital slowly took shape. I conceived the concept of an “Inward Journey”--this is a theme that has interested me perhaps as much as any other over the years. I love the work of Joseph Campbell, I love the fields of yoga and meditation, I am interested in psychedelia and the art that came out of it, I love the art of David Lynch--all of which are interested in the landscapes of the interior of the human being.

The other, ostensibly unrelated, topic which enthralls me is that of linguistics. See my previous blog post for a discussion of why this is & how it manifests in this recital. In this case, it suffices to say that, after I mentioned this, another of the EAS mentors, Mark Robson, who happens to be a wonderful composer in addition to his skills as a pianist and coach, sent me his “Södergran-Dagbok,” six songs in Swedish for baritone and piano. In constructing the recital’s shape and theme, we decided to excerpt four of the six songs from this cycle.

The Emerging Artist Series also includes the commission of a new composition for each Artist. This means that Boston Court Pasadena pays a living, breathing composer to write a brand new work for voice & piano just for the Artist, to be premiered on this recital.

In my case, I was lucky enough to be paired with Michael Welsh. I loved that when Welsh wrote to me, he did not even ask about the concept for the recital, or what kind of thing I might prefer to receive. Rather, he presented me with a concept, one which he had already had in mind for (evidently) YEARS! He sent me five poetry excerpts from Doris Lessing’s novel Briefing for a Descent Into Hell. I had not heard of the book, but I immediately fell in love with the strange, obscure, and abstract images in it. It fit so perfectly with my own love of the bizarre, the profound and abstract. I was also very taken with Michael’s conviction and inspiration. I really believe when an artist is moved by a compelling inspiration, the most beautiful work can come out. Therefore, I was all too eager to tell Michael “Yes, go ahead! Make it exactly how you want & I’ll do it!”. Thanks to Michael, I’ve also now become familiar with this interesting novel, which I am partway through reading & fascinated by!

When Michael’s score came back, it was somewhat daunting because it was long and rather musically complex. But the sounds of it were also perfectly suited to my tastes & inclinations--another reason my pairing with Michael was so serendipitous. His musical language reminds me a little of John Adams and other minimalists & post-minimalists, while at times he slips into a feel that reminds me of Stravinsky. In short, although his language is fully his own, he is in relationship with some of my favorite composers and soundscapes. Over time, the size and scope of the cycle, which runs to about 23 minutes in total length, began to seem a virtue rather than something to be frightened of. With a somewhat larger canvas, Michael was actually able to say something substantial, to create a real arc, and to take the listener on a real journey. Sometimes, scope is simply necessary. Things can be done, depths can be reached, in a three and a half hour movie, which are impossible in a one and a half hour movie. To quote my beloved David Lynch, “who gives a fucking shit how long a scene is?”. A video of me and Maestro McMunn talking about the cycle with composer Welsh can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpmrR4vf5sM .

As I’ve related elsewhere, at one point in the process, this recital was to have even larger scope and include new works in Farsi and Catalan from composers I know personally, as well as songs in Japanese and Korean. At an earlier phase to that, Maestro McMunn and I were wading through a huge long list I had compiled of potential works in unusual languages, including Nahuatl, Hungarian, and others, which was winnowed over time to the three cycles (Irish, Swedish, English) and one short song (Finnish) which you will hear on Saturday. I sought out native speakers and other resources to coach these languages--to learn not just how to pronounce them correctly, but also to memorize word-by-word what I am actually saying, so that I can communicate the poetry with as much nuance & meaning as possible. See my last blog post for the details of this process.

Then came the process of learning the music. Since Maestro McMunn and I were in two different cities, we were left to our own devices in practicing and learning. He sent me “karaoke” recordings of all the accompaniments for Michael’s new cycle. I had various recordings to work with of the Robson songs and the Irish songs by John Kinsella. Thus, when we finally convened to begin socially-distanced rehearsal about two weeks ago, I came knowing the basic outlines of all the pieces--though still with a few “trouble spots” and wrongly-learned parts, which over the intervening time we have ironed out as one normally does with a coach.

In the last two weeks, the rubber has met the road. I was inspired to add visual elements to our recital, and followed that inspiration into the art-form of photo compositing and manipulation--a medium I’d never worked in before. I used many of my own original photos, finding that (especially in my years living in the beautiful scenery of Alaska), I’d taken a few that were perfectly suited to the mood and vision of this recital. In the end, only a few of them will end up being seen on our stream, but others, inspired by and linked to specific songs in our program, have been in my social media and other places, and I still consider them a part of the final total product of the recital. Once I get the video to use for my own purposes, I may edit more of them in to create more visual activity & interest in a final video product of the recital.

Luckily, the bulk of this recital is made up of work by two living LA-area composers, so I had the opportunity during these two weeks to meet with both Mark Robson and Michael Welsh, and get their input on our interpretations of their songs.

Finally, the last step, together with producer Mark Saltzman, has been working up the stage action and deciding on the movements we will use to communicate our story. Now we’re just about 50 hours away from opening night, and all that’s left to do is practice incorporating everything we have worked on until it becomes second nature, and go into the venue itself to assemble and adjust the technical elements.

Thanks for reading and I hope you will consider tuning in. For those unable to tune in live, the recital will remain on Boston Court Pasadena’s website for a week afterward.