Vegetarian Chinese Store in New York City

For years, I wondered where the vegan and vegetarian Chinese restaurants in NYC obtained their mock meats. Most of these restaurants use the same ingredients, and a few, like Home on 8th, do almost nothing other than place these analogues over a bed of steamed vegetables. Others, like Wild Ginger, excel at presentation and nice plating, but their main dish prices are in the $11-$14 range, and they are not located in my neighborhood. That got me thinking: I wonder if I could make these dishes myself?

Then, I discovered the Holy Grail of Chinese faux meats in New York City: May-Wah Healthy Vegetarian Food, Inc.

Located at 213 Hester Street in Chinatown, they stock just about every veggie meat analog you can think of, almost all of them vegan, including mock chicken, fish, beef, steak, shrimp, ham, beef jerky, chicken nuggets, smoked sausage—this list goes on and on. Almost all of these offerings are different than what you find at Whole Foods or other natural food stores, although Westerly Market—our favorite natural food store in NYC—does stock a couple of these items. Our favorites are the Mock Chicken Nuggets (my wife’s favorite), Coal Roasted Veggie Sausage (a hit all around), Citrus Spareribs (my favorite), and the Vegan Ham and Mock Chicken Legs (my son’s favorite). Best of all, everything is relatively inexpensive. They even offer a discount to those who shop there  a few times a year.

If you like to cook Chinese cuisine and you are vegan or vegetarian, check this place out. You’ll save some dough and discover a whole world of Chinese veggie possibilities, and be able to prepare exactly what some of these NYC restaurants serve.

Name That Tune

I recently had three premieres of On The Day The World Ends, a new piece commissioned by the San Francisco-based Volti choir. The texts consist of three poems: A Song On the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz, Life’s Tragedy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Do not stand at my grave and weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye. The title came from the first line of the Milosz poem.

I find coming up with titles one of the most difficult parts of the compositional process. Sometimes I give pieces abstract names, like Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, or String Quartet No. 1, but more often than not, I try to come up with something creative, compelling, and less pretentious-sounding. However, I like coupling abstract titles with movement titles that are more evocative. To me, it’s like opening a present wrapped in plain paper: you may not have a clue as to what is inside, but when you open it, you are pleasantly surprised—hopefully by the music, but also by the titles of the movements.

(That aside, I like to think that I will have an opportunity to write at least one more violin sonata, and hopefully a few more string quartets. Implying that there will be a Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano and String Quartet No. 2 may be a little presumptuous, but I am hopeful that I won’t die too soon.)

Back to this piece: I borrowed the title On The Day The World Ends from the first line of the Milosz poem, but I was never happy with it. As my lovely wife Victoria puts it, it sounds like the title of a bad B movie—or, perhaps like The Day The Earth Stood Still—and it also really only reflects the first poem, not the other two. When I received a couple of mixed comments from audience members, including a gentleman named J’Carlin, that did it: I was convinced; I had to change it.

This isn’t my first time trashing a title: a work I wrote called Symphony in Three Movements used to be called Chamber Symphony, until I decided that there’s really nothing chamber about it, and it even uses spatially-placed trumpets. Since this technique is not that effective in a small space, and since the ensemble is really more a Mozart-sized orchestra than a chamber group, I changed the title.

The new title I finally settled on for On The Day The World Ends is Eternal Reflections. The word ‘eternal’ implies forever, which I like (birth and death being a continuous cycle), and each poem reflects a different take on finality. The Milosz poem supposes that the final day of the world will be like any other; the Dunbar poem describes how we judge what we have achieved by what we haven’t achieved; the Frye poem is a meditation on how life springs eternal.

Finally, Eternal Reflections just sounds like a choral title. It’s not Bang on a Canned (no offense meant, I admire all three of them)—there’s nothing living, breathing lying, stealing, cheating, sweating or anything else with “ing” in the title—and it’s definitely not hip, sexual, confessional or  world-music-y, but it makes me think of something grand—like a beautiful choir in a large, resonant space. This time around, that’s all I wanted.

My composer friend Jonathan Newman wrote a blog entry about this subject. Here’s a formula he came up with for how composers come up with titles:

some descriptive word or phrase + 
a) “Music” 
b) “Dance(s)” 
c) some specific kind of music or dance (i.e., “Gavotte” or “March”) 

I think composers use processes like this without even thinking about it. It’s like a genetic defect, or maybe an unspoken marketing plan. “If I title it like he/she did, maybe people will like it.” Some composers get around this by using funny symbols, dashes, no caps and so on, but I think we all run into the same problem: how to come up with a convincing title that means something, looks cool, sounds compelling, and doggone it, will make people like you.

Maybe all those dead composers who wrote blandly titled symphonies and sonatas had it right: it’s the music that matters, not the title. As with any great piece, you should be able to appreciate it on it’s own merits, stripped of program notes, venue, the level of performance, and, dare say it? Even a cool title.

My Choral Addiction

Volti Choir of San Francisco, conducted by Robert Geary

It is common knowledge among composers that each musical genre is a distinct world unto itself, complete with societies, clubs, associations and groupies. Some of the most robust center around wind bands, educational music, sacred music, the orchestral world, chamber music, music for children, and finally, choral music. Lately, I have become addicted to writing music for choir.

Strangely, choral music gets a bad rap in some circles. Sometimes when I tell people I wrote a new choral work—which I am very excited about, let alone for Volti, a great choir—their eyes glaze over, or they remain speechless, staring at me with an almost condescending, downward glance. Yet the minute I say I am working on an opera, an orchestral work or even a piece for saxophone and marimba, people become excited, almost gushing. Personally, I find this very strange.

Writing for choir is one of the first and sometimes the only method of composing taught in basic theory classes. So if writing for our own voices is so fundamental, why is it so despised by some composers, and even some performers?

Perhaps some composers are put off by the inherent technical limitations you need to work with (or around) to write great choral music. Great voice-leading is paramount. Writing erratic, wide leaps imparts pain and anxiety, at least when composing for most choirs, and frankly, bad choral music with lots of difficult leaps and bad voice-leading just sounds, well… bad.

Plenty of great and/or well-known modern composers have written for choir, composers as diverse as György Ligeti, Aaron Copland, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Arvo Pärt and Morten Lauridsen, not to mention J.S. Bach and all the great, long dead composers. Not too many people would argue that at least a few on this list are great, so what’s the problem?

Maybe it is because choirs are so common, and there is so much choral music—maybe too much, and a lot of it not very interesting, in my opinion—that it is looked down upon.

Or, maybe in our scientific, experimental world, one that is increasingly moving from the sacred toward the secular, at least in the United States, those who are non-religious, often science-minded academics are weary of embracing a genre that has been—and continues to be—steeped in religion, and specifically Christianity. If this is the case, it is truly ironic, as we would not have universities and science if not for religion.

For better or worse, probably worse in this case, the general population appreciates cool effects over subtly and finesse, and maybe choral music does not offer enough pyrotechnics—choirs are just not Monster Trucks. You cannot hide behind snap pizzicatos, multiphonics, muted passages or a percussion section, at least most of the time. Choral music is extremely transparent: if a piece is bad, you will notice very quickly. Opera on the other hand, is highly visually provocative, so perhaps that has something to do with it. In a visual age, choirs are not as visually stimulating as operas, or television, except if your friends, relatives or someone you think is hot is singing in the choir.

Finally, maybe it is that unfortunately, many choirs are not that advanced. Typical community choirs are often technically limited, and often do not have strong tenors, low enough basses, strong altos or modest sopranos. I am kidding a little here, but not really. The difference between The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, Volti, Chanticleer and Nordic Voices and many local choirs and vocal chamber groups is night and day. Listening to great choirs is a sublime, almost out-of-body experience. Listening to a bad choir—even in a church—is simply hell on earth.

Whatever the reason for some people’s disdain, I can’t be bothered with it. I love great choirs and choral music, and I also love when non-professional choirs program new music. I think there is nothing more beautiful than the human voice. Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love writing instrumental music, but to ignore the power and beauty of the human voice is to deny one of the greatest joys in the world: to hear ourselves sing.

The Importance of Singers Having an Online Presence

My librettist David Cote and I recently solicited materials from singers for an upcoming studio reading of two scenes from our opera, A Child Possessed.

Many singers do not have a website, and are also not on Facebook, MySpace or have clips on YouTube. If you are young and/or do not have management, you should at least be on one of the social networking sites (i.e., Facebook or MySpace), or have a website, or some sort of page with a bio, resume, sound clips and a headshot. It is impossible for us to figure out if you will be appropriate for a role, unless we have a lot of time, which we don’t.

Granted, the world of professional opera is different: relationships between composers, librettists, directors, producers, management companies and individual singers over many years will reveal the right people for roles fairly quickly. Perhaps our case is unique, but still, it can only help to put yourself out there so even more people can easily discover you.

Admittedly, we are more swayed by vocalists who either take time to present themselves well, or have a manager to do it for them. However, many management sites are not comprehensive, and that’s a shame: we didn’t have time to call each manager and ask for materials. It is just much easier to listen to a few clips online, look at a headshot, and read a bio and/or resume.

Did it matter to us whether a singer had management or not? Not really. In fact, since managers are in business to make money both for their clients and themselves, and our project is small peanuts since it’s not a major role with a major opera company, managers really just get in the way. The few managers we know and talked to really could not help that much, and that was expected. They cannot put us in touch with people on their roster who regularly work with major opera companies, only those who are not getting enough work—and you have to ask: why aren’t they getting enough work? Maybe they are really good, but it did give us pause. Of course, often times, how would we know? There were no sound clips online.

Fortunately, the singers we are using are all excellent—we are very lucky. Almost all of them have something online somewhere, or we have heard and seen them live, so we know how good they are. Or, they are quick about getting us materials when asked. Others recommended a few singers we are working with, often more than once. This is why it is important to be friendly to your peers and keep reconnecting with your teachers: you never know when someone will talk you up to someone else, and heartfelt, warm words of praise from someone important count for a lot when you have little else to go by.

What was revealing about this process of looking for singers, is that with a few exceptions, they are pretty bad about promoting themselves. Sometimes we received recordings and head shots that were years old or materials weeks late (or not at all), or some of the sound clips were so low-quality that it made us not want to listen. If you are singer, why would you send a bad recording? The sound is what is most important: if you can’t get that right, nothing else matters. It doesn’t take much: just set up a hand-held recorder in your coach’s apartment and record a few arias and songs.

It is surprising—although I guess it should not be—that many schools do not bother teaching students how to promote themselves. Perhaps singers (and schools) think they will eventually get management, so why bother? The truth is, a lot of great singers do not have management, and a lot of bad ones do, and as I mentioned before, many management sites are awful: few or no sound clips, outdated bios, maybe one small headshot, etc.

So if you are a singer, what would be useful to have online? After viewing over a hundred singer pages and sites, what follows is a list of what I think is useful.

Suggestions for Online Materials for Singers

1. Biography: at least have a medium-length one, but having three versions—long, medium and short—is optimal. You don’t need to have a PDF or Word document. People generally know now how to copy, paste and reformat text from a website.

2. Headshot: a clear, recent 8 X 10 headshot, no more than three years old, preferably in color (graphic designers can easily change it to grayscale with the click of a button). Have two versions: one that is 72 dpi (for online use) and 300 dpi (for print). Note that the image you have of yourself on your home page (if you have a  site) does not need to be your headshot. You can also include images of you in different roles, which is also often highly revealing.

3. Sound Clips:  3-5 (or more) sound clips that best represent your singing, and that no more than one or maybe two years old. If you focus on opera, you should have opera clips. If you love new music, make sure to have a few clips of you singing modern works.

4. Resume: in my opinion, what is important here, at least for opera singers, is a list of roles you have performed, with the companies you have worked with, and when you worked with them. You can also include recordings you have made (if any), and if you are younger, teachers and coaches you have worked with.

5. Concert Schedule: this is important because if someone wants to hire you, they need to know if you are available. You can include this on a website if your management doesn’t do this for you, or even do this for free on MySpace, which actually works quite well. This is by far the one detail that is most overlooked by singers, and wasted the most time. We found many singers we wanted to work with, but then found out later that there was a conflict, sometimes of only a day or so (they had to miss one rehearsal, but could have made the recording date).

6. Contact Info: at the very least, include an email address, but a phone number is also useful if you are comfortable putting it online. If you don’t check email that frequently, make sure to include a phone number. Or, if you use Facebook or MySpace, that can suffice, as long as you make it clear on your site that you use one of those sites.

You don’t need a hip flash site, a downloadable press kit or any other fancy gizmos. Just the basics, but done well. In fact, you don’t even need a professional site. You can accomplish all of this for free on MySpace, and even Facebook.

What else could you include? If you have professionally released or self-released CDs, include some links to those pages on Amazon, iTunes or some other site so people can purchase your CDs. If there is something else about you that is pertinent or interesting—you have a social conscience and work for shelters, you are vegan and/or a gourmet cook, you have a blog, you also sing musicals or pop music, or maybe you also play an instrument—make sure to mention it. Sometimes those details can make a difference, or at least make you seem more interesting, After all, if are working with someone for days or weeks on end, eventually, you will want to talk about something other than music or opera.

I look forward to working with many of the wonderful singers I didn’t have a chance to experience this time around, and for those I haven’t yet discovered, I hope I will be able to find you online.

Dylan and the Snowman: Why Children are the Best New Music Audience

On Planet New Music (a strange planet perhaps, but the one I live on nevertheless), everyone usually focuses on entertaining adults. Playing music for children, or writing music that appeals to children, is usually considered a good deed at best, a chore at worst. It is certainly not what most “serious” musicians go to school for, unless they are planning on a career teaching children. This is unfortunate, because I think kids really are one of the best audiences for new music because they usually have the fewest preconceptions. I wrote and essay back in 2002 entitled Who is Our Most Important Audience?, in which I elaborate on this issue, but I want to tell a story about my three year old son Dylan that illustrates my point.

During the winter of 2007-08, I completed a work entitled Winter Songs, a twenty-minute, six-movement work for bass-baritone and chamber sextet. I wrote a lot of it in Vermont—the perfect place to write a piece about winter, I should add. While I was writing the fourth movement, a setting of Richard Wilbur’s poem Boy at the Window, I looked out the window where I was composing, and unbelievably, without knowing what I was writing that day, Victoria and her father decided to take Dylan outside to build a snowman! You could not ask for better inspiration for setting a poem about a boy and a snowman than to look out the window and see your own son building one. Of course, the movement is dedicated to Dylan, but I meant to dedicate it to him all along.

At age 3, Dylan is beginning to understand what I do, that I write music for musicians to play. The other day he said he wanted to listen to my music. Of course, there is nothing more flattering than to have your three year old—or any family member—ask to listen to your music, so I decided to play him Boy at the Window. I described what I think it is about: a boy watching his snowman with fear in his eyes, scared that it would melt and die, and that in the second stanza, you see it from the snowman’s perspective, looking inside at the boy. I told him that we should really be more afraid for the boy, and that all adults know children will eventually experience pain, and that the snowman sheds tears of rain. Dylan developed this whole, elaborate story: the singer, David Neal (who also commissioned the work), is the snowman, and he (Dylan) is the boy in the story. He then proceeded to ask me to play it fourteen times in a row. As a composer, how do you say no to that? Every night since then, he asks for “the snowman song”, and has me play it at least once, usually twice, while he tells the story to me, and is now even beginning to sing along with the vocal line.

What is my point? Dylan does not know that this is “modern music” and that many people have pre-conceived notions that all new music is bad until proven otherwise. He just enjoys it as a piece of music. To my mind, this is how all people should approach new music: with an open mind, and with the innocence of a child.

Muses and the Curse of Memory

Euterpe by Battoni

These days I am working on a new opera entitled A Child Possessed. I love writing vocal music, but I find that the more tuneful my melodies are, the harder it is to let them go. They end up permeating my thoughts when I am awake, and even my dreams. This may sound delightful—how much better could it be than to dream your own music, right?—but imagine having the same soundtrack running through your brain over and over again. It is both a blessing and a curse.

Not only do the melodies themselves repeat ad nauseam, but the singers who will be performing the roles are the muses behind those lines. I will be recording a demo of two scenes in a few days, and I haven’t even heard the singers sing the lines yet, but I already hear their voices—perfectly of course, because it’s all in my head.

Of course, sometimes I have someone else’s music as my life soundtrack. This is great, particularly if it is something I like, such as Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Bach’s Golderberg Variations before bedtime, or if I am feeling particularly badass, the soundtrack to the The Matrix, but what if I just came from an awful concert? Then it’s hellish, but that’s what iPods are for: you can reset by listening to a favorite piece of music, or in my case, more often than not, either works submitted by composers for AME, or a recent podcast.

I wonder if other composers have this problem. What is the background music for Milton Babbitt’s dreams? Are they serialized? How about Helmut Lachenmann? Has he ever dreamt a melody? Is this phenomenon a thousand times worse for a composer like Stephen Schwartz, the composer who wrote Wicked? I would suspect that even for Schwartz, there are only so many times you could dream Defying Gravity before going a little batty. I can take comfort in never having had Philip Glass’s music as my background, as that would be too repetitive for my taste (I wonder what the background music for his dreams is?), or Kenny G.

I guess that’s when I will know I am in hell: when Kenny G becomes by permanent background soundtrack.

What are we Spending on the Arts?

Do you ever wonder what we spend on the arts in the U.S. compared to other industrialized nations? I do, so I decided to do a little sleuthing.

Here is a breakdown (rounded to the nearest dollar) of what we spent on the arts per capita from 1993-96 (I know, old figures, but this is what I could find), based on figures mostly drawn from a 2001 essay from the Millenium Fool, and also from ArtTrust.net:

Germany: $95
Finland: $90
Sweden: $56
France: $57
Netherlands: $45
Canada: $46
UK: $26 
Australia: $25
United States: $6

Sure, these figures are 13 years old, but we should still be ashamed. In fact, according to another much more recent source, via taxes, each U.S. citizen pays roughly 50¢ each year toward the arts.

Government arts funding in the United States still lags far behind almost all other industrialized nations. Even if the Obama Administration increases the NEA budget by 10 million dollars, we will still pale in comparison to other nations. As great as we think we are over here in America, we lag behind just about everyone that matters when it comes to education, health care, technology, the environment, our traveling infrastructure (roads, bridges, more fuel efficient or environmentally-friendly cars, etc.) and finally, arts funding. For such a great country, we could do a lot better.

In the U.S., there are approximately 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations that spend $63.1 billion annually, a huge chunk of which is funneled to museums, complexes like Lincoln Center and so on, and not to individual new music groups or modern music and art.

It is wrong to assume that the private sector will pick up the slack when the government does not support the arts, especially during a recession. Sure, some say that the private sector makes up for what we lack with public funding, but in these dire times, I’m not sure this will continue to be the case, at least for a while. As the artistic director of a new music group, the American Modern Ensemble, I can assure you, it is more difficult than ever to entice people to give, and sometimes even to pay for a single ticket.

Why is arts funding in the U.S. so low? Part of the problem is that we are a very large country compared to the others, but this is a poor excuse. When you consider what we have spent in the past on just about everything else, it becomes clear that our priorities have not been geared toward the arts. This needs to change. As a composer, of course I am biased, but if you are reading my blog, you are probably sympathetic.

Let’s hope the new administration continues to support providing more funding for the NEA and the arts in general.

2009 Ultimate iPhone Wish List

A while back I wrote a post called the Ultimate iPhone Wish List. Fortunately, many features I was hoping for are included in the iPhone 3G, the iPhone I finally purchased, but a few are still missing. Here is a breakdown of what I would most like to see added to future generations of the iPhone and iPhone OS.

To Do List and Notes
Apple’s To Do List and Notes synchronization is the pits. The best workaround I found—which works perfectly for me, by the way—is to use Appigo’s Sync service for my To Do lists in iCal, coupled with Toodledo’s Notebook for notes. This allows me to edit my notes from any computer, since Toodledo’s website is accessible anywhere. I haven’t yet figured how out how to sync To Do’s with Toodledo, but since I usually view my To Do’s in iCal, I have not found the need to sync To Do’s with Toodledo, but it is possible.

So what is my wish here? I wish that Apple would get their act together and make all of this seamless, so I do not have to always resort to Third Party apps to fill in the gaps. I am happy to support the wonderful people who make them, but it is interesting how Apple will embark down a path in a half-baked way (with Notes in Apple Mail, for example) and not do a really good job. These ill-fated moves almost undermine the care that goes into creating devices like the iPhone in the first place.

Sharing Music: Update
It is now possible to share music on your iPhone using SimplifyMedia. This is not a feature that I will use often, but there are times when I will want someone to have temporary access to some of my music. This is particulary important to me as a composer, but I know a lot of other people will find this useful.

Auto Feature Shut-Off
I really want to be able to turn off all services—3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.—with one simple click at the top of the screen, without using a hack such as BossPrefs. Sometimes I am using my iPhone and don’t need connectivity, like when I am walking outside listening to music and don’t want to take calls. It is really annoying that Apple doesn’t make this easier.

Better Mail Handling
As MacWorld wrote back in 2008:

There’s also still no way to mark multiple messages as read, force HTML messages to display as plain text, or adjust how much of a message is quoted in a reply. And Mail’s handling of pictures, both sending and receiving, remains limited: You still can’t move photos from Mail to the Photos app, or e-mail multiple pictures at once. Those of us with multiple e-mail accounts still bemoan the lack of a unified inbox that would allow us to skim messages in all of our accounts at once.

I agree, and I think the biggest problem here is integration between programs, particularly Apple’s, but ranking right up there is the ability to delete en-masse and a unified inbox.

Personalized Ringtones Right on the iPhone
As far as I know, it is still not possible to make customized ringtones right on the iPhone; you still must do it in iTunes or on your computer, using a program like Fission. If a ringtone is available through the iTunes store, you can download it, but that’s it.  If someone knows something I don’t, please give me a heads-up.

Replaceable, Swappable Battery: Update
This still isn’t possible, perhaps for good reason (the built-in battery probably saves a lot of space), but it would be very cool to be able to swap batteries. In the meantime, I’ll vote for the Solio Solar Charger, a nifty device that takes your iPhone off the grid.

iPhone as Credit Card
This still does not exist, as far as I know, so I will mention it again…

Imagine swiping your phone to pay for a purchase, instead of carrying around a whole wallet full of credit cards. Don’t laugh: this is already possible in Japan via RFID tags. Some normal plastic credit cards in the US even incorporate RFID tags so cards can be waved rather than swiped. However, I think biometrics will eventually replace cards altogether, but this is still a great idea.

iChat: Update
Although I don’t use this, the best option I found is BeeJive’s software, which allows you to use any currently existing service you like.

Rotating Lens (or Lens on Both Sides)
I mentioned this before, but it would be really useful if there was a camera lens on both sides of the iPhone. It would then turn the iPhone into a great video iChat device, which is the wave of the future, or at least one of the waves. According to AppleInsider, the next generation of iPhone will have a video camera, so this will hopefully be included.

Remote Control for TV and Kitchen Appliances
You can use your iPhone to control iTunes and your Apple TV, if you have one, but what if you don’t have an Apple TV? Alternatively, it would be great to be able to control my RCN Cable box remotely, or at least be able to program a recording with an iPhone app. Apple will supposedly include this capability in the 4G iPhone.

Someday, in my Wired kitchen, it would be great to interact with my kitchen via my iPhone, or even just a computer, to adjust my thermostat, lights and access the contents of my modern refrigerator via bar code scanning. It would be efficient and time saving to automatically find out if certain items in your refrigerator have gone bad based on expiration dates, and if you’re missing a key ingredient for that risotto you want to make tonight.

There are other nifty details that will improve with the upcoming iPhone OS update, like cut and paste and hopefully un-hacked Flash support, faster speed, and so on, but I have a feeling many items on my wish list  won’t make the cut.

What’s on your wish list? Vote below for what you really want in the upcoming OS release, or in the next generation of iPhones.

Singers Needed for “A Child Possessed” Opera Demo

When I am not playing with my iPhone, hanging with Dylan or being a house husband (not necessarily in that order), I am hard at work on a two-act opera entitled A Child Possessed with David Cote, a good friend who is a multi-talented writer and excellent librettist. We are having a Call For Vocalists for an upcoming studio reading of two scenes, from April 29-May 1. Click the Call For Vocalists link for more details.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS

“In this full-length tragic opera based on the beloved award-winning novel, an estranged husband and wife struggle to care for their severely disabled child. Hélène is a world-famous opera singer who turned her back on her daughter Génie years ago; Stepan is a Russian aristocrat, exiled to France, where he works as a poor truck driver. When Stepan discovers his little girl is still alive, he decides to raise her himself, taking her along his truck routes. Hélène worries that he may be doing the girl more harm than good, yet she sees Génie emerging from her grotesque, deaf-mute purgatory. Issues of normalcy, family and the redemptive power of love are at the core of this heartbreaking tale.”

CHARACTERS
(For These Two Scenes)

HÉLÈNE LOPUCHINE (née Milescu) – Lyric Soprano (B-flat – high C)
[ca. 12" of material, 1 aria]
French, mid 30s. Beautiful, glamorous, world-renowned soprano based in Paris. Estranged wife of Stepan. For the last five years, her fame has grown tremendously. She performs in the world’s best opera houses, with a repertoire of bel canto, the Romantics, and the occasional Baroque work. (She’s more Mozart and Rossini than Wagner.) Stylish, lovely, but imperious and chilly, she wants to control her own past, which is full of secrets. Hélène has emotional difficulty with the idea of family and motherhood—which leads to guilt. She didn’t come from wealth; she had to work her way up from poor origins. She has a dry, sharp sense of humor. Stoic loneliness has become a way of life, what with all the traveling and limited engagements.

STEPAN LOPUCHINE – Dramatic Baritone: Robert Gardner
[ca. 10" of material, small, light children's song he sings to Génie]
Russian, late 30s. Stepan is a truck driver based in Marseilles. When not on the road driving long hours throughout the French countryside, he dwells in a small, shabby room in Madame Pascoli’s boarding house by the docks—which also serves as a bar for sailors and locals. Stepan’s life is part proletarian, part bohemian. He’s jolly but moody, apt to talk about axles and carburetors as well as moral philosophy. Born into the Russian aristocracy, he was forced to leave the Soviet Union when he was a young man. Married Hélène, had Génie, became estranged from Hélène when Génie was about three years old. He’s got a dark sense of humor and can act the fool, but can be dangerous when angered.

EUGÉNIE LOPUCHINE (Génie) – Child Soprano: Nicole Bocchi
[2" vocalizations, little or no singing in these scenes]
Age 8. Daughter of Hélène and Stepan. Génie is developmentally disabled, to the point where she cannot communicate or take care of herself. At first, she cannot speak—beyond random vocalizations—and her responses to outside stimuli are impulsive, strange, and occasionally violent. She is a basically sweet girl but living in a Swiss mental hospital since the age of three has left her dissociated and alienated. No one tried to teach her anything or reach her emotionally. So it is unclear whether she is severely mentally disabled or if it is a combination of moderate disability plus autism, or emotional damage brought about by years of institutional life.

MISS PAUMELLE – Lyric Mezzo-Soprano (B-flat – G)
[ca. 7" of material, 1 arioso section]
Age: late 20s to mid 30s. A therapist in a state-of-the-art Swiss mental institution. Efficient, bright, proud of her work. Her demeanor is that of a schoolteacher/librarian/nun.

DR. CHITRY – Dramatic Tenor (D-flat – high A-flat)
[ca. 7" of material, 1 arioso section]
Age: late 30/early 40s. Doctor in Swiss mental institution. Suave, poised, the public face of the hospital. He deals with distraught parents of patients all the time.

DR. KRETSCHMANN – Bass-Baritone (F – high D-flat)
[ca. 4" of material, 1 arioso section]
Age: 40s/50s. Starchy, pompous but passionate doctor. Innovator of a controversial new neurological operation for the developmentally disabled. Authoritative but not subtle.

RENE – Tenor (Major sixth: second space C-sharp – A-sharp)
[a few measures of light singing and semi-pitched vocalizations]
Age: late teens. Mentally disabled youth who has undergone a radical operation. Docile but distracted. Charming and ingratiating with his supervisors. Flirts with women.

GEORGE – Tenor or Baritone
[a few measures of semi-pitched vocalizations]
Age: 20s. Mentally disabled youth who has undergone a radical operation. A bit fidgety but he tries to control it.

HANS – Tenor or Baritone
[a few measures of semi-pitched vocalizations]
Age: 20s. Mentally disabled youth who has undergone a radical operation. Most distant of all, with impaired motor functions. Withdrawn.

IGRANES – Lyric Baritone (A – high F)
[ca. 5" of material, combination arioso/recitative]
Age: 30s. Helene’s manager. An elegant, urbane, fussy fellow. He loves the opera and adores his client. Conservative in his tastes and dismissive of anything too modern.

HOTEL MANAGER – Lyric Tenor (C – high A)
[ca. 5" of material]
Age: 20s. Worker at a fancy seaside hotel in Cannes. Not as snooty as Igranes, but he tries to be smooth. When we see him, he’s rather flustered.

If you are a singer with an operatic background, or know anyone who is, please spread the word. The deadline for consideration is April 6, 2009.

The Death of Radio

If you have any musical taste whatsoever, you probably do not rely on radio for your daily musical fix. Radio is useful for traveling, but it has always been limited, especially while driving across state lines, through forests and in back woods areas. Broadcasts cut out every few miles, but does this really matter? Most stations’ programs are awful, particularly now that they are almost all controlled by Clear Channel.

It is important for our government to update our technological infrastructure, and I think it is time for traditional radio to be die or to be reinvented.

The death of traditional FM and AM radio will allow indie and new classical music to have a fighting chance. Updated technology will allow us to easily listen to a mix of podcasts and traditional radio shows side by side, even in cars.

Many people—myself included—are only listening online or on cell phones. Some of my favorite listening experiences are podcasts, and I almost never listen to radio anymore, but that is because I like listening to what I want when I want—and I don’t drive much.

We think we are way ahead in the U.S., but are actually way behind Japan and many other developed countries. Our rural areas often lack cell sites, but most urbanites are indifferent until they have to take a drive in the country and their mobile phones cease to work. Once cell sites become more common in rural areas, most people will listen to radio shows via cell sites (even solar-powered cell sites), Satellites or through broadband connections at home.

If I do want to listen to radio, which might be useful for a live broadcast of a friend’s premiere in a far-away city, I could use Pandora (for traditional radio stations) or eventually, Sirius satellite radio on my iPhone. This is the same reason that I almost never watch something on the television when it actually airs; I just record it with our RCN equivalent of Tivo. DJ’s were useful in the past, but I think that Podcasts have taken over, and now I often find out about new releases through podcasts.

Some say it is not cost effective to put cell towers in rural areas, but I think part of the reason businesses do not locate to areas like Middlebury, VT is because of the lack of broadband and cell phone coverage. Small-scale farmers and other traditional businesses (candle makers, microbreweries, etc.) would also benefit from upgraded infrastructure. I have heard the argument that businesses should not be located in rural places, but you cannot grow maple sugar trees in Manhattan or ski in Florida.

If infrastructure in one area improves, there will be more incentives to upgrade other areas. With more cell towers and better broadband, more businesses will locate to less populated towns. High-speed rail systems will hopefully follow. This is all theoretical, or course, but I think there is some truth to it.

With cell sites and reliable broadband access, a maple syrup company will be able to effectively use the Internet to market their products to customers in California, but if they are limited to dial-up, which is crushingly slow, they will mostly sell locally through cooperatives or to larger companies, or by using snail mail lists, which is not always cost effective. Better technology will help small businesses.

All musicians—especially composers and classical musicians—need to push for upgraded infrastructure, especially where technology is concerned. Many of our biggest fans lie in out of the way places. It is in our best interest to push for traditional radio to die a quick death.