An Admission

After watching The Cutting Edge a couple of times (watched it again while I was on my exercise bike this morning, while the B took a little nap) I thought about how it always reminds me of a massive screw-up I made when I was in my senior year of college. I never want to think about it, and I don't really want to write about it, but I feel like writing about it will get it out of my system a little. You can read this or not, really, this one's just for me, but maybe someone out there can learn from my mistakes.

My college degree is the oh-so-useful in everyday life Classical Voice Performance degree. In order to get it, I had to give a senior recital. I'm trying to think of something analogous to it that someone who got a "regular" (useful) degree, and I'm not sure there's anything similar. It really boils down to this: you get two hours to prove that you're deserving of the degree you've spent four years of your life working toward. They're not fooling around either. You really have to prove at that recital (and to a lesser degree, each of your year-ending juries) that you won't embarrass the school by having it on your resume. They can boot you at any time by failing you on one of those juries, although I had always heard of people getting a second chance to pass.

Well, enough background information. My senior recital was coming up (it was March 6, 1994—that's one of those dates that you don't easily forget, and I notice it every year on the anniversary still, twelve years later) and I took more time than I should have choosing the last "set". (You have to sing in four different languages, and use music from four different time periods.) I chose a set of devilishly difficult Schoenberg Cabaret Songs to give me something in German and from the 20th century, which rounded out my selections nicely. The problem? The piano part is as hard or harder than the voice part, and my accompanist was already extremely busy. He did say he could do it, but that he couldn't guarantee how well he'd play them because it would take more time than he could commit to really get them into his hands.

I mentioned my predicament to one of my wackiest teachers, the guy who taught Microtones. He started talking about a guy he knew who didn't go to the Conservatory, but was a great pianist and was looking for gigs around town and would do my set gratis for a copy of the recital tape to use. I agreed, gave him my extra set of music to pass on to this kid, and put it out of my mind. I didn't honestly think Joe (the professor) would recommend someone who would suck. In a supreme moment of idiocy and tunnel vision, I didn't schedule a practice between myself and this guy until three days before the jury I had to do for the entire voice faculty leading up to the recital.

Jump forward in time to that practice three days before the jury, and this guy was a train wreck. He sped up, slowed down, and played notes that had only a passing similarity to what Schoenberg put on paper. He promised me that he would practice day and night for three days and get them down pat, apologizing profusely for misjudging how hard the parts were and how much time he should have spent practicing them before that night. Like a moron (and someone who had no one else to turn to) I agreed and (though I can't believe it) I didn't immediately start looking for a replacement after that disastrous practice.

Another jump forward now, to the afternoon of my jury. Picture me and my main accompanist standing by the guard's station at the main building, waiting for this tool to show up. He was five minutes late (yes, five minutes past the time I was supposed to walk into the jury room!) but we had to wait for him because he wasn't a student at the Conservatory and had to be signed in by me in order to get in. We ran to the jury room and I breathed a sigh of relief that they were behind schedule (they were hearing all the voice majors giving recitals in March that day) and I still had some time. I started to pace, doing nothing to cure my shortness of breath from the jog, but dissapating my nervous energy a bit. This dude apologized over and over for being late, but assured me he had the piano parts down.

They finally call us in, and the eldest and scariest member of the voice faculty (think Elrond, but with more power) decided to ask for the Schoenberg first. I don't think I was actually hearing every word she spoke through my nervousness, but I remember she said something about looking forward to hearing something nicely different from the standard fare. They picked a piece at random from that set (the hardest one) to hear, and my new accompanist and I took the stage.

I gave him that little singer "okay, start now" nod and he started to play. Haltingly. Terribly. I wasn't even sure when to come in, and I knew these songs backward, forward, sideways, and in the fourth dimension. I swear, I must have blacked out. I know I tried to sing and he tried to play, but the only thing I remember is the horrified look on my own voice teacher's face as we tried to navigate from one measure to the next. It was awful. I know lots of people say this, but that was the most embarrassed I can ever remember being.

That's when I did the thing that you just don't do. At a jury like this, you keep going until they stop you. I don't care if the building starts to crumble around you, or if you accompanist goes into labor, you keep singing until they stop you. Well, I stopped.

And then I burst into tears.

Two minutes into the most important moment of my college life to that point, in front of more than six hundred years of professional singing experience. I think I was actually hysterical, as in the medical use of that term.

I think I turned my back and wiped my face off, once the reality of how badly I'd screwed up hit me. It was one thing to bring in a bad accompanist and sing poorly because of it. It was another thing to completely lose my shit in front of those ten people. One was dumb. The other was the worst thing you can be. Unprofessional.

I turned and I think my teacher came to my rescue, dismissing the disaster accompanist and then telling the jury that I'd obviously made an error in my choice and that it would be rectified before the recital. They let me go on and sing four other pieces from the rest of the recital with my good, reliable accompanist, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I would have to come back and sing the entire jury again, and if I didn't have an acceptable pianist for the fourth set, I would be failed. And that means you're gone. No degree. Everyone's nightmare.

I walked out of the room and fired the disaster accompanist, and my regular accompanist gamely offered to play the set. I knew asking him to learn it in a week was stretching things beyond reality, knowing his schedule. If he played them poorly because of a lack of time to practice them, I'd be out on my ear. I left the option open but I honestly didn't know what I should do. I really just wanted to quit. I'd completely screwed up in front of the ten people who could decide my future. Metropolitan Opera alumni. Singers who'd seen the green room at La Scala and Covent Garden. I had wasted their time and made them watch me bawl like a child.

I think I set some sort of record for Kleenex usage that night. I couldn't think of anything to do with myself. I walked around my apartment, staring at things and trying to pretend it hadn't happened. I'd just gotten a care package from home the day before, and a copy of The Cutting Edge (bootlegged from cable onto videotape, I'm sorry to say, but I have made up for it by purchasing a copy of it on DVD once it came out) and I popped it in hoping it would distract me.

When I got to the part of the movie where Kate admits the mistake at the Calgary Olympics was hers, I think I started to bawl again. She looked up at those people, her father, her coach, and someone she was secretly in love with, and admitted that she was a screwup, not just in Calgary, but in the short program they'd just done. I know it's cheesy, but in a moment when I couldn't imagine walking into that room and facing those ten people again, seeing her lace up those skates again and face the crowds was exactly what I needed.

In case you want to know what happened, I found a brilliant accompanist who attended another music school in town who had played these pieces before. I don't even remember how I found him, but he was awesome. He also played my encore to take even more pressure off my main accompanist. The next jury, though the moment when I walked up to the stage and had to look down at those people again was hard, went really well. I got good scores from them and got the green light to do my recital, which also went as well as I could have hoped.

The important thing, though, was that Kate and the Minnesota Machine were there for me when I needed them. Thanks, guys.

Toe pick!