Fever Pitch Magazine

Singer-songwriter, instrumentalist

There is something intriguing around the idea of the unknown. Whether this comes to Feelds as a thirst for exploration or a relentless drive for self-discovery, onward seems to be the only direction.

Since releasing a string of self-produced singles in the latter half of 2016, the Melbourne-based project of James Seymour has grown miles forward into a fully-fledged outfit, defined by clever songwriting used to provoke a dynamic soundscape of honest storytelling. A new level of performance was struck in 2017 with the addition of a live band, allowing the following two singles, ‘Colourblind’ and ‘Crazy Neighbours’ to pave the way for a debut EP release in the early stages of 2018. The self-produced EP, ‘Hunch’, was independently-released to a sold out hometown crowd in Melbourne, has gained national radio success, received over 1.25 Million streams on Spotify, and allowed Feelds to tour across the country in support of the likes of Didirri, Hayden Calnin, Fan Girl & BATTS.

By Stella Joseph-Jarecki (Enquiries: stellamusicwriter.wordpress.com)

On the 1st November, chamber vocal ensemble The Song Company presented Nineteen to the Dozen at the Melbourne Recital Centre. In their words, this concert presented a “tapestry of 20 compact untitled commissions from 19 Australian composers, playlisted against fragmented miniatures from each of the last 12 centuries.” Each individual fragment was about 2 minutes long.

The program was stylistically a mixed bag. I think it is worth mentioning that the listening experience might have been enhanced if it didn’t involve quite as much rapid-fire aural stimulation. The downside of having so many commissions, and running straight through the program from start to finish, was that it was hard to fully absorb any of the pieces as an audience member, particularly as they were so brief.

However, I would like to acknowledge that it is a great thing for a local group to commission so many new works by Australian composers. It would be fantastic to perhaps see a program by The Song Company where they commission three or four composers to write ten minute pieces, which would give the compositions space to breathe (both for the composers themselves in writing the pieces and for the audience members in listening to them).

It was interesting to note that a number of the commissioned vignettes were in a similar sound world, featuring experimentation with soundscapes and vocal effects, such as intentional vocal fry, trills, almost machine-esque noises and vocalisations on particular pitches. The risk with this particular style of overtly modern vocal music is that after a certain point it can sound like arbitrarily ‘weird’ noise for the sake of it, particularly if the piece finishes without building to a climax or experimenting with levels in dynamics and tone.

However, a number of the commissions managed to experiment with the limits of the human voice. To name a handful, offerings from Sally Whitwell, Felicity Wilcox, Josephine Gibson and Matthew Hindson retained a contemporary edge while having a distinct artistic vision for their two-minute pieces.

The eight members of The Song Company displayed a steely resolve and a level of concentration that would be incredibly hard to maintain with the more unstructured pieces. And of course, they possessed a beautiful blend of voices, one which particularly touched this listener with the more traditional choral fragments, such as a stunning Locus Iste (Bruckner) and O virtus Sapientiae (Hildegard of Bingen). The vocal abilities of the female section of the ensemble particularly impressed, featuring a powerhouse, at times operatic soprano voice from Amy Moore and full-bodied mezzo warmth from Stephanie Dillon.

The Song Company are clearly a sharply talented and forward-thinking vocal group, and one to certainly watch out for in the classical and cross-over scene in Melbourne. I look forward to seeing what they present in 2020.

Nineteen to the Dozen featured the vocal talents of:

Anna Sandström- soprano

Amy Moore- soprano

Stephanie Dillon- alto

Jessica O’Donoghue- alto

Dan Walker- tenor

Koen van Stade- tenor

Hayden Barrington- bass

Thomas Flint – bass

Conducted by: Antony Pitts

You can follow the work of The Song Company through their website, Instagram and Facebook page.

In March 2020, The Song Company will be collaborating and performing with The Tallis Scholars from England, the Netherlands Chamber Choir (Nederlands Kamerkoor) and the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir (Det Norske Solistkor) as part of a series of concerts under the banner of 150 Psalms.  

An excerpt from the Adelaide Festival website:

Over four days, in four sacred spaces and one secular space, 12 concerts will encompass all 150 psalms in musical settings by 150 different composers spanning 10 centuries of choral tradition. From Gregorian chant to Ockeghem, from Monteverdi to Bach, from Brahms to Britten and beyond. Many Australian premieres, and world premieres of newly commissioned works by Elena Kats-Chernin, Clare Maclean, Cathy Milliken and Kate Moore. In the final concert all the voices converge in the Adelaide Town Hall for Tallis’ mighty motet in 40 individual parts, Spem in alium.

Find out more here

By Stella Joseph-Jarecki (Enquiries: stellamusicwriter.wordpress.com)

I had the chance to speak to James Penn, co-director of emerging chamber opera company BK Opera alongside creative partner Kate Millet, about the things he has learnt over three years of running the company and mounting productions. You can follow BK Opera’s work through their website and Facebook page.

BK Opera’s next show will be La Bohème, staged in a stripped back style in a pub, the Wesley Anne in Northcote. Check out the Facebook event here, tickets can be found here.

Has it been interesting approaching the practice of conducting singers, as a singer yourself?

It has been a learning experience for sure! You can encounter this duality, of singers trying to be helpful by wanting to do what you want as a conductor, but it can actually be unhelpful when they don’t tell you if something really works for their voice. So I’m trying to work out what’s comfortable for them, and sometimes they don’t know themselves what’s comfortable for them yet. So it comes down to that idea of an artist knowing themselves. You can find yourself in a situation where the singer directs the question back to you and says ‘Oh, no, what do you want?’ but it’s like, well I don’t want to ask you to do something ridiculous, I’m not going to ask you to sing a top D standing on your head. A reasonable request is one thing for me and another thing for someone else. People have different techniques.

Absolutely. So BK Opera is in its third year now, what prompted you to establish the company?

BK Opera was established in 2016, by myself and my dear friend Kate Millett. Kate has a background in black box theatre and we met doing a small Gilbert and Sullivan production. We spoke about drama, about opera… I’m an opera snob and she’s a drama snob, and you know, we started talking and we became best friends. So a year after that, we decided, let’s do something. Let’s do a show. It started as, let’s do a show, and I personally didn’t expect it to continue beyond one show, which was Georges Bizet’s Carmen. But Carmen was successful and we had a lot of interest. And we’ve been going ever since.

So I guess what prompted us to start, was that I really like French opera, and I really wanted to conduct an opera in French. Basically, I just wanted to do something. And I was done waiting around for people to give me an opportunity.

And really it is a really difficult thing to put together because there are so many things involved behind the scenes. We just finished Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. We had an electronic track playing the orchestral music. I engaged one of my friends Kym Dillon to compose that arrangement. The things involved with liaising with him, and working with the software was like a whole orchestral rehearsal in itself… Working with the Hungarian language coaches, sorting the costumes, the social media and everything else, it became really difficult. But creating our own opportunities was the motivation behind it.

Wow. So the orchestral music was in the form of an electronic track?

So I had this crazy idea last year where I thought, well electronic music is not that different from symphonic music in terms of the textures and the way the textures play together. And with Bartók, the colours are so important, and so dense, and so ridiculous. And what is written on the page is not actually what you’re supposed to play because it’s based on Hungarian music, which you really can’t write down exactly with the notation that we have. So working with Logic and working with all the different layers effectively became the orchestral rehearsals. It was painstaking, but it was certainly rewarding.

So I can imagine the list of things you need to do for each production is exhaustive, from conceiving a show to actually staging it and promoting it. Can you give us a brief idea of how that process looks for you, perhaps using one show as an example?

At the moment, Kate and I run BK Opera on our own. So things can become very time-intensive, from the conception to the last cut off of the show, and the bump out…

So the way we approach things, is we don’t say, oh we are doing this show, and then have people come out and audition for that particular show. ‘Build it and they will come’ doesn’t work! So we would hold general auditions and base the shows we do on the singers who come to us. We always have ideas floating around, but if we can’t cast it, it’s obviously not going to happen. For example, we wanted to do Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio for a while. We didn’t have the appropriate people audition so we didn’t do it, but we did end up being able to stage it last year.

In 2017 we did Francis Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine. We’d had a lot of soprani audition for us that year. So I thought okay well, how do we work with that? I’d always loved Poulenc and I came across this opera La Voix Humaine, which is a one-woman opera. And I thought, we could split this role into four parts, because developing singers probably won’t have secure enough technique to be able to stand on stage for an hour and just deliver this really intense French text. So that’s what we did, we had the role shared by three sopranos and a mezzo-soprano. So the role darkened in colour as the opera progressed, and had all these different colours of soprani. So from a musical perspective that was how that started.

The text was also really difficult for that show. As a French speaker, I decided well, during the last weeks of the previous show, let’s just work through the text and really get it second nature. It’s not standard French lyric diction. It’s very much boozy and slang. It’s abbreviated and it’s quick and for it to be effective, it has to sound like the singer is fluent in the language. So it was about getting that text second nature. And because it was a very dramatic piece, getting the drama in their bodies. So that process started before we did formal rehearsals.

[You can watch the full production on La Voix Humaine on YouTube, Part 1 is linked here, Part 2 linked here]

In terms of logistics, Kate books the venues, which usually happens quite early on. So we’ll decide on the shows, and then book the venues about six months in advance. Things do change, because as Terry Pratchett said, opera exists on a catastrophe curve; everything that can go wrong will go wrong. So you have to make sure things can’t go wrong. Getting those things solidly in place early. I guess when singers have issues and can’t do the shows anymore and stuff like that, we deal with those situations as they come. Some things you can’t plan for, like someone dropping out of a show or not turning up to a Sitzprobe without any explanation.

But running BK Opera has really taught me how valuable preparation is, and how valuable practice is. Even being in situations where I haven’t been as prepared with projects for the company, and having to go oh, okay, I need to go home and look at this. As they say, preparation prevents piss-poor performance!

And it’s helped even my practice as a singer, having a different view on the music as a conductor and as a singer. It’s also taught me that having a good voice is not enough. Because there are so many incredible singers out there! And from singers coming to me as the conductor, it has forced me to go, oh, actually the singers I want to work with are the ones who put the work in, not necessarily the ones with the best voices.

You mentioned to me earlier that you have some thoughts on the importance of young classically-trained singers gaining an understanding of themselves as artists. It can be so hard for young singers because as you said, there is so much repertoire we aren’t ready to sing. How do you advise young singers get to know themselves and their abilities?

I was asked this recently. Because I always say this to people, and it’s a tragic thing that I have to say this, but you have to be discerning.  Not everyone has your best interest at heart. That’s something I wish I knew before I got out of uni, before I finished my postgraduate degree. At uni they were kind of saying, oh you’ll go and you’ll get this huge job after you get out of uni at the age of twenty-two… I mean no. They’re selling a fantasy.

But yeah, not everyone has your best interests. And not necessarily in a malicious sense. You mentioned people learn by trial and error and I was asked recently, how do I practice discernment? How do I become discerning with people and how I say no to stuff? And I answered well, I’m still trying to find the answer to that.

Because I learnt it the hard way. Through having experiences that weren’t the best thing for me. Having to go back and say, all right, what is the best thing for me? I had to bring it back and just do my scales. Practice the tedious, seemingly rudimentary stuff. But doing that has really had a profound affect on my voice.

I think a lot of it is going through the stuff that isn’t good for you and just learning what that looks like, so in the future you can say no. I’ve been offered things before, where I’ve had to be like, nope, that’s too much for me. There was one thing when I was twenty-four years old. And I’m lucky I had that discernment but because some people just say, oh any opportunity is good. And then a singer says no and is called a diva. But once you know yourself and what you’re capable of, you can with confidence say no.

So why did you start the company BK Opera? What do you try to offer as an organisation, and what do you think makes you guys unique in this artistic space in Melbourne?

So over the three years that we’ve been in existence, we have offered bare-bones operas, mostly interpretations of French grand operas, that are socially responsible.

There are clearly some texts out there that have different views on things, like the place of women in society, how people get to treat each other, problematic views on race, etc. So we try to be conscious of that. For example with Carmen, it’s clearly about someone who falls in love with a woman and because she doesn’t love him back, he murders her. What we offered was a framing of that issue as ‘this is a bad thing’. This is rape culture. This is someone who murders a woman because she doesn’t love him. We try to be socially responsible.

Framing things like Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio. We completely changed the setting, as it was originally quite racist in nature. So we completely changed the setting and focused on a different theme that was in the text. The ideas of claustrophobia and being stuck and being emotionally abused by someone…

So dramatically, that’s what we offer. As a small company we wanted to add to and enrich the cultural landscape. I think my favourite show that we’ve done was Jules Massenet’s Werther. Instead of it being about dying for love, we explored the issue of mental illness.  

Additionally, the environment I’ve tried to create is a safe space for emerging artists. I mean, whatever your age. It’s not as if you have to be between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six and as soon as you’re twenty-seven it’s like, goodbye! But a safe space for emerging artists to explore repertoire, knowing that it’s okay to make mistakes.

How do you find approaching the very valid process of not only refreshing or repositioning a text, but finding the parts in the text that you want to focus on? Basically working out how you want to represent something to a modern audience.

It’s about how you frame the issues in my view. For example, there’s an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck called Armide. It’s about a sorceress who wants to fall in love with a crusader. She gives him a love potion and basically drugs him. It’s very awkward but my opinion is, it shouldn’t be that you don’t present something… You should frame that event as an issue of assault and present it that way. It’s about finding stuff in the text that you can present that is valid. And I suppose, not contriving it or transforming it into something random or shocking.

Because these are still valid issues. I mean Werther, there’s a valid issue of depression and in La Traviata there’s a valid issue of how people demonize sex workers and in La Voix Humaine, she kills herself with sleeping pills. It’s a still contemporary issue.

So not shying away or downplaying the problematic aspects of the text, but challenging them, and very openly framing the issue for what it is.

So in your opinion, who are some composers who are overlooked in the staging of opera in Australia? Even perhaps some composers who you think are overrated…

Oh yes, I have lots! There’s a French composer who changed his name to Ernest Reyer, who wrote an opera which has the same story as Wagner’s Siegfried, but sung in French and called Sigurd.  A lot of singers when they approached the Paris Opera say, oh I sing both Brünhildes! I think that opera has had not enough attention. [A YouTube clip of the opera can be found here]

I think La Juive by Fromental Halévy doesn’t get a lot of attention. It’s actually being done by Opera Australia next year. A Jewish composer writing an opera during quite an anti-Semitic time…

I think Mozart gets too much attention. I really don’t get it. When Mozart was writing Così fan tutte, ‘All women are like that’, and during the same era, Gluck was writing something about the issues of sexual assault… I don’t get it. I don’t understand it.

There was an opera that I think was only performed once, by Josef Canteloube. Canteloube transcribed a lot of French folk music and he wrote an opera about Vercingetorix, a Gallic war chief…. I think it was only ever performed once in the 1930s. There’s a clip of it on YouTube with Georges Thill singing it in the presence of the composer.

There was a church composer around the same time as Pietro Mascagni and Giacomo Puccini, Lorenzo Perosi. The three of them were actually great friends. He was part of the giovane scuola school of composers, with figures such as Puccini, Mascagni, Umberto Giordano… The verismo school of opera. They all composed opera, but Perosi didn’t, because he was the conductor of the Sistine Choir in Rome and he composed almost exclusively Roman Catholic Church music. He was also severely mentally unwell. He suffered severe psychosis and was in and out of institutions. Puccini and Mascagni actually said “There is more music in his head than all of us combined”. His last oratorio was about judgment day and it was very dark. I don’t know if it’s out of copyright yet, and it’s not really done outside of the church, to be honest no one really knows him even in the church. Now people do Giovanni Palestrina. People tend to see Perosi as old-fashioned.

He was like an operatic composer who didn’t compose opera. He was mental, but fascinating. On YouTube there is a full performance with him at the podium conducting, and the person singing Jesus is Beniamino Gigli, the famous tenor, and they were really great friends. So this really famous, great singer was premiering the works in Rome. So I think that’s really great we have that on record. I show it to people and they go, oh that’s so old-fashioned and over the top!

Ah but what isn’t in opera, after all!

Exactly. So yeah, I think Mozart is overrated, Gluck is underdone… It’s just interesting that in Così there are all these caricatures of women and then in Iphigénie en Aulide (by Gluck) there’s a tormented Greek princess who has to kill her brother. Nothing to do with sex or love in that.

Tenor, co-director of BK Opera company

James Penn is an emerging conductor and tenor, who began his musical training as a boy chorister at All Saints church, St Kilda East in Melbourne. He holds a Bachelor of Music Performance from the Victorian College of the Arts, and a Graduate Diploma in Music from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

His roles include Turiddu (Cavalleria Rusticana), Camille de Rossillon (The Merry Widow), Lucentio (The taming of the shrew), Frederic (the Pirates of Penzance), Ralph Rackstraw (HMS Pinafore), Don José (Carmen) and the title role of Werther.

In 2016 he co-founded BK opera in Melbourne with director Kate Millett. The company specialises in dark and intimate interpretations of classic operas.

Read James’ interview for Fever Pitch Magazine here

Follow BK Opera’s productions through their Facebook page here

BK Opera’s website can be found here

By Stella Joseph-Jarecki (Enquiries: stellamusicwriter.wordpress.com)

On a rainy evening in November, down an alleyway off Sydney road, a concert of new Australian music was presented at Tempo Rubato, under the banner of New Music Sounds Good. Tempo Rubato is a new chamber music venue complete with a bar and fabulously industrial, no-frills, appropriately Brunswick vibe.

The concert was organised by composer Chris Healey, who enlisted a team of collaborators: fellow composers Sam Colcheedas and Luke Severn, and the performing talents of Adam McMillan on piano, Andrew Baird on flute, Luke Severn on cello, and the Invictus String Quartet (Rebecca Wang and Nyssa Sanguansri on violin, Jin Long on viola and Annika Cho on cello).

All of the pieces on the program could be described as ‘new’, with most of them written this year. The opening number was Richard Meale’s Melisande for solo flute, written in 1998. This piece was performed with elegant and fluid phrasing by Andrew, who managed to foster moments of dramatic tension amongst the fast-paced melismatic passages.

The second piece was Cello Sonata No. 2 (2019), written by Chris and performed by Adam and Luke. The lyrical melodic lines of the first movement showcased the dark, caramel-y tone and expansive warmth of Luke’s cello. Adam played with agility and nuance on the piano, and there was great communication between the two musicians. The following three movements provided a contrast in mood, with a lush and filmic second movement, a gently undulating third movement (the interplay between the piano and cello reminding me at times of the rocking of sea waves) and a sprightly, energetic fourth movement with a rousing finale.

Next up was Sam Colcheedas’ piece ‘Aromatic Fantasy’ for String Quartet in F Sharp (2019), played by Invictus Quartet. Before the piece was presented, we heard a short summary of its inspiration: memories triggered by scents, which can create a feeling of ‘euphoric nostalgia’. Sam’s bio in the concert program cited musical influences such as Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev and Erich Korngold. So it made sense that the piece was melodic and stunningly evocative. The quartet produced a wonderful sound and played with disciplined communication.

After a short interval we heard Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano (2019), the second piece composed by Chris (played by Andrew, Luke and Adam). The trio was dedicated to the memory of William Von Witt, a friend of Chris’ who tragically died in an accident. The two movements were entitled The Day’s Long Journey Towards Dusk and Adagio- Towards Peace, with Chris describing the trio as a ‘time-lapse in musical form’. The three musicians were well balanced as they crafted a range of tonal colours and rhythmic shapes. The final movement played with the agile brightness of the flute contrasted against the stormy darkness of the cello.

The concert concluded with Luke Severn’s piece When the World was Young, for piano and cello. There were moments of quiet tenderness in the piece, as well as more tempestuous and extravagant passages, which called to mind a Russian sensibility.

It was an exciting experience to see young musicians play new music by emerging Australian composers. When you hear a performer triumph over a particularly virtuosic passage, it’s fabulous to know the composer is in the audience. I hope we are able to witness more of these fresh artistic collaborations in the future.

By Nathan Michael Wright

One of the most challenging aspects of being a young musician is our inherent need for external gratification. But it isn’t our fault; our very discipline is built around a construct that forces the musician to chase external gratification. Will the audience like what you’ve played? Will your teacher rip you to shreds in your masterclass? Will you win that scholarship or award?

This somewhat toxic need for external gratification is reinforced by an ever-changing set of goals and benchmarks the musician has to try and achieve. I think it is worth remembering that there is no such thing as a true path to ‘perfection’ (because absolute perfection cannot possibly exist), and that you can find your own path to success. Since music is so subjective, every teacher you speak to will offer you different and often conflicting advice; a mentor who absolutely loved what you did last week will be challenged by a mentor the following week who absolutely despised that same approach. There is no specific benchmark, no concrete determinate of success and no definitive way to become an accomplished musician.

Within this musical proving ground, a musician’s mental health is what suffers most. Life for young musicians is a seemingly endless cycle of transition from the highest highs when you are receiving positive feedback, to the lowest of lows when you are completely picked apart the very next day. So, how can young musicians steel themselves against this most turbulent of performance cultures?

I have recently begun the slow process of rewiring my brain to filter out and ignore negative feedback. Don’t get me wrong, technical feedback from mentors is important and is reflected upon and considered, but positive self-talk and the way in which I deliver that feedback to myself is far more important. Phrasing and how I speak to myself adds up over time. If a teacher tells me my phrasing is bad, my instinctual internal dialogue would be something along the lines of “You knew that and you should have done better. That wasn’t good enough.” I wouldn’t speak to someone else like that so why would I speak to myself in the same way? A better approach is to focus on the positives, what I have achieved in the process and the fact that the way to improving has been made clear. Something along the lines of “You performed optimally today and did the best you can. We have some opportunities that we can work on to be even better next time, but you should be very proud of what you achieved today.” One of these approaches is constructive.

Our internal dialogue and how we talk to ourselves is vital for long term success as a young musician. Your internal dialogue builds up over time, and making a conscious effort to be your own biggest supporter will do wonders for your mental health and your performance experience as a whole. There is some inherent truth in ‘what others think about me is none of my business’. Keep your eye on the prize and back yourself. If you’re a classical musician you can do something that a very small percentage of humanity can do, and you are already exceptional.

Fever Pitch Magazine enquiries can be directed to Stella Joseph-Jarecki at stellamusicwriter.wordpress.com

Tenor, writer

Nathan Michael Wright is a classically trained tenor with experience in both opera and music theatre. Nathan is currently studying his Bachelor of Music specialising in classical voice at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Previous accolades include a 2017 Bachelor of Music scholarship for excellence from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, the 2019 Maroondah Singer’s Vocal scholarship, and many nominations and commendations from the Victorian Music Theatre guild.

Most recent performance credits include chorus in Victorian Opera’s William Tell and Parsifal, the Premiere Commissaire in Dialogues of the Carmelites and Sid Sorokin in the Pyjama Game. 

Read Nathan’s opinion piece for Fever Pitch, Conquering External Gratification here

Keep up with Nathan’s singing adventures via Facebook here

By Stella Joseph-Jarecki (Enquiries: stellamusicwriter.wordpress.com)

During the last week of September, I had the chance to pick the energetic brain of soprano Phoebe Deklerk. Phoebe is a singer and educator who has produced a number of concerts, and we discussed the many challenges and rewards of juggling multiple musical careers. You can keep up to date with Phoebe’s singing adventures through her professional Facebook page here

Phoebe’s latest concert is coming up- The Cats Ninth: A Homage to Cats in Song. A portion of each concert ticket will be donated to Maneki Neko Cat Rescue.

Sunday 10th November at Newland Community Centre, Coburg: Facebook event link here, Eventbrite link for tickets here

Friday 15^th and Sunday 17^th November, St Georges Anglican Church, Travancore: Facebook event here, Eventbrite link for tickets here

In regards to becoming a portfolio musician with many projects in the works, pursuing a career in music education as well as a music performance career… Was that something you planned from the outset, or something that gradually evolved for you?

That’s a really big question, particularly because I decided I wanted to be an opera singer when I was twelve. So when I was twelve, I didn’t know that there would be multiple facets I could pursue, or that I was even interested in passing on my love of music.

It was through a series of events and circumstances, with my family also being involved in music, and my own experience with amateur and community-based singing groups, that I discovered that there was more that could be done educationally. Singing is what got me through my high school years emotionally, and I wanted to be able to share that. Teenagers will forever be forced to become adults, and music can help with that transition!

As for cabaret and concerts and the more performance side of things… It was only the realization that there wasn’t much going on, and that I couldn’t just wait for experiences to come to me. I never really expected things to be brought to me on a platter but there’s just so little out there. And the people who run concerts don’t often advertise for auditions or seek out people with different abilities, they like what they’re comfortable with.

So that sparked the desire to produce my own concerts and help other young artists gain performance opportunities. And importantly, have some say in the works that they perform. As young artists we do have some limitations, we’re still developing our technique and our ranges are smaller than what they might be in future… We have to pick our music well. So everyone I work with picks their own solo music and we collaborate when choosing ensemble repertoire.

Cabarets were something I’d always been intrigued by and after I saw a good handful, I just realised that I could do it. It’s not rocket science, it’s just performance and it’s storytelling. So I chose a topic that I was really passionate about to start with, which is funeral music. I’m passionate about that because I think not enough thought goes into it before people pass away. So when their family are taking care of that process, they don’t even have time to think properly. They just pick, you know, from the top twenty songs.

So after my first cabaret I was told that it was a skill that I had, and now I am under the wing of a cabaret club owner who wants to help me experiment and bring as much as I can to the stage through the form of cabaret. Which is really exciting! But had you asked me five years ago, if I would be doing all these things including the workshops and the online singing courses, I would probably have said, pick two out of the five or six.

In having so many projects at different stages of development, how do you approach time management?

That’s a great question, time management is something I’m really passionate about. You can often find me rewriting my ideal schedule or timetable. I get all colour-coordinated with a planner that sits above my desk.

So what I do is I calculate how much time a project will take. So for example, a concert takes fifty hours of my time for admin, social media, getting people, meeting people, hassling them to send me their music, blah blah blah. So I separated the divisions for that and came up with a formula. Putting singing practice aside, practice is just assumed, I need six to eight hours of work a week, for projects that are performance-based.

For things that are more business-related, they fit into the time I spend on my business. So the workshops, the teaching, the choirs, the online courses, they fit into my business and therefore my business time. With that side of things, the focus is more about the bottom line and getting leads, etc. So the focus is a very different with the business time and the performance or project time… but it seems to work well!

I use an online project management platform which really helps the process. It’s called Trello, and you can use it to create boards for different projects. On each board I have different categories: ideas, to do, doing, done, potential obstacles… They each have dates and checklists, it’s really handy. I also use doodle poll for arranging rehearsals, and various other things for collating information including Google Documents.

As a freelance artist who has to use, as you said before, your business brain, how do you find social media fits in with this?

Social media is imperative. It’s how everyone shares everything and I had no trouble with it initially. What I guess I still struggle with, is sharing on my personal page. I have a business page for everything that I do, but I’m still a little bit uncomfortable with sharing even selected things on my personal Facebook page. I also agree with the author of Beyond Talent, Angela Myles Beeching, that a mailing list is an artist’s best friend. A mailing list is one of the most valuable tools that we can have as performers and teachers, and just musicians in general!

That being said, Facebook ads do take a little while to get used to. It took me several projects to actually get some return on the money I was spending on Facebook ads. It’s trial and error, honestly. I was lucky enough to have my friend Teresa Ingrilli give me some training in branding and social media and values. How your personal values spread into the business side of things.

So I set up a social media schedule, and each week I try to post daily, or schedule posts to release daily. I share the heart and mind and soul behind the projects I have.

The thing with social media nowadays that is somewhat troublesome, is that it always seems to portray only the good things. That’s something I actively try to work against. So I like to show the vulnerable aspects of being a musician, because we are so vulnerable and we have to feel to be artists. That vulnerability lets people know that we are human and people can relate to that, and they are more likely to trust me and what I produce.

What do you think are some of the most important qualities for someone who is crafting a portfolio career and wants to continue to diversify, besides their musical ability?

I would say joy and passion. But it really depends on the situation. This is going to sound so weird, but you wouldn’t catch me in a music school teaching singing. Because the niche that I like to sit in with my singing teaching, is really different to the typical singing teacher stuff. Of course I do warm-ups and technique, but it’s not about becoming better. For me it’s about empowering students to feel more comfortable using their voice, playing around with it, learning about the little aspects of the soul they might not have discovered without singing. That is something I’m really passionate about and I use my music to help achieve that.

And then it’s having the drive. Do you have the drive and persistent motivation to produce a concert? I don’t even look at the music that I’m going to be performing until twenty, thirty hours in. So I put in twenty or thirty hours of admin, of my own time, just trying to get the baby off the ground before I even get to do the juicy bits.

You have to like working with people and be good at managing people. Communication is so freaking important! We need to be able to communicate what we want, whether it’s a little speech before a concert or a workshop or a behind-the-scenes video about the meaning of a song… You need to be able to present eloquently and clearly.

I guess the big one which increases impact and reach is networking. We need to know how to communicate things and then actually go tell people about it. So I go to business networking events quite regularly and it has been great practice. I’ve come up with a little title for what I do, I call myself a ‘singing empowerment teacher’. So people know that I look at the empowerment side of singing and use that, rather than just assuming it is the usual teaching stuff.  

Also, sharing. A desire to share what we love makes the admin and business side of stuff so much more meaningful.

That’s fabulous. There is so much solid science emerging which completely backs up your perspective on how singing allows people to grow in confidence and literally embrace their voice.

It lights me up when I do work with students like that. It’s so beautiful.

How do you find the experience of shifting gears between different vocal styles? I know you do a lot of classical repertoire but also operetta, cabaret, music theatre. How have you found that experience as a singer?

I haven’t had too much trouble with that, just because I’ve been doing it from a younger age. I remember when I was first doing performances for family and friends, I was never very good at choosing songs, so I’d say do you want a jazz or classical or music theatre song? And then they’d say they wanted one of each. Nowadays, I sing at aged care homes and I do the same thing. I sing an hour of music that ranges from jazz, to musical theatre, operetta, opera, art song… And it’s great practice, but it is hard work.

I find it a lot easier in performance. So in a cabaret sort of style, where it follows that very musical theatre aspect of singing… what you’re saying comes to an emotional peak, so it has to be sung. And then that song is well chosen and it makes it easy to sort of launch into song, and it doesn’t really matter what style that song is. When we’re performing, technique isn’t something we’re always thinking about, but I suppose some aspect of our mind is always conscious of it.

I also find that thinking about the storytelling, sort of makes the genre irrelevant, if that makes sense. Music isn’t broken up, it’s not separated into chunks, music is music. It’s just one big blob of goopy stuff! So I really don’t feel that there should be any gear shifts, but I can understand how people would perceive that.

So can you tell me about the thought process behind the concert coming up? [At the time of interviewing, Phoebe was preparing for a concert of predominantly French sacred music, entitled Contemplation and Harmonie: The Divine in French Music. It was held at St. Mary’s Church in Ascot Vale, in late October]  

Well the concept of this concert was born from a parishioner at the parish that I sing at, St. Mary’s Church, taking me out to lunch and saying that she wanted me to produce more concerts. So I think this happened in April and I was like, okay, because the concert would take place in a church, it has to be about seventy to eighty percent religious music. I also have this weird thing with Ave Marias, where I just want to sing all of them, share all of them, to make people realize that there’s more than just two!

So I got baritone André Sasalu and organist Zac Hamilton-Russell on board and I was like, okay, what sort of rep do you want to do? Andre is a French speaker and I really like the composer Saint Saëns, so that’s what we went with. And Andre has introduced me to Jean-Philippe Rameau, the French Baroque composer, which is very exciting!

Can you name some of your favourite vocal composers of the moment?

It’s hard to consciously give you my favourite vocal composers without having thought about it for a long time. But off the top of my head, Maurice Ravel is coming to mind. Ravel’s weird, but he’s beautiful. I love his intricacies and his music is just epic. We’re doing some Ravel at the in the cat concert, which is in November. We’re doing his cat duet from his one-act opera L’enfant et les sortilèges. At the moment I’m falling in love with the bel canto composers… the expression, the romance, the drama! The drama is musical, not necessarily just the text. It’s so rich. I really like romantic music. But I also do enjoy some more modern composers like Samuel Barber and Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss, you know, and there’s more!

Our last question is a meaty one. What do you believe is the future of opera in the 21st century? I’m passionate about the art form, but for it to have a future in Australia I think there needs to be a significant shift in the way that it’s supplied to audiences. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yes a good question. And it’s very valid.  

Well with my business mind, I think well where does it work? Who’s got a good structure and a good system going? So, you know, let’s look at Vienna. The kind of audience members who don’t go to the opera here in Australia, go to the opera when they travel over there. And there’s definitely lots of contributing factors to that, one of which is, that’s where that type of opera was born.

But it’s also because there’s a beauty to those opera houses, they’re rich in culture, the architecture is really beautiful. And the ticket prices are much more accessible. We need cheap student tickets in Australia. I don’t understand why some companies won’t allow emerging opera singers to get cheap tickets. Even if we had to prove that we were a singer or perhaps flash them our Bachelor of Music or student ID, that sort of thing… Because it’s us! We’re passionate about it! We can bring friends, we can say, oh my goodness the staging was amazing, you’ll have to check it out, I know you’ll like this particular part of it…

Introducing my ex to opera, he didn’t like Wagner, but he loved Victorian Opera’s The Sleeping Beauty a couple of years ago, which had puppets. [Ottorino Respighi’s 1922 opera, staged by Victorian Opera in 2017]. He was an animator himself, so it inspired him! So I think sharing opera and getting opera in front of people who hadn’t thought about it because no one does. As a way of inspiring, because all artists know (fine artists, graphic artists, musical artists), we all know that we get inspiration from other art.

And then accessibility…. The reason I am doing a cat concert in November is to help cat lovers discover classical music! It’s as simple as that. Bringing a topic that everyone loves, no one is scared of, and everyone has like small-girl-cute-excitement about, and introducing them to something that’s a little bit different, a little bit alien, through that… I think is one of the best ways to do it.

I don’t think we need to start having opera busked on the street, but if it was heard a bit more on the streets, I think that would make it much more accessible. People will be like, oh yeah, I heard that last week, oh yeah, I saw an opera singer busk at Christmas time. It’s not so alien and it’s not so detached.

Also, I think people pull away from classical music and opera in particular when it’s performed in venues that are religious. Not everyone is going to pull away from it because of that, but I certainly know that my dad won’t enter a church unless I’m singing at it, and there’s no Mass. So we could stage operas more frequently in venues that have no religious attachment, more modern venues. Refurbished factories, warehouses, natural amphitheatres, outdoor amphitheatres, botanical gardens… places that people feel comfortable and don’t feel like there’s an expectation of behaviour. I think that would be a good start.

I think having more of an online presence will also help. The only problem, from someone who has thought about doing it, is the cost of getting things filmed professionally. That would have to be absorbed into something, I don’t know what that something would be, because you can’t necessarily sell that fifteen minute opera online for however much it cost to make. So it has to be treated as a form of promotion, but I do believe it is necessary.

I also think there are other ways that we can lighten the mood of operas. I remember being shushed and I know that friends of mine have been shushed while at the opera when something funny actually happens. Why can’t we laugh? That’s just a bit ridiculous!

I think there are so many little things that would help to lighten the mood and make opera less serious. Even though the themes are dramatic, the whole air around it doesn’t have to be as serious as it currently is. I would love to see classical music and opera being performed in wine bars, in cheese shops, in places where there the mood is slightly more sophisticated than a pub, as long as the venue thought it was appropriate. I’m looking into this myself! Bringing opera and classical singing to the everyday person, to the places they go.

Soprano, educator

Phoebe Deklerk is a classical soprano with a passion for opera and art song. Studying music from an early age, Phoebe has combined her strengths in musicality, voice and performance to pursue a career in opera performance. Since finishing her Bachelor of Music (Performance – Classical Voice) in 2017, Phoebe has continued to train and develop her technique with teacher Sally Wilson. Phoebe has created several performances, including concerts in sacred music as well as a cabaret on funeral singing performed in Melbourne and Perth. Phoebe is currently creating her second cabaret, this time with a purely classical theme called Mozart Muses.

Phoebe also teaches private students, directs choirs and runs ten week courses for women to realise and release their self-expression, as part of her mission to give people the power to embrace and honour their voices.

Read Phoebe’s interview for Fever Pitch magazine here

Keep up with Phoebe’s musical projects here

Writer, editor, soprano

Read Stella’s opinion pieces here:

Learning to Love My Own Path

Sometimes Pessimism is All You Will Feel

The Construction of Criticism

What ‘Next in Fashion’ Reminded Me About Creativity

Mind Over Matter

Sometimes, I Don’t Even Like Music

Why I Will Always Believe in Opera’s Future

Honesty

Why Pop-Music Shaming Is Crappy and Hypocritical