The Concert

By Jacalyn Kreitzer

This summer, in the fairyland setting of the Chapman estate, where home meets sea, the musical offering will be a delightful mix of numbers presented by local young artists. Included are "Let ‘er Rip" belt smash hits sung by Olivia Tenney, lead soloist with the Cal Poly Jazz bands, led by Dr. Paul Rinzler.

Swing dancers Brian Holliday and Katelyn Holliday chime in together with "Anything You Can Do" from Annie Get Your Gun! They learned swing dancing, which is enjoying a revival, at the Cal Poly Swing Club. The brother and sister team have traveled all over the west coast to dance, and have now begun to teach as well. They love the dances, the local swing dance community, big band music and "any excuse to dress up in vintage clothing."

Olivia and Scott Nelson will cha cha through "Hernando's Hideaway," about a dive in East Dubuque, Illinois; and Mackenzie Hunt, currently Gertrude in Kelrik Productions' Seussical the Musical, sings "Popular" from the Stephen Schwartz smash hit Wicked. Marilyn Adams, accepted into the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts for Fall, 2011, touches our hearts with" I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables. Kyle Compton, fresh from Sorcerer Productions' Drowsy Chaperone, croons "Lost in the Stars" by Kurt Weill. Marian Allchin, semi-finalist in the Classical Singer competition in New York and Chicago, sings "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" from Yentil.

Natalie Debruijn, Evan Griffith, Harry Sadler, Olivia Tenney and Scott Nelson present "Best of All Possible Worlds" from Leonard Bernstein's Candide. And Molly Dobbs, accepted for the Scottish Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in Glasgow and currently rehearsing Little Shop of Horrors with Sorcerer Productions, sings "Don't Rain on My Parade" from Merrill and Styne's Funny Girl. Sarah  Broomell is pianist for the evening. She has moved back to the Central Coast after developing successful programs in Montana.

All these are local singers and are vibrant young people with delightful personalities; they all sing classical repertoire as well music for the popular theater. In fact, this is a requirement of many musical theater programs across the country, just as some musical theater studyis required in many classical programs.

There are many important reasons for this. Other than a short period of time spent singing with a jazz band around age 20, my entire career has involved performing music from the classical realm. However, when I first began teaching as an applied voice and practicum lecturer at Cal Poly, I quickly realized, although every singer should learn how to produce the most tension-free, vibrant, resonant sounds possible utilizing classical technique, not every singer is built for, or desires to continue in operatic or classical art song performance. Many singers are joyfully and wonderfully destined to do so, while others are joyfully and wonderfully destined to sing musical theater or jazz.

Cal Poly musicologist Dr. Alyson McLamore, is author of an exciting text Musical Theater, an Appreciation. The publisher, Pearson Prentice Hall Education, proudly states that Dr. McLamore helps readers with "a greater enjoyment of musical theater's rich legacy, from Don Giovanni to Rent, as well as increased appreciation of drama and music as independent yet complementary arts."  And Dr. Paul Rinzler, Professor of Jazz Studies at Cal Poly, actively recruits and promotes solo singer involvement with Cal Poly jazz bands.

Having such eminent professors and advocates of musical theater and jazz complements outstanding instruction in classical singing from Dr. Thomas Davies and Katherine Arthur. This has meant that I could encourage students, after they demonstrated a certain grasp of classical vocal production for beauty and health of the voice, to pursue the genre in which they showed the greatest vocal inclination.

Many musical theater singers come from an acting background and have never really learned how to manipulate the voice freely and easily; they gain in quality of sound and vocal health from classical training. And many classical singers, trained to focus on sound, gain acting skills and expressive connection with the music from studying musical theater techniques. In addition, many musical theater composers, including Kurt Weill, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim and Duncan Sheik, are writing works that require a musical theater voice that is tension free, and more "classical" in nature.

Today's opera director, and the world of live HD and DVD recordings, require that classical singers not only sing superbly, but also act and express emotion naturally, easily and charismatically. The joyful, vibrant singing you'll hear at Broadway by the Sea on August 13, proves that free, expressive, exciting and beautiful vocal sound is alive and well, in theater as well as opera.