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SOMEBODY PINCH ME

musical work.
“You take care of that voice of yours,” Dame Joan said. “And
please keep in touch.”
“I will,” I said, fighting back tears.

b b b

The second of the three surreal phone calls I received was from
Richard Miller. It came one evening just before spring break as
my girlfriend Olivia and I were studying in my dorm room.
“Hello Laurie,” said Mr. Miller’s unmistakable tenor voice.
“Do you have a moment?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, alarmed. Mr. Miller almost never called me at
home. “Is something wrong?”
“Quite the contrary,” he said, and now I could hear the big
smile in his voice. “I took the liberty of sending a recording of a
couple arias you performed in studio class recently in hopes that
you might get a very exciting opportunity to sing for John Wil-
liams.”
“John Williams?” I asked. “As in the composer who wrote the
score for E.T. and Indiana Jones, the one who conducts the Boston
Pops?”
“The very same,” Mr. Miller said. “You see, the Oberlin Orches-
tra is giving a concert in the fall next year at the Getty Museum
in LA, and John, who recently received an honorary degree from
Oberlin, will be conducting. All of us on the voice faculty had a
meeting and selected three students to be heard by John to make

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the decision of who would perform with him and the orchestra in
concert. He chose you.”
“Me?” I gasped. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why do you sound so surprised? He
requested that you sing Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915.”
The text of this almost twenty-minute-long work is a prose poem
by James Agee describing an evening from his childhood. As I lis-
tened to different recordings of Dawn Upshaw, Leontyne Price,
and Kathleen Battle’s renditions on headphones in the listening
station at the library, I fell in love with the detailed description
of early twentieth century Knoxville, and Barber’s piercing, nos-
talgic music that somehow captured the fleeting simplicity of
childhood. It’s one of those pieces that almost anyone can relate
to, about remembering details of the environment around you, of
enjoying balmy summer weather, not comprehending but feeling
comforted by the adult conversation around you, and knowing
you’re safe as long as your parents are near.
I studied the piece for half a year before meeting John. It’s hard to
say where my stereotype of conductors came from, but I had been
expecting a surly man who would throw sparks if I did anything
that didn’t pay homage to the music. I went to the first rehearsal
just two days before the concert, feeling terrified that I wouldn’t
be prepared for some obscure question he would ask me about the
piece. Surprise and relief swept over me like a gentle, reassuring
breeze when John took my hand and in a kind voice said, “Well
hello there. You must be that lovely soprano I had the great pleasure
of hearing. Richard Miller sent me a recording of yours.”

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“Hi, I’m Laurie,” I said, my voice sounding small and shy.


“I’m delighted to meet you, and I’m thrilled we will be per-
forming together. Oh, and before we begin, is there anything I
should know? How I should cue you since you can’t see me?”
“I can do a lot by ear,” I said. “I can often hear when a conduc-
tor breathes in rhythm before a musical phrase.”
A rehearsal pianist began to play, and we ran the piece without
stopping.
“You know,” he said after we finished. “This is one of my favor-
ite pieces.”
“Oh no, here it comes,” I thought. “He’s going to tell me how
I just managed to butcher his favorite piece.”
“And your performance just now reminded me why I love it so
much,” he continued.
“Really? You mean that?”
“Of course I do. Not only do you understand the piece, but
you’ve internalized it, haven’t you?”
“I guess I have. The music is so perfect.”
“You can say that again.”
“The music is so perfect,” I repeated. He laughed.
“ So, how was he?” Mom asked in the car on the way home
from the rehearsal.
“Just like the kind of person you’d expect to write the music
to Steven Spielberg movies,” I said. “Really warm, like a favorite
uncle.”
The Oberlin Orchestra had been flown in to LA for the occa-
sion. The instrumentalists were in high spirits, as though they

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were children on a field trip. It was strange to see the people I


went to college with in my hometown. There was only one dress
rehearsal with the orchestra, and then suddenly the evening of the
concert had arrived. I shared a dressing room with a sophomore
violinist who had been selected to play the suite from Schindler’s
List with the orchestra. She and her mother spoke to each other in
Russian, and though I couldn’t understand their dialogue, I could
tell her mother was micromanaging the poor girl’s preparation for
her performance.
I heard the concert master’s A, signaling the orchestra to begin
tuning. The audience sounded large from the monitors backstage.
I sat nervously listening to the orchestra play. The violinist scurried
out of the room to take her place backstage before her entrance,
and her mother rushed to claim her seat in the audience, leaving
me alone. After the last, soulful notes of the Schindler’s List Suite
had ended, I heard the din of the audience. It was now intermis-
sion. I was next up. My heart beat uncomfortably fast.
“You ready?” John asked as I made my way to the wings.
“Yeah, and a bit nervous,” I admitted.
“You’re going to be great,” he said, placing a hand on my shoul-
der.
Suddenly, I was feeling comforted by the fact that I would be
going onstage to perform with him. It was though the man who
was now guiding me onstage was Grandpa, about to take me sled-
ding down the mountain in Lake Tahoe, and I was safe. Only
good things could happen as long as he was there. Then came the
audience’s applause, the excitement, and the heightened aware-

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ness that I was standing there in the bright red strapless gown
Mom and I had bought for the occasion.
The orchestra tuned again, and John took his first deep breath.
The oboe, English horn, and clarinet began playing the first notes
of the piece, and the strings followed. The sound of the orchestra
rose and swelled around me, and there I was, in the center of this
lush landscape of sound.
“It has become that time of evening,” I sang. “When people sit
on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently.”
Together, we set the scene, John Williams, the orchestra, and
I. The music continued to build in texture until the full orchestra
had come in, making the fabric of the music rich and full as could
be. It was easy to tell what John wanted, when he felt a crescendo,
a place to slow down, a place to be more tender. It was all in the
way he breathed, almost singing the phrases with me, how he
audibly mouthed the words. I was near enough to him to sense
his hands keeping time. I followed his strict rhythm through the
passage of Agee’s words describing the sounds of a streetcar as
Barber’s music emulated its industrial sound, and then we slowed
into the quiet of lying on the grass with beloved family under
the stars. Then I heard the impassioned deep breath, cuing the
orchestra through the climactic moment, a child’s plea to God to
remember his loved ones in times of trouble. Then we slowed as
the orchestra returned to the initial theme of the piece in a bit-
tersweet ending.
It was a magical journey we all took on that stage, and we were
welcomed back by the audience’s enthusiastic applause.

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John squeezed my hand as we bowed together. “Couldn’t have


gone any better,” he said warmly. “Now when I think of my favor-
ite piece, I will always hear it in your voice.”

b b b

The third phone call that came from out of the blue was from
Brian. Calls from Brian weren’t unusual occurrences, and in fact,
they happened almost daily. The fact that it came in the middle of
the workday, however, was highly uncharacteristic. I was back in
LA on spring break with a monster of a cold. The phone rang just
as I reluctantly extricated myself from a hot shower, which was
temporarily relieving my stuffy head.
“Hello,” I said.
“You sound awful. Are you okay?” Brian asked.
“I’m sick. What’s up?”
“I just got a call here at my office from a Flicka Von Stade. Do
you know who that is?”
“Flicka Von Stade?” I gasped. “She’s only one of the most
famous mezzos in the world!”
“Oh,” Brian said sheepishly. “Then I guess I shouldn’t have
been as short with her as I was. I thought anyone calling my office
looking for you must be some telemarketer or something. Guess
she got my number off of your CD. Anyway, she asked me to have
you call her back.”
“Me? Call her back?”
“Before you call her, stop hyperventilating, okay? That might

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