Classically (Un)Trained

One of the wisest pieces of advice I’ve gotten is that success is about knocking on as many doors as possible. As in: If you aren’t wanted in one place, try another. And while a place might be a particular company or theatre or agency - it can also be a city or even a country. But how do you know it’s time to seek greener pastures? And how should you prepare for the journey?

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

To leave a rating for this podcast, follow the instructions for whichever podcast app you are using. 

Ah, networking…not to be confused with the network effect, though perhaps there are some similarities. Let’s examine the ever-befuddling Human Element of the arts, and how to keep your soul intact while navigating it.

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

To leave a rating for this podcast, follow the instructions for whichever podcast app you are using. 

Transcript and sources for this episode:

Writers throw away drafts, painters paint over botched canvases. But where can classically-trained performers try and fail and try again?

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

To leave a rating for this podcast, follow the instructions for whichever podcast app you are using. 

Transcript and sources for this episode:

I got some feedback on Classically (Un)Trained over the time I was on break and I need to address it. The issue: This podcast is too pessimistic! Before proceeding with the rest of the season, I’d like to make the case for why I'm actually wildly optimistic.

I'm also going to talk about how Classically (Un)Trained is the right THING but might be in the wrong MEDIUM.

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

To leave a rating for this podcast, follow the instructions for whichever podcast app you are using. 

The first thing I learned about marketing for performers is: “You are a product.” But is that really the right message for young performers? And might there be a better alternative?

If you’ve never heard of the network effect, prepare to get disillusioned. But don’t despair – knowing how the internet works can help you put focus in the right place as an artist. And there are also aspects of this new world we live in that are full of possibility.

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

To leave a rating for this podcast, follow the instructions for whichever podcast app you are using. 

Let’s get a basic understanding of the five basic ways the arts get funded, how funding influences the nature of the art being made, and what that means for you as a performer.

This episode became rather long - here are some timestamps in case you want to listen to just parts:

00:17:06 - what I think I did wrong in my funding attempts

00: 28:54 - The 5 Types of Arts Funding

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

To leave a rating for this podcast, follow the instructions for whichever podcast app you are using. 

What can you do with a performing arts degree, you ask? Well, according to some educators within the performing arts, you can be a great realtor if your performing career doesn’t pan out. Let’s articulate why that sort of thinking is counterproductive but also how exactly academic training DOESN’T prepare us for the real world and which skills to focus on to fill in what academic training leaves out.

What can you do with a performing arts degree, you ask? Well, according to some educators within the performing arts, you can be a great realtor if your performing career doesn’t pan out. Let’s articulate why that sort of thinking is counterproductive but also how exactly academic training DOESN’T prepare us for the real world and which skills to focus on to fill in what academic training leaves out.

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

Transcript of episode:

Let’s start this first season with the assumption that what you do as a performer is valuable beyond bringing you joy or status or distraction. It’s a radical thought, I know. But without it, there’s no point in your listening to this podcast. So let me make a case for why you matter as a performing artist and how what I want to share on this podcast can help you make the best use of it.

Music composed, recorded and produced by Silvia Berrone

Cover art by Kateřina Krejcarová

Transcript of episode:

The first episode will launch a week from now, Monday, November 4th! 

In this pre-season episode I want to tell you a little about how to listen to the podcast and how I envision it to be useful. I’ll also talk about who I imagine my audience to be, how I’m using the term “classical,” and why I decided to create the show in the first place. 

Links: 

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Video version here: https://youtu.be/v1pvdmWkQ90

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

In this conversation with director Vivian Säde and producer Eve Tisler we talk about a short film we’ve been working on (named Echo and created around the monodrama Sentiment by Juliana Hall and Caitlin Vincent) in order to talk openly about all the work that goes into any creative project, even when things never actually "click" to make the project to happen. We also talk about "women filmmakers," budgets, artists and mental health and how opera on film is gatekept, among other things.

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

This is the audio from the anniversary livestream I did on January 13th, 2023. I fixed some of the audio issues from the livestream so it's a bit easier to listen to. 

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Deyiş Görgülü was 9 years old when she swore off music. She was 30 when she decided to take it up again. So, what makes someone refuse music for 20 years?

Deyiş grew up in Turkey as part of the Alevi Bektashi community. In fact, her name, Deyiş, is the name for a type of Alevi spiritual music. But, in the mid-90s, as a child, she lived through one of the flareups of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict. The tension surrounding this conflict, which started way back in the early 70s, meant that her father, a trumpetist for the Turkish army, forbid her from singing Alevi songs, since Alevi culture is fundamentally pacifist and therefore anti-military. It wasn’t until she moved to France, as an adult, that she felt she could sing again and, eventually, founded an ensemble called Evden with viola d’amore player Isabelle Eder and flautist Marie Ploquin. They perform a kind of fusion between European classical music and Ottoman music – and just to give you an idea of the vastness of Ottoman music, Deyiş sings in Ladino, Turkish, Greek, Assyrian, Armenian, and Arabic among other languages.

Deyiş and I talk about Alevi culture and the cem gathering, which Deyiş likens a to jam session, about the vast world of Ottoman music, about the meaning of the word Evden, the name of her ensemble, about a song Deyiş is writing for the women of Iran, and about one problem shared by music and baklava, among other things.

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Madness. It’s a popular literary and operatic themes, but seldom would you get to talk to an artist who is trained to cure madness.

Helena Mamich leads a double life: she is both a doctor at a psychiatric ward in Berlin and a soprano spatializing in classical contemporary music. As a singer, Helena has achieved enough even for someone who doesn’t have a parallel life as a doctor– she has premiered numerous works by contemporary composers, recently debuted in a new opera at the Bethanien Theater in Berlin, collaborated with the German band Black Needle noise on a crossover track, and in the year 2019 she won the Večernjakova Domovnica prize awarded annually by the Večerjni list daily newspaper for the most successful musician of the Croatian diaspora and as if that wasn’t enough, Helena has recently published a book of political haikus in her native Croatian. One of Helena’s big missions is to educate the public about psychiatry and one of the ways she would like to do that is through a short opera based on her experiences as a psychiatrist (she’s already written the libretto.)

Helena and I talk about how psychiatry and classical contemporary music complement each other, how important understanding someone’s culture is in determining whether they have a psychiatric condition, how every discharge letter from a psychiatric ward could be a libretto, as well as one thing Helena says should be taught in conservatories but isn’t.

Helena’s website and blog: https://helenamamic.com/

Helena’s Instagram: @helenamamich

Music (all music on this episode is interpreted by Helena Mamich):

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Meet Felicita Brusoni, Italian singer and voice researcher. Felicita is pursuing a doctorate at Malmö Academy of Music is Sweden (part of Lund University) where she is working on a project called “A Voice Beyond the Edge.” One of her main mentors is composer Michael Edgerton, author of The 21st Century Voice: Contemporary and Traditional Extra Normal Voice which is a catalog of vocal sounds that often comes up in conversations about extended vocal techniques.

As the name of Felicita’s artistic research project implies, this is definitely going to be an episode for voice geeks but also for those who like the bizarre. Felicita and I talk about the inaccuracy of the term “extended vocal techniques,” about the somewhat hard-to-define but increasingly popular discipline of “artistic research,” about the difference between extended techniques in the mid-20th century and today, about Felicita’s fresh discovery that humans can produce ultrasounds, but also about singers Cathy Berberian and even Maria Callas and, at the end, Felicita even tries to teach me an extended technique I hadn’t done before – to mixed results.

Felicita’s website: https://www.felicitabrusoni.com/

Felicita’s Instagram: @felicitabrusoni_soprano 

🎵 Music:

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Vivian Säde is a twenty-four-year-old Estonian/intercontinental filmmaker in the very beginning of her career. I was connected with her by another guest to this podcast, Malena Dayen (whom you can hear in episode 4), when I was looking for someone to work with on a short film. I found that Vivian’s sensibility, unpretentiously influenced by pop culture, is a perfect counterbalance to a potentially overly-serious short musical film written around a monodrama for unaccompanied soprano by contemporary American composer Juliana Hall and text by Caitlin Vincent. 

Vivian and I talk about the difficulty of breaking into filmmaking, about walking the line between popular entertainment and high art, about the Americanization of storytelling, and about our joint film project and how it ties into issues of feminine identity in the public eye, among other things.  

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Richard Katrovas (a.k.a. my father) might be the luckiest person I know: He grew up in cars, the eldest son of a criminal who bounced checks while lugging his family of seven across the United States. They lived from motel to motel and car to car, fleeing from the police, which meant my father and his four younger siblings missed much of elementary school. The two times his father was in prison, the rest of the family lived with his mother on welfare in public housing. Long story short (and I describe his circuitous life path more in the intro) he became a poet, later an "ex-poet," and a creative writing professor, as well as co-founder of the Prague Summer Program for Writers, which sprouted from the 1990s American expat community in Prague, Czech Republic. 

I interviewed my father more or less on a whim, a day before he left to return from Prague to the US, after visiting my sisters and me for the holidays this past December. I didn’t necessarily plan to edit our conversation into an episode of this podcast, because I wasn’t sure If my father really fits what I would think of as an “indie” artist but what I realized is that our conversation is one about myths – personal myths, historical myths, cultural myths. My father’s story can be framed as a manifestation of the American dream or it can be understood, as my father has come to understand it, as a story of how lucky it was to be white in 1950s and 60s America. The format of this podcast, in which I ask artists to “sing a song of themselves,” to paraphrase Walt Whitman, really emerges from my growing up with my father's storytelling and self-mythologizing, and so his voice really does belong in the Artists on the Verge series.

I should also add that I was editing our conversation after Russia invaded Ukraine this February, and this loomed over our conversation, in retrospect, in the sense of how much we talk about the way history plays out in the lives of individuals. 

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Miro Tóth is a Prague-based Slovak composer, improvisor, and saxophonist who effortlessly moves between genres. He recently premiered his composition Black Angels Songs, Book 1, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, inspired by the famous George Crumb piece. He created (among other music theater works) a series of operas called Trilogy of the Rod in which a rod – an actual stick - becomes a kind of monolith vested with the absurd power of public officials. He’s also known as a film composer. On the other hand, he stood at the founding of an improvisation scene in Slovakia some fifteen years ago and has performed as a saxophone and vocal improvisor, in genres from jazz to free improvisation, across Central Europe. He is a tireless ensemble-founder – from our conversation I counted about five different ensembles he founded, focused on a range of different genres.

Miro was nice enough to speak English for most of the interview but we switch to Czech and Slovak in the last third of the interview, which is also when the most interesting conversation happens. I try dub over this to convey our conversation - for anglophone people it’s a kind of peek into a foreign culture and language.

Miro and I talk about how you must think of yourself as “nobody” in order to do your best work, the absurd power of public officials, the Czech new music scene, the Ostrava New Music Days festival without which the Czech New Music Scene wouldn’t be what it is, the cultural differences between Czechs and Slovaks, and the permeability of music genres, among other things.

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Kate Gale is a poet, prose writer, librettist, president of the American Composers Forum, and founder of Red Hen Press, a Los Angeles-based independent literary publishing house, one of the foremost of its  kind in the US. Her story is both all-American and quite unusual: It involves escaping a cult, going to college just to spite a conservative boyfriend, and becoming a divorced mom who decided to transform Los Angeles into a literary city. The result was Red Hen Press, named after the American fable about the Little Red Hen who sowed her own wheat to make her own bread.    

Kate and I talk about the healing power of storytelling, how a manuscript goes from being one of thousands submissions to being published, how stories aren’t always enough, the taboos around money, the insight manuscript submissions give into the collective psyche, and why e-Books aren’t replacing print books any time soon, among other things.

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Olivia Fuchs is an opera director with roots in indie theater. Her story involves founding her own experimental theater company in London, a burned down performance space, and the UK tradition of performing above pubs. Recently, Olivia has been working on environmental activism, which she hopes to incorporate into her work in theater. Olivia and I spoke about techniques to approaching theater directing, how almost any story can be feminist,  the advantages of growing up bicultural, Margaret Thatcher’s unexpected help in starting a small theater company, and, of course, finding ways to make ecologically-conscious, sustainable theater.

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Cassandra Kaczor is a classically trained pianist and composer whose dream was to make a living performing pop music. She’s also the first composer whose work I premiered back when we were both in undergrad.   We talk about millennial angst, our fraught experiences with music education, the greed of American colleges, standing up for yourself as a freelance musician, and the coolness of nuns, among other things.   

Cassandra's website: http://www.cassandrakaczormusic.com/ 

🎵Music: 

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Reginald Edmund is a Chicago-based playwright and founder and managing curating producer of Black Lives Black Words, an activist theater organisation which "commissions, develops and produces bold and unapologetic artistic responses to current social and political issues." Since its inception in 2015, Black Lives Black words has served two continents, three countries, nine cities and counting. Reggie and I talk, among other things, about the artist as griot, the changing nature of the idea of "community" in a globalized world, the importance of live performance, and what it means for an artist to be, in Nina Simone's words, "with the times."   

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Jason Cady is a New-York-based composer, librettist, pedal steel guitar and modular synthesizer player, and co-founder and co-artistic director of Experiments in Opera. We talk about following one’s musical curiosity, the definition of opera, music and storytelling, leaving the 20th century avant-garde behind, and how when “everything goes” in art, we might as well make it fun.   

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Malena Dayen is a versatile vocalist and exciting opera director who works a lot with new media. Recently, Malena directed the first opera in virtual reality (The Presence of Odradek with Bare Opera.) She is also a versatile vocalist who sings both “standard” operatic repertoire and, most prominently with her duo New Airs Tango, Spanish music and tango. She is also part of the vocal improvisation ensemble Moving Star based at Carnegie Hall and a collaborative artist at the Weill Music Institute, among other performance engagements. 

Malena and I talk about virtual reality, how technology changes singing, the magical elements of opera, and the so-far still irreplicable qualities of live performance, among other things. 

Links: 

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Miriam Gordon-Stewart is both a world class soprano and co-founder and artistic director of Victory Hall Opera, an artist-led opera troupe in Charlottesville, Virginia. While still an active soloist, she and two other singers turned away from what she calls the "arena" (i.e. the opera industry) to embark on what she calls the "frontier" (i.e. the world of independent creation). Miriam and I talk about the freedom and hard work of the opera frontier, about the stage magic that happens when singers get to lead, about the advantages, both personal and artistic, of having a close-knit performance troupe, and about upcoming projects, which include Unsung, a film that takes a raw look at the lives of opera singers and includes footage and music from Victory Hall Opera’s recording of La Traviata. It premieres online this February, 20201 - see link below for tickets! 

Links: 

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Julia Mintzer is one of those artists who has been able to cultivate a dual career in more ways than one: first, she is both a performer and director. Second, she has worked on the "industry" side of opera as well as on "indie" projects. Julia and I talked about some of her directorial projects, about giving depth to two-dimensional operatic characters (especially soprano ones), performing in art galleries, her direction of the first fully-staged opera in London after the beginning of the pandemic, and the difference between directing for the stage and for video - among other things.   

Julia Mintzer's website: http://www.juliamintzer.com/ 

Music: 

"Si vuol di francia il rege" from Maria Stuarda (Donizetti) and prelude to Der Tod und das Mädchen (Schubert): http://www.juliamintzer.com/audio

Excerpt from /Bread and Circuses: The Wrestling Opera/: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAuBPpTRZ1M

La Bohème at Mass Opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=datdy5oPEiE

Carmen instrumentals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCrKncOpE7Q 

Dana Varga's research into gender disparity in opera: https://theempoweredmusician.com/supply-and-demand-gender-disparity-in-opera-part-1/

This is an episode of the old podcast, called Artists on the Verge. I decided to keep these conversations up in the feed because they are, in fact, part of what led me to create Classically (Un)Trained. I have taken down all except the artist interviews - but you can check out an expanded archive here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/former-podcast-archive/

Check out the current podcast here: https://classicallyuntrainedpodcast.com/

Omar Shahryar calls himself a composer, facilitator and peace-maker. We talk about the meaning and importance of an education in the arts, letting go of the perfection and expectations drilled into academically-trained artists, re-thinking the idea of an audience and – don’t worry – we also talk about getting that all-important funding for indie projects. 

Links: