The real reason I stopped singing

I love the weekly @MusoChat discussion because people engage with each other in an open and honest way. This week was no exception.

Q6a. How have your fears and insecurities negatively affected your work/practice? #musochat

— Chrysanthe Tan (@ChrysantheTan) May 9, 2016

This week, the @MusoChat questions from Chrysanthe Tan really hit me like a punch to the stomach, and made me dive deep into my experience as a "singer."

.@ChrysantheTan A6: Yes: I haven't sung solo in public since my senior recital in 2012. I feel atrophied musically sometimes. #musochat

— Angelina Panozzo (@AngelinaPanozzo) May 9, 2016

New follower and fellow @MusoChat participant Miranda George described it as a "creative scar," and I couldn't agree more.

@AngelinaPanozzo @ChrysantheTan Sounds like a creative scar. Been there. #musochat

— Miranda George (@MirandaGeorge) May 9, 2016

I’ve mentioned before that I haven’t sung in public since my senior voice recital in 2012. Here’s why.

As a kid, singing was my thing. It’s what brought me into the world of music in the first place, and I took every opportunity to do more of it. I joined choirs at a young age, and when I was three I terrified my parents by sneaking out of the house at five in the morning to sing to the birds.

All through high school I was in choir, I sang in talent shows, and I did as much community theatre as I could force my mother to drive me to. My drama director surprised me in my junior year, when she said that my voice had grown immensely and that she was very impressed.

Me and my mom after my performance in my high school's The Sound of Music production, circa 2006

I had a  great voice teacher as a teenager - she gave me innumerable opportunities, from helping to direct and conduct church choirs, to more community theatre, to singing solos at a festival in Italy. She never strayed away from giving me more difficult repertoire to work on and study, and I’m grateful for that.

Me in Assisi for a singing conference in 2006

After I graduated high school in 2006, I went off to college at Northern Illinois University, and I was over the moon to be a music major - for about 30 seconds into my first theory class. My professor told us that 90% of us would be failed musicians. A few weeks into my first semester I went to his office to ask for clarification on something he’d taught in class, and he gave me this advice: “If you don’t understand a concept the first time I explain it in class, you had better just go and change your major before it’s too late.”

Voice lessons weren’t going any better - she told me that all of my repertoire was wrong, I’d have to start from the beginning, and I didn’t have the body type to be a professional singer. She suggested that I not even bother auditioning for the opera workshop, and so I didn't.

Unsurprisingly, I left university after just one semester.

I took a couple of years off, licking my wounds, working crappy jobs, and wondering if I’d ever go back to school for music. I contemplated massage school and cosmetology. I contemplated going back to school for agriculture. I did some musical theatre to keep my voice in shape and interact with what I loved most: music and theatre.

Me as Gymnasia in A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum in 2007

In 2008 I befriended a man in Texas through playing World of Warcraft. He knew the head of music at the local college, and knew that they were looking for voice majors to give scholarships to. I got in, and was offered a hefty scholarship. I moved to Texas to reboot my music major degree, renewed with hope and vigor.

I bounced into classes, ready to learn and take the music world by storm. I spent all of my time listening to music and learning. This time around, theory felt easy to me, and I was surviving ear training class. I was doing okay, for the most part. In choir I wasn’t the section leader, but I was expected to run all of the mandatory late night sectional rehearsals. After auditioning for several solos and realizing they all went to the same four people, I stopped auditioning for them all together.

My voice teacher would jab me in the ribs during lessons and ask me if I was on my period if I was struggling with a technique. He constantly cancelled my lessons to take “important phone calls,” and they never got rescheduled. I was left without guidance to learn my own repertoire, and the accompanist chose most of it for me.

Still, I was so grateful to be a music major that I looked at my teacher with stars in my eyes. He had worked with some big names in the industry and conducted huge ensembles all around the world. I tried my best to work hard, I always showed up prepared to juries, I got good grades in all my music classes, but he looked right through me. You see, his favorite students were the skinnier, prettier girls.

When my time there came to an end, and it was time to transfer to a university to finish my degree, he told me that I was his “biggest disappointment.”

At university, I really struggled to find my vocal footing. I was a junior in university and no voice teacher had been able to tell me what kind of repertoire I should be working on - my voice type seemed to change every year. Mezzo, Soprano, Coloratura, Dramatic, no one knew what the hell to do with me. I felt lost. I had no repertoire that I could take to a formal audition.

I started to realize that professional singers had all spent many summers during their university years doing expensive pay-to-sing programs for stage experience. I had to work summers to pay rent.

My junior voice recital included a lot of art song material (but not “Der Lindenbaum,” because that’s “just for men”). I still didn’t have a classical voice classification. The person I was with at the time only came out of obligation, and said “God, I really hate this shit, don’t you?” to one of my fellow students. My performance in the department musical, Ghosts, drew a similar reaction.

Me as a dead opera singer in Ghosts, in 2010

My voice wasn’t reliable and despite years of technique training I still had unpredictable flips and catches in my voice. No amount of technique seemed to help, and so my voice teacher declared that I probably have some kind of vocal fold deformity that doesn’t allow them to close properly. I don’t know if that’s true, I just took it at her word. She said that I should prepare myself to accept a non-music career, and so I did, taking online courses in marketing and content creation in my free time.

I sang my way through my senior recital, with a Poulenc song cycle, a bunch of Charles Ives Americana pieces, some Giancarlo Menotti pieces, and Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.” The recital went reasonably well, though I don’t have a recording anymore, after four years and four moves to four different countries.

After my senior voice recital in 2012.

About a year ago, I thought about returning to the singing world. I started looking for a qualified vocal coach in the London area that I could see once or twice a month to ease back into it slowly - not to mention I have a full time job, and I don’t have time for more than that right now. The first teacher I contacted said that she doesn’t work with students who aren’t at least at the Master’s degree level. Another said that to teach me would be a waste of his time. Still another said that if I wasn't willing to take twice weekly lessons, there was no point in taking me on as a student. I gave up on finding a vocal coach in my area.

Every time I think about planning a recital, or even going to an open mic night, I think about these things my mentors told me, and I seize up inside.

“Biggest disappointment.”

“Your voice will never be good enough.”

“Vocal fold anomaly.”