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Feature article

Artsy songstress wows SCAPA class

Article and pictures by Tammy Lane
February 22, 2008

Mezzo-soprano Katherine Rohrer shared her love of “art song” with Lafayette High School students who enjoyed an hour-long visit that was part classical recital and part stand-up comedy routine.

Mezzo-soprano Katherine Rohrer, who is doing a residency with The Marilyn Horne Foundation, sang “art song” excerpts during a SCAPA masters’ class at Lafayette High School. View a slideshow of more pictures.

  In the art song genre, short, stand-alone pieces are intended to tell a story or convey a mood. “Composers use musical elements to help paint the pictures we hear,” Rohrer explained during the afternoon SCAPA masters class in the music building.
  Rohrer, who is doing a residency with The Marilyn Horne Foundation, sang a few art song excerpts, accompanied by pianist John Parr, head of the music staff at the San Francisco Opera.
  In between songs, the professional singer spoke animatedly about the language barrier in Spain (charades comes in handy when nature calls, she noted, with legs crossed), and laughed as she related the story of a costumed colleague’s plume catching fire on stage (“Good times,” she recalled, smiling).
  The Lafayette students, mostly SCAPA voice majors, chuckled at her colorful humor and listened intently to her musical instruction.
  “I loved how expressive she was … communicating with the pianist like he was the other role,” senior Kevin DeVries said.
  Parr, who can deftly imitate other instruments such as the harpsichord and guitar, is like another voice or a partner in a recital, Rohrer explained. The pianist sets the tone – much like the picture of hunky Fabio on the cover of a romance novel. “You know what you’re in for,” she said. For example, if the music sounds tormented, dark or calculating, the mood of the song is “automatically painted for you before I open my mouth.”
  And when she did open her mouth to sing, Rohrer’s rich, velvety voice drowned out the school buses pulling away from campus, and the students of Ryan Marsh, director of choirs at Lafayette, focused on their guest – ignoring the fierce sunshine pouring into the second-floor classroom.
  “I enjoyed the stories,” said Will Huffer, an 11th-grade choir student who was glad of his last-minute decision to attend Tuesday’s event.
  Rohrer, who grew up “in a swamp” in Florida, shared that she was deaf for the first five years of her life, and is still deaf in one ear. While she also has sung big band, jazz and cabaret in her career, she said, “opera, for me, is something I have to do.”
  “Opera gives me an opportunity to tell one story,” she said. In contrast, an art song recital is like reading a magazine, with different countries and different styles of music. A singer can experiment and choose composers who speak to her.
  For the SCAPA visit, Rohrer selected an emotional theme: love.
  In one Brahms piece, sung in German, she noted the composer’s exuberant expression, as if swept away by love. But when her accompanist changed the tempo, the emotion of the song was turned on its head. “You get a totally different color,” Rohrer said, as when comparing the styles of artists Picasso and Monet.
  She paused after each new section of music to question the students:
• Where are we in this piece?
• What do you hear?
• How does this composer paint the picture?
  “Songs are important because they evoke memories for us (sing one line of “Happy Birthday” and you’re instantly transported back to when you were 5 and buried your face in that cupcake). But they also tell us about the past,” she said.
  Rohrer, 32, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Stetson University and a master’s of music from the New England Conservatory, also sang samples of an old Highland dialect from Scotland and some mail-order-bride blues from early America.
  “You can look in a history book and read about it,” she said, “but there aren’t many chances to hear a composer tell you how it felt.”

THE BACK STORY:
  The Marilyn Horne Foundation, which was started in 1993 after the opera great retired from the stage, promotes the preservation and development of art song.
  Every January, the foundation sponsors a huge festival at Carnegie Hall with opera singers from around the world, two weeks of master classes and special concerts. Then there’s a New York debut recital for about a dozen singers handpicked by Horne. Roughly half of those are selected for residencies around the country.
  This year, the University of Louisville received one of the few national grants and the first in Kentucky from the foundation to host programs at area schools to give students first-hand experience with a classical singer and the genre of art song.
  The first resident artist in the four-year grant is mezzo-soprano Katherine Rohrer, who spent this week in Kentucky. She presented short recitals at West Louisville Music Academy, Ballard High School and Valley High School in Louisville, as well as Lafayette High School in Lexington. (A free public concert Thursday night at the University of Louisville’s Comstock Concert Hall was canceled because of icy weather.)
  “Whatever helps expose the kids to this art form ... is what it’s about,” said Daniel Weeks, an assistant music professor at the University of Louisville and a past performer with the Horne Foundation. “Breaking down stereotypes and barriers is a big part of it – learning that the people who sing opera are accessible.”

Online: www.marilynhornefdn.org/#

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