Being a Young Tenor

Off to Chicago

2009-07-09T20:29:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow Cara and I will be boarding the plane to Chicago. This is going to be one grand adventure. Once we leave I will not have any time to practice, just time to look over my music one last time. I am as ready as I can be and hopefully my best is what they are looking for.

That idea, hoping my best is what they are looking for, is one that has only dawned on me in the past few days. After numerous auditions, some eventful and some I never heard from, I realize that I do my best at each one. My level of performance doesn't change. Some can hear me and think I have a great big voice that is perfect for Puccini. Others can hear the same thing and think that I should be singing lighter rep for many more years before touching the 'heavy stuff'. What I do will never change someones mind on what they like or what they perceive as being the 'right' sound. So, I will go to my audition on Saturday and sing exactly the way I know how. It is my hope that Chicago is looking for my sound, because that is all I have to give and it is out of my hands if they aren't. That does not mean they don't like what they hear, just that it was not what they were looking for.

On a side note I will be doing a live Twitter session starting tomorrow to chronicle this big audition. See you there!

- Gregory -

Surprise Lesson

2009-06-30T19:48:00.000-05:00

So my voice teacher, Craig Hart, gave me a call on Sunday which resulted in a 3 hour drive to CT for a lesson. He and his wife Susan worked with me for a full 3 hours until my voice was sufficiently shot. During this time they were able to pick apart my arias and give me some great stylistic insight. You are never as prepared as you think you are. There will always be things you can improve on. Never let yourself be fooled into thinking that you are done practicing and preparing until the audition is done.

One of my favorite things about lessons with Craig is the fact that he is so patient. No matter how many times I do the wrong thing he just explains it a different way and helps me to understand and remember. Craig, this audition is for you. To all who say we should never sing the rep that we do, I will be doing my best to prove that my teacher is not just some crazy bass, but a great teacher as well.

- Gregory -

Two Weeks

2009-06-26T18:06:00.000-05:00

In two weeks I will be boarding my flight to Chicago. Things are starting to fall into place for me. Recently practice has been a bit discouraging. My voice has felt a little tired and slow. However, this week my good friend Nathan was kind enough to give me a coaching. It felt very nice, fluid and comfortable all the way up and down my range.

This leads me to believe that I am not warming up properly and at the end if the day, work has annhiliated my voice. I need to give myself more time in between warming up and working on my rep. As for being tired after work.... well I can't really do much about that yet.

- Gregory -

Testing a New App

2009-06-22T19:45:00.001-05:00

My birthday was this past weekend and now I have a new toy that I am testing out. Still getting ready for the big audition in less than 3 weeks. Hopefully I will be able to fit in a lesson and a few coachings before then!

- Gregory -

Audition Date

2009-06-11T09:35:00.004-05:00

The confirmation has come in. July 11th I will be in Chicago for my audition. This is extremely exciting and I am practicing diligently every day after work to prepare. They have asked me to prepare 5 arias, I get to sing one of my choice and the judges may ask for a second from my list. So far this is what I have prepared:

Che gelida manina - Puccini, La Boheme - Chosen song
Addio, fiorito asil - Puccini, Madama Butterfly
Ah, leve toi soleil - Gounod, Romeo et Juliette
Una furtiva lagrima - Donezetti, L'elisir D'amore
Kuda, kuda - Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky

These are all arias that I feel very solid on but need to be polished a bit. This is a big opportunity and I do not want to mess it up. During the weekend in Chicago I will be doing active "tweeting" of this major audition and hoping for some good marks by the judges.

- Gregory -

Twitter?

2009-05-26T19:08:00.002-05:00

So I have joined the (current) final frontier of social media, Twitter. At this time I do not have any intention of keeping it up to date other than making a note of when I practice and if it is going well or not, so follow at your own will. As you can see by the number of comments this blog receives, my readership is towards the lower level. My whole reason for starting this blog was to catalog the events of my career going from student to professional opera singer. Twitter will be the same thing for now, simple logs of events and my take on what is going on. If/when I make it, this site should prove to be a nice archive of events and now we can add Twitter to the list.

When I have a burst of twittering or blogging about to happen I will alert everyone here. To give some warning, this should be an interesting summer. It is looking like I will have an audition in Chicago this July which will be quite momentous and at the very least, tweet worthy.

- Gregory -

Audition

2009-05-14T20:42:00.002-05:00

Recently I mentioned that I was looking into some auditions. Today I received credible information that one of those auditions is going to happen for me. Looks like I may be taking a trip this summer for the first series of auditions for a contest. Winning this contest would be quite the resume builder and I will be practicing non-stop to make sure I am ready for this.

The concert at Gordon went really well. There is some video that I have of Danny Boy that I will be posting soon. It sounds pretty good even though I'm singing over a full symphonic band. Turns out having a big voice does count for something.

In other news I sang the Nation Anthem again for game 1 of the NBA eastern semi-finals for the home game at the TD Garden, Celtics vs. Orlando. Quite the experience. This season I sang the anthem around 6 times, not a bad streak. Looking forward to next season guys!

- Gregory -

Irish Folk Songs

2009-04-18T06:26:00.002-05:00

Tonight is the spring Pops concert that I am singing in. The songs I will be performing are a set of Irish folk songs for tenor and concert band. Deiren De, Jug of Punch, The Beggerman, and of course, Danny Boy. These songs are fun to sing but they present a very different issue then the type of arias I usually perform. Danny Boy is about the closest one there is, very melodic, nice lines, a few A's. Beggerman is a different story. This song is all eigth notes in a "brisk two". Alone I could handle that, it is when each note is a different word and the line jumps up through my passagio multiple times. Italian words are easy to manage in a situation like that, English, not so much. This has been causing the problem where I open notes that should be covered and by the end of the song I am exausted. After working hard on it and getting my voice in top condition, I am sure tonight will go fine. If you are around it is at 7:30 in the A.J. Chapel at Gordon College.

After the Irish song set I will be narrating Aesop's fables with the band as well, it will be quite interesting!

- Gregory -

Writing is Hard Work...

2009-03-27T19:17:00.002-05:00

Especially when there is a dearth of things to write about. This past winter was a surprisingly dry season for auditions. In and around Boston were auditions for 10-15 different performances of Amahl and the Night Visitors and that was about it. With a lack of auditions to prepare for, all I have really been doing is practicing. There is only so much that I can write about practicing that is interesting.

With all that, I do not want the lack of updates to make you think I haven't been busy. My most recent work has been preparing to sing a set of Irish folk songs with the Gordon Symphonic Band. That will be on April 18th in the AJ Chapel at Gordon College. If you are in the area please come and watch, it should be very fun.

Outside of that I have been a little more active in my search for auditions. Nothing that I can truly speak to yet, but I have my name at a few places right now. If/when one of these opportunities presents itself I will be updating much more regularly. All in all my biggest piece of advice, keep practicing no matter what and never give up. Sometimes it only takes one chance, one aria in front of the right people, one high C, and then you have your big start.

- Gregory -

E-mail List ----->

2008-11-21T20:06:00.002-05:00

Currently I am in the middle of working to get the join code working to my mailing list. Ideally I would have this combined with the form in the comments section with a checkbox asking if you would like to join my list. Right now though that doesn't look like it will work until I dust off my javascript book and fiddle around.

Until then you can sign up for my mailing list on the top right hand side of the blog page. Please sign up and I will send out occasional mailings (no more then once a month) keeping you updated on new shows or exciting happenings. Thank you all for supporting me through my dry period these past few months and to those singers out there, I look forward to working with you again. To everyone else, I hope to see you from the stage soon!

- Gregory -

Long Time, No Write

2008-11-15T11:30:00.002-05:00

Once again there has been silence on this blog. This time I actually have a (semi) good reason, not just that I am lazy and haven't been practicing. Recently I took a new job, so I have been busy with applying, interviewing, finishing up at one job and starting a new one. Now that I am a big time department head I have to be a lot more purposeful with my practicing. My schedule has finally settled in so I now have a regular time to practice. With more practicing comes more auditions, more (hopefully) shows and much more to write about.

The only thing that has happened recently in my music world is that I sang the national anthem at the Celtics again. This time I received a number of complements throughout the entire game and all the way to the train station parking lot. The consensus, people love the high C.

In the near future I will be implementing a mailing list. The code needs to be adapted to my contact form, but it shouldn't take too long. Once setup, if you submit a comment to the site you will have the option to sign up for a mailing list. This will include monthly mailings with hi-lights of my singing, dates and locations and other important news.

Once again I apologize for the lack of updates, I will get back in gear again. Singing is too important for me to just give up on, regardless of if there are opportunities in Boston or not.

- Gregory -

From the Mouthes of Babes

2008-08-27T07:16:00.003-05:00

One of my good friends is a music teacher. For an intro music quiz to one of his 7th grade classes he asked "What is Opera?". One response read as follows.

"Opera is when someone sings as high as they can for as long and as loud as they can."

That could quite simply be the best quote about opera of all time. I think I'll make it my motto.

- Gregory -

Wordle

2008-07-30T09:38:00.003-05:00

While reading the amazing musings of Michael Monroe and saw that he recently has become consumed with Wordles. This nifty little app generates a "word cloud" where the more a word is used, the bigger the word is. It is interesting to see how my word usage stacks up in this blog. Interestingly enough it came up randomly with "Gregory singing Puccini Opera" in quite a nice order, foreshadowing perhaps?

One thing I would like to point out is that all of my posts are signed with my name, I don't just refer to myself in the third person all the time. What would be nice is to have an actively generated word cloud of your blog so that every time someone visits they get a gist of the content. Clearly I need to step up the references to being a tenor.*

- Gregory -

* tenor tenor tenor tenor tenor

Piano-lizing

2008-07-22T08:32:00.006-05:00

I just had a message from one of my music professors and vocal coach from college. This clearly outlines the constant war between instrumentalists and vocalists (or musicians and singers if you ask them).

"I just played a high C on my piano. It was quite easy and caused me almost no strain. I'm thinking of piano-lizing up to an F tomorrow."

Sometimes we just can't get a break.

- Gregory -

Wild at Hart

2008-06-12T13:48:00.002-05:00

Once again it has been ages since I last updated you on my performance life. The slow season still has me firmly in its maw and I have been fighting to get out. Instead of posting so much fluff here just to fill up the space, I decided to just relinquish posts until something happened. Now it has!

Recently, some of the alumni members of the Craig Hart voice studio put on an opera gala unlike those normally seen in New England. An (almost) entirely male cast sang operatic selections from a few of the powerhouse composers, Wagner, Puccini and Verdi. Myself, I went way out of my league and sang the "Di quella pira" from Verdi's Il Trovatore.

We had decided that if we were going to do a recital it should consist of stuff that we "shouldn't be singing till we are 50". In my opinion you shouldn't make a career out of singing Verdi and Puccini when you are 25, you should just do it for fun. It won't hurt you* (unless you are singing incorrectly which then singing anything from Mozart to Wagner will cause damage). So there, I said it. If you want to sing stuff that is fun, do it. Don't let people say you shouldn't be singing that stuff, have fun just don't over do it. Sing a Puccini aria every so often and push yourself, you might just be surprised at what comes out!

Back to the recital, everyone was amazing. The first half was all arias and the second half consisted of duets, trios and the opening scene from Boheme. We packed out the hall and blew everyone away. Like I said, I doubt many people have been to an (almost) entirely male, strictly sweet opera recital. I may be bias, but when you hear a female opera singer it is almost always good and when you hear a male opera singer it is almost always mediocre. However, when you hear an amazing female singer she sounds great and when you hear an amazing male singer he melts your face with awesome high notes. We may not be in that upper echelon of opera singers yet but I can guarantee that some faces were melted. Feel free to take a look at the program and decide for yourself.

- Gregory -

* Please note I am not a doctor nor a master vocal pedagogue, singing a high C can hurt you if you are not prepared for it even if you think you sing correctly.

Madama Butterfly

2008-05-26T11:59:00.002-05:00

The past few posts have been few and far between, this time though I have been practicing since the last post. There has generally been no news so I have not been able to find anything to post about. My voice has now come back to full strength after the long break from practicing and I feel a lot more confident in my abilities. My confidence however does not always directly translate into more opportunities. The only thing that I have had recently was an e-mail from the Artistic Director of the Commonwealth Opera. They are doing Madama Butterfly this fall and were holding auditions. Clearly this is an opera that is right up my alley, Puccini, nice tenor part that isn't on the heavy end, high C at the end of the first act, etc etc.

I drove out to Springfield MA yesterday to audition and overall I feel the audition went well. I opened with "Addio Fiorito Asil" from Butterfly and then sang the Hines "131st Psalm" and the Lensky's aria from Eugene Onegin. The Lensky's moved the Artistic Director to stunned silence for a couple minutes after I finished. It was either very awkward or very reassuring, I haven't yet decided. All in all I am not holding my breath for this role, however I think this would be a great stepping stone for me to larger opera companies. When I hear back I'll fill you in!

- Gregory -

Silence, it is not golden

2008-05-07T08:33:00.002-05:00

So I fell prey to the lull. I took some time off from practicing. When things got slow I stopped practicing every day during the week, which quickly lead to not practicing at all. After that happened, I stopped writing posts because there was nothing going on. The longer I went without practicing the less I felt that I wanted to practice. I was finally able to shake off my funk and start practicing again, but that caused problems too. Coming back from not practicing always leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Never sounding as good as before I take the break and it always feels like my voice is slow and cumbersome. Just now I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of my voice getting back in gear and I have renewed my efforts to get ready for the Met competition at the end of the year. I apologize for the lack of updates recently, hopefully there will be some auditions soon that I am qualified for.

On one last note, my good friend, Dan Draper (baritone), tried to help me out of my funk with this e-mail...

"Hey Dude This audition looks right up your alley... You like early French
music, right? he he see you Friday"

Description: The Boston Camerata is holding auditions for professional level singers and instrumentalists with an interest and/or background in early music. Knowledge of Camerata’s work is very helpful. Foreign language skills, especially French, are also helpful. Auditions will be for cast openings in The Boston Camerata’s upcoming 2008-2010 Seasons.

If you did not already know, early french music and I are not the best of friends...

- Gregory-

Slow Season

2008-03-24T13:17:00.002-05:00

The slow season is upon me. The times like this are the ones that make it difficult to practice. Nothing on the horizon, no auditions pending to prepare for, no recent auditions to hear back from, no shows to study for..... This is what I felt like last year around May when I had no prospects and yet things did ramp up eventually. I just have to keep that in mind and keep practicing. I do not want to be ill prepared should someone call me up for a next day audition. It is difficult, but if I push through the slow times then the fast times will be easier.

- Gregory -

Time Off From Singing Pros / Cons

2008-03-10T11:38:00.003-05:00

No matter how many times I do this, I always think it might change. When I take a few weeks off from singing, it takes me a few weeks to get back into it. Try as I might, the first day back my voice never feels nor sounds good. Everything gets thin and wobbly. Yes it was nice to have a break from singing even if my break consisted of having the flu.

Pros - Vocal rest; I don't spend lunch time in a practice room; I can spend time looking for new rep instead of singing old rep.
Cons - Coming back to singing takes time; I run the risk of having a next-day gig/audition come up which I would not be prepared for; I can't practice the new rep right away because I need to get back into voice again.

Overall I would definitely say that taking time off is good. However, vocalize for a little bit every day. I am really bad with analogies, but here goes. Vocalizing is checking the air in the tires of your convertible during the winter. If you do it every so often, you can take off down the highway in spring. Neglect to and you will have trouble driving with flat tires. Or something like that.

- Gregory -

Puccini and Pastries

2008-02-25T21:51:00.004-05:00

Yes. That was the name of the concert. I love stuff like this. It is right up there with Sherry and Sopranos from Opera North. My friend and sometimes coach Michael Monroe thought that we should continue the series with Basses and Brewskies, Mezzos and Merlot, and Tenors and Tequila. I think it would be a riot.

This past week I was on vacation and took a little vocal rest after the Puccini concert in NH, I was also off from work. It was a welcome respite. Now I am back to work and feverishly trying to decide my list of 5 arias (of contrasting styles, 3 different languages, one in English). Everyone wants your list to be something like that, so I figured I would cover the bases.

One of the new arias I am adding to my audition list is "Addio, Fiorito Asil" from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. I performed that aria at the competition and it seemed to go well. I also sang it this past week at the Puccini concert. I have uploaded the video onto the interwebs for viewing. Let me know what you think.

I also had a discussion about covering with some of my friends this past weekend. If there is enough interest in this I will make a detailed post of my opinions and get some feedback.

- Gregory -

So the Duke of Mantua walks into a bar...

2008-02-14T14:45:00.002-05:00

Today I finished fixing up the new archive section and I have made that live as of right now. It does not line up perfectly in Firefox or Safari but I am not going to mess with it anymore. One interesting thing that I discovered is that you cannot view my site properly using Safari 3 in Apple OSX 10.4 (Tiger). Safari renders the site fine in Leopard, it is just Tiger that is giving me the issue. I recommend using Firefox for now if you wish to check up with my site. I will try and work on this in the future.

Today I uploaded a small portion of the Gordon College "Opera Scenes" program. Right now I only have the Duke's aria up but I plan on getting the quartette finished up and posted soon. Enjoy!

- Gregory -

Apology

2008-02-13T16:48:00.003-05:00

I have to apologize to people who have been viewing my site from Apple computers or through Firefox. I have known for quite some time that my archive section was not friendly to those browsers. The code was not made that way intentionally and I thought I had it working properly. Alas, I did not. However, in an attempt to salvage some dignity, work has begun on a new format to the archive page that should work better. It still is not perfect on Firefox and I have not checked it on an Apple machine, but I will work diligently to make this site accessible to all users.

- Gregory -

Technique

2008-02-11T09:42:00.000-05:00

The concert this past weekend went very well. The audience loved it and the singers all performed admirably. There are always a few minor hiccups, but nothing caused any real damage.

Someone commented on my voice recently. They told me that some of the vocalizing I do is much to low or baritone-like. I have had people tell me that I am ruining my voice my warming up to sing a low G. I know that most of the rep I sing will never go lower the C below middle; however I still see the need to keep my voice moving in those ranges. My motto "You have to have the bottom to have the top". Now I know this is not a motto for every voice type or even for every tenor, but it does work for me. Some people think that their technique is the only way to sing and anything else is horrible for your voice. I am of the mind that for each individual voice, there is a right way and a wrong way.

My voice is fairly powerful. I attribute that to the beatboxing that I use to do. It is a very taxing ability and the only way I was able to do it was to practice until my muscles were extremely strong. This was good and bad for me. Singing high notes came easily even if they were forced and strained. It took some time before I was able to relax my throat enough and open up my voice, especially through my passagio and into the upper register. Since I could control my throat that well, concentrating on the chest buzz and bringing that low feeling up throughout my range. It has been said that I will blow my voice out within the year if I continue like this. 3 years later and my voice is still growing.

People who sing with the top-down approach, bringing the falsetto down into the lower range, are good singers. Singing that way can protect your voice, however it is not going to achieve the top results for everyone who uses it. Singing with a different method would not work for me. There have been successful singers who use this technique and sing their whole lives and they did not damage their voices too badly(Jerome Hines, Franco Corelli, etc). To say that one technique is for everyone is completely wrong and if anyone ever tells you that, get away from them. If you have a teacher that says it is their way or bust, choose bust. That mindset is not healthy and will not help you.

If you have any questions about my technique, your technique or any advice you have heard about singing, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail. I look forward to any discussions in this area.

- Gregory -

Love Songs in Lynn

2008-02-08T08:11:00.000-05:00

I had rehearsal for the Love Songs concert with Mass Theatrica last night. It was a very good time, should prove to be a great show. There are a lot of really talented artists singing in this show and I am looking forward to it.

On another note, I heard back from the Boston Lyric Opera and I have another audition with them. I auditioned for them last year and surprisingly enough, never heard back from them. /sarcasm off. I had sung "Una Furtiva Lagrima" for them, expecting it to be a not very highly auditioned piece. As it turned out, they were putting on "L'Elisir d'Amore" that season so I'm sure they heard that same aria about 50 times that day. Combined with the fact that I was still refining my technique, well, it just was not very good.

This year I have a (semi) full resume and will be singing "Che Gelida Manina" for them. I think my voice has matured enough over the past year that I will at least get their attention and hopefully they will remember my name. We shall see...

- Gregory -

Bum bum baa ya padum

2008-01-28T10:32:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was the showing of the Opera Scenes program at Gordon College. I helped out with the opening scene from Albert Herring as Mayor Upfold and the opening of Act 4 (or 3 depending on your score) of Rigoletto. I got to sing through La Donna e Mobile, which is a very fun aria to sing. It is especially fun to sing this aria for people who do not know opera. As soon as the aria starts, everyone in the theatre got smiles of recognition. Maybe they heard it on a pasta commercial, saw Bugs Bunny singing it or even heard it as the foreground music during a fight scene in the Punisher movie, who knows.

Now that the scenes program is over, I will be focusing on the concerts I have in the upcoming weeks. There is the love songs concert for Mass Theatrica and the Puccini and Pastries concert in NH with Lakes Region Opera. They even have a nice little spot on their upcoming events page about it. February 17, 2:00 pm "Pastries & Puccini"
Farmington Town Hall
We will enjoy some fine food and glorious music by Giacomo
Puccini featuring Gregory Hanson, Tenor, First Place Winner of our Capital Region Opera Idol 2007!

I am looking forward to both concerts as well as taking the Gordon Opera Scenes program up to Vermont to sing for some Opera North patrons. This month is quite busy but I am free after it is through. I am hoping to pick up a few more concerts for the summer but not too much. Right now it is time for me to refine my technique and work on some roles with my teacher.

- Gregory -

*edit 1-29-08*
Thanks to my wonderful sister for pointing out that my last name was misspelled "Hansen" on the Lakes Region Opera page. I have edited this post and informed the company as well. - G -