From Classical NEW JERSEY Society Journal, October 23, 2003

New Jersey in
Pennsylvania

VOICES, Hamlisch, Pittsburgh, and Mountain Laurel Center

The experience of a VOICES soprano

By Laurie Tema-Lyn

Marvin Hamlisch arrived at our Princeton rehearsal ten minutes early, without fanfare. He cracked a joke and a smile, opened his score and in a heartbeat we were singing. You could feel the adrenaline of the 60 singers of VOICES Chorale.

VOICES was invited to perform at the opening of the Mountain Laurel Center, the new summer home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Bushkill, PA.

The concert Sunday August 10 at 2:00 PM was a Pops concert featuring the outstanding 100-piece Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, VOICES, and soloists Terri Hansen, Brad Little (currently playing the Phantom in the national tour of the Phantom of the Opera), Gary Mauer (recently on Broadway in Phantom), Rocky Paterra, and Jeff Howell under the direction of Marvin Hamlisch.

"I'm not a conductor that gives you every cue. I'm interested in programming. You do your job in this concert, and I'll do mine. I want to have some fun, too." Mr. Hamlisch's words put fear in the hearts of many of us so used to the precise direction of Lynne Ransom, VOICES' founder and Music Director fur the past 15 years. But the rehearsal and the concert turned out to be a thrilling experience that this singer will remember fur a lifetime.

It was immediately obvious that we were in the presence of a consummate musician who could poke fun at himself and invite people to be both relaxed and professional at the same time. He set the bar high: he knew exactly what he wanted and let us know that he expected us to take individual responsibility for excellence. He stated that his overarching talent was not his musicianship but his showmanship and that his job was to prepare us for the task of pleasing the audience.

Pops concerts are not traditional fare for VOICES. An auditioned Pennington, NJ, based community chorus, we generally perform the great musical classics with a sprinkling of contemporary, world music, and spirituals.

Our role in this concert was to accessorize the emotional heart-stoppers from the beloved Lerner & Loewe musicals: Gigi, Brigadoon, and My Fair Lady. And unlike classical music where singing beautifully on pitch, in rhythm, and with perfect diction is what counts, here we were also asked to be actors - to tell the stories with energy, passion, and emotional richness, and to make a deep connection with the audience.

We learned to keep an eye on Marvin — who, though he prepared us for the contrary, provided every nuanced bit of direction that we needed. While there was a baton in hand, the richness of his direction came from the smallest gestures - the slight curve of the wrist, the flick of a finger, or the raise of an eyebrow.

Part of the fun of the concert was singing with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra whom most of us hadn't heard live. We immediately sensed their world-class musicianship and were thrilled at the opportunity of singing with them. They performed a program of serious symphonic works the two nights before our concert, and were leaving for Switzerland the following week. In our rehearsal Sunday morning it was amazing to see them pick up pencils and make changes on their scores on the fly, then produce sounds that were precise and profound - like performing a discrete classical score and improvisational jazz at the same time.

We sang our hearts and souls out to an almost full house gathered on this gloriously sunny afternoon at the Tom Ridge Pavilion that seats 2,500. And there were other hearty souls in the blazing sun on the steep grassy slope before us as well. Haying never sung to such a large audience before, I thought I might be nervous and feel distant, removed from the listeners. Those feelings disappeared in the first few moments of our concert as we were transformed from two large groups of musicians and a large audience into an intimate community. Part of the magic was the arc that Marvin made with us and with the audience as he told stories, joked with the crowd and spontaneously interviewed the soloists. It's the kind of audience connection - making that Lynne Ransom does so well with smaller VOICES audiences.

Earlier the week of the Hamlisch concert we presented a concert at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital where we have an on-going outreach program. As we began our first number a client in the first row started singing along with us. I wondered if such outbursts would cause us to lose focus and musicianship. Lynne simply folded his enthusiasm and his voice into our performance, making for an even richer musical experience.

That week with its two performing experiences sums up what is such a delight about singing with VOICES. The call to stretch our musical talent, whether with the PSO at the Tom Ridge Center, on the stage of Carnegie Hall, to sing at a baseball game, or to perform inspiring Masses --all with a quality of professionalism that represents the best attributes of a fine community chorus.

I look forward to our fall 2003/04 season, but I'll never forget working on the concert with Marvin Hamlisch!

Laurie Tema-Lyn is a Board Member and the Marketing Director for VOICES. She is the President of Practical Imagination Enterprises, a consulting firm specializing in product innovation.