In Conversation with Justin Petersen: Part 1

The initial conversation with my historically-minded colleague Justin Petersen took place over Zoom; however, it somehow didn’t get recorded—a pity since we found ourselves swimming deep into historical vocal pedagogy. But Justin, being the generous man that he is, offered to continue our conversation, so we dove in again.

On James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.

DS: A student recently sent it to me, and while I haven’t read it yet, I have to tell you about another student with asthma. I had taught her Lamperti’s 18 second breath; and now, 6 weeks hence, she’s telling me she doesn’t need to use her inhaler any more. She said “I can’t say I am cured,” but she's curious to see if the fibroid tissue in her lungs is still there.

JP: A student of mine saw that book on a TV show and said “That is so cool!.” I’ll give it a read and put it on my pile of books.

DS: I also like it because it’s written as narrative non-fiction and I am writing narrative non-fiction.

JP: I never read fiction. Isn’t that funny? I’m so not interested in it. I just think real life is so much more fascinating.

How Musical Theatre People are different than classical music people

JP: Did you ever see that documentary Broadway: The Golden Age where that man—Rick Mckay—went around interviewing all the old Broadway stars? Oh, so good!

DS: I think there are two of them?

JP: Yes! The first one… (sighs)… just loved it. I tell people to watch that all the time. You have to watch this documentary. It’s so good. He just interviewed everybody. It’s fantastic.

DS: I’m gonna take that as a segue. You’ve done opera and musical theatre—I’ve done both too—and the energy in the room is so different. The musical theatre people come up to you and say “Oh, you sing opera!” and you are like “Hey! I’d rather do this!”

JP: (Laughs) My musical theatre friends were so psychologically different than my classical vocal friends were. That’s a whole study in itself, isn’t it?

DS: Yeah.

JP: The psychological frame of a person who does a certain kind of music?

DS: What’s the difference? What is your interest in using these old school tools in both camps? What’s that like?

Function & Aesthetics

JP: Well, I am always trying to remember Function and Aesthetics. The two of them are poles: how are they going to be used in a particular way. That comes—for me—from honoring the body. I don’t care what type of music you sing: I want your body to make the sounds as best and healthfully as it can. That’s work. That’s the work of it. But also acknowledging what the demands of the aesthetic are—the particular quality of the aesthetic.

DS: Do you think classical is more formal?

JP: It uses the same parts. It’s just (the) usage is different. I think there are standard things like range: the voice should be rangy. You should be able to sing loud and soft. You should be able to sing vowels undistorted. It should have an unobtrusive vibrato rate. I think—even with opera singers—there is a tendency to ‘make’ the voice—a sort of put on, over cultured, sort-of-classical sound. Joyce DiDonato was asked in an interview why she got into trouble and she said: It’s because I was trying to sound like an opera singer. Rather than singing with a free sound, she was trying to manufacture one—what she thought was an operatic sound. I’m always trying to find the core essence of the voice without a style overlaid on it. And then we go to style: and that’s usually a vowel tweak or a registration tweak…..I have a gym analogy.

DS: What do you mean?

JP: Everyone has a favorite exercise that they like to do in the gym. Over time, that can be limiting and you get stuck. So, if a woman comes in and wants to work on her belt, we do head voice. That’s what we do here! If you want to work on your belt, that’s great. But we will also work on your head voice. Just the difference of the separate function makes the voice work better.

DS: That’s an interesting word: function. It doesn’t appear much until Mr. Reid came on the scene.

JP: Right, right—also the Husler/Marling book Singing: The Physical Nature of the Vocal Organ which came out in 1965. They talked about that (function) a lot.

I wasn’t there, but my idea is that the work of the old training was a full potentialization of the voice—that the voice could do all the things: scales, staccati, long tones, messa di voce. There wasn’t anything the voice couldn’t do if it wanted to do it.

DS: And your teacher made you do it.

Potentialization

JP: Right! That potentialization—I love that word—that the singer can do anything in any direction that they want to do because the instrument has been—what’s the word? Not conditioned.

DS: Trained?

JP: Yeah.

DS: Your gym analogy.

JP: Exactly.

DS: Your trainer makes you do the hard thing you may not want to do.

JP: And not too much because you’ll spoil the horse. The horse will rebel if you don’t give it some pleasure. What I come to more and more is that singing is a humanist endeavor. In a way, it’s a self-actualization as well. You are self-actualizing someone through their voice; and bringing them into a fuller and deeper relationship with the Self.