Here’s the deal.

If you live in New York City, contact me for voice lessons and can’t read music?

I will send you to Liz Fleischer at the Kaufman Center.

Why?

She’s the best!

You owe it to yourself to become the musician you say you want to be—which means learning to read music.

True Story

I thought I knew how to read music well when I got to Westminster Choir College in 1985—J. S. Bach’s tricentennial. Then I auditioned for and got into the Westminster Choir and found myself reading 18 Bach cantatas.

Guess who had to go into a practice room and work his ass off?

Moi.

I upped my game in the process. Still, I had more to learn. Once I got into New York City Opera and had a church job on the weekends, I found myself reading tricky Anglican music and then singing it in a service an hour later.

Boom.

This is what professional musicians do.

Ditto for learning opera scores.

I had to show up for rehearsal, sit in a chair, and learn and memorize atonal scores—which you only learn to do by doing them. You learn to think, diagram, and notate the score for starters. This means writing at a bare minimum, using numbers in the bars so that you know where the beat goes.

Simple, right?

It's not so simple when the composer is changing meters every other bar.

If you come to me and don’t know what the time signature means and how to read music you will be spending a lot of money and spinning your wheels. And please don’t tell me Pavarotti didn’t read music and, like him, you are going to be the next star.

That’s hubris on top of stupidity.

Musicians can count and read. Are you going to be one or not?

Or are you going to perpetuate the perception that there are singers and musicians?

N'est-ce pas?

It’s up to you.