Hey, y'all! Today I had an AWESOME sitting down with the amazing Heidi Schneider, a fellow Fredonian and current DMA student at Stoney Brook University on her podcast, the Paper Soprano Podcast. We talked about so much, including our Western New York accents, vocal injury and the journeys we face as young singers, along with our pet peeves (one of mine is VERY controversial!) Hope you enjoy! God, I never thought I'd ever use the word coup this many times in a 5 day period. Welcome back to the blog! Sorry for my delayed second post. I didn’t forget about the blog, I promise. I fell off the wagon around the election, as I couldn’t come up with anything original to write about that topic that would ease anyone’s anxieties. Same with the coup and domestic terrorist attack we had at the United States Capitol this past week. However, silence is complicity, and the reason I don’t have anything calming to add to this national conversation is because there is nothing calming about it. I am aware that I am not saying anything groundbreaking or original in this post, but it is still important that I say it. Firstly, the BLM has my full, unwavering support. I don't believe it is my job as a white person to judge how people express the rage created by 400+ years of marginalization. I believe in the defunding of the police in favor of funding more equitable mental health, educational, and community resources for BIPOC communities. I am working everyday to check my biases and privileges and am striving to become actively anti-racist, so that my community and industry can be a more equitable place for all I live and work with, and that I can be the best teacher and clinician I can be for anyone who walks into my studio and practice. Is this process easy? No. It's hard work. Am I perfect and always correct in what strides I take throughout this journey? Absolutely not, I’m human. But I’m trying and taking it upon myself to educate myself, not expecting BIPOC people to educate me. Next, if you voted for Trump for any reason, you voted against BIPOC as well as LGBTQ+ Americans. If you supported or condoned the attack on the United States Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, you support and condone domestic terrorism, an attempted political coup, and treasonous behavior. If you condemned the BLM demonstrations, you chose to actively ignore the cries of the black community. The difference between BLM demonstrations and the riots at the Capitol is that BLM were peacefully protesting the murder of black Americans at the hands of the police, which is abhorrent. The Capitol riots are protesting the loss of an election with violence incited by a sitting president. They are not comparable. If you try to compare them to justify your support of the disgusting actions of Trump supporters, you are wrong. Will future employers/directors/potential students read this blog post and disagree with it? Possibly. Will it affect my casting/employment in the future? Maybe. Do I want to work for or collaborate with anyone who STILL tries to justify the ridiculous behavior of Donald Trump and his supporters? Absolutely not. If this upsets you, I encourage you to check your own privileges and biases as that is the only way to truly make a more perfect union for ALL Americans. Classical music is a western, whitewashed industry that is blighted with cultural appropriation, rampant racism, and blackface. Caucasian musicians created this industry and culture, and therefore it up to caucasian musicians to ACTIVELY (not passively) help dismantle the racism within it. Pay attention to your BIPOC colleagues experiences and figure out how you can support them. The following Instagram accounts and organizations have been acting as platforms to disseminate the experiences of our peers in our industry and academia. Some of them also have awesome discussions with industry leaders, as well.:
Equity will be a regular topic on this blog, and I am actively working to start virtual book clubs Naomi André’s books “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement” and “Blackness in Opera.” I invite you to join me on these reads, and will provide reviews on these books in the coming months. I implore you make equity a regular conversation you have within yourself as well as with those in your life, whether or not you are a musician. Again: Silence is complicity. Enough is enough.
Maybe I’ll migrate into another one of those avenues as time goes on, but for now I’ll scratch the writing itch that I’ve been ignoring for the last 9 months. It shouldn't be surprising that creatives have flocked to the aforementioned platforms during their quaran-time. Not only do these platforms serve as virtual venues to regularly showcase the art we sorely miss sharing with audiences, but they’ve sustained the conversations and community that are unique to our places of employment. “Opera Tik Tok” and “Musical Theatre Tik Tok” may sound like like nerdy little niche corners of the internet to you (okay…they definitely are nerdy little niche corners of the internet) but to so many of us they’ve become microcosms of normalcy in a world where our extensive, specialized training has been deemed “nonessential.” (More on that to come in later posts. Just you wait.). A Snapchat of my Mom and I when we visited the Met for the first time.Now, no offense to Tik Tok, but my heart will always belong to Snapchat and Instagram. Their purpose has always been simple: capture photo and video easily, edit them as much or as little as you want, share them. Bada bing, bada boom. That's more than enough functionality for me. As the granddaughter of two former Kodak employees in Rochester, New York, photos and the moments they capture have always had a very special place in my heart. Immortalizing one to sixty seconds of fun nights out with friends and family, my corgi, Millie, my singing, inspirational quotes, et cetera., that’s my jam. I truly believe that “Doing it for the ‘Gram” is the new “Kodak Moment.” Over the last 4 years, my Snapchat has become more than that. It has become the vehicle for a spontaneous combustion of a series called “Ellie’s Snapchat Rants.” (I definitely dropped the ball with that title, but it has stuck!) I could not begin to tell you what the first rant was about, but what was meant to be a one time outburst for my friends’ consumption was the catalyst for a biweekly mini-podcast-thing where I ramble about anything and everything that's on my mind. (Luckily, I haven’t talked all my friends’ ears off, yet. There are a few very loyal listeners who are still there every time I pop off. They know who they are. I love them dearly.) A Snapchat of Millie. You're Welcome.Tik Tok isn’t exactly my cup of tea, and I’m not quite ready to invest the time and energy required to have a YouTube channel or podcast, so I’ve continuously turned to my front-facing camera to talk my ideas out on Snapchat. My Snapchat Rants have grown with me, morphing from 30-second clips of 19-year-old-Ellie rambling about sexist customers at my entry-level retail job to four minute musings on racism in music and opera, vocal technique, my experience with vocal injury, and fatphobia. They’ve been occurring more frequently since COVID, as all of the places where I would normally have these discussions verbally have been taken away from me and so many others. Until I can regularly have these conversations face-to-face, I think it will be nice to write them down in a more coherent, succinct format. I think that this platform will be a great place for me to advocate for the social and civil change we so desperately need in the music industry, ESPECIALLY within the world of classical voice. It'll be nice to be able to discuss these things while sparing my friends a ton of swiping and scrolling. And, if I'm being frank, I pay a lot for this web address, so I might as well get a bit more mileage out of it when my press kit and recordings aren’t being browsed as frequently. (However, please feel more than free to go peruse those while you're here!)
In summation, expect posts dealing with the whole kit and caboodle: vocal health, vocal injury and its stigma, navigating COVID, social injustice, and the 2020’s as a 20-something singer just beginning to dip her toes in this musical world of ours. Am I an expert at any of the above things? No. Can I guarantee that I’ll have something original to offer to the larger conversations surrounding these topics? Not always, but thats not the point. My goal is to document my reality, ideas and perspective of our industry during a time where everything is becoming increasingly surreal, and so that my Snapchat story can once again be a place of memes and videos of me whining about my disdain for vegan cheese substitutes. Feel free to come along for the ride! |
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