To Teach Communication

An interview with Denise Astorino


1. How long have you been a professional musician?

Well, "Professional," I believe, is a rather subjective term. Technically, I am a professional because I get paying gigs from time to time, but I am not a full-time employee of any particular professional [paid, I presume] enterprise. In addition, some of the non-paid performances I've done have received higher acclaim and involved significantly more qualified musicians than almost all of my paid performances....which leads me to question things, which generally leaves me QUITE confused. SO, let's just say that my first paying gig was as a soprano section leader at a United Methodist church in Birmingham, AL in 2003. My first professional accolade, however, was in the Boston Globe last summer for performing the Berio Folk Songs at the Gardner Museum--for free. Oy. The same goes for my life as a composer. My heaviest-hitting, highest profile commissions are often the ones that fall somewhat short in the funding department. I hope to remedy these things in the future and prevent myself from falling deeper and deeper into an already debilitating existential crisis.

Thankfully, a healthy sense of bitter angst helps with my creativity. It's better this way. Really.

2. Where did you receive your training?

I took my first voice lessons as a high school student under a particularly devoted choral/theater teacher, Brenda Sue Holcombe. After High School, I remained in private voice and composition lessons throughout my time at Birmingham-Southern College and during my Master's at Cleveland State University. To this day, my teachers are still my strongest influences as a composer/performer.

3. How long did you study your instrument prior to your first paid public performance?

...As per the paid gig rant in above, I had taken two years of voice lessons before I was hired as a soprano section leader in Birmingham.

4. What style (s) of music do you play?

As a performer, I specialize in the music of living composers. Gotta help out my own kind, I suppose. Other than specialization though, I have performed in various styles, as have most performers--the sign of someone devoted to music is versatility. I'm not sure I believe that. I may have just made it up. But it sounds nice.

5. How often do you practice?

10 hours a week for voice, significantly less for piano. The later, I only practice out of obligation, because it's just shameful for a composer to suck as a pianist.

6. Do you perform as a solo artist or in an ensemble? Explain.

Vocalists generally rely on an ensemble or at least a piano for support--nature of the instrument. But I prefer to sing as a member of a chamber ensemble [preferably with disassociated instruments] and not necessarily as the center of attention [which is difficult for sopranos and for audiences--historically speaking, and again with the nature of the instrument thing]. I like the experience of collaboration and mutual exchange with other performers, especially when each performer brings a different sound color and instrument quality to the group. To me, that's what making music, and perhaps art in general, is all about--interaction--a means of enhancing human connectivity through individualized contribution.

7. How has playing an instrument and performing added to your life?

As a member of the field of music, I feel like I have a strong grasp of subjective thought in a world where objectivity dominates a lot of artistic perception. Music communicates in a manner that can mean many things to many different people. Everyone approaches music on a different level and with a different set of mental constructs that influence the way it affects them. It's beautiful for many reasons, but its subjectivity, I believe, makes it transcendent. One must open the mind and allow him or herself to be affected--and to embrace a work of art for its own individual quality, discarding other language. It enhances one's worldview and ability to have exchange, I think: the ability to immerse oneself in a foreign language [be it musical, visual, Czech, or otherwise] and to embrace a mode of communication that transcends what one may already know.

So yes, as a musician, my life is enriched by a sense of purpose--to teach communication.