Jessye Norman Interview (page: 3 / 9) Legendary Opera Soprano	Print Interview

What experience or event in your life inspired you the most?

Jessye Norman: Oh gosh. That would be very difficult to say. I would have to choose being inspired by just hearing my grandmother sing her way through the entire day. She had a song for every time of day. In the morning there was a kind of quick song, a spiritual that would be rather fast. And then later in the day, when she was perhaps more contemplative, or maybe just exhausted from the day... I remember being taken by that. She seemed to have her own kind of soundtrack that accompanied her throughout the day. I didn't think of it in those terms as a young child, but now, in reflection, I think about her having her own soundtrack.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think about being nine or ten years old, and the next door neighbor saying she had some 78s that someone had given her, and she knew I was interested in that kind of music, and would I sort of like to listen to something. And I said, "Yes, of course I would." We didn't have a stereo player at the house -- at our house -- that played 78s, but she had one at her house that played 78s, so she gave me this stack of recordings and kind of left the room for me to have my own fun. And I found a recording of Marian Anderson's -- whose name I'd already heard -- and she was singing the Brahms Alto Rhapsody. I was listening to that on that record player, as one referred to them in those days, and even though I had no idea of the meaning of the words, they sounded important to me, and the music sounded important to me, and I listened to it over and over again. And on the occasion at Carnegie Hall, many, many years later when we were having a memoriam -- as by this time Marian Anderson had passed, this was in 1997 -- and when Robert Shaw said to me, "Let's do the Alto Rhapsody," I said, "Well, I might not get through it, because I might cry all the way through it because this is a very meaningful piece to me." But it was thrilling on that occasion in her memory to sing the first thing I'd ever heard her sing.

Is there a book that inspired you as a child?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: I think when I was about five, I read a book that still remains one of my favorites, and I give it to all of the little children in my family, and it's Ferdinand the Bull. I love Ferdinand the Bull because Ferdinand didn't look like the rest of the animals and therefore had to think highly of himself to sort of get on in life. I still think of that book, and every time I mention it somebody sends me another copy of Ferdinand the Bull. I give them away. One can only keep so many copies of the same children's book, but that was a book that inspired me as a very young child. I know it isn't probably the answer that one is expecting to say, "Oh no, it was the first time I read Much Ado About Nothing of Shakespeare," or something. No, it was Ferdinand the Bull.

When you were 16, you entered an important music scholarship competition. Where did you go to participate and what was it like?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: When I entered the competition -- this is, of course, on paper, I was 15, but knew that I would be the required age of 16 by the time the contest would occur. This was an idea of my choir director from middle school, and so she told me about this and said, "There's something called the Marian Anderson Competition in Philadelphia, and one can enter from age 16." What I didn't understand at the time is that it went from age 16 to age 30, so there would be people in this contest that had a great deal more experience than this 15-year-old from Augusta, Georgia. But anyway, along we went, and there's a marvelous story that goes with that as well, because my school principal decided that the school should participate in my going to Philadelphia. So on one particular day -- and this is amazing when I think about it -- he said that all of the children in this big school should -- instead of spending their money for lunch -- that they should give their money to me so that I would have extra money to go to Philadelphia, and the Board of Education paid for their lunch that day, so that there would be the act of their participating in my going to Philadelphia. Is that a wonderful story?

I wonder if those kids remember that when they see where you went in life.

Jessye Norman: Oh yes. I still am in contact with a great number of kids that I knew at that time.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I went to Philadelphia, and I didn't win the contest, of course. I mean I was probably the youngest person that ever showed up, but I recall so well that the sister of Marian Anderson came to me. She said, "Now you are very young, but I want you to come back and sing for us once you've actually studied singing, because we're going to keep an eye on you." And as far as I was concerned, I had won everything! Marian Anderson's sister actually spoke to me!

Get the Flash Player to see this video. On the way back from Philadelphia, because my teacher who was accompanying me -- Rosa Sanders, my high school music teacher was accompanying me -- we stopped in Washington, because we both had relatives here. We were sort of visiting near the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and all of that, and in the middle of the day she said, "Why don't we find out if anybody at Howard University is there and will listen to you sing?" I said, "Well, that sounds like fun." You know, at that time you don't care that you're tired and sort of perspiring from sightseeing all day long. It never occurs to you that you can't sing. And so she knew one of the professors at Howard because he had been a professor at Paine College in Augusta when she had been a student, and that's where she'd gone to school. So we just called this person, Dean Fax was his name, Mark Fax. And by now he was on faculty at the College of Fine Arts at Howard and so we called and he said, "Well why not? There's a class this afternoon that's a master's degree class in vocal anatomy, so you can sing for that class." I said, "Why not? That's fine." So along we went, and sang for that class, interrupted their studies and just sort of knocked on the door. The professor at the time was told that I was there, and so she welcomed us into the class, where there was a small piano. I sang a few songs, and that professor happened to be Carolyn Grant, who had been professor of voice at Howard University for about 42 years at the time. She accompanied me and my teacher out of the room once we finished our little performance, and she said, "How old are you?" And so I said, "I'm 16. I've just turned 16. I'm all grown up!" So she said, "Well, where are you in high school?" I said, "I've got another year." She said, "Well I suppose you'd have to finish high school before you could come to school here," and I said, "Come to school here?" At that moment, she went down to the dean of the college and said, "I want to teach this child. Make sure that she comes to Howard University." That's how I happened to have a scholarship to Howard University. I know, it's all fairy tales, isn't it?

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

What do you think she heard in your voice, or saw in you as a person?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: I think that she saw great joy in the actual act of singing, and that even though I was walking into a classroom of people -- and it was a small classroom. It wasn't a big auditorium. People were sitting all around me. And that I was comfortable in that situation, because that's the way you sing at church. I mean if you were standing in church singing, there's somebody sitting in the front row, there's somebody sitting on the side. There are the deacons sitting to your right, so it's not like you're on a platform performing. So I think that she saw a certain degree of enthusiasm, and a certain degree of happiness, just being allowed to do it. I think that that sort of caught her eye and her ear, which was, of course, a glorious thing for me, to be able to work with someone, not having studied anything about voice before.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

How my parents understood that that would not have been a good idea is something about which I revel and celebrate every day of my life. Because, you see...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It could be very easy to ruin a young voice by having training in singing too soon, particularly for women. Those muscles on the middle of our bodies that actually support singing are still very much developing when we are teenagers. And if we go to those classes, which, of course, are proliferating all over the world now, because kids think if they can just sing on television and be heard by the right person they'll have a record deal, as it were, sort of overnight. That isn't the way life works. Not real life. That's the way life works on television. It really is so important not to try to use those muscles before they are fully developed, because if you do that, the tendency is to use muscles in the neck, and muscles that are not there for that. Those muscles are there for chewing, absolutely. And I'm sure that you have noticed, as well, that one can see rather young singers that participate and the jaw shakes. That's because the emphasis is being put on the wrong muscles, and they probably started doing it much too early, because these muscles were not developed so the body uses whatever there is.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

That's very interesting.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jessye Norman: The thing that I say to young singers, to try to frighten them into not sort of taking themselves too seriously before the body is really ready for it, is that these vocal chords are unforgiving. If we abuse them, if we use them in the wrong way too early, they stretch, and like any ligament they don't go back. They don't go back. So it's not a matter of having sort of ruined your voice at age 16, if you can just be quiet for two years everything is going to be all right. That isn't the way it works. It's not like a muscle that you can massage, or you can give it an injection or something, or you can rest it, and have it be all right in a matter of time. The vocal chords don't work like that. So I was very lucky to work with Carolyn Grant to begin to understand how the voice is produced. She was a great vocal pedagogue, what one calls the study of vocal anatomy. So I understood how all of this works: where the diaphragm is in the body, and what part of the body sort of pushes the air out of the lungs and through the trachea and past the vocal chord, and how this all works. So that it's not some sort of mysterious thing that happens to my body, that maybe it's good one day and maybe it's not good the next day. At least I know how it's meant to function, scientifically.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

Science has always been a part of your life and what you do, hasn't it?

Jessye Norman: Absolutely. It really is a part of my life. I bore the people in my family to tears. There are several doctors and nurses and so on, and I'm always talking about what I've just read in the American Medical Association, and one of the youngsters in my family said, "Aunt J., have you ever read Vogue? It's a really very nice magazine about clothing. You like clothes. Have a look at that sometime."

But this lifelong interest has obviously made a difference.

Jessye Norman: Oh, yes. I think it makes a difference for any of us to understand how it is that we produce something. Whether it's a person that is an incredible marathon winner -- I can hardly wait for the Olympics -- or a person that is a magnificent swimmer, to understand what muscles are engaged at what point in that production of whatever it is you're doing... It quiets the mind to know how this thing in your body functions.

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