A follow-up to my previous Gatekeeping blog...

One of the things us classical musicians do really well is gatekeeping.

We're actually trained to do it, without knowing we're doing it.

We love it, especially us academic types or those who run important YAPs.

A pause: If you haven't read my previous blog, please do so before continuing. Here's the link: https://coachcraft.ghost.io/ghost/#/editor/post/66252cd77b6b01000194aea1

Telling singers, sorry - advising them - what they may or may not be ready to try, what programs they should or should not pursue, what roles and repertoire they should study, and/or what life choices might hold them back is what we do (us "mentors"), sometimes thoughtfully, and other times maybe less so. It can take severe forms with teachers dictating what their adult students should, or can, wear when singing or taking a lesson, how thin or "fit" they need to be, what kind of hair or piercing styles are professional, sometimes down to literally how many steps they may take while singing an aria and in what kind of shoes.

In the voice teaching arena, this sort of gatekeeping has existed for decades and decades. Perhaps not as much with vocal coaches, as we are seen to be more ancillary, often are not regularly present in a young singers' early career, and have far less power in academia. Coaches are seldom considered vocal gurus, or warrant a cult-like following. But pianist coaches can still wield significant power, particularly as collaborative pianists in auditions - "you really should start with the [insert name of aria they want to play] instead of [insert the name of the aria you wanted to sing]."

When it goes awry, gatekeeping can often take the form of a type of passive-aggressive control.

I believe this is contrary to good pedagogy. It can be the worst kind of misguided effort during a young singers' initial steps in learning to be a classical musician, particularly during a time many of them are quite vulnerable, naive, and open to suggestion due to the fact they don't know much about the world of classical music.

Harsh words.

These thoughts have developed over decades of teaching in higher education and over forty years in the opera business coaching, conducting, directing, and guiding singers. But especially via the first-hand stories from actual singers about their experiences (good and bad) studying voice in their formative young adult years. I use the word "adult" on purpose because another deviant of gate-keeping is infantilizing in order to exert other kinds of control. That's another blog...

I've witnessed way too many meetings where academics make policies and decisions in order to control what students can study, rehearse, and perform. This control has wide arms. There are policies for who they can study with, perform with, rehearse with, or coach with (both in academia and professional arenas). Sometimes, these policies are rationalized/camouflaged in verbiage of how someone (often the voice teacher) is solely "responsible" for the vocal health of their students. And in turn, this responsibility spills over into their students' career choices, their pursuits of competitions, YAPs and gigs, even down to how they dress and comport themselves in the hallways.

Many syllabuses used to dictate what a singer could or could not wear to a lesson. My own beloved piano teacher in my masters degree told me that if she saw me with "another one of your baseball caps on" she'd cancel my lessons. I loved her and smile now as I type that memory. But really Jo-Jo (my private nickname for her), did the lack of cap in lessons change my playing?

This same, it must be said "odd", idea of what-you-wear-shows-respect-to-dead-composers filters into the tradition of singers being told to dress up for a Sitzprobe rehearsal. You know what? Some singers are too poor to have dress up clothes or were trained at programs where this was not ingrained so they show up in their gym clothes and are shamed for it (I've seen this happen first-hand and it is ugly.) Some singers feel uncomfortable dressing up and want to appear as themselves. The orchestra doesn't dress up, so why should the singers dress up to show respect to a group of people who have a powerful union, are getting paid a solid hourly wage, and are in flip-flops, shorts, and tee shirts to work their way through an opera they hardly know, let alone have spent thousands of dollars on voice lessons and coachings to prepare for this experience like a singer often does?

It's not a hill I'm prepared to die upon, but really - do we really need that pretension in our ranks?

Another story involves a voice teacher telling their students to take the stairs, as the elevator should be reserved for professors and older guests, plus "the young need the exercise." I didn't believe it, until I heard it with my own ears one day while stepping into the elevator with one of their students. The student meekly exited the elevator. Awkward silence for many floors...

It is frustrating, damaging, and unnerving to hear hundreds of negative gatekeeping stories over the years. Sometimes these are told to me through tears, sometimes laughter, most times with at least an unpleasant bitterness. Personally, though, it is anger-inducing to hear so much gatekeeping over the years during casting meetings, zoom meetings with YAP admins, and during faculty policy meetings.

And it must be said, I'm seen and have been seen as a big gatekeeper where casting is concerned most of my professional career. (I consider solid casting one of my biggest talents, if I'm honest.) But it is a type of gatekeeping. Though casting is different. You're looking for specific roles to cast and those roles have ranges and expectations. A lot of casting looks like favouritism, but many times it's because the person who is being cast multiple times has proven their ability to learn and perform a role with aplomb. "Breaking into" the business is often about getting casting directors (mainly the conductors, directors, or artistic administrators) to see you as fresh new talent ready to take on [insert repertoire or role] and making them forget that [insert name of established artist] would be a safer choice.

Some more recent gatekeeping that's come to my attention (in addition to the stories sent to me in my first gatekeeping blog):

Telling a young artist their voice is too big for a Mozart role while coaching them on a lighter bel canto role.

Preventing a student, an actual adult learner, from taking a professional contract offered to them by advising them that "their voice isn't ready for the profession" (this told to someone who got a contract to cover a very small role with an octave range any singer could sing at a tiny summer company so that they could advise them to go to a pay-to-sing program instead; one their teacher taught at - you know, to get them ready.)

Creating recital repertoire restrictions preventing students from exploring other languages like Spanish or Russian because they must present in Italian, French, and German first.

Placing a barrier to audition for outside gigs by requiring a student to get their teacher's permission for any auditions outside the program, because "we're making sure they don't overextend...".

Advising students what classes or ensembles to take based on whether they themselves teach those classes or run those ensembles.

Or telling a student that they need extra lessons to get them "ready", and those lessons will cost the student additional dollars beyond their tuition.

Just the tip of the iceberg...

But worse, making them fearful to try new repertoire, or rep outside the traditional canonic stuff because, IMHO, they don't know how to teach it or are unfamiliar with it. This can take the form of not allowing students to work on musical theatre or Zarzuela repertoire, rep in Polish or some other "obscure" language, or 21st century new opera written by "second-rate" composers who "don't know how to write for the voice." ("Second-rate" or "Don't know who to write for the voice" has been used in my presence as a type of code for women and BIPOC composers.)

Gatekeeping can get ugly like that. And the intentions are often quite honest and from a place of misguided nurturing; sometimes though, it's using power and privilege to manipulate fragile students.

So confession time: I have done this. I'm as guilty as anyone trained during the last hundred years or more. It permeates the training, like the misogynistic theory of how feminine or masculine endings take appoggiature or not. (Yes, I know, it's a topic that I'm obsessed with - that blog is in the works!)

Now I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't advise their students. I'm not saying that anyone should just go out and sing Wotan, offer only Ethel Merman hits at prestigious voice competitions, or some way-out-there-idea like have their first audition be for La Scala. I'm not arguing that young students in a bachelor's degree should just sing folk tunes with autoharp for their senior recital. I'm talking about a more insidious type of game played at the expense of young singers' mental health, careers, and education.

It's worrisome because they are paying tens - sometimes hundreds - of thousands of dollars, plus giving the best years of their lives, to acquire knowledge from experts. A young singer entering into voice lessons or opera coachings is as naive as I am talking with someone who specializes in corporate tax law. These young singers often think we are experts in everything. Aren't we? We certainly can tell stories, we certainly can teach "Morgen", we certainly know people in the industry, we certainly have - on some level - done it.

We succeeded. Somewhere. Somehow. Despite all the gatekeeping.

But like many of the rich and famous, we mistakenly think our success is about our hard work or talent when we don't also acknowledge Luck and Privilege. When that happens, we think we know kinda anything about our field and often times, many things outside of our experience. How many amateur psychotherapists work their wiles on unsuspecting singers before starting a lesson?

We got our degrees, we made it into prestigious summer apprenticeships, we found an agent, we made our debuts, we built our solo careers. All that built upon successful auditioning, people skills, hard work, luck, and consistency in rehearsing and performing.

So let's all take look in the mirror. Think about whether we might be gatekeeping instead of advising. The former is a type of manipulation and control, the latter is an open-ended exchange that needs context and flexibility.

Some specific questions we might want to ask:

When our students don't follow our advice, does this make us upset? Why?

If our students go after opportunities we've advised against, and then don't get them, do we offer solace/wisdom or an "I told you so."

When a student seeks advice for rep, do we dictate what they'll sing or show them directions to the music library? (Finding rep on their own needs to be an essential skill taught to all young musicians!)

Are our program's audition repertoire restrictions flexible for someone who might not have a privileged background? Do we judge them if they sing from bad editions or make obvious stylistically bad choices at a young age before they've been able to find expertise to help them? Do we dismiss these types of singers without really listening to their voice or think about their potential?

Does your program or school offer remote auditions for those who can't pay to get to your school for a live audition? Mine do, many do, but some do not.

Can students sing any kind of repertoire in their recitals? If not (and the answer for 99% is NOT), are those restrictions representative of your own training that venerates the canonic/legacy rep over other genres like musical theatre, folk, pop songs, or rep by living composers, especially women or BIPOC composers?

And a final check-in: Say you invite an important guest to your program. This person wants one of their students (from outside of your arena) to attend the event so they can observe the teaching. Do you tell the teacher that that student won't be allowed into your program's precious space? And if so, why?

'Cause dude, that's literally barring the gate!

Inclusiveness is spoken about in EDI meetings, sometimes less than equity or diversity. I believe that if we were to embrace Inclusivity in classical music training, many of our gatekeeping and some of our pedagogical problems would vanish. Poof!

The opposite of inclusion is exclusion, we all know this. I'm not making some profound point. But if you're gatekeeping, it's tough to do anything but exclude what is not deemed good enough to enter into your doors, your spaces, your programs, your casts. You may have your reasons, but kids on the playground also have their reasons.

Surely our music, our beloved repertoire, can withstand some inclusion!

Would it kill us to chill a little? Relax a little? Let people applaud between songs in a song cycle without the judgement? Let singers sing auditions in jeans and sneakers (like happens in Europe) without being offended that they weren't respecting you or the Heilige Kunst? Let someone end their recital with a jumpy yet maudlin MT song by JRB? Or end with a Celtic blessing accompanied by autoharp? Or Eric Carmen's pop song "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again"?

FFS, surely the last one would be acceptable... the melody is by Rachmaninoff!