2024.02.25 And Then There's Music! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The first spiritual experience I had with classical, aka “good” according to my mother, music was in college sitting on one of the uncomfortable lecture hall seats with the pop-up desks that slid between the seats, ready to take notes on music.  The first “lecture” was a piece of music played once, then again, and then again. In between the “hearings” the professor told us how to diagram the piece which was Wagner’s Overture to the opera, Tannhauser.  

I was thrilled, not simply by the music itself, but by the fact that a grand piece of classical music could be diagrammed, just like a sentence can. Music, not just the elementary scales and practice books my boring and haughty first piano teacher used, but grand public music with thrills and trills, movements, transitions, themes with variations, rests, and punctuations. 

As a writer, a lifelong devoted reader, and lover of words, I now heard that music could be read. I was also excited to know more about the music business of my maternal grandfather, known in NYC as “Pop” Adams. He was an impresario whose business with the Wolfson Bureau was to attract, import, and promote European classical music, vocal and orchestral, in the United States, where in the 1900s there was a dearth of classical music, vocal and orchestral. I never knew him because he died when Mom was twelve and I was unborn. Still, I felt as if I knew A.F. Adams through my immediate attraction to classical music, especially opera, with the exception of the occasional scorching soprano who could not blend. 

Despite occasional flirtations with rock and roll and jazz, my love has stayed steady. We had season seats for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and now with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra whose conductor is the animated and vibrant Carolyn Khan. 

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Wendy Gerbier, to us, is Auntie Wendy, a mezzo-soprano with a voice that soars with a slow die-out, like an echo. It stays with you. She is an ambassador of singers who have sung our national anthem at events, and has a three-octave range. Wendy is the aunt of my stepdaughter’s son. She recently performed a concert here in the auditorium at McLean Village Retirement Community. The listening audience sat still in awe and delight. You’re never too old for fine music, even if your ears don’t hear each note. Here we are (Dick Simeone and moi) after the concert, munching on brownies with Auntie Wendy with whom we munched on brownies, provided for the event which was open to the public. 

Although Wendy Gerbier sings mostly operatic selections, she usually offers a program of varied selections, each with a bit of information about each piece. She opened this concert with two spiritual classics, the Schubert “Ave Maria” and the Malotte Lord’s Prayer, then continued with a mix of “a little bit of everything,” including “O Danny Boy” and Bernstein’s “Somewhere.” My favorite selection in this concert was Bésame Mucho, which is a bolero (Mexican dance tune), composed in 1932 by Consuelo Velazquez Torres, a female concert pianist. The words mean: “Kiss me Lots ’n Lots” Como si fuera esta la noche La última vez.".  Kiss me as if this were our last night.”  Both song and artist are important in the history of Latin music, a downright sexy and elegant way to flirt with song and gesture and coy desiring. Wendy sang it with her voice, danced it with her body, and lured us into the rhythms with her sway—seductive and alluring. Such is the universal language of music itself.  

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What has this to do with one of the most difficult times in the life of Jesus of Nazareth? After he had spent hours in prayer and discerned that his mission would be to persuade his people that he had a messianic message of universal love, he withstood all the usual temptations at his disposal—wealth, power, and unbridled control—to choose the ways of peace, justice, compassion. That sounds promising and simple, but it was not. It cost him his life.  

Temptations to betray such gracious love for all creation bombarded this Jewish preacher from many directions, even, and especially, from his closest disciples who failed to understand the depth and breadth of Divinity itself. He would have to be persuasive and totally human—have sex appeal— to lure people to follow his countercultural message.

Have you ever betrayed someone’s trust? Has anyone ever betrayed yours?  Oh, let me confess the many ways. It is blindingly difficult to trust a love you cannot see or touch or hold onto and keep as a guarantee about your direction in life. All this and no profit with little salary. 

It’s like flying blind. Or going to a symphony or opera when deaf. Or breathing in the scent of spring without the ability to smell. Or pretending to love with no heart. The last sense to go in death is that of touch. So hold a hand, and be present at the end if you can, because no one knows for sure if it is a beginning or an ending.   

Ay, dios mio! 

2021.12.19 Let Heaven and Nature Sing—Bringing Music To the Soul With Wendy G.

This Sunday is Fourth Advent, an invitation to focus on Mary of Nazareth AND lots of other bringers of brilliance, including Wendy Gerbier, Mezzo-Soprano. 

 

 

When I was in college I took a basic music course as part of one of the requirements. I chose it over Art 101, not because I disliked great art, but because there was music in my family, and I loved to sing—in a large choral group—too shy to solo. Strangely, I loved studying classical music and discovering opera. It made my heart soar even when I did not understand the words. My dad had a rich deep bass voice, and his mother had given up her vocation as an opera singer to get married and have children. She did a good job at that, spawning six children. Operatic drama, however, stayed in her soul. She would frequently summon her “boys”, one of them my dad, to stand around the piano after dinner to sing. I don’t know why she never invited the daughters. Maybe they too could sing, but she favored those four boys. They all joined their father to sing in the Mendelssohn Glee Club in New York City. Felix Mendelssohn only lived to be 38 years old. His music will last forever. Did you know he composed music for “Hark the Herald Angels SING!”?  And sing we must.

My mother hated those concerts. She favored show music, even though her own father had been a New York impresario (importer of musical talent from Europe to this country) and was, like Mendelssohn, Jewish—a fact I discovered only after Mom died. She had “adored” her father and felt devastated when he died in 1924, when she was twelve. With the help of technological stretch on the internet and our parish archivist, I researched his beginnings in Eastern Europe before he emigrated/immigrated to the USA. Knowing such details of my own history made my life, my heart-and-soul being, richer and wiser. I wish I had known my Zaide.

This long string of extraneous personal facts warms me, yet is a mere lead-in to tell you about the roots of my love of operatic bravura—and Auntie Wendy, the finest mezzo-soprano soloist I’ve ever heard and felt a tiny bit related to.  

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Wendy Gerbier, Wendy G., a professional singer of classical music, is Aunty Wendy to my stepdaughter Honor’s son, Brianjohnson. We first met Wendy in Nantucket when she came with Honor for a weekend visit. She brought immediate delight. We were lucky to have mostly sun that weekend, yet I bet Wendy’s exuberant laughter and buoyant presence could have penetrated any island fog-sweeps, just as her mezzo voice penetrates the sound barrier. Honestly!

On December 3, 2021, we heard Aunty Wendy sing professionally for the first  time. We went to her concert as part of the Silvermine Artist Series in Norwalk, Connecticut, originally established in 1983 by Karen Shaw, Professor of Music at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music. The venue was a nondescript brick house set way back from the road. We drove back and forth, passing it a few times until we saw Brianjohnson waving us in. He wore a jacket and tie—symphonic, really, and with a great grin. 

The interior of this house looked like a museum, crowded with antiques and amazing paintings, and seasonally swathed in Christmas greens and holiday decor. Chairs for the audience were set up facing the grand pianos—three of them. Here is one.

The audience chatted and waited. Somehow everyone suddenly knew to hush into anticipatory silence as we heard a distant voice calling. Aunty Wendy descended a side staircase, her voice growing louder, crescendoing, as she sang the spiritual, “Rise Up Shepherd and Follow.” Immersed, I would have followed that voice anywhere. I didn’t move, but my soul did, and my head turned, knowing something wondrous was about to happen. I wasn’t with those ancient biblical shepherds that followed a star, but quickly knew how moved this scruffy bunch of shepherds of old must have felt. Today I still follow that “star” and that call wherever I see or hear it.   

Wendy G stood at a podium to sing, and her gifted accompanist David Harris took his place at one of the pianos.   

The concert officially opened with Panis Angelicus (Bread of Angels), music by Cesar Frank, and text by Sylvester Wager.  As Wendy sang this very traditional Christmas anthem, I envisioned angels soaring about preparing a visitation to a young girl of Nazareth named Mary. I bet these angels conferred as to how to approach this teenager with the idea that the child to be born from her womb was of God. I’m guessing Mary fretted about being pregnant before marriage, but the biblical version tells us that a guy angel delivered the message to Mary, and a guy Joseph stood by. We all rest assured  to know that her scandalous condition was no offense to God, so why would it be so to mere humans?  

Music dedicated to the courage of this young girl named Mary and the glory of divine courage followed. There are many tunes and texts to Ave Maria. My own prayer version only alters one word: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is within thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Wendy G. sang this to a tune composed by an Italian composer, Guilio Caccini (1551-1618) of Fiorenze (Florence), Italy. Caccini’s music is every bit as melodic as the traditional tune, and even more meaningful to Honor’s dad and my husband, Richard John Simeone, whose father was born in Italy. I never knew his father but lovingly call him Ernesto di Napoli. His presence at this concert was invisible although honored by the presence of his son and granddaughter and maternal great grandson. Here are Wendy and Dick Simeone. 

The Spiritual, “Mary Did You Know?” graced this audience and the biblical story with a musical tradition familiar and beloved by African Americans. Wendy G. did it justice: “Mary did you know that your little baby would be a king?”  Similarly, “Pie Jesu” from the requiem by Andrew Lloyd Webber, also the composer of my all-time favorite rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” swept over us with deep tenderness and volume rich enough to make me hold my breath and think to myself: Aunty Wendy rocks!    

The closing hymn “O Holy Night” composed in 1847 by French composer, Adolphe Adam, a name close to that of my maternal great grandfather, Adolph Adams, whom I never knew. Wendy sang it with such power and volume I turned my head to look up to the balcony to follow her voice—almost too big for the humble space. I felt grief and grace. But is that not the point of Incarnation, God in our flesh, praised and mourned?  

At Christmas, 1982, my 71-year-old father was dying of esophageal cancer. Surgery had not been enough. He was young. He made a final stab at “Merry Christmas” and came to sit at the head of the family dinner table. He couldn’t swallow or eat. My heart wept as we all smiled and cheered Christmas. Later that night Dad sat alone with his nurse as the night settled in and sang “O Holy Night.” It was his own “Magnificat”. 

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining

It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth

Long lay the world in sin and error pining

’Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.

Wendy G. sang traditional seasonal music—vital because it is beloved. She gave it the brilliance of Mary’s life and story as well as her own and mine. 

This concert made my soul feel its worth. It was Advent anticipation blended with Christmas joy—already and not yet in the same moment. Every day we live this story over and over as if it were our own. And so it is. 

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See WendyGerbier.com for a schedule of Wendy’s performances and to hear her sing. She is a United States Anthem Ambassador with a three-octave range and sings regularly at Greenfield Congregational Church in Fairfield, Connecticut.