Behind the Scenes: #24 I'm Still Here - Part 1

A Peek Behind the Curtain: A Solopreneur Produces an Album Recording

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

I’m still here.

I’m reminded of the Stephen Sondheim song of this name from Follies, made famous by the inimitable Elaine Stritch, that begins with the lyrics, “Good times and bum times, I’ve seen them all and, my dear: I’m still here.” I’ve been through the wringer over the last ten years, but yes ….

I’m still here. What is not still here is the voice I had for most of my life.

What is here now, with me, is a new voice. I’m still singing and making music, as I have for my entire life. And everything is different now.

What is not still here is the vitality and endless energy I once possessed. I now work and perform with an energy system that is different and less efficient than it once was. But I’m still making music and performing, just from a different perspective with a different set of resources.

I’ve decided to take a risk and open up about I’ve gone through with my voice, where I am professionally at this late stage of my life, and the mental and physical hurdles I’ve to clear in order to succeed in a brand new career at this stage of life. I think it might be important to someone else in the creative arts to hear about this. Perhaps they’ll take comfort that they at least have more to work with than I do at this point! Maybe they’ll feel more hopeful about their own obstacles and be inspired to take what they have and make the most of it. And maybe they won’t lose hope if something unforeseen happens to them and know that if all seems lost, it might just be the beginning of something new. It sounds cliché, I know. But that’s what I lived through.

I’ve been reticent to talk about what happened in 2017 to me and my voice. That’s because we in the music business don’t really talk publicly about difficulty or issues with the vocal instrument, especially in classical music, which was previously my primary genre. There’s just too much stigma and judgment involved.

There was until recently a sense that if you admitted you had a vocal issue you were forever doomed in the business because people would assume that you wouldn’t be reliable (since your vocal instrument had dared to have a problem once, who knows when that might happen again?), or because your singing was most likely not up to par (Pavarotti never had vocal issues! Or did he? How would you know? And voices don’t really recover from injury, do they?), or because people would think you must have (shudder) bad technique that caused the problem (in which case, you might as well just end it all).

But it’s a different time than the one I came up in musically, and younger people are in general much more open about things that those of my generation might have been uncomfortable—or professionally barred from—sharing. So here goes.

Something happened to my voice in 2017. In every musical project I undertake now, I’m challenged with the result of this event. This has been the elephant in the room of the Behind the Scenes series about my recording of an album—that technical and musical issues are not the sole obstacles that come into the recording process for me, that the issue of my vocal instrument and its challenges is often present in the face of musical and artistic decisions that I must make in this project, and at times even in performance.

In addition, I have a health issue that arose more than a decade ago that often interferes with my ability to practice and perform; at the least, it sometimes makes these things quite challenging and requires that I do more planning than would normally be required. That’s also something I’ve felt I had to keep to myself as a performer who works with some of the premiere musicians in New York City. I figured I’d best keep that under my hat.

To be honest, I’m tired of keeping these secrets. I should think it would be obvious by now that despite any obstacles I might face, I continue to record, produce and perform at a professional level. And I wonder if there aren’t other musicians out there who have similar issues that they hide due to shame or professional concerns, and I hope to alleviate those concerns.

How It Began

I started singing professionally in high school, performing musical theater and popular music. For much of my life beyond high school, I was a classical vocalist, singing both opera and Spanish art song, but I always kept one foot in popular music. It wasn’t quite acceptable back in the seventies and eighties to cross genres, so I kept it under my hat, performing popular music only in casual environments, not letting on to my teachers and coaches in classical music that I did so. But eventually it became commonplace for classical singers to cross over, and I became more public about doing that. As I became older, I found myself gravitating more and more to the popular side, although I still kept up my classical technique and produced and performed in shows of classical music. Although I gradually stopped singing opera publicly, I continued to sing arias and classical music in small venues. I truly love opera, and I couldn’t see myself ever leaving it behind.

Singing opera, and classical singing in general, takes a lot of strength, energy, and skill. Because classical singers build up those qualities over time, they might not realize how much strength, energy, and skill it takes to do what they do. As one ages, unless you’re involved in a rigorous work-out regime, the strength does begin to wane, and that affects the stamina and the ability to sing dramatic music well. I did notice that decline in recent years, and I did my best to counteract the effects of time on my strength. Because I developed an autoimmune disorder when I was in my fifties, I came to be quite aware of the energetic requirements of performing and had to learn to ration my energy carefully when I was planning to sing classical music.

What I never realized, until the vocal mechanism had a problem, is the amount of technical skill I had developed over the decades that allowed me to perform vocal music at a high level of expertise and artistry without struggling with the technical aspect. I was soon to learn just how much I had to lose.

The Vocal Saga

In late January of 2017 I became quite ill with a respiratory illness; it turned out to be pneumonia. I had been working on producing a show of Spanish art song that was scheduled for performance in late February, so I was anxious to get healthy and get the voice working again so that I could put in the vocal practice and rehearsal time to keep the show on schedule.

Finally, on February 2, 2017, I was well enough to return to my office job (legal IT Applications and User Support). On that same day, I recorded a video interview just prior to going in to work.

Here you’ll see an interview from the first part of my EGMP Interviews series on creativity. Yes, it’s me, still with pneumonia, recording the interview just prior to going back to work. This was the last time I spoke with the old voice: EGMP Interviews – Part 1 No. 1 – Elena Greco (click to listen).

After recording the video interview, when I got to the office that afternoon (I usually worked the evening shift from about 4:00 pm to midnight), the air was super dry, and there was a lot of fragrance in the air that night. I have asthma, and fragrance irritates my bronchial passages and throat and often causes asthma symptoms. With an already compromised respiratory system, those unfortunate conditions resulted in violent uncontrollable coughing fits which continued throughout the evening at work, and even after I got home from work that night.

When I awoke the next morning and attempted to speak … absolutely no sound came out, not even a squeak! I assumed the lack of voice was a result of the infection and hoped that the voice would improve soon.

I waited a full week for the voice to return. At that point, when I still could not make a sound, I became anxious. My voice was everything to me! What did it mean that I couldn’t phonate? I’d never experienced that before.

I searched for competent otolaryngologists and did my best to make an appointment for an exam with several of them. This proved impossible, because none of the doctors’ offices provided an email address. Obviously, I couldn’t call for an appointment, because I had no voice with which to speak. (This was prior to texting being a common practice.) This seemed ironic, that I was trying to reach doctors whose specialty was vocal problems, yet they provided no means of contacting them without using your voice. Finally, I found one who provided an email address and wrote to request an appointment. I had to wait a week for an appointment to see the doctor for a scope (laryngoscopy) to see what was happening, and hopefully to get a prognosis. I so wanted to have a voice again!

After he looked at my cords, I could tell by the doctor’s expression and slowness to speak to me that things were probably not good. It turned out that I had ulcerative laryngitis as a result of the violent coughing, which meant that I had blisters all over my vocal cords. The doc said that this was fairly rare. He didn’t seem at all hopeful about the outcome. I was horrified.

He asked me to come back in about ten days for another scope to determine how the healing of the cords was progressing. He told me that under no uncertain terms was I to speak or make a sound until he saw me again so that the cords would have a chance to heal. I remained silent—learning during that time how difficult it is to be unable to speak while living in Manhattan. Try taking a cab without being able to speak to the driver!

By Day 25 (February 27, 2017) of total laryngitis, whenever I tried to phonate sometimes a high-pitched whistle or a very low sound came out, and I no longer felt as though I were strangling when I tried to produce sound. It seemed that progress was happening, ever so slowly.

Ulcerative laryngitis, the doctor said, is rather unusual and occurs almost always from violent coughing. I had no idea that that could happen. No one in my forty-six years (at that time) of professional singing had ever suggested that I could damage my voice from coughing. And since I had had many bouts of flu over those years and suffered no ill consequences from coughing, it didn’t occur to me that this time would be any different. I am very sad about this. Singers and voice students take heed.

I was unable to speak or make real vocal sounds for a full five weeks. I waited, fearfully and soundlessly, pursuant to doctor’s orders, not to attempt to speak or even whisper while the cords were healing. I saw him a couple more times as the cords continued to try to heal themselves. He was particularly worried about one blister that was larger than the others and seemed to be taking its time healing. He said that he was concerned that there might be scarring on the cord. That would mean the end of singing, forever.

I waited.

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Click here to continue reading: Behind the Scenes: #25 I'm Still Here - Part 2.

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