Behind the Scenes: #26 Bringing a Song to Life

A Peek Behind the Curtain of Self-Producing an Album and Other Tales

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Note: If you’re new to this series, you might start here (click): Behind the Scenes: Introduction.

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While I wait for funding to enable me to continue recording the album—a situation not uncommon for recording artists—I’m hard at work on something that will contribute to the recordings enormously: performing the music for a live audience.

As I mentioned in the last segment, I’ve now fully embraced a whole new world musically: cabaret.

Cabaret was a bit daunting to me initially. I didn’t really know what to make of it. I started attending open mic cabaret performances, not only for the chance to perform live in this new genre, but so that I could watch and learn from others’ performances. I could sense when an act was obviously valued by the audience. What I didn’t quite get at first was why. The performer might not exhibit what I had come to consider in my previous training to be good vocal standards, and the dramatic presentation was very different from what I was accustomed to. In fact, sometimes the performances were frankly a bit unpolished. Yet those performances were clearly very much appreciated. What was I missing?

As a beginner once again, I had to learn what the goal of cabaret performance was. Exactly what were the standards? In classical music, there’s always the standard of beauty and production of sound; that’s what we listen for. In musical theater, there’s the standard of acting and a certain sort of presentation on stage. So what was the secret sauce of cabaret?

I began to understand better what cabaret was about when I read an online description of cabaret as “a musical performance in an intimate venue that breaks the fourth wall.” For the non-performers reading this, the fourth wall is the imaginary boundary between the performer and the audience, one which is typically never broken in a performance. In other words, the performer pretends the people in the audience aren’t there, instead interacting with an imaginary world on stage. The audience is essentially spying on the performers in their pretend world.

Cabaret is the exact opposite! Cabaret performers sing to the people in the audience, a big tabu in any other type of performance.

I was disturbed at first that musicality and quality of voice in singing a song were seemingly not valued in a cabaret performance. I’m first and foremost a musician, I love to sing, I appreciate vocal beauty, and I didn’t see how I could enjoy a format that didn’t value musicianship and voice. But I came to see that those things can be included.

In fact, in cabaret anything can be included and valued! And that is why I’ve come to love it. I can be however I want to be and sing however I want to sing, and still be a cabaret singer.

I’ve never fit in the boxes, as a singer or as a musician in general. If you’re a classical singer, you’re expected to fit into a Fach, which is a classification system for singers. Depending on which Fach system you follow, there are more than twenty Fachs (Fächer, if you want to be authentic). The six main classifications are probably familiar to you: soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone, and bass. Within each of those classifications are subdivisions, often based on the weight of the voice (lyric or dramatic), but sometimes on the type of role the voice plays (comic or dramatic), and occasionally as a dual type that crosses categories, such as Zwischen (“between” soprano and mezzo) or bass-baritone (a darkish baritone that has a low extension).

I didn’t fit neatly into any one of the Fachs. Everyone who heard me was certain that I belonged to one of the Fachs … but literally each one heard me as a different Fach. I believe I’m a full lyric mezzo, and I sang mostly roles that fit into that category; that tessitura suits me perfectly. But I was “accused” by various singers, directors, and voice teachers of being: a lyric coloratura soprano, a full lyric soprano, a dramatic soprano, a coloratura mezzo, a lyric mezzo, and a contralto! I’ve always had the ability to color my voice to suit the music, and I have an ear for imitation, and I think all of those people heard a certain timbre in my voice that suited the particular music I was singing for them and immediately pigeon-holed me as a certain Fach without taking into account that the voice sounds different in different situations. Whatever the reason, it was mightily confusing and distressing to be Fachless or, at the least, to have controversy about the voice itself.

I didn’t fit neatly into the genres and subdivisions of popular music, either. I love to sing bluesy jazz standards, which is probably my forte, and I sing a lot of the Great American Songbook, but I can knock out a Broadway ballad, and occasionally I like to sing Latin jazz or a pop tune. And within jazz there are quite a few sub-categories; I’m at home in several of them.

Cabaret lets me be all of these! That’s the beautiful thing about cabaret: you can be whoever you are and communicate anything you want to communicate in any way you choose to communicate it. The only expectation is that you communicate directly to the audience and make them feel something.

I’m grateful that in New York City, home of cabaret in the US, I have quite a few opportunities to perform and learn from other’s performances. I can take advantage of some wonderful open mics specifically for cabaret professionals, my absolute favorite of which is Natasha Castillo’s Spotlight on You, a really magical place to learn and perform cabaret. Every month there I have the opportunity, thanks to Natasha’s generosity, to meet and perform with top New York City pianists from the worlds of cabaret, jazz, and Broadway, and to meet other performers. Since I’m new to the genre, I so welcome the privilege of meeting other singers of this unique format, many of them veterans of cabaret. People at all levels of ability, experience, and age perform there. Most of all, these open mics give me the opportunity to learn and develop a way of performing that’s new to me, one which includes the audience.

This rather long expedition I’ve just taken was the slow route to explaining how bringing a song to life in live performance is important, even essential, in bringing a recording to life, as well.

I’ve always found, no matter what the genre, that it’s not until I perform a song in front of an audience that I learn how to sing that song. I discover where the song takes me, and what spontaneous musical variations emerge which become an integral part of my unique performance of the song. I realized early on that it was best not to record a song that I haven’t performed for an audience at least once. Because that’s where the song comes alive for me.

And something else I discovered recently is that by performing a song in a cabaret setting, I find the real meat of my interpretation. Perhaps that’s because there are no rules in cabaret, no expectation about delivery or style or technique. The most organic interpretation of the song arises through a cabaret performance when I’m opening myself to communicating the song to the audience in this setting which almost forces you to be authentic. I previously focused primarily on the vocal production and musicality, since those are the most important elements in classical singing. Now I find that I’m focusing much more on what the words mean to me and how I convey them to the audience. And that infuses the song with life.

So while I wait for funding for the next set of recordings to manifest, I’m focusing on developing the songs organically through performing them at cabaret and jazz open mics, which, it turns out, is the absolute best way to bring a song to life!

(Check out my web page with some fledgling performances: Elena Greco, Vocalist. And if you’re in New York, stop by Spotlight on You at 53 Above/Broadway Comedy Club) for the monthly show; you’ll usually find me performing there!)

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Photo by Josh Rocklage on Unsplash

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