Weekend and Pavarotti

It's been a pretty long and busy weekend! Friday was the usual get to work, put in your 8 hours and you are so glad to go home. Before the end of the day though I had a meeting with my supervisor to figure out some of this maternity leave stuff. After having a lengthy discussion with him about how things in our department need to change or I have to leave actually made me feel a little better. He is totally on my side with everything and dosen't see why all of this is even an issue. He said that when him and his wife decide to start their family he is going to ask for exactly the same things that I am. So now, we have to try and talk the other managers of our department into being a little more flexible. We'll see where all of this goes.

On Saturday morning we woke up and realized there was nothing for breakfast so we went to Perkins to have a hearty one (there is something about sleeping in and going for a late breakfast at Perkins on the weekend that is just satisfying). We went back home and Brice decided to do some cleaning and I went up to Wal-mart to get some shopping done. I had to go take a couple of duplicate gifts back that we got for the baby and got one of those warm sacks for taking the baby outside during the winter....he'll be nice and warm in that. After coming home I decided to tackle all of the clothing items that we had gotten for Karsten. I went through everything, took off the tags on the stuff he can wear right away, unwrapped all the blankets and unpackaged everything else that needed to be washed and I washed it all. There was so much stuff that I ended up with 2 large loads of laundry....for a baby! I was amazed at how much stuff there was. Everything is so fluffy that it took a little longer than normal to dry in the dryer and there was a TON of fuzz to deal with. So, everything is washed and put away in the dresser ready to go unless I get more. After looking at what clothes we had and didn't have we realized that he only had one pair of cord pants and a pair of jean overalls and the rest were all jammie type pants. There were also a LOT of short sleeved onsies but only one zip up sweater that he can wear over the top. So, after church today we took a trip to Target and found him 3 pairs of pants and a knitted zip up sweater. We also found a small bookshelf to put in his room that was on clearance so now we have MORE furniture to put together. Back to Saturday, we cut up some of the apples that we got at the apple orchard last weekend and made this totally yummy carmel apple bar recipe....it is SOOOOO good! I have a feeling that I will make more because we have a good 10 pounds of apples left.

Tonight we went over to the VFW for dinner because the fire department was having it's annual chicken fry. I don't quite understand the connection between firemen and being good at grilling but it sure makes a great combo. The food was wonderful and our money went to a good cause.

There was this amazing article in the StarTribune today about Pavarotti....it says completely what all of us musicians strive for but can never quite grasp completely but Pavarotti had it all. I enjoyed reading it and I think I'll have to hang a copy of it up in my cube or on the fridge or something because it is truely inspiring.

John Timpane: His talent really was that rare
There are three unusual abilities that must be wedded to become the singer he was.

John Timpane

Published: September 09, 2007

Luciano Pavarotti once sang a song of mine.
I wasn't there; I had to wait for the video on PBS. He didn't sing lead; he came in on the choruses. But the way he performed even this relatively humble musical task -- compared with the mammoth spectaculars, the Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti heroics for which he had become famous -- taught me what it takes to make a Pavarotti. It's more than meets eye or ear, and that says a lot for so big a man.

Along with Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, and a tiny group of others, Pavarotti married three singular, extremely rare talents. To have a Pavarotti, you need all of them; without any one, you might have a pretty good thing, but not the human miracle in such a singer.

Thing 1: The Voice. This is the province of the Creator, and only if it pleases Him/Her/Them. You know that truism about "You can either play in the NBA or you can't"? The Pavarotti-level voice is much, much rarer than the man or woman who can dunk. Maybe a few thousand people around the world can play professional basketball. How many Pavarottis are there at one time?

Thing 2: Musicianship. People think singers like Pavarotti stride on to the stage, take their stance and just belt it out. Not so. To be a singer at that level, you must be a musician. You must learn your instrument through and through (including the athletics of it, the exercise, the preparation, the competition, the mentors and coaches). You must grow expert in the history of music, the rules, the legacies of thousands of other performers. It's a religion. It's slavery.

But then the hard part. Thing 2B. You must somehow reach through all that training and use music to explore reality, human emotion, the situation of human beings in the world.

You must learn how to challenge, touch, enlighten others. Some of this can be taught. Much can't. You have to have lived in the world with your eyes and spirit wide open. No true musician is only a technician, only a plumber with facts and techniques. You can study music all your life -- thousands do -- and "know everything about music" (thousands do) and still not have what I'm talking about. Pavarotti had the unteachables. He would have been a wondrous musician no matter his voice.

Thing 3: An entertainer's sense to match voice and musicianship. Pavarotti was the hammiest of hams, far beyond the bourgeoise overacting of the operatic tradition: He seldom hesitated to milk the moment, search the funny bone, prompt the reach for the hankies. He also, however, was a professional who honored what the entertainer does: assess the mood and needs of the audience and work to realize them. Entertainment, whether classical music or dime dancer, is a generous act, outerly, other-oriented. Watch a Pavarotti performance sometime. Watch his eyes, his body language. He's reading the audience because he needs them to need him.

Many people have one of these things -- an exquisite physical gift; mastery of music; audience connection. Almost no one, and maybe only a handful in the world in any one generation, has them all. Pavarotti had them all.

I am proud and thrilled to have helped write a song on which Pavarotti actually sang. The event was a 1995 "Pavarotti and Friends" benefit concert in Modena for the orphans left by the bloody conflict in Bosnia. The Croatian musician Nenad Bach asked me to work with him on the lyrics to a song -- "Can We Go Higher?" -- that asked whether humanity could ever live in peace, ever transcend its legacy of tribal violence. Nenad sang lead, I recall, but Pavarotti sat in on the choruses -- and he did what he always did, pitched for the home team, took that stance we all know so well and just blasted out the music -- but with earned emotion, eyes traveling the crowd, calling them in. He probably had heard the song maybe a few hours before, and yet he was laying out all his resources on its behalf, as though it were Beethoven. It was a benefit; he was either not getting paid or not getting his normal check. And there he was, not even the lead, working his work.

He did the same thing for many causes, political and musical. He was the best salesman classical music ever had, just by being himself. Remember: The miracle in a musician is mostly invisible. The miracle you hear is the miracle he or she has lived. I am glad that, if only for the slenderest of moments, I got a chance to see him live it.

John Timpane is a musician and the associate editor of the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He wrote this for the Hartford Courant.