Adriana Zabala: artistry in every phrase.

Although Adriana Zabala's primary pursuit is opera, she enjoys a career that spans a wide range of musical interests including song repertoire, new works, concert and oratorio, cabaret and Latin jazz, and serving as program manager and coartistic director of the Southeastern Festival of Song. Zabala will perform in concert at the 2005 MTNA National Conference. Brian Shepard, MTNA's director of marketing and public relations, shares his conversation with the gifted vocalist.

Brian Shepard: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as a performer and what influenced you to pursue a career as a vocalist?

Adriana Zabala: "I don't remember a time in my life without music. As a child I remember listening to my parents' records of Simon & Garfunkel, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Bach, Chuck Mangione, Mozart, etc. They belonged to the choral society of Miami, and I clearly remember my dad drilling the tenor line of Chichester Psalms at home, and I thought it was fantastic. My mother was a floutist and also played recorder in an early music group when we lived in Caracas.

"My sister sang all the time and was a wonderful soloist as a teenager. When we moved to Texas, I began to study percussion and played for eight or nine years in school and still love to play. There was always a piano around, and everyone enjoyed singing and all good music. It wasn't until I was 12 when I first encountered Mozart in an unexpected way, that I was completely seized by classical music. Within a year or so, it seemed clear that singing was what would take me deeper into that world. Soon, I was attending the Houston Symphony regularly and then spent a summer at Tanglewood, which affirmed any idea I had had about pursuing music long term. So, in short, you could say that the foundation was there early on, but my real conscious choices began around age 12 or 13, when I became passionately committed to music, and since that time, I haven't turned back."

BS: With your extensive opera background, can you tell us how you became involved in other musical genres, specifically musical theater?

AZ: "Bernstein said, admittedly paraphrasing someone else before, that there is only good music and bad music, irrespective of genre. This struck me so deeply and continues to influence the choices I make in programming and in what styles I choose to pursue.

"In the last few years I have had the amazing good fortune to work with Steve Blier, first at Wolf Trap as a young artist, and, since then, in more than four programs for the New York Festival of Song. Steve has had a major influence on me regarding programming and song repertoire that embraces and celebrates the musical theater and jazz heritage of American music. He was the first world-class collaborator I encountered who gives equal love, attention, care and expertise to Sondheim as he does to Schubert, and I was stunned by how beautifully that approach works in intelligent, creative programming. The opportunities for communication and emotional expression are often unique and direct, and it is exciting to capitalize on this in a distinctly American idiom. I think no one in the world negotiates the melding of traditional western classical music and more popular genres more successfully than Steve Blier, and his example has inspired me more than I can say. Because of this, I have become increasingly interested in musical theater in the last few seasons and look forward to an all-Sondheim program that Mr. Pavlov and I are preparing for the Wildwood Festival for mid-April, and Ryan and I are always trying to expand SEFoS's [Southeastern Festival of Song] repertoire in the music theater and jazz idioms."

BS: You're also active as program director and co-artistic director of the Southeastern Festival of Song. What do your roles entail there?

AZ: "We are embarking on our first full season at SEFoS, after a year of preview concerts and an inaugural gala concert in Atlanta. Ryan Taylor and I are co-artistic directors, and we are still settling into ideas about how each of our positions may evolve long term. We are very fortunate right now to have a board and executive committee in Atlanta, which offer an amazing system of support and efficiency regarding how SEFoS functions, but the backbone of SEFoS's existence is Ryan's prodigious organizational and business skills. He is gifted both in that sense and as a beautiful singer and intelligent musician. I must say that although Ryan and I share many administrative responsibilities, my great interest and love lie in programming. I thoroughly enjoy the research and great challenge of finding thematic throughlines and the balance, interest and variety that make a compelling, entertaining and engaging concert; finding the right cast, mix of voices, styles, personality chemistry, in addition to compelling poetry in the songs, thematic links to visual art, literature, political and cultural history, preparing remarks and writing program notes; these are all parts of the process that I really treasure."

BS: How do you select your repertoire for solo performances?

AZ: "When I am choosing repertoire for solo performances, I turn to themes, composers, languages, that have always interested me and to which I have a very strong pull. My list of 'things I must study, sing and explore' is so long that I should have program ideas into the next century! I usually start with a theme, sometimes broad and sometimes quite specific, and then let the brainstorming of eras, art, poetry, literature and artistic movements begin. A nice arch with specific choices usually begins to form within a day or two. So really just things I love, that fit my vocal and aesthetic personality, and that compel me to present them in a unique way."

BS: Could you give us some background about the program you have planned for the MTNA conference?

AZ: "I have always had a strong response to Weill's music, to his songs, some of which I heard and studied in graduate school, and more recently playing two different roles in two productions of Street Scene. Then, last spring I heard a friend sing Nangs Lied at Carnegie Hall, and I was sitting there numb and struck to the core by the raw emotion of the text and music, and how inspired it seemed in form and in practice. That evening I went home and started forming this program. Early in the process I became especially interested in the Weill/Brecht stage collaborations and soon made that the focus of the program, although it treats several Weill compositions after the collaboration deteriorated. The more biographical research I did, the more I became interested in Lenya and the role she played in Weill/Brecht's creative aesthetic, the totally unique stage-creature that she was, as well as the role she continued to play with Weill's music well after he died. The way these three young artists so handily captured the gestalt of Weimar Berlin I think is worthy of extensive exploration, and from my work so far, this program has formed: The Curtain Draws, Brecht, Weill & Lenya in Berlin and Beyond ... The program is chronological and starts with Weill and Brecht's first partnership, the Mahagonny Songspiel, and continues throughout their time in Berlin with Dreigroschen, Happy End, Mahagonny, Berliner Requiem. I touch on the Seven Deadly Sins, which was the result of an unusual and difficult process that took place in Paris after they fled the Nazi regime, and then end with a review of Weill's more successful Broadway works. All the pieces are from stage works, and they span about twenty-five years and three languages."

BS: Many of our members are collaborative artists, either as pianists or vocalists. Can you share how the collaborative process works f or you and your colleagues?

AZ: "This is such a sacred process and something that often unfortunately goes by the wayside in our operatic pursuits, usually, somehow because of time and money! First I am so appreciative that you use the term 'collaborative artists' and not singer/accompanist. The way the process works for me really involves both artists and a mutual relationship and understanding with the music, the composer, the poetry, the poet, to the piano, the voice, the colors of each instrument and to each other's strengths and limitations; a true collaborative process.

"I am thrilled to be doing this concert with Stratsimir Parlor, as he possesses not only fantastic traditional technique and fine musicianship, but is also gifted as an improviser and wonderfully conversant in the jazz idom, skills on which we will draw throughout the program. One of the reasons Ryan and I started SEFoS was so that we could choose to work regularly with artists who share similar values. We are extremely fortunate to have many opportunities to work with these artists both within SEFoS and in venues such as this convention and in other concert series throughout the country. It is essential that we keep the collaborative process alive and that it continues to be encouraged in colleges of music and conservatories."

BS: Since our members are teachers, do you have a particularly meaningful memory or significant teacher story of a lesson you have had?

AZ: "I have been so lucky to have had great teachers, in music and otherwise, throughout my life, and a handful stand out as having inspired real revelations in music in general and in vocal practice. Even though I would say that my true mentors have been Ken Fulton at LSU and Steve Blier more recently, as they have influenced my whole musical philosophy, one of the most important moments of my music education came in a ninth-grade percussion section rehearsal. We were playing Nehlybel's Symphony for Band, and even though I had already been a percussionist for three years, I can honestly say there were things about reading and counting that I simply had not grasped. This lack of understanding was evident as I stumbled through the glockenspiel part repeatedly in one particular section. My band director, Jimmy Koch, took a moment to isolate my part and explain some intricacy in the notation. I don't remember just what he did, but I do recall that for whatever reason, the way he put it, as I looked at the music and heard him explain it, everything was completely unlocked! It was like learning to read, putting the alphabet to work in the infinite variety of words and stories. From that very moment forward I wanted to tap out and count aloud and play every single rhythm I laid eyes on. It was a watershed moment in my musical development, and I have Mr. Koch to thank for it single-handedly."

BS: What advice would you offer to young people who are interested in pursuing music as a career?

AZ: "Persistence and practice. Staying on the train is half the battle at certain stages. I would recommend that people hone in on how they can creatively market themselves and their interests and abilities, to not just rely on making a living in a mainstream opera or symphony route. If teaching genuinely appeals, then start to cultivate that skill along with progressing in your principal instrument. Maybe most importantly, always seek what inspires you, whether it is what you are getting paid for or not. If you seek it and cultivate it, it may become part of your practical marketability, and the riches inspired pursuits bring long term are invaluable."

BS: Are there any community or arts advocacy programs with which you have been involved? If so, tell us a little about your experiences.

AZ: "Unfortunately, involvement in community-established organizations has been a great challenge for me because I am on the road so much of the time and have lived in six states in the last five years. We are working hard to establish our educational outreach program for SEFoS in Atlanta, and hopefully, we will become a strong voice for arts advocacy in that community long term. Otherwise, hopefully our biggest contribution to advocacy is the very path we have chosen as artists."

BS: What has been one of the most humorous experiences of your life?

AZ: "Something pretty unusual happened during our third show of Cenrentola at the Arizona Opera just a week ago (November 2004). Right after we had begun the sextet of act II, with almost the whole cast on stage, we noticed a blue light that began flashing from the house. We all kept singing and also looking at each other like 'what's going on?', and a few seconds later it was clear that our singing was competing with an automated voice on a loudspeaker announcing something about evacuating. We continued to sing as the light still flashed and the voice began totally distorting the music. Finally, after only a few seconds, which felt like an hour, the maestro cut us off: The house lights came up, and we looked out and smiled, as the audience was asked to get up and move toward the aisles to leave the building. We were escorted, in costume, out of the theater, too, and joined the hundreds of displaced audience members on the sidewalk by the theater, in the broad daylight of a cool Phoenix afternoon. After just a few minutes we were entertaining a large group of kids that had gathered around us for an impromptu Q & A, and amused parents were snapping away with camera phones. The fire truck roared alongside the giddy crowd while they investigated the problem. We all continued to chat with the kids and others in the audience and eventually posed for a few pictures by the fire truck. After about half an hour the theater had been cleared. No one was hurt. It was a false alarm, and we were told we could all reenter and the show could continue. The curtain came up and we started the sextet again, and you can't imagine how much that audience was on our side now. They laughed and even applauded Dandini's line that was translated, 'I knew the second act would have something different.' In the end we were treated to an enthusiastic standing ovation, and I'm sure that each person in the theater, both on-stage and off, will share and enjoy the unforgettable memory of an unusual afternoon at the opera."

Adriana Zabala received an undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University and spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Salzburg, Austria, studying German Lieder at the Mozarteum. Upon returning to the U.S. she pursued a master's degree at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Zabala is program manager and co-artistic director of the Southeastern Festival of Song.

Brian Shepard is MTNA's director of marketing and public relations. He holds a B.M. degree in music education and a B.S. degree in marketing from Miami University of Ohio. Shepard also is the director of music and organist at St. Luke United Presbyterian Church in Middletown, Ohio.