The lessons I’m carrying from this season
It has been a particularly full season. I sang in cathedrals and concert halls across the country. This month alone, I flew home after a weekend with the Colorado Symphony, picked up again a couple weeks later to sing Bach's B Minor Mass with The Sebastians, ran home for bedtime, and battled several viruses my two-year-old carried through the door. Surprisingly, the whirlwind pace actually freed me up to stop worrying about survival and start paying attention more — to the music, to my colleagues, to the rooms I was singing in. And I would not trade a single day of it.
A weekend inside the Colorado Symphony
I returned to the Colorado Symphony in April for their “War and Peace” program, conducted by Taylor Martin, alongside Amanda Forsythe, Abigail Nims, and Joshua Hopkins. The program moved from Handel through Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, into Missy Mazzoli’s These Worlds in Us, and closed with Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem. It was one of those rare concerts where the programming itself tells the story. You do not have to explain the arc to the audience. They feel it.
What made this engagement especially meaningful was that the Colorado Symphony invited me to take over their social media for the weekend. That meant bringing the audience backstage, into the warm-up room, into the rehearsal process, into the small conversations between colleagues that usually happen out of view. I loved it. So much of what we do as soloists is invisible until the downbeat. Getting to show what goes into a performance, the preparation, the collaboration, the quieter human moments before you walk onstage, felt like an extension of the music itself.
It also reminded me of something I keep learning: the best performances happen when you are not doing it alone. This was a program built on trust between the soloists, the chorus, the orchestra, and the conductor. That trust is what lets you take risks in the moment and know that the people around you will be right there with you.
Photo courtesy of Colorado Symphony
Looking ahead: Carmina Burana with the Vermont Symphony
I close my season on May 9 with the Vermont Symphony performing Carmina Burana. This will mark my 20th performance of the piece, which feels like a milestone worth pausing on. I have learned over those twenty performances that the real gift of returning to a piece that many times is that you stop worrying about the notes and start noticing the room. You can be present with the audience, with your colleagues, with whatever the moment brings. I am looking forward to carrying everything this season taught me into that final performance.
Photo courtesy of Austin Symphony Orchestra
A few words before summer
If this season taught me one thing, it is how much an audience will give you when you give them something soft. Not every moment needs to be loud or virtuosic. Some of the performances I will carry with me longest this year were the ones where I let the dynamic drop to just before silence and trusted the room to lean in. I want to keep building on that. I want to keep finding those colors, those choices, that tenderness. That feels like the work ahead.
And if you want to follow along as the season wraps up, keep an eye on my social media for more episodes of Road Notes, my little series of singing and reflecting from the car on the way to performances. It has become one of my favorite ways to share what this life actually looks and sounds like between the concert halls.
Thank you, as always, for reading, for showing up, and for listening.
With gratitude,
Brian