The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 009 Wallis Giunta: The Mindful Voice

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number nine. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. hi everyone today i speak with mezzo soprano wallace junta i've known wallace for a while now and i've loved following her adventures throughout the years wallace is a multi-faceted artist with a variety of interests a great take on mindful practice and a truly wonderful personality. She was named Young Singer of the Year in the 2018 International Opera Awards,

Starting point is 00:00:53 was named both Young Artist of the Year by the Arts Desk and Breakthrough Artist in UK Opera in the What's on Stage Opera Awards for her work in 2017, and she's been praised by Opera News for her delectably rich silver-toned mezzo-soprano with a beautiful sense of line and effortless Rapid Runs. Her 2018-19 season includes debut with, among others, the BBC Proms Festival, the Grange Festival, and the Royal Opera House Muscat, as well as several major roles throughout European opera houses and recitals in Europe and North America. Wallace is a 2013 graduate of both the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and the Juilliard School. She's a 2011 graduate of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio,

Starting point is 00:01:43 and she also studied at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto, the Ravenna Festival Stein Music Institute, and the International Meistersinger Academy. She has appeared in recitals and operatic roles throughout the world and has sung as soloist with several major symphonies. Wallace is currently a full-time soloist with Opera Leipzig in Germany. In our conversation, we discussed the importance of making choices that will allow you to thrive, how she prepares for a role, and how she uses mental practice to learn and memorize music at a deeper level.

Starting point is 00:02:18 This was a really interesting chat for me, and I hope you enjoy our conversation. Let's go to the show. Well, it's Junta. I'm so happy to have you on the show today. Hi, thank you. It's a pleasure to speak with you. You and I met for the first time, I think it was 10 years ago already. Crazy how time flies. Oh my God. Was it really 10? Oh, I think more than that. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, time does.

Starting point is 00:02:56 It's been so great to watch your career evolve into what it is today. And you're doing so many amazing things and I was looking at your schedule for the year ahead and there's so many incredible projects ahead as well that we'll get to talking to in a little bit. I'm really excited to talk to you also because I feel that in addition to being a truly remarkable artist, I find you to be such a multifaceted person with many talents and several different interests and I just love that about you. Thank you. Thank you. I like to keep things interesting. Definitely. So can you begin by telling us your story? Who is Wallace and how did she get to where she is today? Sure. So Wallace is from Ottawa, Canada, and she grew up in a very musical home,

Starting point is 00:03:43 but not at all classical music. My father worked in radio, in classic rock radio. So there was a lot of like Nirvana and Led Zeppelin and that kind of thing and a lot of interesting eclectic musical choices but I was drawn to classical music sort of on my own I started playing piano when I was five that was my first instrument and then when I was eight I joined the children's choir in Ottawa the kind of school board choir and we were singing some classical some folk some more kind of popular stuff but it was definitely like full-on music training ear training sight reading like serious musicianship and we were expected to be very proficient at sight reading and harmonies and all that so i was in that choir for seven years until i was 15 and it was it was prestigious

Starting point is 00:04:35 because in the capital uh in ottawa like that choir was expected to represent canada for all official functions like if there was a visiting dignitary or if they needed a children's choir to go to an international festival we were the ones so we went all over the world to japan to a few times to europe to the states and uh and sang and a lot of really high profile things so i from a very young age was used to performing in high-stakes situations you know in front of important people sometimes on national television i had solos in the choir so i've been singing in a very serious way since I was eight years old. And then the solo singing really took off from the choir because my choir director, Barbara Clark, recommended to my

Starting point is 00:05:25 parents that I had some potential in that regard. So she connected us with the best teacher in town in Ottawa when I was growing up. Her name is Charlotte Stewart. And I began lessons when I was 12. So that obviously was a good choice. And, and it, it just continued right through until undergrad university where I, uh, I went directly from high school into the music program at Ottawa U. Um, that was 17 when I started. So pretty young, I did two years there. Um, and then I just felt like I needed to spread my wings a little bit. Um, I needed to be in a new environment. you know what I mean? So growing up in Ottawa, doing all my training there, I wanted to kind of get a taste of some new opinions, different opportunities. And so I transferred halfway

Starting point is 00:06:13 through my degree to the Glenn Gould School in Toronto, which was a very small kind of academy conservatory vibe as opposed to a big university. And it was a wonderful choice because I was in small classes, like maximum 10 singers in the class. We had a lot of one-on-one time with the teachers, wonderful faculty there, like a really great international mix. And what worked for me at that school, I don't know if it would work for everybody, but what worked for me was that they were very performance based. It wasn't so much about the academics of the study as it was about the practical application. So I think that's smart. If you're training to be a performer, obviously, what do you do? You need to perform to learn how to do it. So we did tons of shows,

Starting point is 00:07:00 in the classes, as opposed to just talking about an art song, in theory, they would make us sing the song. And then we'd learn about the history of it, the context, the language, all the musical influences and whatnot. But we'd learn it through performing it for each other. And that was just great for me. The other thing that they were good about was allowing us to leave for short periods of time during the school year to take professional work if we got it. And they also were encouraging and gave us opportunities to audition for local companies and, you know, a little networking to get us connected to people outside of the school environment so that when we did graduate, most of us had some professional experience under our belt, perhaps even had done some auditions for

Starting point is 00:07:50 management, made some connections in the industry, mostly in Toronto. But still, that's a wonderful advantage, I think, for any university graduate with a music degree to have already got their foot in the door in the professional world. So I do actually give a lot of credit to my school for helping me in that way, preparing me for the real world that is this job and giving me a head start because, you know, I have a lot of friends who were across the street in Toronto at the university. And although they have an absolutely wonderful program and a lot of similar faculty as well, I know that they had a much heavier course load and less time to do anything extracurricular. And I think some of them found it hard to kind of transition in a way. But I don't

Starting point is 00:08:42 know. That was just my experience. And definitely I made the right choice for me because I'm a real stage animal and I thrive on learning through doing not so much learning through just thinking about it or talking about it but everybody's different right um so yeah from there I went straight into the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio when I was 23 I started there and that was a two-year program and that was actually incredible as well talk about getting your your feet wet lots of real hands-on experience there. Um, I did a few small roles while I was in the program. And then as soon as I graduated from that, they had me back, um, the next two seasons to do some really big rep, like, um, lead roles in a couple of Mozart operas, Così fan tutte and, uh, Clemenza

Starting point is 00:09:32 di Tito. So I'm very grateful for that because again, that's how you grow. You got to give yourself some challenges. Um, and I went from the COC ensemble directly to New York, which was actually not my plan, but, um, I had done a young artist program in, I think it was 2011, um, in Ravinia actually in Chicago. And the artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artist Program was also the artistic director of, uh, this Ravinia Young Artist Program. So he heard me there and he basically headhunted me for the Met and invited me to come the next year and join that program and simultaneously do an artist diploma at Juilliard because he was in charge of both programs at the same time. And he thought, I guess, he's a very smart man. His name is Brian

Starting point is 00:10:27 Zeger. He understood me and he knew that I really need to be challenged. As I said, I need to be given a lot of opportunity to to try things and grow and make mistakes as it were and so he thought doing both programs would give me a better scope in that environment because at the Met the young artists are very tiny fish in a big pond right and we we get exposed to the wonderful opportunities that are there but we don't really get to be involved in so much because we're still just you know low on the ladder just getting our we're earning our stripes rather so at Juilliard the program that he recommended was the very top tier you know post postgraduate performance based artist diploma and in that environment I was the bigger fish in the smaller pond so between the two

Starting point is 00:11:22 it was a really nice balance of humbling and kind of boosting of, uh, of confidence. And, uh, I got a great, great education there. That was like the perfect kind of final touch to what I had done so far. Um, and it also really taught me how to, um, weather the blows, shall we say, because it's pretty pretty tough world in in New York you know not just in those programs there's it's wonderfully nurturing but being in Manhattan where everything's happening it's rather cutthroat there's a lot of auditions there's a lot of rejection there's a lot of you know feeling like you'll never quite be good enough or do enough and you know getting through that experience and still feeling like I knew who I was as an artist and had something to say and could

Starting point is 00:12:16 potentially succeed. Um, that's made me so much stronger, I think, than if I had, um, stayed in Canada maybe, or not gone there at who knows. Right. But definitely that was, um, that was what gave me the armor that I needed to be able to thrive in this world, this crazy opera world. So from there, from there, I went straight to Europe to do a fest contract, which is the equivalent of a full time job in any other profession. But I'm with opera Leipzig now. And I've done three seasons here. And that's basically like, you're a member of a group of singers that covers all the repertoire in the house, with some exceptions. So all the main kind of standard repertoire and we have a few mezzos, a few sopranos, and we have all the voice types covered and we just kind of take turns singing this and that and cover each other. And it's a wonderful way to get a lot of roles under the belt all in one go. You know, you can feel safe in this environment, really part of a team. But I'm also very lucky that they don't have a huge amount of repertoire for me to sing.

Starting point is 00:13:31 So I have a lot of free time to also work elsewhere and, you know, meet new people, challenge myself more, as I said, I like that, and travel and yeah, make connections. So that's where I'm at now. I'm in my third and a half year in Leipzig and doing a lot of freelancing as well on the side. That sounds so amazing. I love how Europe is, you know, seems to be so supportive of classical music. It seems to be such an important thing over there. Yeah, well, it's very deeply entrenched in their culture, right? That's where it all started. Yeah. And they value it. They do. And thank you so much for sharing that story. It's really inspiring to see how it's possible to build a successful career in the arts by, of course, working really hard, but also by being able to, as you said so well, figuring out who you are and staying true to this. I loved how you were talking about how through these different experiences you were able to, as you said, cover such a big scope of different aspects of playing and staying motivated. And, you know, I think that having, as you said, again, the performance as part of the training is so, so, so important.

Starting point is 00:14:50 This is what I see missing in a lot of programs around me throughout the United States. and um that is so wonderful that you had this and i was looking at your website a little bit so many awesome programs coming up this year what are a few things that you find i mean i would invite everybody to to look it up but um what are some projects that you're looking forward to in this coming season well one of them that i was very much looking forward to i actually just did um about a week and a half ago um that was my debut at the proms in london the proms festival and i was very excited about that one because as I'm sure you know it's the Leonard Bernstein Centenary and this was a concert which they they wanted to honor Bernstein so I got to choose pretty much

Starting point is 00:15:37 all my favorite songs by him and also his contemporaries like Sondheim and Blitzstein and Copland and just like the best songs that all these guys have written and that's what I love to do the most really is just mine the depths of of the repertoire available to me to find the juiciest nuggets that are like possibly not discovered yet and and really just craft programs that are all the best songs you know um maybe it's too rich it's like having cream on top of ice cream but i don't know i'm not a big fan of like performing repertoire in full intact um chunks just because it's all part of the same opus and so-and-so wrote it in one month so you're supposed to do all of them like if there's a 12 song cycle and I only like three I'll sing those three because

Starting point is 00:16:30 I know that I can give them 100% commitment and if I'm not into the songs it's probably not fair for me to choose to perform them because I won't I won't do them as as much service as they deserve So my next program that I'm really looking forward to is in October, and it's exactly just that, what I described. It's a curated tour through many different styles and genres, but the overarching theme is the journey of a love affair from beginning to end. And I've chosen songs from like literally every corner of the classical vocal repertoire, but all of them are what I feel to be 100% worthy. And I'm really looking forward to that. It's in Lisbon in Portugal next month. um what else well I'm making some big role debuts this year uh first Carmen first Rosina in the Barber of Seville first Octavian in Rosenkavalier which is also my first Strauss role um and first Idom Idomante in Idomeneo by Mozart which is a really big sing so that one that one's going to take some time it's it's in uh eight months so yeah that's a lot on my plate this year

Starting point is 00:17:50 a lot of big stuff and you know i love what you just describe about this what i would call a mindful approach to choosing repertoire and how once again this seems to be a theme with you but you know you're staying true to who you are and what you're trying to say and what your message is i love that thank you yeah it's very important to me because i guess i've i've done recitals where i wasn't choosing the music myself perhaps it was a piece that i didn't like or i had an issue with it and I just feel like that's not it's not fair to the audience to have me perform something if I'm not sincere in my admiration of the piece or the composer you know if I'm not connected to it how can I expect them to be and of course within that there's room for the fact

Starting point is 00:18:40 that I'm an actress I'm a performer and I can definitely I can definitely put on a show if I need to, but why not just pick songs that I love? Wallace, I'm so curious about so many things in regards to how vocalists practice. So of course, music is music and practicing has similarities, whether you're an instrumentalist or a singer. But in many ways, I feel like the approach to practicing is very different for a singer. And one of the reasons I am so curious is that But as a violinist, when I work on a passage, I always ask myself and I always tell students, you know, how how would I sing that? How would you sing that? Or I try to think, how would a singer phrase this? Where would she pause to breathe? What consonants or vowels would I use on these notes?

Starting point is 00:19:34 Like what, you know, if there were lyrics on this, where would the consonants and what the words would be, where the vowels would be? Um, so I think that knowing more about how singers approach learning music and practicing would be extremely useful for me and would be, you know, applicable in my own practice. So can we please talk a little bit about this process for you as a singer? How does, um, how does a singer approach learning music and practicing mindfully? So, for example, you were just mentioning the role in Indominio and, you know, you have to learn these new songs for this opera in eight months. So, you know, what happens next? You pick up the score. What happens next? okay well very interesting so it's changed a lot the answer to that question as I have grown as an artist if you'd asked me this 20 years ago I would have said I just sing it over and over and over until I have it memorized and then I take it to my teacher and we try and like add in some interesting things like musicality and color and you know text painting and all that and then maybe 10 years ago I would have told you that I would work very hard first on the vocal technical stuff

Starting point is 00:20:48 just trying to make it technically perfect and not really think about much else because I was I was not sure of my technique yet I wasn't confident in my actual instrument it didn't work well yet so I had to focus so much on that that I didn't have much brain space for anything else. But over the past 10 years, basically, since I've figured myself out as an artist and as a musician, getting more and more toward freedom in the sense that I don't have to think about my technique, the way that I approach music now and practice, shall we say, is really a lot more mental than anything else. I don't spend very much time actually singing something if I'm practicing or learning it, as you say. So the first step would be to translate the text of

Starting point is 00:21:40 whatever it is, if it's not English. My German's pretty good. My French is quite good. Italian, eh. But even still, a lot of these texts are poetic and old, you know, hundreds of years old. So even if it's French and I understand French, it may be some kind of phrasing and vocabulary that isn't common and doesn't make any sense to me. So I do a word-for-word translation of everything. So I know what really is happening, and I know what the composer is trying to do with the music because this is the story, and I understand it.

Starting point is 00:22:18 So that's very important. Then I probably would listen to recordings, if there were any available, and definitely more than one because I don't like to get fixated on any one person's interpretation. But I don't think there's any harm in just listening to the song to hear what it sounds like, you know. Obviously, we're very lucky to live in a time when we can do that. And I don't think one should avoid doing that.

Starting point is 00:22:44 I know some teachers say, oh, never listen to anybody else's recording because you'll just end up copying them. But I like to think I'm smart enough that I can not do that. So I listen to get a sense of how it flows. and uh and then I I usually just launch right into singing it because like I said I I trust my instrument now I know when I look at a piece of music I know where the problem spots are going to be I don't have to sing it to find that out so I sing the parts that I know I I can manage no problem and then if there's a a section that you know has a really awkward high note or

Starting point is 00:23:19 something super fast and difficult I I just kind of go slowly through it break it down figure out what i need to do and it happens pretty quickly i can put a song together pretty darn quickly um so that's the learning process and then the memorizing process is i'd say 90 mental i hardly ever sing through something over and over to memorize it because you know the body does tire it's not a violin it doesn't have limitless playing hours in it each day. So I, uh, and, and also in the average day I'm in an opera rehearsal or I have a performance or something that I have to use my voice, um, you know, in my job. So I don't have a lot of gas left in the tank, if you will, to practice at the end of the day or on a break.

Starting point is 00:24:08 So I do it in my mind. I do it while I'm biking. I do it cooking. I would say actually the most effective time of day for me is right before bed and first thing in the morning. So if I'm, if I'm really trying to learn a piece, you know, quickly or memorize it under the gun, I, I get into bed and I, uh, I just spend basically until I fall asleep. I just, I put that song on in my head as if it was an iPod or something. And I play the, I play the music in my head and I sing through it in my head over and over. And that often just puts me to sleep. And then when I wake up in the morning for first thing, uh, do it again. And I can, I can't tell you how effective that is. It's like cementing it in there that, you know, before bed, early morning thing. I don't

Starting point is 00:24:58 know how I figured that out, but it works really well for me. The learning part is the easy part. And the memorizing is what takes effort. Practicing for me really consists of, of memorization for opera and recital programs. That's, that's the big difference. I think it's a, it's a, it's a big burden sometimes you know if you have a 90 minute recital program a bunch of different languages and you have to have it all from memory um let's just say it used to be easier gets harder the older I get because I feel like my musical library is almost full I'm gonna have to delete a few files before I can add anything new but yeah does that make sense I mean that's that's sort of the process for me that is so interesting you know I love seeing the evolution going from what as an

Starting point is 00:25:43 instrumentalists, we would call the rote playing, where you were talking about how you would sing a song over and over again until you would learn it. This is, for us, the equivalent of playing. And so this rote memorization that happens in the body, and then you went on to, as you mentioned, thinking more and more about the technique and how now the process is more mental. I feel like so many of us stay stuck in these first two steps, thinking so much about the technique and repeating over and over again which oftentimes will just in i don't know if it's the same thing for singers but for us it will just cement in the mistakes and the bad habits oh yeah oh it's the same for singers that is definitely the same for singers you can learn a bad part like you can learn a

Starting point is 00:26:31 mistake very well by practicing it yes and i feel like this mental approach that you're describing is so key into, you know, evolving into a bigger artist for sure. And, you know, there's so many studies that prove that what you were referring to about doing it right before bed and early in the morning about how the brain processes things in the sleep. So I'm, I'm with you on that. I totally believe in this approach. And I remember, you know, nights before a big audition or big concerts, just sitting in bed with my part in the recording and just doing some practice right before going to bed. So I'm with you on this for sure. Right. Yeah. It's amazing how it works. It's, it's actually possible for me to learn a song entirely in my head and then perform it for

Starting point is 00:27:20 the first time without ever having tried to sing it and do like a pretty damn good job. Like I don't rely on that. I'm not saying that I recommend it, but there have been a couple of circumstances in my life where I haven't, I've had to learn something quickly and I haven't had a chance to sing it before I present it either in an audition or in a class, you know, or I wouldn't say a professional concert, but a situation where you're performing it for someone and you, you know, you want it to be good. And I've actually been able to just get it all kind of figured out, laid out in my head and I know how that feels in my voice so it kind of just works you know it is better if you sing it a few times too definitely but it can be done entirely in the mind once once you get to

Starting point is 00:28:10 the place where you are confident in your technique and you know your instrument whether that's internal or external well enough that you feel you have that freedom to work mentally I think you you can't start only from that place it has to be in conjunction with a lot of practical work too yes that's so good yeah that's so good it's it's key what you're saying we need to work so hard on the technique so that we then reach this freedom as oftentimes I feel like maybe it as a student I had those moments where you know you feel stifled a little bit because you're trying to express something and your teacher is bugging you with this technique yeah and I'm doing the same thing to my students now but i'm trying to explain to them that it's we're working on the technique

Starting point is 00:28:57 so that we can then have this freedom so this is uh but you know i'm really curious about one thing because i am not a singer and i think my children could vouch for that but um what how does that look like when a vocalist works on i'm not even sure if i should call you guys vocalists is that okay? Is that an okay term? Oh, yeah, absolutely. How does that work when you work on the difficult passage? Because I know for us, we practice slowly, we'll break down things into, you know, several aspects, we'll work on the shift, or we'll use different rhythm, we'll troubleshoot, you know, how does that work for a singer? Well, I'm going to say a lot of the time, slowing it down doesn't actually help. Because, you know, since you're working on breath,

Starting point is 00:29:45 you really only have so much you can do so if the phrase is already difficult and let's say it's difficult because it's a long phrase the last thing you want to do is slow it down um and again you can't just you shouldn't just sing it over and over and over and over again so what i would do is break it down into parts yeah for sure if it's if it's difficult because it's a high note which is often for me what is difficult because i'm not a you know a high voice per se so if there's a really high section, that's usually where I target my energy. That's where I, I know if I have trouble, it'll be there. Um, so I'm focusing on the approach. So what I would do, I suppose, is isolate that, what comes before the high note, what comes before the difficult part,

Starting point is 00:30:31 figure out what I'm doing there so that I know how to strategize, maybe save some air or, or take less air in. So I'm not over-breathing. That can be a problem too. Um, so yeah, do a little strategy work with the approach and most of the time that that fixes the problem if there was one and the difficult bit the high note or whatever it is um works out just fine but in a practice session i won't do it too many times maybe three or four times because it's fatiguing you know to go over something that's hard so things like that yeah i try to be really economical but if it's difficult for another reason if it's difficult because let's say it's a really fast text you know like a tongue twister kind of text which i actually was working on today i'm i'm working on

Starting point is 00:31:22 barbara of seville right now and this is rossini so the music is very fast there's a lot of what we call patter when you're just speaking like a tongue twister basically so that i actually would sort of slow it down speak it maybe speak it first before singing it um at whatever tempo I need to to be able to get all the words correct and then just gradually speed it up and speed it up speed it up until it's it's the right tempo and uh and then hopefully it works but yeah uh there's there's different kinds of difficulty for singing there's there's breath related high note related and kind of text related. And I suppose you would have a different strategy for each. But that's just me, you know, I can't speak for everyone. I know some singers that will

Starting point is 00:32:11 literally just hammer a high note for an hour until they get it and somehow it doesn't fatigue them. But yeah, I can't do that. I love that. I guess it comes down to, like you said, breaking it down and really understanding where the problem lies before. How about memorization? I was just going to say that also comes with time and experience because I now know that I don't have the stamina and I need to be more strategic. But even five or six years ago, I would get really frustrated and I would sing something way too many times and blow out my voice. I didn't have the self-knowledge yet to understand how to fix the problems in a most effective way. So that is something I've learned through making the mistake, I suppose. Yeah. And how about memorization? Do

Starting point is 00:33:01 you have some tips? What are your little tricks? Definitely what I said about right before bed and first thing in the morning. That's my number one go-to strategy if I'm really needing to memorize something. What also helps, and this may be unique to singers, is giving the song dramatic context. Of course, if it's in an opera, as soon as you start, you know, interacting with colleagues on stage, applying staging, you know, movement, blocking, use of props, interaction, as soon as it becomes a dialogue and you have some context for it, it goes right in there. Like it's very hard to not remember something when you have a whole physical vocabulary that goes with it so in the context of an opera I find memorization quite easy because yeah it's it's connected to

Starting point is 00:33:57 something you know it's got an anchor in the show and if it's a recital program that's just me and a piano I guess most of the time so what I do is I kind of cheat and I make each song into a little mini opera for myself and i give each song in my mind uh a world of its own um characters if there are characters um i think about what they're wearing i i give them a backstory you know i make each song its own little mini opera and in that way it helps me in the same way that i find the the opera world like the environment of being in an opera helps memorization I apply that to my recital work. And by default, I would say my recitals tend to be on the dramatic side compared to some perhaps more reserved performers that I know. But I think

Starting point is 00:34:49 people generally like it. And if they don't, they know they shouldn't come to my concerts. So it's working. I love this tip about making your own little opera. This is fabulous. I'm going to start using it and tell my students to do it too. Could that work for an instrumentalist? Could you kind of give your own abstract imaginative world to an entirely instrumental piece? Actually, it does. And this is what I do less and less of now. But as a child, when my mom would make me practice, she would have me think of a story for the piece and really come up with exactly what you said, come up with characters and the plot and what's going on. And it's funny that you're mentioning it. And I kind of had forgotten about that, even though I do tell students to

Starting point is 00:35:39 develop narratives when they're playing for sure. But I forget to do it for myself. I feel like when I'm preparing for recitals, I think we get caught up in a different realm. But that's a great reminder i'm gonna try and go back there cool yeah i hope it helps you know i think uh speaking with you like this makes me feel like every musician should take voice lessons and you know learn how to sing it certainly would not hurt well that was one nice thing that um i really loved about like training in um in toronto at the glenn gould school is i think they did actually expect the instrumentalists in some capacity even once a year to to sing in something you know they all had to i think we had a choir and everyone had to do something that's really good so they they

Starting point is 00:36:34 made sure that and and you know vice versa they made all the singers play an instrument we all had to i think most people chose piano but we had to up to a certain level and that's good too you know you get a better musical ground ground foundation and it can't hurt that's for sure usually if you can't sing a passage you can't phrase it uh with as much you know i would say flow but if you have a really clear ideas even if you're not a good singer if you have a really clear idea where you feel like you know how the phrase itself sings or would sing itself it really helps you making all these artistic choices of in our case i'm a you know i don't even use air with my instrument but although it's very important to breathe when you play the violin

Starting point is 00:37:23 and i could do a whole episode on that but um but you definitely i can't tell you how stressed out i get when i listen to a violinist that's not breathing with their instrument because i sing along like my sympathetic response as a singer is to not breathe until the place where you're supposed to breathe in each phrase and if if the instrumentalist is not breathing as they go along obviously they're breathing in their own body but if they're not breathing with their phrasing and with their musicality I hold my breath in the audience and it's just terrible so I mean I I can I can work through it if I remind myself like just just stop following along just breathe normally let them play but it happens like organically and I can't help it yes yes you know you know

Starting point is 00:38:13 this is what happens when we start singing in our head what the music should be like it starts to sound more organic you know earlier you said something about how this the physical vocabulary I love that term how it helps you memorize and this is another dimension of singing that we're not familiar with it's this acting part how does that work for you guys to interiorize this character and bring it to life well I was very lucky to have had some fantastic acting teachers over the years and most recently I worked with Stephen Wadsworth who's a director theater and opera director in New York at Juilliard so he was my main teacher there and our our approach his teaching is basically that you have to find a way in through your own life experience

Starting point is 00:39:02 so we would take each piece whether it was a whole opera role or just one aria from an opera we would determine what the character was going through in that situation so what's the context what's the situation you know what is this person doing and feeling and we would come up with a sentence that would encapsulate that moment or that situation and then think about our own life experience when have we ourselves been able to identify with this context with this situation and once you find your own personal version of whatever it is that that character is going through like for example you say this this aria is about a person who is struggling to come to terms with their the death of a parent and they turn to their friend for comfort or even not as

Starting point is 00:39:58 specific struggling to come to terms with a death or a loss you know something general so that you as as the performer can easily get into it and then you can go in your own experience and like oh well loss can be many things loss can be a job it can be a literal death it can be you know a friend moves away and you don't see them anymore so you find something in your life that that can hook you in to that situation and then while you're performing the piece you find yourself mentally there in that moment in your own life's experience and you identify with it immediately and you just you don't have to necessarily like work too hard to think about this memory that you have but you just have to have that that thought going in your head of what that was

Starting point is 00:40:46 like for you and you know any little details of that situation it all works toward informing the performance and and showing the audience that you are a thinking actor who has something to say so that's just one way to do it that's my technique that i i like and i learned through steven and it works very well for me but um there's many different ways you know a lot of different people have different ideas i think the main thing is you just have to be thinking You have to be reacting to what's going on in your environment. If you're in an opera with other characters, you have to be aware of everybody else in the scene.

Starting point is 00:41:25 You have to be, you know, in the moment, right? And if it's a recital and you're by yourself, then you create that world through your imagination. It's actually harder in a recital. It's much more work because you don't have the sets and the lights and the orchestra and the costumes, and you don't have an audience with the synopsis in their program and, you know, surtitles above you, you are the entire performance.

Starting point is 00:41:49 So it's a lot more work. And I definitely draw on my own personal experiences to inform everything that I embody, definitely. Wow. You know, this is really inspiring for me to hear because like you just mentioned, we don't have the sets. We don't have the lights and the costumes. And I feel like there is definitely I will have to think about this a little bit more. But in relation to what we were talking about earlier to creating a story, there probably is a way to introduce a little bit more of this aspect of characterization into our performance and, you know, relating to memories that we have in the past. And, you know, this could be for a chamber music concert or a recital. And this is going to make me think a whole lot this conversation.

Starting point is 00:42:42 Well, there's a lot of programmatic instrumental music out there, right? You know, maybe not quite as specific as an opera or an art song, but definitely, especially in the more like late 1900s, 20th century music, composers had plans, right? They had ideas that the title would tell you what's going on or it's named after something like Don Quixote. You know, you have a real story there. You have characters or Symphonie Fantastique. You have all these colors that come through. You don't really have to, you don't have to create much. It's all there.

Starting point is 00:43:17 It's so alive. And I guess I couldn't imagine not having my imagination go wild if I was performing something like that. Right. And I think so often we stay connected to the technical thing, to the technical aspect of those pieces. So to really make sure that we are reconnecting with the story. So it's a great reminder. If there is one, if there is one, I mean, it's a little bit harder with like Bach, perhaps, or earlier music. It's a little more abstract.

Starting point is 00:43:48 You have to kind of dig deeper to find the plot, shall we say. But it doesn't even matter if there's an actual story, as long as you're really communicating something, whatever it means to you. Yes, yes, yes. Oh my gosh, Wallace, thank you so much. Great stuff. I could keep you here all day, but how about we do just a round of rapid fire questions before I let you go? Sure. So tell me, for the people who would be dreaming of becoming an opera singer, can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like? Well, if you've seen the inside of a suitcase lately, that's pretty much it. So I have three suitcases, different sizes.

Starting point is 00:44:32 And at any given time, one of them is always open on my floor because I am traveling so often that I don't even bother putting it away. And it's a little bit sad, but it's also fun. It's basically just, you know, you're always meeting new people. you are going to new environments it's challenging because sometimes you don't speak the language or know anyone there um but no matter what everywhere I go I grow as a person and as an artist and I love what I do but yeah it's a lot of airports and a lot of taxis and it's not as glamorous as it as it might seem it's uh schlepping heavy suitcases into you know airports and yeah that that kind of stuff is there a performance that has stayed

Starting point is 00:45:26 with you throughout the years definitely um my very first one i would have to say my very first opera that i was a part of so i started singing in an opera chorus when i was 15 um this was in Ottawa again with our local opera company and they were doing Madame a Butterfly so I was in the chorus my first time in an adult chorus I was just old enough to be able to pass for a grown-up and we were doing Madame a Butterfly and I remember any moment that I wasn't singing myself I was absolutely in awe of the soloists like the main characters what they were doing with their voices is how it moved me and of course Puccini is one of the most romantic you know heartbreaking composers that's ever lived and his music just it brought me to my knees so I used to go and

Starting point is 00:46:22 hide in the wings um whenever I wasn't on stage and watch the show just with tears streaming down my face and and that was the moment I knew that this was going to be my life for sure wow this is great yeah how about skills that you think the young musicians learning today should acquire in addition of course to learning to play their instrument or learning to sing oh ho ho well here we go everybody needs to definitely figure out how to do some sort of self-marketing there is nothing sadder to me than a musician who is absolutely fantastic but they don't have any idea how to promote themselves or any, any interest in promoting themselves. So I would encourage everyone because we live in a world where self-promotion is how it works. You know, that's,

Starting point is 00:47:15 that's it. Um, I would encourage you to learn the basics of website building, unless you happen to be independently wealthy and you can hire someone to do that for you. But if not learn some coding or just mess around with one of those template sites online and get yourself a website up. Do a little bit of work on copywriting perhaps or again, pay someone to do some work for you on writing your biography, getting some content up on your site.

Starting point is 00:47:50 I would also encourage people to learn the basics of recording and editing sound and video. It's really not that hard, especially if you're using like an Apple computer, those programs are pretty paint by number. And if you can get your, yourself, uh, someone to record any of your concerts and you know how to edit, honestly, you can have a pretty thriving YouTube channel because the way it works now is someone hears your name. Someone might be talking about you. What's the first thing they're going to do? They're going to Google you. If you don't have a website and you don't have any,

Starting point is 00:48:25 any recordings or videos of yourself performing they're going to move on they're not interested they will not pursue it so that is really crucial as sad as it is to say it's not enough to just be a wonderful musician anymore it's too competitive so you have to get a toot your own horn amen yeah and maybe maybe figure out how to do some budgeting and taxes stuff because it gets quite complicated. Yes, this is where I need some help for sure. Oh my God, me too. I'll call to anyone who knows about international tax law. Come talk to me, please. How about a favorite tool in the practice room? The one thing that you could not go without while you practice? Oh, well, other than my water bottle, a mirror actually for singers, not for vanity's sake, but simply because when

Starting point is 00:49:20 we don't know what we look like when we're singing. We do some wacky stuff with our faces and our bodies too. And it's, it's quite, quite humbling to see yourself in the mirror when you're not expecting it or a photograph or a video and realize what, what contortions we get up to. And every time I do practice in front of a mirror and remind myself not to do all these unnecessary things to just simplify it, get out of my own way and do the most natural facial and body position that I can, the path of least resistance. I always sing better. And it's crazy. Like if I don't practice in front of a mirror for a few weeks, I'll start like just twisting my face. And I don't know, it's constant maintenance, constant vigilance. So

Starting point is 00:50:07 get that mirror out. Yes. This is, you know, monitoring the basics. That's so great. how about a favorite book it doesn't have to be a music book could be any book but a book that you would like to recommend to the listeners it doesn't have to be a music book well my absolute favorite is definitely the collected works of sir arthur conan doyle namely the sherlock holmes mysteries me too me too yeah okay i don't know why well i do know why it's amazing. But I also find them very practical because they're short. And let's say, you know, you're in a big rehearsal for something and you're not on every minute of the show, you can quickly go off into the wings and read a short Sherlockian mystery and then you're back

Starting point is 00:50:56 out, you know. They're great and they never get old. You can just keep going back to them year after year. Oh, I'm with you on this. And if you like Sherlock Holmes and you can read French, also try arsène lupin really really good great writing great story i will okay writing that down thank you what's the best advice you've ever received that you would like to pass on definitely to stop trying to please people in this world especially in the music world i don't mean in your life in general of course let's all be nice and kind to each other for sure But as an artist, if you're approaching your art with an effort to please others, namely teachers, coaches, mentors, your parents, your colleagues, your classmates, if that's what your purpose is, then you are not bringing anything to the table and we don't need you. what we need are people that have something to say that's authentic true to themselves and

Starting point is 00:52:03 as long as they're still being respectful and supportive and collegial they shouldn't you one should not focus one's attention on meeting someone else's goals and demands but really following our own intuition and letting our artistic voice guide us and i wish i had paid attention to that advice earlier when I was younger. It took me a while to take it in because I was really fixated in my early training years on making my teacher happy, making my pianist happy, making the conductor happy. And while these are not bad things to do, it stunted my growth as a thinking individual with something to say. And eventually I got out of that rut and I was able to, um, to find my voice literally and figuratively. Um, but it took longer, longer than I wanted it

Starting point is 00:52:59 to. And, uh, now I'm not wasting a minute to make up for that. Oh, that's so great. How about a quick actionable tip that the listeners could start implementing today in the practice room or in their lives? Today, I would like to challenge everyone to, in their next practice session, whatever piece they're working on play it with complete and total abandon and then see how it feels see where that takes you and see if you can bring a little bit of that into the structure of what you're working on that's so great wallace where can people find you and connect with you and i'm going to put all these links in the show notes i'm kind of semi social media involved i i pick and choose what I'm interested in. So I have a pretty active Facebook page and it's just my

Starting point is 00:53:52 name, Wallace Junta, easy to find. And I also have Instagram now as of this year, I just a little late to the table, but I got it. So that's also just wallace.junta. Um, very easy to find no weird code names. Um, I don't have Twitter or anything else like that. Uh, I try not to, to spend too much time on on social media but I do on the things that I do I do very well but I don't do everything I just try to focus my efforts so yeah Facebook and Instagram and oh and YouTube sorry YouTube as well I don't think of it as social media but I guess maybe it is but I do have a pretty active channel and I have a lot of content and like what I was saying before about recording your performances and putting them up online that's something I'm really dedicated to

Starting point is 00:54:43 I record all my solo recitals and I usually release at least five six seven songs from each each concert on my YouTube channel so yeah definitely if you're interested in checking out my work you can find a lot there a lot of different stuff and I've been on your YouTube channel and it is phenomenal so great I think everybody should go for sure thank you it's really like a mixed bag of wacky stuff wallace thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today you know i feel like um i feel so inspired and by a conversation and i think that i'm super motivated to try new things when we're going to get off the phone but i learned a ton and i'm sure others will have learned a thing or two as well i'm a huge fan of both the person and

Starting point is 00:55:33 the artist that you are you know we've only covered you as a singer today but there's so much more to you and um i encourage everybody to look you up go on your website go on your instagram and your facebook page because there's so much more to wallace than wallace the metal soprano and i look forward to watching your career continue to grow thank you so much that's that's really really humbling and lovely to hear it's my pleasure to talk to you too with my first podcast my debut. Oh, well, then I'm very honored. Thank you so much. Thank you guys so much for listening. You can find the show notes for this episode at mindoverfinger.com. I would also love to connect with you. So join the conversation on social

Starting point is 00:56:25 media. Let me know what inspires you, what specific questions you have about mindful practice, and what other topics and guests you would like to hear about in future episodes. I am Mind Over Finger on all platforms. And it's not too late to join the Mindful Practice Challenge, which started a couple days ago. If you're interested in exploring new ways to practice and reach new milestones in your playing, join us on the Mind Over Finger Tribe's Facebook group

Starting point is 00:56:53 at facebook.com slash groups slash Mind Over Finger Tribe. pick some goals that you want to work on throughout the month of November download the modacity app my new favorite practice tool and get ready to take your practice into the next level with us in the tribe we're there to motivate support and hold each other accountable this is going to be a lot of fun next week I'll be talking to Paul Marcello principal trumpet with the Montreal Symphony discussing surprise efficient deliberate and mindful practice, as well as the importance for the 21st century musician to create and pursue opportunities for him or herself. If you have the chance, please take a minute to head over

Starting point is 00:57:38 to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review. It's very much appreciated. Again, thank you and à bientôt! Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 009 Wallis Giunta: The Mindful Voice

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