Patty Vest: Welcome to Sagecast the podcast at Pomona College. I'm Patty Vest. Mark Wood: And I'm Mark Wood. Patty Vest: In these extraordinary times, we're coming to you from our various homes. As we all shelter in place. Mark Wood: This season on Sagecast, we're talking to Pomona faculty and alumni about the personal, professional and intellectual journeys that have brought them to where they are today. Patty Vest: Today, we're talking with Grammy award winner, Soprano Melissa Givens, and assistant professor of music at Pomona. Mark Wood: Welcome, Melissa. Melissa Givens: Hi. Thank you. Hi. Patty Vest: Hi. Mark Wood: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us here in Zoom land. Melissa Givens: Absolutely pleasure. Mark Wood: How are you adjusting to life in the time of plague and the time of Zoom? Melissa Givens: Well, personally I've always been kind of a hermit. This is, I'd say I've been training for this my entire life, but in terms of the teaching, I miss the interaction of teaching and voice teaching is so intimate. And so there's just so much you have to see and hear in real time. We've been just trying to figure out various ways to make Zoom voice lessons work, and the best ways to kind of not do them on Zoom and [inaudible 00:01:10]. I listened to it [inaudible 00:01:13] and then we visit by Zoom because part of keeping the relationship going and just making sure they're okay. Patty Vest: Melissa, tell us about your early years. How did you- Melissa Givens: Oh my goodness. Patty Vest: Yeah, very open-ended question. Where are you from and how did you find your path to music? Melissa Givens: Absolutely. I'm from Buffalo, New York. My mom was a teacher. My dad was an air traffic controller and I'm the oldest of three girls. And music has always been in the house. I took the lessons starting at five, interrupted that because I got fired. That's a whole ‘nother story. Picked it up again at eight and then kept going for quite a long time after that. I'd always sung in children's choir. My mom loved the children's choir at church and my sisters and I would sing when we were doing dishes and just whatever chores we had around the house, we just kind of sung whatever was popular back then and harmonize it ourselves. But from the time I was five, I said, “No, no, I'm going to be a doctor.” I'm like, “Okay.” Melissa Givens: That was kind of always the narrative that I was going to be a doctor, even though I was singing and playing the piano my entire life. And so when it became time to choose a college, the focus of that was who has a good pre-med program, who has good medical school, admissions and done the students search things. I was getting mail from just everywhere. It just became overwhelming. And at some point the great procrastinator that I was sent to clean my room. And of course, procrastinators start under the bed because I don't know that's where the good stuff is. Melissa Givens: I found a brochure that had somehow missed being opened from a little tiny college in North Carolina called Davidson. And so I opened it and it looked really exciting because I'd been kind of agnostic about it. I knew I was going to college. I knew I'd find a great college, but I hadn't found one that just grabbed me yet. And so I took it to my mom and she said, “Well, this looks really interesting.” And she and my dad talked about it and I called the people and they flew me out for a visit kind of like Pomona does. And it was kind of, all she wrote, that was the only place I wanted to go after that. Once the acceptance came through, we were all excited about that and I went to North Carolina fully expecting to be a chemistry major because I had been in a high school that allowed you to major. Melissa Givens: I'd majored in chemistry in high school and loved it, most of it. Senior year we did inorganic, which is freshmen general chemistry. I hated that because it was mostly math. Math and I had a very, shall we say distant relationship. I didn't want to say that. Patty Vest: Socially distant. Mark Wood: Conflicted [crosstalk 00:04:13]. Melissa Givens: Oh my gosh. Yeah, socially distant. We're going to stay appropriate. Davidson let you pick your classes, let you pick your schedule, we had three classes every day. And we were on quarters and I had an eight o'clock chemistry class my first year. I don't do mornings. I missed it a lot. And it was literally the same thing I just finished doing. I didn't really have to intellectually work very hard, but I barely escaped that class and this wasn't going to work. What had happened when we first got there to Davidson is they're big on community. It's a very Pomona place. That's again another story, but they have the thing called the Freshman Talent Show. Melissa Givens: I guess to make sure they have enough acts, they make sure that each freshmen hall and each dorm had four floors, would do a group thing. And anybody who wanted to do a solo thing could do a solo thing. And our group thing was to take the covers off the mattresses to put them over our heads and took them in our jeans and belt them at the knee since there were 32 of us and be dancing teeth. And I'm like, “Ar.” Patty Vest: That's creative. Melissa Givens: I don't want to do that. I know. Mark Wood: Yeah. Melissa Givens: There's so much of that, that just sounded horrendous. I skipped it. My hall counselor said, “Well, you could get out of it, but you'd have to sing by yourself.” And I said, “Sing? I don't sing. Whatever gives you the impression that I sing?” And she said, “We hear you singing across campus when you got the window open. Yeah, those are your options.” I didn't bring any music because I wasn't going to do music in college. I didn't have anything to accompany me. I'd done some voice lessons in high school, but I thought I was done with that. I said, “Okay, I'm not going to do that tooth thing, so I guess I'm going to [inaudible 00:06:16] from my school.” And the only thing I remembered was this teeny tiny little Aria. She says dripping with sarcasm, which is Serena's aria from Porgy and Bess by Gershwin, My Man's Gone Now. Melissa Givens: It's an enormous aria that high school people shouldn't even be thinking of singing, but he had aspirations, my voice teacher. I didn't have an accompaniment. It's on this giant stage, me by myself, acapella singing a Gershwin aria. Surely this cannot go wrong. After I finished, nothing. Absolute silence for about a nanosecond and then the place kind of erupted and like rawkus applause. And I was like, “Oh, Oh, okay.” It was really fun and exciting. And of course the choir director and the voice teacher were in the audience as apparently they did sometimes. And they like made a beeline for me and said, “You got to be in the choir and you've got to take voice lessons.” I said, “Oh, okay.” Melissa Givens: I started out as a second Alto and that actually has to do with Pomona because as it turns out, my choir director was class of 1980 super alum Frank O. Binder. And he talked about Pomona any chance he got. This was 1985, 1986, et cetera. He's not too far from college himself. I didn't know that at the time, but everybody looked old to [inaudible 00:07:54]. Every chance he got, he talked about Pomona. It became a thing. He'd say Pomona College and we'd all go where the streets are paved with gold because that was what told us. And then he kept up- Mark Wood: They are, aren't they? Melissa Givens: See, see. And he kept up through the years of course. And he was just so thrilled when I told him I'd becoming here. That's how I got into music basically. Mark Wood: At what point did you realize you wanted to do this as a career and then what was the career you had in mind? Was it teaching? Was it- Melissa Givens: Well, once I embraced my inner singer, I thought, “Okay, well, people do this for a living. I guess I'll try it.” I was offered a fellowship to Rice University during my senior year, which I ridiculously asked to defer, but that turned out to be a good clinic thing too. And they let me defer it for a year. And I started my master's at Rice in 1990. And I thought, “This is really nice.” People were appreciative of my singing. I got nice feedback. I won a couple of awards and competitions and it just seemed like this was going to be the thing to do. The thing that singers do when they're finishing the end of their training, is they apply for this huge round of young artists programs or what they call apprenticeship programs or gaps, and the kind of the meccas for those auditions are on the coasts. Melissa Givens: So, you either go up to New York for a few days, if you get some auditions or you go to Chicago or to LA. For two years in December, I went to New York to try to audition for things. Got as close as a semifinalist for what is now Greater Miami Opera. I forget what it's called now, but it's in Miami. And it just wasn't happening, which is not unusual. I didn't sound anything like I do now. I was a good musician, but my voice hadn't quite gotten where it probably needed to be for an opera career. And so I thought, “Well, now what?” I decided to just get a job because one needed a job to live in Houston and did some office work for a long time. I think I worked at a school of nursing and I worked at my church and I worked at Houston Grand Opera where I was also singing in the chorus. Melissa Givens: I thought, “Well, I'm a failed singer. I am having to have a day job. This is horrible. Oh my God.” But I was singing the opera chorus of the third largest opera company in America and learn having a great, what I call post-post-graduate education, meeting all kinds of wonderful soloists and directors and people who worked in the tech department when I did my job there, which is tech secretary. And so I just generally and slowly just sort of became known as the singer in the community. I had a soloist job at one of the big Presbyterian churches in Houston and some of the opera chorus, and sung with some chamber groups and did recitals around. And it just kind of became a thing that this is what I do, I'm a singer and an office jockey, but mostly a singer. Melissa Givens: I was doing some teaching along the way. I had always sworn I would never teach because my mom was a teacher and she was really good at it, but it was stressful. And I said, “Well, I think I can take the leap and become a full-time professional musician/teacher.” And so that's what I did in 2004. And it was terrifying and wonderful. And then eventually, I guess right before then, one of our new part-time people at the church was teaching also at Houston Baptist University. And he said, “Well, we need a part-time teacher.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, you think he could do that?” I said, “Er. I have a job.” He said, “Well, we could work around your schedule. You'd have to audition.” I said, “Okay. “And the day that I ended up auditioning for this job was September 11th, 2001 at 9:00 AM. Patty Vest: Oh, no. Melissa Givens: My best friend was going to play for me. And he was not far away, but obviously not in the same house. And as I was getting dressed, the first plane had hit and I thought, “Oh, well, that's curious. Well, that's horrible. We'll just keep going. We have this thing today.” And so as we got to the church where I was working at the time, the media office was right off the stairs. And so on the way to the music suite, they were watching and the second plane had hit. And I said, “Well, do we go? What's happening? Obviously this is not an accident.” And I think they had just announced as we were driving down that it was not an accident, that they closed the airspace. And it was of course that beautiful September day. Melissa Givens: We're driving down the freeway and the traffic is thinning and there's nothing happening in the sky. We weren't even sure if this thing was still on, but we went and my now treasured, former colleague met me at the parking lot and walked us and she said, “Well, this is all a very strange time, but if you don't mind, we'd still like to go through with the interview.” I taught a little, I sang a little, I answered some questions and they later told me, once they hired me, yay, that that had been such a healing moment to hear singing in the midst of this, like now completely unprecedented unknown time. That was how I got into teaching. Patty Vest: And for our listeners we will have a piece of Melissa for some needed healing- Melissa Givens: Oh, thank you. Patty Vest: … later on after the interview. Melissa Givens: Thanks. Patty Vest: So, I look forward to that. Melissa Givens: Yay. Patty Vest: I'm imagining, that's kind of how you found your way to higher education and it shifted. Melissa Givens: That was my entry into higher education. Somewhere along the way, I got convinced to go back and get my doctorate, which I did, which was actually fun in ways. Not that I was doing it full-time while I was also teaching full-time, but it ended up being a great thing. I ended up not teaching there after about 11 years and I adjuncted a few places in Texas and I got a job in Augusta in 2016. Patty Vest: [inaudible 00:14:26] by the way. Melissa Givens: Yay, Augusta University. How about that? Patty Vest: Yeah. Melissa Givens: Tiny world with all of its many names. Patty Vest: Go, Jags. Melissa Givens: Yes. Go, Jags. Thank you to tell them about that. And so that next year, Donna Di Grazia who's of course our wonderful choir director approached me. Actually, Jeremy did. I found out later it was Donna's insistence. We tried to make a concert happen before. There were something they were going to do that needed a soloist. There was a conflict, I couldn't do it. Jeremy said, “Yeah, we're still trying to get you on campus if we can.” And so they invited me out for residency. I did a recital, which is what you'll be hearing later. Talked to some classes. I met with some students. Actually sung at UCC Claremont. Patty Vest: Church, yeah. Melissa Givens: That one. And then we did a flash mob of one of the songs with the Glee Club in the Frank Dining Hall. Patty Vest: Oh, cool. Melissa Givens: I think at this point it was Frary. I didn't know that at the time. I just knew it was a dining hall and it was really lovely. My friend, Shannon, who was playing for me, we loved the City of Claremont and the atmosphere at Pomona from the moment we set foot on campus. And we both looked at each other and said, “If we didn't have jobs, I would love to be out here.” And it turns out that Donna had heard. I sang with Conspirare, which is a professional choir and we have several albums and she had heard one of them and heard me sing one of the solos on Stephen Paulus', the road home, which is one of our bigger hits from our earlier archive. And said, “She's really great. We should probably try and get her here. We don't have a position yet, but we might, you never know.” Melissa Givens: And as it turns out my wonderful late colleague Gwendolyn Lytle did in fact start her phased retirement. And they did in fact, start a search a whole year after I had started at Augusta University. They were like, “Oh, what do I do? What do I do?” And I had a wonderful chat, fabulous. I've been so fortunate to have really great colleagues everywhere I've been. And my chair was just like, “You've got to go for that. That's a wonderful school. And I think it seems like a great fit. You should apply.” And I applied and I came back and did another round of interviews and here I am, second year. I love it. Mark Wood: So, you've told us a little bit about how frustrating it is trying to do music lessons over Zoom. Tell us what your music lessons are normally like. What are you looking for, listening for? How do you work with your students? Melissa Givens: Well, mostly I try to remind them that they are their instrument and when your instrument lies inside your body, you have to kind of approach it differently, than say an instrument that you can walk away from at any given moment. And so we do a lot of talking about being aware of your body and all of the ways, how are you standing, what do you feel like, what are you feeling, where do you feel it? There's a lot of talking about where they are in a room or in their body, what's going on in their lives, because if there's all sorts of weird stuff going on in the command center of their instrument, I'm not going to be able to get through. We do a little bit of getting stuff out in the air. I'm a huge language nerd, so I love the fact that my art requires that I deal with language, both as texts and there's actual articulatory processes. Melissa Givens: And so part of that body awareness, if you've grown up speaking English your entire life, you've never queried. How do I make this sound? Do I actually need to spread my face wide for this valve? The answer is no. How do I make the koo sound? And why does it feel so explosive? And why does it feel like it's the same place as goo? Well, because they're the same continent just when you can hold a pitch on when you can. And then you know what, mm is back there too. So, just kind of teaching all of … I love anatomy. This is where I get my frustrated doctor part comes in. Explaining to them that all of this wonder stuff that's going to come out of their mouth is actually happening in this tiny little box of cartilage and tendons and muscles, that the muscles that are actually working are smaller than a quarter, which also freaks them out. Melissa Givens: I like to treat the whole instrument as it were, and I like to pick wonderful repertoire for my students. That's hopefully age appropriate and pedagogically appropriate. And I also love learning new repertoire. I'm always ordering music and seeing what's out there. And I'm happy to dive into music I don't know. If my students, if they bring me something or if I find something out in the wild. And so we learn together and they learn hopefully how to stand and project and take ownership of the space and not apologize for what's coming on our mouths. Patty Vest: Melissa, tell us about some of your students. And you've described how your voice lessons were before, what kind of the approach do you take. You also teach a class. Tell us about some of the students that take your voice lessons. Melissa Givens: Sure. Well, I've got mostly Pomona students, but I do have students from some of the other campuses. What I love about teaching at a liberal arts college is that a lot of them come to me with never having sung a note before in their lives, which can be more challenging for me, but also more fulfilling because you have to teach also, “Oh, wait a minute. This is how I make sound. And I have to hear it first and really hear it in my brain before I can echo it out.” That process can be probably frustrating for them, but some of them will say, “Well, I just feel like I'm not making any progress.” And I say, “Okay, let's just go back to lesson day one when you couldn't match pitch, or when you couldn't tell a quarter note from a half note, or when the idea of singing in a foreign language made you almost wet yourself.” Learning to honor the progress is part of what we also do. I've got a couple of really great seniors. One got to do his recital and one didn't. I can say their names, right? Patty Vest: Yeah, of course. Mark Wood: Sure. Melissa Givens: Hey, Zach. Zach Freiman is one of my seniors who does recital in early, like I said in March. He's a double major with music and public policy. And so he's working on a thesis right now. It's due Friday. Go, Zach. He came to me from another professor. Sometimes every once in a while, students for whatever reason will find the need to look for another teacher. And so this was our first year working together and he's so focused to just, you tell him what to do and he kind of does that. It's really great, has really a love for the French language too. And so he picked out this beautiful cycle by Francis Poulenc called Banalite, which is banalities. Melissa Givens: They're all these little weird poems and one of them is about taking a smoke. And part of the job of teaching is not just teaching you how to sing, but what are the aspects of performing that you have to learn and what are the mechanics of getting to the stage and how do you start the song and how do you want to deal with the audience and what do you want the audience to feel and how do you find that in yourself? And so I like to say, “Well, you're doing a great job on notes and learning. We also have to think about what story are you telling and how do you make sure that the story that you're telling is getting across to the audience. You can think you're making a face that's coming across, but there's so many muscles in the face that you almost have to overdue without getting in the way of the actual physical function.” Melissa Givens: And it was really fulfilling is that by the time he finished his recital, he got it. He's like, “You've been telling me this all year that I have to do blah, blah, blah, but I could see the difference when I started a song.” We provide translations for vocal recitals and he was singing the French and he decided I'm just going to start this piece really quietly. I've got to single out, I've got to get their attention. And he decided to start this one piece very quietly and he did. He said, “Dr. Gee, they all just like their heads lit up. They just kind of, all of a sudden they were there. They were with me.” I said, “See, I do know a few things.” You cannot just stand there and say, you have to be a storyteller and you have to be a compelling storyteller and you have to use all the tools in your expressive storytelling toolbox. Melissa Givens: That was really exciting and I'm very proud of him. Michael, my other senior, who was going to do a great little program that included part of the Rupert leader of Gustav Mahler. Rupert is a German romantic poet. And he actually was one of our contestants in the concerto competition, Michael Elvis, who's a history major. Not all of our really good singers are music majors, which is part of the liberal arts tradition. And so his would have been lovely. It would have been this past weekend when we also would have done our Mozart and Brahms concert, which mourning just a little bit. Yeah. I've got some really lovely kids, got some wonderful first years who are just kind of figuring everything out and not really comfortable with the fact that there's not always a right answer.” There's just the answer that you have. And it's just watching them finally go, “Oh, wait a minute. That works.” Like, “Yeah, it works. Just go with it.” Mark Wood: As you were talking, we got some glimpses of how your performance career kind of interacts with your teaching career. Melissa Givens: Yes. Mark Wood: How do you balance those two and do they ever conflict or are they two sides of the same coin? Melissa Givens: I would say, yes, they are two heads of the same coin. And as a performing artist, my professional activity is to perform. Just like my writing colleagues have to make sure they're doing papers and presentations and all that, I have to make sure that I'm getting gigs and hopefully doing them on a national scale. And so I think part of it means that I'm gone sometimes. And so we'll schedule the makeup lessons either ahead of time or after the fact. And it's probably not easy when their schedules are disrupted, but they appreciate the fact that the person that they're taking voice from is an active professional. I do a lot of singing, like I said, with Conspirare, which is a professional chamber music based out of Austin. And that's who we won the Grammy with in 2015. Melissa Givens: And so that can be anywhere from a week to two weeks away. Usually if it's just a concert gig, what I would have been doing as we speak right now is heading to Oregon, not Oregon, Washington to do Considering Matthew Shepard, which is this great piece that my director wrote with [inaudible 00:25:35] University of Puget Sound. That would have just been like three or four days gone. Sometimes I judge competitions, that's usually a couple of days depending on where it sits in the week. Fortunately, I know almost all the time within like, I'll know my schedule for the year or at least for the semester, and I can let them know when those absences are and they're expected to still practice and do their work. And so I try to not do as much during the school year, but obviously sometimes that's when the concert season is. Everybody's really great about it and it's part of what I have to do. And it keeps me going and keeps fresh ideas coming into me. It works, I think for everybody. Patty Vest: You mentioned the group that you're part of Conspirare. You won the Grammy in 2015 for Best Choral Group. Can you tell us about the group and can you tell us about the Grammy experience? Melissa Givens: Sure. It's based in Austin and it started out life as a New Texas. I wasn't in it that, New Texas Music Works, I think it was what it was called. And then Craig Hella Johnson, who's the founding director decided that we needed a name that sort of described what we did, which is we breathe together. That's how he came up with the name Conspirare, which is to breathe together. And it's about 25 years old now. Been doing professional recordings since 2006, I think. Our first studio recording was done on the Clarion label. And we actually recorded it at Luke Skywalker Ranch, at Skywalker Ranch, which is an amazing spot. We didn't actually get to see Steven Spielberg, but it's full of lavender. And it was my second time being in Northern California, I think. That makes sense. Melissa Givens: And we've done some tours. We sang at the eighth International Court World Choral Festival in Copenhagen. We sang at the Poly Choral Festival in France, which included a trip to the National Cemetery and at Omaha Beach where we performed the flag lowering ceremony and sung. A stunning experience that I will never forget. We had done a rep of liturgical Russian music called the Sacred Spirit of Russia. And we got the opportunity to record it with our label, whose name just left me. Harmonia Mundi. Yes. It's great people, wonderful producers that we have there. And we recorded it in a church in Austin, which had great acoustics, but was also a downtown church. It was a little tricky to do that. And we were nominated for the Grammy in 2015, and a bunch of them went out to go. Melissa Givens: It was not our first nomination, but it was the first time we actually won. And the classical part is like the pre-ceremony. We're all just sitting there [inaudible 00:28:41] work, just hoping we're going to get it and they call our name and we'd got it and it was amazing. I guess it was a Sunday, so maybe we weren't working. I don't know. Excuse me. It was very exciting. I haven't seen the statuette yet because it was at Austin. Even though I've been there several times, I keep forgetting to ask, but as the ensemble members, we get certificates and everybody kept saying, “So, are we Grammy winners? How does that work? Is it, you have a Grammy?” I'm like, “Oh, I have a Grammy. Okay.” Since then, that's considered Matthew Shepard thing is a passion, a modern day passions and 90-minute choral work that our director wrote when Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998, it affected him very deeply. As a young gay man, he was conducting Chanticleer at that moment, which is a professional male choral group out of San Francisco. Melissa Givens: It always kind of stayed with him. He wanted to react to that in some way, some artistic way, but it never really felt like the right time. And then in 2006 or so, it was 2016, the decades we did a project of all passion music. We did the St. Matthew Passion. We did some composed passions that were just for that event. And Craig decided to just kind of debut workshop, this piece that he'd written in honor of Matthew Shepard. And it was such a beautiful effecting piece for moments where we had to kind of stop in the preparation of it. And eventually he took time to finish the whole thing and we recorded that. We've been touring it basically since about 2017-18. I think we just did our last show, what we were supposed to do at one of our last shows in Oregon in May, and that's not happening now. But it's been so well received. Melissa Givens: It's made up of several different musical genres and there's a great big rollicking gospel style chorus at the end that kind of ties up all the themes of loss and redemption and who we are as humanity. And it's a really wonderful work and it's fortunately getting a life outside of the group too. That was nominated for a Grammy, but it didn't win. Mark Wood: You've spoken about singing as a soloist and as part of a choral group. Can you tell us about how those two experiences relate? Do they enrich each other? Melissa Givens: They do. I think there's two schools of thought on singers and some people are just strictly solo musicians and others of us really crave the commonality of singing in a group. It enhances your listening skills. And when you feel like you're part of something greater than yourself, that allows you a little bit more freedom, I think to just kind of surrender to what the music is and what the composer wants. There's really no greater feeling than being in a room full of people, all dedicated to the same purpose just to breathe together and to make beautiful sounds. And you kind of forget, we kind of lost the art of societal communal singing. It's something that only choir geeks do or that you might do in school and never again. Houston hosted the, I think it was the Lutheran Musicians Association. I don't even remember what it's called, several years ago. Melissa Givens: And so at one point they put on a group, one of the groups I was singing with the Bach Society of Houston was hosting one of the events. It was like a even song kind of thing. And that room holds about 300 people and every single person in that room was a musician. When we're singing the hymns, there are 300 people singing together, loudly, lustily. Every time there's a breath mark, 300 people are breathing together. I was almost overcome because you just don't experience that very often. And it was just such a testament to the power of communal song, which I really wish we would get back to. Yeah. I don't really do anything substantively different as a solo singer. Obviously I'm the one in charge of the musical decisions. To me, it's kind of just again, two halves of the same thing. Patty Vest: Let's say you shared a few of the memorable performances that you've had as part of Conspirare. What are some of your favorite children or most memorable performances as a soloist? Melissa Givens: Goodness. Let's see. In 2000, maybe it's 2001. I think it was actually … It was 2001 November, I sang with the Houston Ballet. They toured to Moscow and we performed in the Bolshoi Theater where the fringe is taller than I am. And so even though it was in the pit just to kind of be in that super historic place singing some incredible music by [Ricard Bogner 00:33:48] was kind of spine tingling. I have been on a couple of tours with various churches. The church I sang with in Houston for 18 years, First Presbyterian Church of Houston decided to do a tour to the Holy Land to celebrate Pentecost, which is considered the birthday of the church in 2000. They said, “We're going to do the 2000th birthday at the church in the birthplace of the church.” And so they asked if I would go along to sing. Melissa Givens: I said, “Well, how would that work?” They said, “Well, we're going to all these significant places and you'll sing whatever you feel like comes to mind.” I say, “Okay.” [inaudible 00:34:30]. No pressure. We were in Mary's church, which is in Nazareth and they asked me to sing and I did Ave Maria, which is the Marion hymn of Hail Mary full of grace, blessed are you among women and again its acapella. But to sing a song that was dedicated to the person in whose church we were standing was another one of those goosebumps experiences. There's a piece by Gustav Mahler. It's actually a symphony. It's the symphony number four. And the fourth movement is a solo, a solo soprano and orchestra. And it's a text from [foreign language 00:35:10], which is a ethno musicological collection of German folk tales and folk stories. Melissa Givens: This is all about the heavenly life and how the angels would sing and which saints will bake the bread and who will chase the fish in the little river. The singing there's the most beautiful you've ever heard. And it's always been one of my favorite pieces, even just from being a student and studying it, a music history student and studying it. There's the full symphonic version, which I'm bucket list wanting to do if anybody out there is ready to make that happen. But there's a reduced timber version of that, that I've done several times with several groups and the orchestration, the way the different instruments come together to kind of just create this vision, a child's vision of heaven is just really just kind of stunning and usually little tingles at the corners of your spine. Mark Wood: You mentioned a bucket list. Is there a certain musical milestone out there that you'd still like to achieve? Melissa Givens: Well, I would love to do the Verdi Requiem and my joke is that he wrote that for eight sopranos, but only assigned it to one. And so there's a couple of parts that I think I could do really well. And there's a couple of parts that are a little bit challenging, but I think yes, before I die or stop singing I would love to sing Verdi's Requiem. And I would also love to do Orff's Carmina Burana, which are a settings of really kind of body and earthly poems from I think, ninth century hermits or something like that. And that's got a gorgeous soprano part that just kind of sales up into the stratosphere, which is again, not my greatest place I think, but I can do it when I've had wine. Patty Vest: So, it works for singing too? Melissa Givens: Exactly. Patty Vest: Also [crosstalk 00:37:02] oh, go ahead. Mark Wood: Quick follow, do you ever have any stage fright about those difficult moments or when you're caught up in it, do you just flow? Melissa Givens: You just have to go. You can't think about all the horrible things that could happen because there's just so many matters of coordination and balance that have to happen at exactly the right time and your brain has to be engaged. Sure there are disasters that happen, and I always have a healthy amount of respect for those impending disasters that I'm a little nervous before every performance. Fortunately, it was in a friendly group, but I was singing a Messiah sing along that I'd done for years and years and years. And I've been singing Rejoice Greatly, which you could probably wake me up at three in the morning and I could sing perfectly, but the orchestra played this little intro and they kept playing and the conductor kind of looked at me and I kind of looked at him and I said, “Was that me?” If you're going to have a giant disaster like that, it should be in a room full of people who love you. Mark Wood: Yes. Patty Vest: Around that theme, any advice for prospective students or students who may be thinking about music as their major are as just to explore music in general? Melissa Givens: I think it's one of the most appropriate and fulfilling majors that you could have. People say, well what are you going to do with that?” Well, it teaches you how to work with people. It teaches you how to have confidence when you have to speak in front of people. It teaches you to problem solve and linking all of the various historical aspects of music to the performance of music, it's just an opportunity for synthesized learning, non-siloed learning. And I think anybody should give it a shot. We would love to have you. A lot of people think they can't sing, but there are only a few people who truly should not sing. And I've only taught one of them and had to say, “We need to not do this, but we can start you anywhere. If you like history, if you like math, because there's a lot of intricacies of rhythm.” It's very fulfilling, instrumentally, musically. If you want to be a composer, we've we got you covered. So, come check us out. Mark Wood: So a reminder to our listeners, if you want to hear Melissa sing, stick around after we sign off. Mostly, would you tell us a little bit about what they're going to hear? Melissa Givens: Sure. This is from my 2017 recital called Chiaroscuro or Light and Dark in Art Song. And the three songs are from Mendelssohn who's one of my favorite composers and it's called the First Violet. It's a song about this guy who sees the first violet and it's all full of love. And then the violet dies and he hopes he never has to be alone again. And then a [Rage Aria 00:39:49] from Mozart, two minutes song called [foreign language 00:39:52]. The title is longer than the song, I think. Luis is very upset with her lover, who is betrayed her and she's burning his letters. And then the last one is one of my favorite little cute songs by [Hugo Wolf 00:40:07] called [foreign language 00:40:09], which means I have a lover in Pena, but then she goes on to say, "And I have someone in [Arama 00:40:16] and I have someone on [Kona 00:40:17] and [Deterbo 00:40:17] and [Pazentino 00:40:17] and where I live in [Majone Lafra 00:40:18]. And I have 10 of them in [Castiglione 00:40:25]. 22 lovers." Very, very liberated for the time. Patty Vest: Or this time. Melissa Givens: Or this time. Mark Wood: Or any time, yeah. Melissa Givens: I say go for it. Mark Wood: On that note literally, we're going to wrap this up. We've been talking with American Soprano, Melissa Givens, assistant professor of music at Pomona. Thanks, Melissa. Melissa Givens: Thank you so much. Patty Vest: Thank you. Mark Wood: It's been fun. Patty Vest: [inaudible 00:40:50] you're listening to Sagecast. Stay tuned for Melissa's recording and stay safe. And until next time.