The Freelance Musician

     After five years at Trinity University, studying piano and voice, I spent the next several years freelancing in San Antonio and Austin, as coach, rehearsal pianist, and singer. I also went back to the Round Top Festival for four more summers, once as a piano student and three times as a voice student. (Their vocal program existed only a few years, unfortunately.) Because I wasn't allowed to matriculate at Trinity (due to my lack of a high school diploma), I had no undergraduate degree; so graduate school was not an option. I had to become a professional straight away.
     Freelancing is no bed of roses, let me tell you. In order to earn any decent money at all, you have to have as many jobs as possible, which means you have to drive to all these jobs, which takes both time and gas. I was lucky to land some of the best jobs a freelance pianist could have in the San Antonio area: rehearsal pianist for the Symphony Mastersingers (I also sang with them), vocal coach at UTSA and St. Mary's University, répétiteur for the San Antonio Festival (now defunct), Austin Lyric Opera, and the Opera Theater of San Antonio (also now defunct). ("Répétiteur" is a fancy name for operatic rehearsal pianist.) As a singer I was soprano soloist at a couple of the bigger churches, and also sang solos with the Texas Bach Society, the Mastersingers, and the San Antonio Choral Society.
     During these years, I was equally interested in being a coach and a singer. My youthful aspiration to be a concert pianist had fizzled out by this time, as I discovered I lacked the wherewithal (or discipline) to put in the necessary hours per day practicing. My laziness again reared its droopy head. At any rate, I really didn't think I had the technique to cover a wide enough repertoire. Playing opera meant playing piano reductions of the orchestration; as they are not true piano works, this means you don't have to play every single note on the page. However, this does not necessarily mean that reductions are easier to play; in fact, there are many, many operatic scores that would challenge the most gifted pianists, for the very reason that they are unpianistic. I grew to love playing opera, being a one-woman orchestra and seeing how the orchestral score supports and enhances the drama. I loved being part of a multi-faceted art form and watching it come together, facet by facet, in the rehearsal room, then seeing the final product of weeks of hard work come to glorious life on the stage. But I also wanted to be part of that art form as a singer; so I continued studying voice and doing auditions and competitions.
     One summer, I decided to audition as a singer for the San Antonio Festival. They were mounting a production of Handel's Saul, and they were looking for a Merab. I was already known to the General Director as one of their regular repetiteurs, and he was rather surprised when I showed up to audition for Merab. After the morning round of auditions was over, he took me into his office and asked, "So are you a pianist or a singer?"
     "I'd like to be both," I answered.
     "You can't do both. Either one would -- should -- take up all your time, concentration, and effort. You cannot do both and expect to succeed at either one of them. Frankly, it's a lot harder for us to find competent répétiteurs than it is to find good singers, so I'd rather you play for Saul."
     Maybe he was trying to find a gentle way of saying he didn't think much of me as a singer; but I knew he was dead right about it being hard to find competent répétiteurs, especially in the San Antonio area. So I chose to play rehearsals for Saul, which meant I would also play continuo in performances under the baton of Baroque specialist Nicholas McGegan. (More on that later.) 
     That decision pretty much squelched any real ambition I had to be a singer, and sealed my fate as an operatic répétiteur and coach.