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Interview: Elin Manahan Thomas, Soprano
Who or what inspired you to take up singing and pursue a career in music?
I’ve been singing since I was little. I started lessons when I was six (pretty normal in Wales) and always sang in choirs. When I was fifteen I joined the Swansea Bach Choir and the conductor, John Hugh Thomas, really became my mentor. That was one turning point in my singing life. Then after I had sung at Clare College Choir for three years at uni, I went to be an au pair for a while. It had never occurred to me that I would be a singer. By total chance during that year I was asked to sing for Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his year of Bach cantatas, with the Monteverdi Choir. That’s what started my life as a professional singer and I still thank the stars for the lucky break that got me that audition.
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
Certainly John Hugh Thomas, he was my biggest inspiration when I was young, since he too had started out with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and his immense musical knowledge and empathy taught me so much. Then it’s been other singers along the way: Emma Kirkby, Rosemary Joshua, Lisa Milne, and especially my peers who’ve surged ahead with fantastic careers, like Carolyn Sampson and Lucy Crowe.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Getting the balance right. Between singing/presenting; work/family; music I know and love/new music that’s exciting but a lot to learn. It’s a constant juggling act but then, I suppose most careers are.
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Training for a Marathon String Quartet at the Cloisters
Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 (1983) lasts roughly five hours, about as long as the average time taken to run a marathon. The Calder Quartet, who will perform this exceedingly quiet behemoth in the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters on Saturday, is modeling its rehearsal schedule on the training program that the quartet’s violist, Jonathan Moerschel, follows to prepare to run marathons.
The musicians have been experimenting with a practice of making micro-adjustments to body position in order to avoid fatigue as they play the same gesture many, many, many times. Andrew Bulbrook, one of the quartet’s violinists, recently told me that the greatest challenge is going to be the fight against gravity: To play the violin quietly the bow arm must resist the pull of gravity. To relax the arm into a bow stroke produces a sound that is much too loud for most of this vast collection of miniatures that whispers to the audience.
⇒The Calder Quarter will perform Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 in the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Met Cloisters (99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan) on Saturday, November 12 from 11:30am–4:30pm.
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