Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
From the heart of Manhattan,
this is Classic Talk.
This is Classic Talk with Bing and Dennis,
thank you for joining us.
Today it's our great pleasure to chat
with Jay Hunter Morris here in the studio.
Welcome Jay! Thank you very much! Happy to be here!
Jay is a tenor from Paris, Texas,
who went to school in first in Baylor University and my first question for
you, when you were back there in Baylor,
as an undergrad studying music education did you do dream of singing Siegfried at
the Metropolitan Opera?
Absolutely not, I never even heard of Siegfried! In fact it wasn't that
long ago that I had not really heard of Siegfried or... contemplated
uh... taking on this beast.
You know, I grew up in the church. My father was a
southern Baptist music minister, and you know, you know Baylor is a
is a Baptist church and I always thought that I was gonna get
involved in the music ministry, and I was uh... as a young person and even after
my time at Baylor, I moved to Nashville
and pursued gospel, country music and
but,
to talk about my time at Baylor I do remember my roommate reminded me
that there was a day that I
saw Pavarotti singing,
one of his concerts, we had little thirteen inch color T.V. and I
was so smitten
by the charisma, and by the color and power, and
uh...
it didn't head me towards opera,
but there was definitely a
light that came on and uh...
a curiosity that was born then,
but you know I had uh... I sort of had to spend a few years chasing
other things and,
you know I played a little guitar, played a little piano,
and I did some studio work in
Nasville, but
I wasn't very good at any of it.
I found a lot of things that I was mediocre at, and
you know I think there was always, if I may go back to the ministry and
and my
parents, and my father,
I had a belief instilled in me from very young age that you know, I should
pursue something great
I should try and be great. If something that is there somebody out there that
can do it,
that I can do it to, so I always sort of had this little
voice in the back of my head that said find something and be really good at it
and once I realized
in Nashville
but that I was a very good
at any of those things um...
What about
ministering?
I mean, your father is a minister and
is it calling for you?
Well it certainly was at the time,
and then there was something that the uh... is still a part of of my heart,
and my life,
uh...
I'm not involved full time, obviously, in a church anymore,
uh... but I enjoyed that it was a big part of youth,
you know what,
a friend, a young lady invited me to the opera in Dallas,
uh... several several years after Baylor,
uh... and
took me see La Traviata,
was my first professional opera, my first
real outing,
and I was smitten,
I could not believe, I remember the whole night I kept saying
are you sure they don't have a microphone?
That lady is laying on her back,
in this
three thousand-seat house,
that big orchestra, no mic, I was so fascinated,
uh... by the beauty of it
by the mastery
that uh... this singers possessed,
uh... that night I said, I want to try that,
and then
it's sort of well-documented all of you know this or not but that,
the tenor was Alfredo Kraus, as
the fates would have it
this is the late eighties,
somewhere like that I'm not sure what I think I was about twenty-four twenty
five years old,
and Mr. Krause came out, and I said
I'm Jay,
and I really love this, and
could you give me a tip, how can I find out if I have a voice
for this or not?
And he was very kind to me, very encouraging, he said you know I've got a
friend here in town
that uh... that teaches voice, and I just saw him, and I have his card right here,
he gave me his card,
a man named Tommy Hayward, he sang at the Met for
many years in the forties and fifties and
and the next day I called Mr. Hayward I setup lessons and
and that began my path
uh... towards being
right here.
So that's the turning point? Yeah, that was the turning
point for me, I met with Mr. Hayward and sang some scales and
some things for him,
sort of imitated uh... what I I felt like opera singers did. What did he say
after you had to sing for him? What was the first thing that he said?
He said there just might be a voice in there.
you know what I, I thought I want to try this,
and I was young enough and
what...
the real reason that I
uh... that are pursued it is because I felt
a real passion ignited,
and it's it's about the technique,
it's about how do these people do what they do?
It is so far removed from how we sing
as
country, or gospel, or rock and roll, you know?
I was just a
normal kid uh...
you know I sang at the Holiday Inn happy hour, and I played guitar and sang in
rock-and-roll bands and
high school choir, in church choir,
but, what they do,
and the sounds that they were able to make with their throats and their bodies
was so foreign to me that I was
I was fascinated and still am.
You know I'm...
uh... not a young man anymore
and...
You look young!
It's an illusion I assure you, I am still so excited, you know,
just about two weeks ago
I found a new,
sort of a new thing in my technique, we're all
constantly pursuing, trying to get better trying to
get more polished, trying to get
more beauty out of our throats and out of our bodies,
uh... I'm still so excited about
pursuing this art form and trying to be better.
Did you find it during a performance, or...? No in rehearsal,
that
one particular young lady that you know named Carol Issac,
who has been a coach and a friend of mine for many years
uh... she's very honest and so when she says you know, Jay, you're flat, Jay that's
not pretty
you know, I believe her.
and so therefore when I try something new, uh... it's just it was a posture thing,
a little bit of an alignment thing
sort-of freed my throat up a bit, a little less muscle,
a little more freedom,
Carol said that's it!
that's what you have to do that's, that's a pretty sound, that's a freer,
more lyric sound and that's uh...
I believe her,
you know because she tells me the truth when it's not good so
um...
you know it has begun a process.
It got a little better the next day, it got a little bit better the next day,
you know some of the
uh... some of the singing I did for the opening night of Siegfried
I feel like it was best I've ever done.
It's uh... it's exciting, it's thrilling, you know not all of it,
there's a handful of notes that I'd sure like to take back in
and try again. Do you think, in this profession
either you have it, or you don't? Absolutely not!
Who told you that? I am just saying... That's nonsense, that's nonsense!
I'll tell you, listen,
here's the thing
there is a multitude of young singers out there
that are all really good,
you know,
to step back just a little bit,
I went to Baylor, and then I went on to study with Mr. Hayward in Dallas
and I got
a masters degree, and
you know,
the phrase in my head back then, the terminology was
I'm just gonna put my feet in the water
and see if somebody bites,
I'm gonna see if I can get one job
and uh... and one person that believes in me and thinks I can do this
and I found a few. I sang in the
chorus at the Dallas Opera
when I was still doing my masters degree there at SMU,
and Jonathan Pelle at the opera got me
an audition for the apprentice program in Santa Fe
and I got in there,
you know,
I got that one champion there and then I met Marlena Moss at the Julliard opera
center,
she got me in there and I spent two years here studying at Juilliard,
and that's where I'm going to your question.
Everybody was talented,
everybody was good,
uh... and you know there were
thirty or forty
tenors while I was at JOC that were
outstanding,
really great singers,
um...
so it could have been any one of them,
it could have been any of us
that got the big break,
that had the champion
that had somebody that believed in them. This is what I said, either you have
it or you don't,
okay maybe or of these thirty, forty people
some people can make it, and some won't,
and there has to be something there. I'll tell you what I think it is,
I think it's the practice room.
you know 'cause everybody was good, everybody was talented, naturally gifted
and for me, I think the reason I'm here today and not
doing something else is because
I really, I really like trying to figure this out and I've practiced
hard and I found good teachers
and good coaches
that fed me that guided me
and uh... gave me a lot of great advice along the way
and I also had this, I have enjoyed over my
twenty-three years in this business, if you can imagine,
I've enjoyed an enormous bucket of good luck. How long did you stay
with the coach
back home?
Uh... yeah I don't have it...
you know for for those two years that I've was with Mr. Hayward, for
those two years
at SMU while I was getting my
masters degree and then I went to Juilliard opera center I studied with
Marlena for
several years and you know I think I have had great fortune.
Can I tell you a little story?
um... I was singing,
you know what I think for all us, tenors anyway, you know what I shouldn't
speak for all of us,
for me
it all fell apart
uh... somewhere in my early thirties, you know you get away with it, you get a few
jobs grown on potential, and you might be good someday,
but there comes a point where you have to start
sing like a grownup,
you gotta start singing like uh... you know like the big boys do,
and during that time where it all sort of fell apart for me I was in Toronto, and I
heard
Ben Hefner sing in concert
he was amazing,
the voice was so beautiful so free
uh... I went back to him
after the show and I said, Ben,
my name's Jay and I am so smitten with your singing and
I'm looking for some guidance and and maybe
uh...
a teacher, and coaches, can you tell me
who teaches you, he said
this fella' standing right here
Bill and Dixie Neil, his teachers
lived there in Toronto, and
and introduced myself and I said can
could I maybe come and spend a little time with you,
they brought me into the fold, into the family, and I have been studying with Bill
and Dixie ever since then.
There's where the great fortune lies,
you know he has been such an amazing fit for me
because he always knows what I have to work on next.
No matter
how well I feel like I've done, and I am doing,
he says, always, okay...
now we've got to work on this, now you've got to do this,
so you know it's been a great ride and without, I think without the
passion
for the practice room
without the drive to figure this out
um... and without that bucket
of good fortune, you know it will be somebody sitting here talking to you.
Was there it was there ever a time
doing all those years where you were
ready to give it up think I've worked hard at this but it's not happening?
Only about a thousand times! Absolutely!
And it was not long ago,
you know what,
unless you're one of the
the few
you know I've I've got friends that have been on top for
a lot of years because they are
unusually, almost supernaturally, gifted singers.
I think that's probably maybe one or two percent of us that work in
this business. The rest of us we just have to work really hard and...
and we have to be very resilient.
You know it was just a few years ago that
I sort of fell between the cracks for a while.
I'm fond of saying that my phone was learning not to ring.
What did you do
during that period of time?
Well,
you know,
I lived at home with my momma for a while,
you know one of those valleys, if you will ah...
challenging periods was at the time that I turned forty years old
and I was...
I didn't have any jobs singing,
didn't really have a manager at the time
I was between places to live, I spent three years sort of
hopping around with friends and
uh... spent some time at home in Paris, Texas,
passing out towels
at the gym,
and practicing. It has to be hard for your mom
to see you suffering. Yeah,
it was, you know, alone
it is for all of my family,
they want the best for me and I had a lot of good
had a lot of good years, you know, over the last twenty years
a lot of great mountain tops,
it's a lot of great breaks,
and then you know, things sort of fall off for a while,
but I kept the faith,
and I kept belief in that if I...
the important thing
is that I sing well,
if I sing well,
then I'll believe I'm probably gonna get jobs,
uh... if I don't then I probably am not going to.
So that kept me in the practice room,
it kept me trying to figure this out, and it
kept me hopeful
that if I just stuck with it
I would get a break.
I want to know about that Friday afternoon in October of
2011,
when Peter Gail looked you in the eyes and said, can you do this?
What did you think?
Yeah,
uh... I thought yes I can do this, absolutely,
without a doubt, I can do this, I can do this
you know, it all comes down to preparation,
and talking about those good breaks,
I was in
uh... a sort of a challenging period of my career
in 2007, 2008,
I didn't have many job singing leading roles,
and Spate Jenkins, in
Seattle,
said to me
I will give you the job, I want you to understudy Siegfried.
And I said,
are you crazy?
I don't want to...
he said just have a look at it, so I look at it, and I said are you crazy!
I could never sing this,
I could never learn this,
um...
but you know what,
we had a baby on the way,
and I didn't have uh... uh... any other options.
and so my wife and I looked at it, we thought about it and
weighted all of the possibilities and there weren't any others, so I said yes
sir, Mr. Jenkins, thank you very much I would love to
to be your understudy Siegfried,
so I started studying it,
uh...
I just almost went crazy.
I almost passed out about one hundred times, I thought I am never gonna learn
all these words,
I'm never going to learn this complicated music... Was that your first Wagnerian role?
No, it wasn't my first.
I had sung Erich several times, there in Seattle,
I think thats when
he believed,
uh... I had also sung in Die Minnesinger. That's quite a few words too.
That was a long song too, it sure was, I sang that in San Fransisco
actually you know what Spate flew to Frankfurt and heard me sing it there
and that was another
reason he thought I I would be a good Siegfried someday.
So I took it on, I learned it,
and to answer to your question
I got to understudy
Stig Anderson
who is a pro, who has done it so many times and
and I watched and I learned there and I sat in that auditorium and I listened to him
picked his brain, talked to him about it and
I started understanding how the role works, how it fit together,
and then I got hired to be the understudy in Los Angeles,
and I want to Los Angeles and I got to understudy John Truleven and
he's another pro that's done it so well for a lot of years, and I sat out there and I listened,
I imagined
and I'd visualize what I'd do when it's my turn, what am I going to bring to
this role, how am I gonna
negotiate this really hard singing, and this music, and acting...
Stop right there, we have a clip speaking of this very role from the
first act of Siegfried, it's a very short clip,
so let's take a listen, Siegfried, first act from the Met's production.
There is much, much more to it,
Oh Lord, that made me break out in a sweat!
You know how hard that is? Is the first act of Siegfried more difficult
than any act you have ever sung? Oh, you better believe it!
It's probably the most difficult act that anybody's ever sung, that's certainly how it feels.
It's just, you know there's a lot of high notes,
and there's a lot of orchestra down there. What does feel like at the end of the
first act, and you see, oh God, I have two more acts to go?
Well I feel like at least for for now uh... the hardest part's over with.
I feel that way until we start the love duet in the third act, then I think oh gosh, maybe the hardest part is right now.
You know what,
so much of this game is mental,
you know that
uh...
it's a really, very intense mental and emotional
and maybe even spiritual battle, I certainly pray a lot during that show,
um...
but I just go in and collapse,
after that first act
it's so exhausting,
into the
marrow of my bones.
You know 'cause
the intensity of being on stage
at the Met
in that role
it's massive, so I go back, and I collapse,
uh... for half an hour, and I eat a lot of food, get some nourishment,
and uh... say a few prayers, and then I get up and you know what,
I love the second act,
it's sort of uh... you know where is the the first act is largely about...
Forging the sword... the second act you are in the forest, how nice..
Yeah, you know
the first act is, to some degree,
I fight it, but to some degree it's about power, crafted, I have to be strong
uh... the second act I get to try and sing pretty,
and really focus and concentrate on trying to sing beautifully and
that's such a relief
after forging that sword.
Do you feel like
singing Wagner,
oftentimes the voice is a little bit darker?
And yours...?
I'm surprised to hear that.
First of all you know, it always makes me nervous to listen to myself
sing,
I start making a very long list of mental notes, of things I wanna do
differently
but in truth
I can't do a whole lot better than that, you know? It's beautiful.
This is just who I am, I'm not gonna sound
like
Placido or Luciano, it's just me and I have to go out there and I have to do my
best uh... every time the orchestra starts playing,
so that's why I focus on,
um...
I'll tell you that I could not have done this
five years ago
I don't think,
for exactly what you just said
there is a color there, there is a darkness
no, I don't want to say darkness,
there is a warmth, there is a strength and a color that only age gives, I think.
You can try and impose it on the throat
when you're younger but uh... there will be tears,
if you do I think, it doesn't work for a long, I've tried.
That's where you get hurt? That's where it gets dangerous.
So for me,
I've been fond of saying over the last couple years that uh...
it's as if there's a God
and he cares for me, because all of this
timing and the way everything has worked out for me is quite remarkable,
you see if any one piece the puzzle had not
uh... fit together just right
it might not have have workout so well for me so
you know what I spent a lot of time counting my blessings that I am, on this day, I'm
at this point in my
practice
career
with my scales ,with my
vocalism, with where the color of my voice is,
and uh... I just, I get
to go out there
and do my best and try to be the best me that I can.
What is it
to sing in the Met?
It's massive.
It is such a
privilege
I looked on from the outside
for the great majority
of my career, for over twenty years,
listening to my favorite singers and seeing what they do,
and listening to that orchestra, and seeing these productions,
you know you dream of
getting up there
and singing the songs with with an orchestra like that,
all of a sudden,
after that one conversation on that one day
on that Friday afternoon when everything changed, the next day I'm standing next
to Bryn Terfel, I'm singing with Bryn, and with Debbie,
you know, look, that was over a year ago and and I've done performances with
them,
since, and
it is
is no less exciting. We have to take a break this has gone so quickly,
we'll be back. This is Classic Talk with Bing and Dennis,
speaking here with Jay Hunter Morris, we'll be right back.