Project

Ich freue mich auf die Gelegenheit den Vorschlag, der ich hinunter aufgeschrieben habe, in Munich zu erfuellen.

I look forward to the opportunity to fulfill this proposal, that I have written below, in Munich.

 

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I have never left the country, never taken a road trip to Canada, never purchased souvenirs in Tijuana. Despite having never been outside the United States, cultural difference has figured heavily in my life. As a classical singer, I draw from my experiences coming out as queer in the American Midwest and moving to the metropolitan East Coast when creating characters, such as Goethe’s Mignon, that find themselves alienated from their communities, alone in foreign lands and singing about their search for freedom and acceptance. Soon after I moved to Boston, I found that I began to let communities in both art and reality define themselves independent of what I already knew. My portrayals of life in cultures as different as Brahman India and upper-class, 19th century France took on a life of their own, and art taught me about my own limited framework for cultural thought. By applying for the Point Foundation Munich Internship, I hope to further challenge myself by supplementing my academic study of European musical traditions with firsthand experience, stretching my understanding of cultural difference through the language, and strengthen my leadership skills among Point Scholars who choose fields other than vocational advocacy.

In Munich I plan to investigate European musical culture and professional opportunities for singers while continuing to study voice. In the past I have dedicated time in America to study German musical literature and language exclusively, and I plan on continuing to explore the intersections of art and culture, investigating the impact of regional pronunciation and poetic inflection on the musical meaning of vocal music in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. To accomplish this I would attend concerts, music festivals, and opera throughout this area. I would also solicit input from local vocal coaches on style and diction and secure a teacher through live audition upon arrival.  

In the United States, queer studies in musicology are blossoming because of such instrumental writers as Susan McClary, Ruth Solie, and Carolyn Abbate, whereas queer studies are almost absent in European musicology. Furthermore, there are a whole host of queer-related, arts advocacy organizations in the United States such as Classical Action Against AIDS, Broadway/Equity Cares, and the American Musicological Society’s Gay and Lesbian Study Group, but I have been unsuccessful in locating similar organizations in Europe. Therefore, I plan to survey the state of queer advocacy in musicology and performance as compared to the United States by researching German academic publications and making contact with active writers, academics and queer advocacy organizations.

In order to further support my musical goals, I also plan to continue intense language study through courses at the Goethe Institute- München. During the Summer of 2007, I spent seven weeks without any English at the Deutsche Hochschule für Sänger at Middlebury College. The experience was one of the best in my life, because it forced me to reevaluate my identification with labels such as lesbian, queer and femme without clichés or stereotyped vocabulary. I found myself progressively freer to take artistic risks than I had ever been, and I attribute this freedom to my newfound sense of self-definition in the German language. This summer, I intend to take this experience to the next level by challenging myself to abandon my English comfort-zone once again and commit to experience Germany in German at all times, except when absolutely necessary for health, emergency or other important safety reasons.

To ensure the completion of my goals for musical, academic and language study, I will register for language courses and attend concerts and festivals emphasizing German vocal repertoire as ensembles announce their summer seasons. Other concerts will also be included so as to establish a framework for Germanic handling of various cultural styles, such as Bel Canto and French Impressionism, but German vocal repertoire will be the primary focus. Furthermore, I plan to document my summer through a blog, logging my activities and daily tracking the progress of my study and research. This will allow me to monitor my own progress while traveling and provide you with updated documentation on the state of my project. The blog would be written in German with side-by-side English translations, so that the blog can be shared with the wider Point Foundation community.

As a Point Scholar dedicated to enhancing the diversity of voices in the Scholar community, my combined role in the Scholar community as a woman and artist would bring new dimension to the internship’s alumni, setting a precedent for other women to become involved and serving as a resource for future artist-advocates. Furthermore, my completion of this internship would provide a window into the evolving role of queer advocacy in seemingly unrelated professional fields. The majority of scholars currently work in law, medicine or vocational advocacy, but the number of scholars advocating for queer equality in other fields continues to expand. In light of this growth, we need visible leaders to set examples for advocacy in all fields, not just those historically associated with queer advocacy, and I believe that my role as an artist can play a large role in helping to transform the struggle for queer equality into a holistic movement, not limited to legal definitions and standards of medical care.

Success for me is determined by the freedom it inspires, and freeing my voice and the voices of others remains the single most important impetus for what I do. This internship can help me be more effective in my efforts, but regardless of whether I am chosen, I will continue to pursue the fulfillment of my musical, educational and professional goals, in my own work for queer equality and artistic freedom, because it is not enough for me to sing about freedom without taking steps to create freedom through song.