Page 100 - Classical Singer magazine 2019 Fall University Issue

A Composer Improvises
Jake Heggie
business world who were never in the right place at the right time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something that you love.”
For Heggie, that meant trying to be a part of the music world, even
if he couldn’t be at the center of it. He got work on the administrative side of things, which eventually led to a job writing press reports for the San Francisco Opera where he got to know artists, conductors, administrators, and the opera world inside out. “It’s easy to get sarcastic and jaded, especially if things don’t go your way,” he says. “But the thing to remember is that people don’t like being around people who are sarcastic and jaded. And that’s when opportunities start disappearing.”
When asked to o er his advice
on how to prevent that, Heggie recommends the thoughts of singing actor André De Shields, who recently
Heggie, like many artists, went through a dark period. Su ering problems with his hands that made playing piano di cult, his professional future was uncertain.
“No one can predict the future or a career,” he says. “A career is a
combination of things. Not only
is it training, being prepared to go on, having the goods—but it’s also a certain amount of magic dust that comes your way, or doesn’t.
“And that’s true in any business. There are brilliant people in the
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100 Classical Singer | September/October 2019
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photo by Jamie Niebuhr