Page 72 - Classical Singer magazine 2019 Fall University Issue
P. 72

CDylansamsiDceDsucoraitpCtiuorntiscontinued “They think they know everything
and they don’t know anything. Maybe it’s not a good idea to put that video up of you singing. You might think it’s great, and it might not be great. You never get a second chance to make a  rst impression.
“You can audition somewhere twice, like me with Curtis, and people can hear progress. But you don’t want to make the  rst impression too early or you’ll spend time trying to get a bad taste out of somebody’s mouth— and you don’t want to worry about that. Danielle and I will try to guide that, especially with the freshmen and sophomores. They need to spend a couple of years just learning how to be the best singers they can be, instead of saying, ‘Look what I’m doing!’
“Get the idea out of your mind that you’re doing this to be famous. The notoriety and the fame needs to be a byproduct of you honing your
craft. I’ve heard this idea: ‘The best PR is to be so good that they can’t ignore you.’ It’s not ‘Let me  ood the market with as many videos as I can.’”
Today’s Curtis students will have it a bit easier than Owens did back
in the day, at least in terms of  nding practice rooms. “The Drexel Mansion is a lovely building, but the number of practice rooms was never enough,” Owens says, speaking of the historic building on the 1700 block of Locust Street. “The new facilities are making things so much more convenient
and easy. When they broke ground [on Lenfest Hall], it was around the  nancial crisis about 10 years ago and they were still able to get it done, which is quite impressive.”
The Drexel Mansion, built in 1893, is on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, while the state- of-the-art Lenfest Hall opened for the 2011 school year. The 10-story,
105,000 square-foot building includes dorms for roughly half the student body and an orchestral-sized rehearsal space that is acoustically treated
for recording optimization. Artistic sensibilities share the stage with functionality. The building boasts a large art collection including works of Frank Stella, while the dual-paned windows of Gould Rehearsal Hall overlook St. Mark’s church.
The Curtis campus is just east of Rittenhouse Square, a park planned by city founder William Penn in the 17th century in what has long been one of the toniest neighborhoods in town. (A lyric in the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes goes, “A house on Rittenhouse Square wouldn’t be so hard to take.”)
Curtis is a magnet for international talent but, like the Philadelphia Orchestra and Opera Philadelphia, it is an arts organization very much of its place. Not long after Curtis was
72 Classical Singer | September/October 2019
If music is your passion,
TCU is your school.
Spring 2020 Audition Dates
January 18 - Nordan Scholarship*
(*Prescreening Video Audition Required)
February 1 // February 8 // February 22 November 1, 2019 - Application Deadline for early
action consideration. Undergraduate scholarships and graduate assistantships available for you.
music.tcu.edu/admissions


































































































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