The IU Jacobs School of Music has a long-standing, time-tested strategy of bringing the best available talents to the school. The hope is they will share their skills and worldly wisdom with the school's up-and-coming performers. This year proved no exception, when the voice faculty welcomed to its ranks three distinguished sopranos: Carol Vaness, Scharmel Schrock and Sylvia McNair. Each has already enjoyed several decades of singing and teaching, and each has had her fair share of success as well as difficulty. And now, each calls one of the country's finest academic music institutions home.
Vaness was 1st music major from her alma mater
"I love it," Carol Vaness, an acclaimed opera soprano, said of her time in Bloomington. "I love my students. I talk about them behind their backs and tell everybody how good they are."\nVaness herself had no intention of becoming a singer when she was her students' ages.\n"I went to California Polytechnic State University, which is an agricultural college," she said, "but I went for a piano-English double major. I was the first voice major to graduate from there; they had never even had a music major.\nShe said she decided to go into music because of her love for choir. \n"So I signed up for choir and here's this guy sitting there and I'm thinking, 'He's so cute,'" she said. "Now, being from Catholic girl's school, the only males I spoke to were relatives -- so here I am, 19, and I've never had a conversation with a guy, and here's this cute choir director who was gay, but what did I know?"\nHer crush on the choir director prompted her to accept his offer of weekly voice lessons. After graduating four years later, the teacher recommended Vaness continue her studies at California State University at Northridge with David Scott, an IU alumnus.\n"He told me about this guy, said he had a good opera program, got reviewed in the L.A. Times a lot. So I went to study with David Scott, and he's been my teacher for 33 years."\nIt was at Northridge that Vaness took on her first opera roles -- including Tosca, which she has since performed with none other than Luciano Pavarotti -- and her first steps toward a professional singing career. The career would span three decades and send her to opera houses, concert stages and recital halls around the world.\n"I've sung with every major tenor there is, every major bass, all the major conductors," she said.\nBut Vaness began to tire of the endless travel alone. She found the "man of her dreams" and married him in August right before moving to Bloomington. \nLater, she said she was involved in an a car accident that would when the steering locked on a rental car. \n Eventually, the car came to rest on what she described as "the only part of the highway that didn't have a drop-off of hundreds of feet."\n"Needless to say, after this experience, I went, 'You know, life is so short -- why am I running around, throwing all my things in suitcases, not enjoying every second of my life?'\n"I can still work if I want to," she said. "I could go sing, I can do my concerts in Carnegie Hall, but I'd rather go home, play with my dogs, be with my guy and cook a turkey." \nVaness had previously conducted a series of master-classes here in Bloomington and found she enjoyed both the students and the environment. So when the invitation to join the full-time faculty was extended, she was more than ready to accept.\nIn addition to her studio of graduate voice majors, Vaness has also taken charge of the Graduate Opera Workshop in which she stages and rehearses full scenes from the vast opera repertoire.\n"I'm going to keep evolving it," she said of the workshop's format. "We're going to start right away (next semester) with some very unusual and interesting repertoire, or maybe some more standard rep -- I'm not sure yet."\nVaness is leaving her options open.\n"I don't know that I'll be here forever," she said, "but I'm just enjoying it."
Schrock played host to Hurricane Katrina victims
For opera singer and director Scharmal Schrock, moving to Bloomington proved quite a shock.\n"I've not seen an autumn for 25 years," she joked, referring to her extended tenure at Southeastern Louisiana University on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Having completed her master's degree at IU in 1967, Schrock was also shocked by the many changes the school has experienced in the time since.\n"It's changed a great deal, much for the better. I was here before they had the (Musical Arts Center)," she said. \nStill, Schrock said she is thrilled to be back in Indiana.\n"It's been wonderful. I'm very motivated and stimulated by the environment here," she said. "I tell people I've found a fountain of youth."\nSchrock teaches about 15 students in a cozy studio that is just a couple of doors down from where, 40 years ago, she had her own voice lessons with the late opera singer Margaret Harshaw. \n"I have mainly graduate students," she said. "I taught primarily in an undergraduate environment at Southeastern," where she was both a voice professor and director of the opera program.\n"There were four of us on the voice faculty there, so it's quite a change to have this large faculty." With over 20 professors, IU's voice department remains one of the largest in the country.\nHer last year in Louisiana was marked by extraordinary circumstances.\n"We made it through Katrina extremely well ... I personally took on students from Tulane. I was also a counselor and advisor for evacuees," she said. "I took in several faculty members who had lost their homes, and they stayed with me for quite a while. It was an amazing thing to live through."\nWhen it came to taking a position at IU, Schrock said the job sought her out.\n"I had planned to retire, but didn't want to stop teaching," she said. "I hadn't even thought about coming back (to Bloomington), but I got a call from (voice professor Gary) Arvin asking if I would like a position here. And I said, 'Well, I'm old and I don't sing anymore,' and that didn't seem to bother them at all.\n"I was very dubious about it, but I thought, why not. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And by the time they officially offered the job, I really wanted it."\nSchrock said she had the pleasant surprise of running into some old friends and acquaintances upon her arrival.\n"I was very close to Jan Harrington," she said. Harrington is chair of the choral department. "He and I started our masters' at the same time. We met in line for some audition or test at the very beginning, and we just always sort of kept in touch."
McNair earned honorary doctorate from IU in 1998
Soprano Sylvia McNair is an alumna of the Jacobs School of Music, having received her master's degree in voice in 1983. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University in 1998.\n"I don't have to tell you," she said, "but to have your alma mater give you an honorary doctorate is really the greatest honor you can have."\nThough McNair began teaching this fall, she has worked for the school since 2001 as part of the Office of Development.\n"I've mostly been involved in helping out with fundraising, be it singing at an event (or) sitting at a dinner table."\nIt was through her work with the office that she developed a friendship with Barbara Jacobs, whose family the music school is now named after.\n"During the trip I made to Bloomington for the announcement of Jacobs' donation, I delivered a letter to (Dean) Gwyn Richards saying that I was ready to settle back in Bloomington," she said. "He had made it clear that the minute I decided to come back to Indiana, there would be a place for me."\nOnce she arrived, she said her first semester back did not go exactly as she hoped. \n"My cancer diagnosis last April turned my world upside down. It has turned out to be a bigger battle than I knew at the beginning."\nMcNair explained that she spent most of November in the hospital and had to cancel her teaching obligations for the remainder of the semester.\n"I've had these amazing colleagues who have taken on my students, though, and I can't tell you how blessed I feel right now."\nThough she has experienced an untimely interruption in her teaching, she is already looking forward to the spring semester.\n"I'll have a few more students next semester," she said, "and will be teaching a new class. The bulletin calls it 'Opera Workshop for Undergraduates,' but I'm calling it 'Not Yo Mama's Opera Workshop'! We'll be doing musical theater, cabaret, movement exercises, audition techniques, make-up sessions for the girls. I want to encourage undergraduates to be as versatile and capable as they can possibly be."\nMcNair stressed how important it is to have a back-up plan when pursuing a career in singing.\n"Having a singing career is a needle in a haystack," she said. "I can't believe I've had the 25-year singing career I've had. It was a lot of luck."\nAnd despite the challenges life has presented her, she said she remains positive.\n"I think the Jacobs School of Music is in better shape than it's ever been, and I'm very proud to be part of the team"
