Hila Plitmann

My paternal grandmother, Miriam, who stayed as sharp as a missile until her last day, was born in Saloniki in Greece. Yet she was educated within a completely french system. Her first language was French and her entire life she revealed to us the magic of french art, poetry and literature and could be heard forever humming a tune while going about her life, sometime in French, sometime in Hebrew, sometimes Ladino, but always with a sort of french lilt to the hmmm-hmmm-hmmm.

Last summer I finally discovered Yael Naïm, a French-Israeli song writer that has become immensely popular, and writes some of the sweetest, most delicious chansons I’ve ever heard, and with so much ease, it hurts my teeth. One of my favorite is ‘Paris’, also riddled with it’s own hmmm-hmmm-ness.

A few weeks ago I went to Paris for the second time in my own life. The first time was when I was a child, with my father and sister, and my memories were full of the adventure you have with your father and sister, but not so much of what it actually felt like to be in that city…

This time the entire stay there was nothing short of enchantment. From the architecture and the food to the way the light hit the pavement after the rain, I found myself constantly being emotionally uplifted and filled with longing. I discovered hints of my dear, wonderful grandmother everywhere I turned, and Ms. Naïm’s tune simply refused to leave my mind:

Yes, it can be damn cold in Paris; but for me every drop of rain seems to whisper a promise, and each snowflake falls to the rhythm of a heart-beat.

What is the meaning for all this?

The milk sitting quietly, the half-put-away shoes.

I thought that you were circling further from me;

There were attempts at waking up.

A concoction of honey and wild flowers -

To heat the bones from inside.

But my soul is dreaming still, on a train, in Poland;

Closing in on grim distance, and a terror of never arriving.

Yet humans, we reach a destination;

And in that place, the farthest I believed you to be

the nearer you were advancing.

Chipping down the caked-on soot, and grime,

and making the Night hold a hope of morning.

Last night I sang the 3rd in a series of 3 concerts with Nashville Symphony. The experience was an inspiring one – the orchestra played magnificently, their conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero is a superbly sensitive and energetic leader, and the Richard Danielpour premier ‘Darkness in the Ancient Valley’ (in which the soprano joins the orchestra on the last movement) proved to be an absolutely fantastic work of music.

But the crux of my inspirational emotions was the challenge of Mahler’s 4th. There are things that I feel I do well naturally (oftentimes with a whole lot of work added on, and with many a thank you to the universe as well…), and then there is what some might call ‘breath support’.

I have not been blessed with an ability for endless phrasing. Let’s be honest, not even half-endless… I have sought many different instruction on this throughout my career, and at the end of the day I always end up in the same spot – with not enough breath (for what I think the composer is asking) and a really yucky feeling of inadequacy.

Small ribcage maybe? I spent too many years being an athlete and dancer, so that my sense of lower-abdominal relaxation is lacking? I’ve just learned it all wrong from the get-go? I give too much in the wrong places within the phrase?  It’s simply inborn body structure? I get too excited? The list goes on for what might be WRONG. What I might be DOING WRONG. And worse -  how I’m incapable of getting it RIGHT.

Add to that my immense respect and admiration for a great work such as the Mahler. And my respect and admiration for those better artists who can ‘do breathing’ so beautifully. Who can sing a sentence of music as though the entire heavens were flowing inside their lungs. And the shadows begin to loom, my brain begins spinning, and my self esteem starts plummeting…

One of the challenges that seems to be stalking me in this lifetime is finding the balance between what I think others expect of me (that can run the gamut – parents, siblings, teachers, audience members, friends, critics, dead and living composers…) and what I can actually achieve.

Even given the awareness that human beings outside myself are too busy with their own thoughts and their own lives (and, surprise surprise, actually not spending half their mental powers thinking about Hila….) still, those horrible ego-driven demons – appeasing, wanting to be liked – quarrel endlessly with my work at inner growth, self knowledge and self acceptance…

And in realizing how foolishly self involved I am lies my temporary salvation. I understand that I can never be perfect. I can let that great expectation go.  And I try to remind myself that others will see me as they see fit (or not see me at all).

And anyway, heck,  if I try to sing this or that particular melody in one breath it will sound bad. If I really, really, really try not to take a breath, and then take one because I’m on the verge of choking – it will sound bad. I’m here, and this is me (however much I might desire it to be otherwise), so I might as well take as many breaths as I need….

OK, I’m ready. So while sitting on stage, waiting my cue, in the midst of the 3rd movement and some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful music I’ve ever heard I am reminded of the words that I am about to sing:

‘Kein Musik ist ja nicht auf Erden
Die unsrer verglichen kann werden…
…Die englischen Stimmen
Ermutern die Sinnen
Daß alles für Freuden erwacht.’

(‘There is no music on earth
That can be compared to ours…
…The angelic voices rouse the senses
So that everything awakens with joy.’)

Let the angels do their job. I’ll just try to keep breathing.

Ay caramba. I just realized that the Union Chapel concert is this coming Tuesday evening and all my concert dresses are still in a crate somewhere on their way to London…

I’ve always considered showing up to sing in some torn jeans. There’s a fantasy in there somewhere. A thought that it might be liberating, and would allow me to blur the line between ordinary and extraordinary – that is, if you’re one to wear jeans on a daily basis. (And yes, yes, all those fringe contemporary folks have been doing it for years…).

There’s an athereal quality to the program on the 11th, and I’m longing to already be performing it…I’ll be singing ‘Sleep my Child’, ‘Good Night Moon’ and a new, haunting piece by the painfully creative Guy Sigsworth. I went to work with him at his studio a few weeks back and the winds were so strong I’m certain we weren’t in Kansas by the end of it…

And, of course, most of the show will be centered around Eric’s magical choral works with his London based ‘Eric Whitacre Singers’ who are simply PHENOMENAL. Hmmm. He’ll probably look all handsome as usual…And so will all those lovely singers….And the pianist….oof. I guess I need to go shopping.

Sometimes life is life. I’m walking down the street; my foot hurts; I’m carrying too many grocery bags with uneven weight between left and right; a car passes too quickly in front of me and honks; someone behind me, talking on the phone  and spitting obscenities into the air …then there are times that it all feels a little too close to being a dream. The air is so crisp and the sky so blue in the morning; the buildings around me are grandiose and impossibly majestic; I pass someone with a smile like stars.

Last night was one of those dreams. I rode down on the train from London to Cardiff to record Eric’s (Whitacre) new piece ‘Good Night Moon’ with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, for his next ablum…There is something about  journeying in trains (for me) that seems to transport (pun intended?) into the realm of magic realism. As if the movement along the earth somehow is revealing tears in the fabric of perceived time and reality. Then this music. That is so heart-achingly sweet and like good music puts a layer of meaning into words that I never felt on their own. And finally the gift of strings (and some superb engineers) leaves me with a feeling that I’d like to stay asleep for a while longer…