The Yard Magazine

A Passport to Knowledge: Jamie Danner ’12 (part 2 of 3)

David Rockefeller International Experience Grants Program
« Read Part 1 of 3 | Read A Passport to Knowledge Intro | Part 3 fo 3 coming soon »

James Danner ’12

Hometown: New York, New York
Concentration: History and Literature
House Affiliation: Leverett
International Field of Study: German Language and Art Song
Destination: Munich, Germany, and Nice, France

Nice is as beautiful as ever. It seems as though I left Munich at just the right moment—it dropped to 13˚ C just as I left! After spending a truly wonderful weekend in London with two of my close friends from Harvard who are working there, I journeyed on to the Riviera, and boy am I happy to be here. The schedule is very flexible, but still quite intense in terms of what is expected. Every other day, I have a master class with my professor, Lorraine Nubar, which now for the second two weeks will alternate with Dalton Baldwin’s master class. On those days, I also have private coachings and lessons with Alessandro Zuppardo and Cynthia Sanner—two incredible teachers who studied with Dalton and Lorraine respectively—I owe them so much! Lorraine is one of the most incredible people, not to mention professors—I have ever met. She is a consummate artist, a performer, and so incredibly caring. She really knows how to teach to each individual and values all of our participation and ideas in master class. Dalton is, well, a musical titan. When you’ve recorded all of Poulenc, Fauré, Debussy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Schubert, Schumann, Duparc, Ravel, and countless other composers were on the list as well, you start to just get music, at an utterly fundamental level (and perhaps just a touch crazy). I have been working on Strauss lieder and Korngold (Dalton was actually the first person to ever record the Korngold songs, so it’s really amazing to get his guidance), and while they are grueling technically (and some would say I should wait about two or three decades to really sing them…), they are truly so beautiful and a joy to sing. Dalton has asked for many of Poulenc’s cycles (he is the foremost expert on Poulenc in the world, in my humble opinion), and so I have been singing a few songs from them as well.

Nice is, as I said, gorgeous. The beach is well, rocks—but the sun is glorious and the water is so wonderful! It is so great to be singing in such a beautiful place! I am also so happy to see a lot of my friends from Juilliard here—I really don’t get to see them hardly at all during the year, and they have all progressed so beautifully over the past year. Coincidentally, there is another Harvard student here in the program! John Kapusta ’09, about whom I knew quite a lot, he being in the dual degree program with the New England Conservatory (a program to which I was just accepted), a senior, and having sung John Adams’s The Wound Dresser for Adams himself (an amazing concert for which BachSoc played equally as wonderfully) in a really moving rendition—I certainly did know who he was! He was quite surprised when he found out I went to Harvard, and funnily enough, we have such a similar repertoire! Of course, our voices are very, very different—and his is much more developed (he does have a few years on me!), with a very well placed top that simply soars—rare for most baritones, especially his age. In any case, he is studying here and then journeying to Paris for the year on a Fulbright (!!!!!!!!), which is just so cool. I can only hope to do that and to study at the Conservatoire!

Being surrounded by so much music again is always a comfort, and slightly nervewracking in that adrenaline-infused performing way as ever, but things have been going quite well. I am working a lot on my breath support and getting more core and resonance into the sound so that I have those high frequencies to shoot over an orchestra in the future. (Physicists reading this, opera is a miracle—you should read about it. Sung vowels are absolutely fascinating from a biophysical perspective! Really they are!) In any case, I am floored by the fact it is nearly August! I have been gone for so long, and I really do miss home at this point. I saw a dollar the other day, and it just looked so foreign, I couldn’t process it, but I wouldn’t trade being here for the world. It’s such an amazing learning experience—it’s like you improve effortlessly in the hands of these professors who are like magicians!

Very excited for the next few weeks and for the final concert (with pictures from Nice and Munich to come very soon, I promise!)

Jamie