2025 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars: Day 4 Blog | From Artistic Director Steven Blier

It’s been apparent that we have an unusually harmonious group this year. With a few notable exceptions, our Caramoor casts have generally enjoyed hanging out together, and they’ve supported each other with generosity. But this year it goes a bit farther. The five musicians Bénédicte and I invited seem to move as a group. They show up for breakfast at the same time. They stay in the room for the entire rehearsal—no more of those irritating moments of “So-and-so’s song is next, anyone know where he went, can someone text him?” Everyone seems interested in watching Béné and me work with their colleagues, eager to help out as needed, always ready when their song gets called. 

We worked through the whole concert in order today for the first time. On paper the playlist looked like it had the right flow, but you’re never sure until you hear it in sequence. And yes—I think all the hills and valleys are in the right place—and that is a relief. 

But even the most elegant program can only work if the cast brings the right color and weight to each number. I am happy to report that they are nailing pretty much every song, and for a program that ranges from Schumann and Fauré to Bob Dylan and Jason Robert Brown, that’s saying something. We took our time today, doing some of the pieces four times in search of their essence. It’s paradoxical: sometimes you have to rehearse something over and over again for it to finally sound fresh and spontaneous. It’s as if we’re using sandpaper on the song, scraping away until it (or is it the performer?) finally stops resisting and begins to glow from within.

The feeling in the room was intense all day, but it came to a boil when Kate Morton and I worked on “Take Me to the World,” by Stephen Sondheim. On Tuesday Kate had been delivering a lovely, if somewhat pastel rendition, and I asked if she could turn up the heat a bit at the beginning, which seemed a touch passive. Bénédicte, out in the hall, cried out, “No, a lot more heat, for the whole song!” (Our patented good cop/bad cop routine.) Kate dug in with more warmth, and the song had a beautiful new vitality. 

Something unexpected happened today: Kate really let the song move in on her—I could see that Sondheim’s lyrics had become her thoughts, her feelings—exactly what we’re aiming for. She got to the end, hit the high note, and it sounded absolutely glorious. And then she was almost unable to finish the last line. She was in tears. As we say in the theater, she “went there.” 

That was exactly when Bénédicte came back from her break, only to find a tear-stained Kate and a somewhat befuddled Steve. (“I should never go to the bathroom,” she grumbled, “I always miss the good stuff.”) I could see that Kate had broken through to something, which is almost always wonderful in rehearsal. (There are exceptions.) She tried to explain—it started with the line, “teach me how to laugh, to feel,” and climaxed two pages later with that fabulous, open-throated Eb. It was as if everything she had been going through in the last four days got channeled into that performance of “Take Me to the World.” 

“Should we leave it for today?” I said protectively. “No! Sing it again! I want to hear it!” exclaimed Bénédicte. We did, and this time it was Béné who was in tears at the end. (I was hanging on for dear life.)

“I think it’s tea-time,” I announced. As we headed out to the enclosed patio, Reed Gnepper walked with me. I commented that Jamal, born in Belarus, was amazingly conversant with Western popular music and dance moves. (He and Reed have been executing some elaborate, impromptu choreography during the long piano interlude in their duet, which we all love but which the world at large will never see.) Reed wondered if Jamal would have been equally well-versed in American culture if he had lived in Belarus 30 years earlier. We got to the table and asked him. At first he didn’t quite understand the question. But we explained it again, and he said, “Oh, no, definitely not.” He then went on to describe life in Belarus in the 1990s, when his Palestinian father and Russian mother were scrambling for food in an era of intense scarcity. He painted a vivid picture of a place overrun with graft and corruption—and alcoholism. As we were lost in our images of his parents’ lives, Zoey picked up the thread and shared some of her background. Zoey’s mother was the unwanted eighth child of a family in rural China, and was given away to be raised by strangers in a nearby farm town. But despite her own poverty and lack of education, she wanted her daughter Zoey to go to a good school, and sent her away at age 13 to go live with her brother in a bigger city. I got the feeling that it was her sister-in-law who encouraged Zoey’s love of music. Although born in a poor, agricultural area of China, Zoey managed to land a scholarship at Juilliard. (Her life, too, needs to be made into a book, to be put on the shelf next to Jamal’s memoir.)

We were just getting our bearings when Kate Morton shared some of the stories about her upbringing as a Cherokee in Oklahoma. Bénédicte then spoke about her life in Paris—Reed even had some colorful tales about his boyhood in Ohio. (Unlike Zoey’s, they did not include meager dinners of freshly killed rabbit.) Through it all, Joyce Kang (from Seoul) and I (a Jewish New Yorker) said not a word—we share a certain reticence about ourselves, and I think that our very shyness is one of the reasons we have such a deep friendship. We’re kindred spirits. 

Yesterday Jamal said to me, “People…they have no idea. They just have no idea.” I knew what he was talking about: the lives people lead, the struggles, the cultural assumptions, the challenges of the terrain, the politics, all of it remains hidden, mysterious, intense for those who exist in dire circumstances, invisible to the rest of the world. And there we were, having tea and cookies, six people from five countries, laying our souls bare, and making music. It would have been precious at any time, but in today’s climate it warmed—and broke—my heart.