In 1968, my brother and I drove to Montreal from our native New Jersey. It was a year after Expo, construction cranes were everywhere, and the whole city sparkled.
We parked by campus. While we were headed uphill toward the Mount Royal lookout, I stopped on a stairway in the park, looked behind me, and thought, “This is the most beautiful city I have ever seen.” Then I said to my brother, “I wonder if I can study music here.”
We went into an office on campus. Did McGill teach music? Boy, did it ever. I applied for admission and was accepted.
When I arrived, I auditioned for the singing faculty. Prof. Jan Simons, the noted Canadian voice teacher, accepted me with the words, “I’ll take you... I think there is a voice in there somewhere.” My classes started: music theory, music history, music dictation – music, music, music, and I was in heaven.
While I was home for the summer working a factory job after my second year, my father died suddenly. I had to leave my mother alone to put her life back together. That was very hard, but Jan Simons and his wonderful wife Scottie and their children welcomed me back. I was already part of their family.
That was also the year when I began opera studies, under Prof. Luciano della Pergola and his wife Edith. For two years I appeared in small walk-on parts and learned stage skills that sustained me during my years as a singer – stagecraft that my colleagues did not seem to know.
Luciano della Pergola inflamed my life with a love for art that has never left me. One day he fixed me with a close stare and said, “Remember that if they throw you out the door, come back in through the window!”
The business with the doors and windows didn’t exactly work out. I am now a writer. But the certitude that music can be the foundation of a glorious life has sustained me every day. And that, I owe to McGill.
Photo: Tenor Barry Lenson in a New York City production of The Impressario by Mozart a few years after graduating from McGill (credit: Joseph LoSchiavo).