COURTNEE CESTA
Special to The Leader and Assistant Reverb Editor
SUNY Fredonia Professor Casey Gray teaches voice diction class in the School of Music, but is better known to many as a very active pianist — he accompanies dozens of students in the School of Music and was even featured on last week’s cover of The Leader as the rehearsal and pit pianist for this semester’s Walter Gloor Mainstage production, “RENT.” It was quite a surprise, then, to see Gray as one of the featured vocal roles in last weekend’s WNYCO performance of Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus” (“The Bat”).
The operetta was the final concert of the ensemble’s 2013-14 season, “Classic Concerts.” To kick off the performance, the orchestra executed the overture with a light tone and playful feel — Strauss’ string music is far from heavy, and his melodies in the overture intertwined with one another to create sudden shifts. As one melody came to a surprising halt, another would begin slowly at first and accelerate to a tempo that even the orchestra struggled to meet.
The humor of the ensemble’s music, though, enhanced the simplicity of the minimal stage settings and it’s amusement: a period couch, a worn-down chair and a mock wine bar, and left room for the audience’s imagination to run wild.
The orchestra finished on a simple, single-beat note before Gray snuck up on the audience as he emerged from the left side of King Concert Hall. When he sang the opening lines of the production, the audience was shocked by the unexpected sound of his voice, but also from seeing a familiar face in an unexpected place.
“[Gray] does a lot of accompanying work around campus that it almost makes him unrecognizable as a singer,” said Colin Mann, a junior vocal performance and education major who has worked with Gray on a number of vocal commitments. “But when we realized he scored a big role in the opera, his friends and colleagues were all so excited and were behind him 100 percent.”
Gray earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music: Voice from Bethany College in West Virginia and is more recently a Fredonia graduate where he earned Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance — not a single keyboard degree. It’s a shame then, that aside from teaching diction, Gray doesn’t often get to showcase his vocal talent. Gray hopes that performing with WNYCO was the perfect opportunity to open a new door and return to singing.
“If the opportunities arise, I would love to [perform more vocally],” Gray said. “I feel like me being a pianist for so long now, people have almost forgotten that I do sing. And hopefully yesterday there were enough people in the audience that were there saying, ‘oh, you can sing, that’s right.’”
Gray took the stage in the first act with a strong, clear sound that never faded. He portrayed the operetta’s opening, longing tone with lush melodies as he professed his love for Rosalita (Fredonia alumna Margaret Flanigan), a former voice student of his. The feelings, though, turned quickly to sensations of childish joy that came as characters Einstein (School of Music faculty Brent Weber) and Falke (Fredonia alumnus Makoto Winkler) devised a plan to defer Einstein’s jail sentence.
Although Gray, who portrayed a quite grandiose opera singer, was often amusingly arrogant, Adele (Amanda Conte) and Frosch (Jared Allyn Decker) provided plenty of comic relief. “Die Fledermaus” also featured current students, Steven Olick as Dr. Blind, Cody Ray Caho as Frank, Allison Deady as Prince Orlovsky, as and Stephanie Doche as Sally.
Planning for “Die Fledermaus” began almost four months ago with auditions and preparation that didn’t end until the week of the final rehearsal. As with all large productions there were emotional ups and downs — scenes came together quickly, but were just as soon stalled by illness. In the end, all turned out well. For Gray, the hardest part was being in a role that he had almost left behind.
“I’m so used to being behind the piano that it’s hard to stop myself from giving the information to the people … and I had to then take what was said to me and apply it to myself, when usually I’m the one saying the stuff that people have to apply. So that was kind of a roll reverse because it had been so long. It had been a few years so it was a little bizarre getting back into that,” said Gray.
Piano was originally a source of income for him, especially during his college years. In music school, all vocalists need a pianist to play for them and according to Gray, good, able pianists are harder to come by and are therefore in high demand.
“I graduated with a masters in vocal performance, but the work happened to be, for me at that point in my life, in accompanying. So I kind of got into that, and then I just started getting offers here and there through people looking for vocal coaches and I was like ‘well, I can do that too,’” Gray said.
So, his vocal experience didn’t go to waste after all. Since graduating, Gray has gotten into vocal coaching, where he is required to both play piano and instruct singers on technique and musicality, and has been giving private voice lessons. Luckily though, he still enjoys accompanying and takes advantage of certain perks.
“I’ve had pretty good success with vocal coaching and getting good results out of people in doing private lessons. But I also find that joy doing both sides,” Gray said. “Although I would like getting more into performing and singing again because that was my actual major, [when] accompanying for different people I get the education you can’t buy. I see all the different studio teachers and the way they interact with their students with the different problems that can arise — I get to soak in all that information.”
“Die Fledermaus” was Gray’s chance to pull all of his stored knowledge from the back of his head and use it to his advantage. Even after he graduated from Fredonia almost five years ago, Gray has attended dozens of lessons a week as an accompanist. This, he said, helped him grow even after he was done with his formal studies.
“Even from my final recital here as grad school, I see an improvement in my singing,” Gray said.
According to Gray, a vocalist’s peak age (when they are their strongest) is usually around 30 years old. At 27, Gray is nearing his full potential.
“I’m starting to get there, where my voice is starting to lock into its final resting place where it will be the easiest for me and the most powerful. It was nice to be able to hear that,” Gray said. “But overall, I really had a lot of fun.”