Was just ruminating about how — oftentimes — my most accomplished singers have a tendency to look down on “simple songs.”
You should see the faces I get when I assign a golden moldy like “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” to a singer who can already belt everything out of WICKED and CANDIDE.
Two realities are at play here.
When we are “accomplished,” we want to sing all the stuff with vocal fireworks — super high, super low…
And when we are “accomplished,” we don’t want to spend (make that “waste”) the time practicing songs we believe are not challenging.
When we buy in to and reinforce those two realities, that’s the mindset the production staff picks up on before declaring they need to “go in a different direction’ — which, ostensibly, doesn’t include you.
Treat a simple song as if it is the most difficult song ever written.
Do that and you will discover volumes of information about the character, yourself, the show, life….
Treat a simple song as an unworthy task and you will ease yourself right out of the running for that revival of “Sound of Music.”