The Sellars method: How a master director coaches singers toward greatness
World Arts and Cultures Distinguished Professor Peter Sellars
The L.A. Times takes note of Distinguished Professor Peter Sellars' "role in the creation of several of the most important singers of our time."
"During a recent SongFest public master class, the director Peter Sellars was coaching Mishael Eusebio, a poised tenor who told Sellars to call him Mish and brought confident emotion to Aaron Copland’s arrangement of the old American song “The Boatman’s Dance.”
Sellars asked that the boatman call be a more droning refrain evoking the placid expanse of the Ohio River, and that Mish “get down” for the song’s high-spirited quickstep chorus. “Do you dance?” Sellars asked. The tenor smiled without otherwise answering.
Repeating the number, Eusebio nonchalantly threw in three or four remarkably polished tap dance steps for the chorus, causing song and singer to come spectacularly to life. Sellars yelled, “Yeeeeesss!” into his mike. Eusebio flashed that same sly smile."— Mark Swed, june 24, 2016
Read the full article at the Los Angeles Times website.