MEDICAL ARTS

Singing With Your Heart

By Colleen Foy Sterling, MD

About a year ago, I was toiling over the paper chart of a patient in the hospital at Kaiser Santa Rosa (where paper charts have since been replaced by electronic ones). The printer whirred, and the occasional sound of the automatic door opener hissed through the otherwise quiet nurse’s station. Slowly, my mind wrapped itself around an altogether different sound, foreign to the ward. I believe it was the melody of “Cielito Lindo.” Sung by an unknown musician, the song floated through the air, adding a cheerful note to the serious tone of the work area.

I glanced up and was surprised to discover that the source was none other than Dr. John Cassidy, on call for the neurology service. I complimented him on his talent. He was enthusiastic about his new adventure, explaining that he was happily enjoying music lessons. I found his story inspirational.

“Oh, I have wanted to study voice for about 25 years, and I have toyed with actually taking lessons for about 15 to 20 years!” he recently divulged, with slightly embarrassed joy. He did sing in choir and glee clubs in high school, he explained, but “when you sing with a group, it is not the same.”

John has worked for Kaiser since 1982. He specializes in child neurology and has always been a resource to me and my colleagues, even before I came to Kaiser. When I worked at the Petaluma Health Center, he always made me feel comfortable calling for consultation regarding adult patients of mine who had been followed by him when they were children.

Six years ago, John’s life changed dramatically when his wife Madeline died of leukemia. He missed her deeply, but at a certain point he needed to start moving forward out of his grief. Serendipitously, an interior designer who was helping John redecorate his home was taking voice lessons at the time. She referred him to her teacher, Joy Willow, and John’s journey as a solo singer began.

Eventually, Joy moved out of Sonoma County, so she referred John to her original teacher, Thelma Dare Ahner. When Thelma met John, he recalls that she was “impressed with his voice instrument.” She told John that her main goal was to bring him to “sing with freedom.” She taught him to sing in the 19th-century bel canto style, which literally means “beautiful song.”

John explains that Thelma teaches people how to sing well without amplification, but at the same time to “take care of your voice.” She believes that you need to save your voice and to “sing with the whole instrument—to breathe down to your toes and not up to your nose.” She hopes that her students will learn to sing in a “connected fashion, from below the pelvic girdle (or even lower) on up.”

Learning to sing takes time. “I dedicate 45 minutes every Friday to a lesson,” says John, who will often come back to work immediately afterward. He has warned us that we may page him anytime we need him, except between 12:15 and one o’clock on Fridays, as this is sacred time.

“I am supposed to practice for 45 minutes a day,” John notes, “but I can’t say I always do this, because I am supposed to practice mezzo forte, which is too loud for some settings.” Perhaps as a result, John’s favorite place to sing is in the shower.

John feels he is a “repertoire novice,” as he has only memorized four songs. He particularly enjoys singing German lieder (art songs). Indeed, his performance of “An die Musik,” by Franz Schubert, earned him the “Best in Division V” title in a recent competition sponsored by the Redwood Empire National Association of Teachers of Singing. As John wryly observed, “I can’t compete for any further award from this group because it is for singers older than 35, and it is the last division!”

My children and I recently attended a recital by John and other singers at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa. John sang “An die Musik” and the folksong “Roving Gambler.” Both were lovely. We were seated behind Thelma, who was beaming with pride. My children sang joyfully all the way to the car: “I am a roving gambler, I gamble all around. Whenever I meet with a deck of cards, I lay my money down!”

According to John, Thelma teaches that everything in song revolves around the consonant and the vowel, the shape of the sound. She says, “You don’t just do the music, you sing the song. When you pay attention to the pronunciation, the music takes care of itself!” John adds that Thelma frequently advises him to “sing into the mask,” meaning the perinasal sinus, a powerful resonator.

I asked about John singing when he has a cold. “It hasn’t been a problem,” he answered. “One of her teaching strategies is really to approach singing as a jigsaw puzzle: a little piece here, a little piece there, and it all comes together. Singing is in a sense more like being here now. You have to be present. You can’t sing without paying full attention to it.”

John often compares singing to batting instruction, where you learn to hit one round object with another round object. You spend hours hitting the two together and learning the technical details to make your swing appear “natural.” Learning to sing with freedom is like that. Even if you are not relaxed and comfortable, you can still sing freely and well.

And how did John feel, up there on stage during his recital? “Frankly, I blanked out on adrenaline. You hope the training will take over, and you will sing with your heart, even though I was feeling my knees shaking and my mouth drying up.” In other words, it takes lots and lots of practice to sing freely!

In closing, here’s John’s advice to people who want to sing: “You shouldn’t be afraid. Teachers of singing can teach anyone to sing, unless you have a medical problem. If you can’t carry a tune, it may take longer, but they can teach you. It is really a spiritual movement.”

E-mail: colleen.foy.sterling@kp.org

Dr. Foy Sterling, a family physician at Kaiser Santa Rosa, serves on the SCMA Editorial Board.