My tattoo

Thear years ago I got my first (and only) tattoo. Whenever people see it they ask what or who it is and then I explain to them: it's adapted from a 16th century woodcut of the Renaissance period composer Josquin des Prez. I got it because I'm into his music, but even more so because I am into the music of that time.

I have been passionate about "early"music, i.e., the music of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, since the early '80s. In the fall of my freshman year at Wagner College on Staten Island, NY, I had a terrible cold. I had been in bed for a few days but I was starting to get a little better, well enough to drag myself out of bed and over to the dining hall for dinner to sate my returning appetite.

As I settled into a chair to eat a Reuben sandwich, I noticed a group of about 15 people wearing tuxedos and evening dresses standing off to one side of the room. After a few minutes, they opened music folders and their director led them in singing a couple of pieces from their upcoming concert. I had never heard anything like that before in my life. It was amazing. I had no idea who these people were, and I left the dining hall before I could find out. Later, I saw a flyer for the group's concert, and I wanted to go, but I was painfully shy in those days, and didn't know where the performing space was, so I let it go.

Later in my freshman year, I moved in with a roommate named Adam Stein who was into all kinds of stuff I knew nothing about. He had his own desktop Apple computer, he wore t-shirts with mathematical formulae on them, and he listened to English folk-rock and early music. Well, I never really got into doing anything with his computer, and while I enjoyed math in high school, I didn't have any plans to go any further with it. But I did catch the bug for English folk-rock, and for early music especially.

Once Adam discovered that I was open to listening to his music, he would play it on his stereo when I was around. Then in May, he told me he was going to the Collegium Musicum's concert. Well, as it so happened, in choir I had started dating a girl named Karen who had joined the Collegium Musicum, so I was going too. This concert of the music of the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso was an eye-opening experience. This was the same music that had enthralled me on that day in the previous fall. While listening to the few albums my roommate had of Medieval and Renaissance music was cool, this was music that I wanted to know everything about. I wanted to sing this music.

The problem was that the Collegium Musicum was for only those music students who were advanced, who could hold a part all by themselves. I.e., mostly juniors and seniors. And here I was just finishing my freshman year. Plus, I had only started learning to read music since I came to Wagner. The director of the Collegium could see my enthusiasm to join the group, so he agreed to let me in, on a probationary basis. And I agreed to take some music courses the following year to build my musical skills.

Well, the rest, to paraphrase the worn-out cliche, is my history. I went to my first concert of professional singers, the group Pomerium Musices, singing the music of Johannes Ockeghem a few months later, and once again I was blown away. Early music became the focus of my life at school, and eventually I became a music major and graduated with honors in music with the goal to make early music my lifelong focus.

Well, it hasn't worked out that way exactly, but neither have I at any time not had early music in my life. I did get a masters degree from Columbia University in musicology, but while there I soured on the idea of becoming an academic and teaching music. I had doubts about whether I was skilled enough as a performer to make a living at it, so I took the easy way out and went to work in corporate America, as a paralegal and later secretary for big New York law firms. Over time I amassed a huge library of recordings of early music, and I have sung with various amateur early music groups here in New York City, and still do so.

Starting in the mid-80s, I also developed a specialty in the field: Gregorian chant, or as I prefer to call it, plainchant. While working at my first New York City job, as a shipping and receiving clerk at an occult bookstore in 1986, I heard of a chant choir starting up. Well, I had always been told that most Renaissance music is based on chant, so I thought that if I really wanted to understand Renaissance music, I should develop a knowledge of chant as well. Once again, I had an epiphany experience. Singing chant was deep and meditative and just the right thing for me. I stayed with that group, under the direction of my friend and mentor Rembert Herbert, for about 13 years, and by the time the group disbanded in 1999, I was the group's assistant director and cantor along with Rembert.

When Rembert's group ceased to exist, I saw my opportunity to make my own way in the music world, by having my own chant choir and teaching people about chant. It hasn't worked out exactly as I envisioned it; however, I did put together a concert of chant a few years ago which we recorded and the whole project showed a lot of promise. Out of that experience came the idea of creating the Chant Project. I still have domain names reserved to start a website for the Chant Project and hopes to get it going as an ongoing performing group, but have yet to begin building it as I would like.

But recent developments are making it more likely that I will finally use my musical abilities and possibly make a living from them at long last. After 18 years working for law firms it became clear that my heart just wasn't in being a legal secretary any more. So the question arose - what then? After thinking about it, I thought, why not bring my administrative skillls that I have built up over the years to a musical or performing arts organization? Unfortunately, that is easier said than done; but I am now in the process of volunteering with some performing arts organizations with the goal to impress the right person at the right time with my abilities and then find a paying longterm position as a result.

Oh, we were talking about my tattoo, right? Well, you can see why of all the things I could've put on my body, I chose a Renaissance composer. To say that it has meaning for me doesn't come close to describing how I feel. How do I feel when I sing those ancient melodies, in concord with others making incredible pure intervals, reviving music that was created so early in the development of our Western culture? I feel alive, more than emotional, at peace, useful. I feel like I am where I am supposed to be. I am home.