October 14, 2025 • 40 mins
Whether in the studio, on stage or in a collaboration, soprano Clara Rottsolk brings joy to her work. Lauded by The New York Times for her “clear, appealing voice and expressive conviction,” she’s a sought-after performer on several continents. As Bach Talk host Ron Klemm and The Bach Society’s Assistant Executive Director Danielle Feinstein learned, perhaps Clara’s greatest joy comes from sharing her artistry and passing along a legacy of excellence.
In this episode, she reflects on her upbringing as the child of church musicians and the lessons that help her stay grounded in an unpredictable career, from surprise debuts to redefining success on her own terms.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Bach Talk.
On one hand, I want every one of my singers to know how the thing works, so they can feel empowered by information.
For me, that's one of the really fun things about teaching, is figuring out the way into the human, where we're always encouraging folks to be equipped.
And then here's the other big piece of this, to make their expression heard.
(00:26):
Then I feel like they can make music for the rest of their lives, and keep finding other stories to tell, and keep finding other ways to tell those stories.
That's what's important to me.
That is another thing that gives me great joy, making this kind of music with a community that cares so deeply, and gives so much of themselves to it.
(00:46):
It's a really special thing, and I'm very grateful to be here.
(01:07):
That's soprano Clara Rottsolk, along with violinist Lenora Anopp, and the Laudamus Te from Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor.
It was a surprise appearance by Clara with The Bach Society of Saint Louis in 2022.
You'll hear why in just a moment.
(01:28):
And from her comments, you can already tell, Clara is passionate about teaching, and about her students, preparing them not just for the performing arts, but for life itself.
Hello, and welcome to Bach Talk.
(01:51):
I'm Ron Klemm, lauded by the New York Times for her clear, appealing voice, and expressive conviction.
Clara Rottsolk is a brilliant and accomplished concert artist.
Her solo appearances have taken her across the United States, the Middle East, Japan, and South America.
(02:11):
As you've heard before on this podcast, The Bach Society of Saint Louis presents Bach's B minor Mass frequently.
This past spring, they presented it again, and again Clara was the soprano soloist.
Bach Society Assistant Executive Director Danielle Feinstein and I sat down with Clara in the Versailles room at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac to talk about it, but this time was nothing like the last.
(02:41):
May of 2022, and it's spring, and singers are busy, and you're having a busy time, right Clara?
I, yeah.
And do you remember where you were?
I was in New York City.
You're in New York City, doing what?
I was working on a Schubert program with Fortepiano and a period clarinetist.
(03:05):
And the phone rings, and it's our Executive Director Melissa Payton.
And what does Melissa say?
She says, our soprano has COVID and is not going to be able to sing B minor Mass this weekend, and I believe it was a Friday, and she said, can you be here tomorrow for our dress rehearsal?
And I said, I'm sorry, I can't be here tomorrow for your dress rehearsal.
(03:28):
I have a concert in New York on Saturday afternoon.
But I said, I can be there Saturday night and sing the concert on Sunday, if that works for you all.
But you know, by all means, find someone who can do your dress rehearsal.
About an hour later, I got a call back and she said, nope, we want you.
So yeah, so I finished my concert in New York on Saturday afternoon and flew down to St. Louis on Saturday night and worked with a couple of the singers in a piano rehearsal on Sunday morning and met the maestro, shook hands and walked on stage.
(04:03):
And saved the day.
Well, I mean, B minor is something I've been singing for close to 20 years.
It's something that's always in your system.
Once you have Bach in your system, it stays.
First of all, obviously your reputation preceded you, so there was no problem there.
But you also, as a singer, have a routine.
(04:26):
You have a plan.
And you probably were looking forward to Sunday, oh, day off.
I can just put my feet up and relax.
But when you come into a situation like this and you're completely thrown off of your routine, what kicks in?
What do you do?
How do you handle it mentally?
(04:48):
Well, I joke that as the child of two church musicians, I am always expecting the unexpected.
There are always surprises.
There are always various crises when you're growing up in church music.
So on one hand, I think I'm pretty used to things just going sideways and you fix it and you do your best.
(05:09):
And actually, that's one of the liberating things about being a last-minute person is that you get to really just do your best and everyone's just grateful you're standing there.
And so in a way, it can be liberating to just say, okay, we're going to make the music go first.
And it doesn't matter.
I didn't have control over making sure my morning routine was perfect.
(05:31):
I didn't have control over what dress was in my suitcase.
I didn't have control over the fact that I did not have my score.
Melissa handed me a score.
So I didn't have any of my usual markings or any of my things, but again, it's music.
You hopefully know really well.
And if you don't, you're learning it on the airplane, which I have also done.
And I think in a way for me, it means that all of the little bits of you that like to try to control your routine, try to control all the variables, you just have to say, ain't going to happen.
(06:01):
So you just give over and try to stay focused on what matters, which is making each breath count, making every phrase matter, and hopefully comes out into a performance that people are happy to hear.
Where did you learn that lesson?
At home, at church, or on the plane?
(06:21):
I mean, because not everybody can move that fast to come to that point.
I think it's a life lesson.
I think it's a survival tactic.
This business is potentially unrelenting and potentially unforgiving and figuring out how to negotiate the practical side of it and keep the music alive.
(06:52):
I made a deal with myself when I got into, when I decided that I was going to go to music school and I was going to try to do this for a living, I made a deal with myself that if it ever ruined the music making for me, it wasn't worth it.
Because it's the best way I know how to tap into my humanness.
It's the best way I know how to communicate with other people.
(07:12):
And I never wanted to lose that.
So I think on one hand,
and then also when one is a young person in the business, and one is constantly putting
oneself out there for everyone else's opinions to come your way, and judgments to come your way,
and opportunities, and you're asking time and time again for their approval or their patronage or
(07:36):
whatever, it's potentially very unmooring if you don't have some sense of what your worth is and
why you're doing what you're doing.
So I think for me, it was largely a survival mechanism.
How do I survive this rat race of auditions and rejections?
And oh, I have a pantheon of massive amounts of rejections, or confusing feedback and still feel like you have a kernel of yourself because you have to, in order to get up and share something with humans, you have to have some sense of what you have to share.
(08:07):
So I think for me, that was a big journey in my education time and in my early professional life.
And it's something we're always retooling.
I get to a point where I sometimes feel like it's just a job, and then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Now I'm not able to do what I actually mean to do in it.
I never want it to feel perfunctory or functional.
(08:28):
I always want it to feel expressive and important and vital.
So it's a constant evolution, but I think really it was when I was learning how to negotiate all of that kind of gauntlet of early professionalhood that I feel like that's where a lot of it came.
At least that's where I figured out what center I'm trying to work towards.
(08:50):
Was there ever a time where singing professionally started to feel not so worthwhile?
Or have you been pretty fortunate that you are just forever leaning into that?
I'd say I had a pretty big crisis moment.
I mean, most of us were trained in my day to do opera.
(09:13):
That's what the school was for.
That was the professional track.
That's what you did.
And so it's funny because I always had the side hustles.
I was always singing in professional choirs.
I had a church job.
I had a synagogue job.
I was doing lots of pick-up pro-choral work to support my audition habit and teaching as well.
(09:40):
But there was a very clear in my head one weekend where I was for the second time in the regional round of the Metropolitan Opera Competition and also in the final round of a Seattle Opera Young Artists Program audition process.
I thought I sang really well all weekend and I just got the most mystifying feedback from everyone.
(10:06):
And after that I was so unmoored and so disheartened that I was like, you know what?
I quit.
I quit auditioning.
And how old were you?
I was probably 28, 27.
Yeah.
And I was just like, what if I just practice for the work I'm actually getting, which is all this pro-choral work and some chamber music work and lots of early stuff because that's just sort of what found me and actually practice for that stuff and actually focus my energy in that direction.
(10:38):
And I'll tell you what, somehow the universe conspired because pretty much then ever since I have been the person, like one of my big breaks was being at the Carmel Bach Festival in the pro choir and the soprano got sick.
And who do they call?
They call me because I'm the idiot who will get up there and sight read in public.
(10:59):
So, and that's turned into, you know, now in these last few seasons, I've been the primary soloist of the Bach Festival.
And that's, so I think a lot of it has been actually more gratifying because then it's about relationship building and it's about singing the repertoire that speaks to you and really getting to do lots of chamber music and lots of the things that I think are where more of my superpowers and the things I care about musically come together.
(11:26):
That's soprano Clara Rottsolk with The Bach Society's Danielle Feinstein.
I'm Ron Klemm and this is Bach Talk.
You gave us a hint of some things about your beginnings.
Tell us about your earliest recollection of music in the home and about some of those early aspects of your musical upbringing.
(11:52):
Wow.
I'm not sure I even have a conscious memory of that.
I mean, there are photos of me playing the piano in diapers and I mean, my mother, she would, she'll blush to hear that I call her a singer.
She was a singer who became a conductor and an educator.
(12:14):
And my father was an organist and with some musicological streaks.
And so it was just always the thing in the house.
Like I don't remember learning to read music.
I don't remember, like it was just always there.
My sister and I used to give like little cabaret performances for my parents' dinner parties.
(12:34):
So I think there were probably some surreptitious like home videos of me singing.
I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair at age five.
There's money in commercial gigs, by the way.
Well, I mean, oh yeah.
And my sister and I had a record of the Humperdinck Hansel and Gretel that we used to do a marionette show to the whole thing.
(12:57):
No one ever sat through it.
I would die to see that.
Yeah.
And my sister is four years older.
So like a typical younger child, I was always chasing her.
So I actually really couldn't tell you what my first memory is, but there was always music.
I mean, I ruined Palm Sunday by being born to the organist and the cantor.
(13:20):
I believe they did Palm Sunday with bagpipes.
Well, I'm thinking about how that might work, but now maybe we shouldn't go there.
I mean, one of my mom's other favorite stories to tell is that they realized they couldn't have me as an infant in church anymore because the organ was in the balcony and my mom would canter from up front and I would apparently respond to everything she's saying from up front.
(13:49):
So, I mean, and this is still nonverbal in a crib.
So I think in some ways, like it's just how it's just, it was in the water at home and it's just what we did.
And as long as I can remember, my sister and I were the ringers in my dad's church choir.
At some point, a light went off and it was, oh, I can do this.
(14:13):
When did that happen?
I was in my, I can't remember if it was my junior or my senior year of high school, and I was actually a very serious flute player at the time.
And I was still in the children's chorus for the Seattle Opera, and it was a production of Turandot.
And Cynthia Haymon was singing Liù and Jane Eaglen was singing Turandot.
(14:39):
And I just remember sitting in the wings during that production and being so deeply overwhelmed by how beautiful everything was and not feeling like I could choose if I wanted to be on the stage or in the pit.
And so it was at that moment I was like, okay, I have to really try to do this, to see what it can be. So I actually applied for music school as a double performance major, which
(15:04):
Instrumental and vocal?
As a flute player and as a singer.
Yeah.
Was there a specific role or piece of music that made you decide, okay, singing is the way to go?
No.
So I should go get a flute and let you play?
(15:26):
No, I have not played in a while.
No, I actually injured my hand.
I crashed my bike.
Really?
My sophomore year of college.
And it's not actually that I can't play, but it took me out for a couple of months of not being able to hold the flute for very long.
And so by the time I recovered, it was going to take me so much longer to finish the degree to get in all the rotations in orchestra and all of the things I had to do for both degrees that that was not practical.
(15:54):
And so basically between really being miserable playing orchestral excerpts in the practice room by myself for five hours a day and really, really enjoying getting into more of how text and music interplay and really getting more into languages and those kinds of things that, I mean, I wept through the first orchestra concert I didn't play in.
(16:17):
It was very deeply emotional, but it also, it was definitely the right choice for me personally.
It's just, I think, if I had known then what would have been possible in chamber music and other sorts of things.
I mean, I was in an orchestral training program.
That's what we were doing.
So maybe things might have been different and I would have kept professional things open on both sides more.
(16:41):
But even, I mean, I played right through graduate school.
Yeah, but definitely singing was my main.
But it sounds like that was a moment of closure.
Oh, it was definitely, okay, singing is going to take the front seat now and we're going to see how that feels.
And actually it felt really great.
It was handy when I went to Westminster Choir College for my master's where you had 400 singers on one city block, basically, and you were very popular for the thing you did that wasn't singing.
(17:09):
So actually like lots of my singing breaks happened because I was sitting there playing in the orchestra for the Bach Cantatas class or for a summer Bach week or whatever.
And, oh, hey, can you hop up and do these things?
Sure.
Why not?
Yeah.
So that's my funny life sideways.
Things tend to happen sideways.
You grew up in the Northwest?
(17:30):
I did.
I grew up in Seattle.
Okay.
And so you went to high school there.
And where'd you go to college?
I went to Rice University.
Okay.
Uh-huh.
Who discovered Clara Rottsolk?
Who said, oh, we need this person.
Who are your earliest mentors?
Oh, wow.
On the pedagogical side, the voices I still have in my head are actually my childhood flute teacher who taught me a huge amount of what I know about music and how to practice and how to make meaningful change in your habits.
(18:07):
I would say when I was in college, that actually, that title goes to Dr. Brady Knapp, who actually harassed me into joining his church choir.
He called my college voicemail like every three hours until my roommates were like, you have to call him back.
And I was like, I don't want a church job.
(18:28):
Anyway, but he was a doctoral student at Rice when I was there, and he was teaching the pedagogy class.
And he was directing music at an Episcopal church across the street from campus.
And he was an incredible pedagogue and musical mentor.
And he was the first one to say, you know, you're really good at singing this early stuff.
And let me help you negotiate doing this in a way that's going to be healthy and your voice teacher's not going to kill you about.
(18:54):
And my undergraduate voice teacher was an incredible musician, an incredible musical actor, and an incredible interpreter, but he was not a technician.
And so Brady really, really helped me start to sort out some of the things I needed to sort out technically.
Then I did my master's degree with Sharon Sweet.
(19:15):
She was deeply, deeply important to me.
Hey, Sharon, you're amazing.
In what ways?
Well, she was the first one to sit me down and be like, you need to stop mimicking anybody else and figure out what you are.
Did you sense you were doing that?
I think no, but I do think I had real clear expectations in my brain of what I thought certain kinds of singing or certain kinds of repertoire should sound like.
(19:42):
And I remember very vividly this lesson where she like got her finger right up in my face and was like, you will never be as good at being Elly Ameling as Elly Ameling is at being Elly Ameling.
But she said, but no one will be as good at being you as you are.
We just have to figure out what that is.
(20:04):
Interesting.
Interesting that she caught that in you.
She really is such a deep empath.
And she really wants you to connect fully to what your instrument can do and explore that fully.
And that was huge for me.
And then as sort of my life took 16 other turns, I found Sanford Sylvan when I was at Carmel.
(20:30):
And, you know, Sharon, when I stopped pursuing opera, Sharon was not able to support me in that.
So Sandy was huge in sort of being my guiding light through my 20s and into my 30s, just being that touchstone of person.
Professionally, huge, huge, huge, huge shout out has to go to Andrew Megill, who was another person who, I mean, he found me my first day at Westminster and was like, hey, so do you want to be in my choir?
(21:02):
And I've been making music with him ever since.
The answer is always yes.
Well, it was not my intention when I got to grad school, but he got me.
He's like, just come to one rehearsal and see how it goes.
And I was hooked.
So no, a lot, a lot goes to Andrew Megill and the folks I met through him.
And it's so much just relationship building.
I don't think there was one conductor who pulled me out of oblivion or I mean, Andrew Megill is as close as they get, actually.
(21:30):
But it's so much about, yeah, making the relationships with the people you want to make music with, being as fully equipped a musician as you can be.
And then, yeah, hopefully being a good citizen.
What was the transition post-school like for you in terms of performing?
Were you able to just transition into performing regularly?
(21:53):
Was there a gap?
What did that look like?
Now, why are you laughing?
No, I'm laughing because I made my professional Baroque orchestra debut as a countertenor.
What?
I'm not kidding when I say my life has been hopping in.
When I was in my second year of my master's degree, the student Baroque ensemble that Andrew Megill was conducting was teaming up with Andrew's professional ensemble, Fuma Sacra, to do a concert with Tempesta di Mare.
(22:22):
And this was the spring of my second year of my master's.
And the night before we started rehearsals with the orchestra, we got a call saying hey can the folks in the choir cover the countertenor solos in this Purcell ode and this Blow ode.
And Andy was like, you're the only one that can read this.
(22:43):
Can you just pretend for the week and just don't say anything?
Don't tell anyone you're a soprano.
Just do the thing.
And I mean, he knew I could pull it off.
And a lot of times I sang alto in choir because I could.
And anyway, so that was my second year of my master's.
Does Jay Carter know about this?
Oh, definitely.
Oh, OK.
(23:04):
All right.
Just want to make sure.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry I interrupted you.
No.
So in some ways, like, I mean, I never felt like it was like suddenly I was the professional.
I felt like I was at one time at the same time doing some of these kinds of things where you're in the ensemble and you do the step out solos while also trying to be an opera singer and doing some young artist programs.
(23:27):
And I did some stuff at Spoleto, but I sort of stepped away from pursuing that hardcore when I was, yeah, when basically I burnt out on auditions.
It was really sucking my will to live and the joy out of music making, at which point you just can't like if you don't know what it is you have to offer because you feel like what people are receiving is not.
(23:51):
Yeah.
If people are telling you you are something and those things that they are telling you are so wildly different.
It's very unmooring.
Well, we could talk about this for a long time, but I'm very curious whether you whether you did the self-analysis and you said, I'm not having any fun anymore.
There's no joy in my life doing this.
Or if someone recognized it in you and and said, you got to you got to take a break here.
(24:16):
I mean, how did this all happen?
No, really, I finished that weekend and I was like, screw this.
I'm out like I'm not auditioning anymore.
I'm happy teaching.
I was teaching at The Lawrenceville School and I had a handful of students at the at Swarthmore College.
And, you know, that was enough to like pay my rent and feel stable.
And I was like, I'm just going to regroup and see what kind of music making with what kind of people I want to be making music with and see how that goes.
(24:41):
And that was really pretty restorative in lots of ways.
So, yeah, no, it was definitely me just throwing a tantrum and being enough.
You don't throw tantrums anymore.
I mean, not in public.
You have to vent sometime.
(25:02):
That's Soprano Clara Rottsolk and with The Bach Society's Danielle Feinstein, who apparently is sympathizing with her.
This is Ron Klemm and you're listening to Bach Talk.
(25:30):
So, Clara, you mentioned that you were teaching all the while you were amidst that audition circuit.
So you decide I'm going to step back, regroup, but you're still teaching at that time.
So it sounds like you've been teaching all throughout your career.
So what has the teaching side of it looked like?
Well, kudos have to go back to Brady Knapp, um, where, you know, when I was having challenges as an undergraduate trying to figure out just the mechanism, how to make the thing work.
(26:00):
You know, you have this glorious day and then the next day you're like, wait, I don't understand.
Why do you not work?
And so I, so Brady was like, well, just take my pedagogy class.
We'll unpack some of this for you.
And I took the graduate.
It was not offered for undergrads, but I sweet talked my way into the course.
And I took a pedagogy class my last year in my undergrad.
(26:22):
And I was like, so empowered by how demystifying it was and how much less of a victim I felt of circumstance and how I felt like, okay, this knowledge is actually going to be deeply important for me as a singer.
Um, and then it also turned out to be super duper practical.
(26:45):
So I was at the time working at the Episcopal church at Palmer Memorial in Houston and, um, working with the kids' choirs.
And so I would start to do individual sessions with like the middle schoolers and I found it so gratifying to watch them build skills and so gratifying to watch them negotiate tricky parts of life as a singer in ways that were much more equipped than what I had done, just sort of trying to wing it as a young person.
(27:13):
Um, that it just always felt like not only does it make me a better singer, but it's really gratifying.
And I do think that's one of the things that's helped me sort of stay grounded or at least keep coming back to feeling like I feel like there's worth in what I do.
Um, you know, my students will always keep me honest.
(27:34):
Um, so then I, my master's is actually a double performance and pedagogy degree, which is a big part of why I went to Westminster.
Um, because there was so much happening there at that time in voice science and in teaching, um, teaching philosophy and stuff.
So, um, yeah, it was definitely like originally a practical thing and originally a selfish thing.
(27:57):
And then I turned out to really enjoy that process.
And so for me, it's been really, again, I don't have to live in a suitcase all the time.
I can go home and be in my bed for a while.
And there are relationships I have that are continuing as well as the new exciting ones on the road.
And so I started after my master's degree with The Lawrenceville School, which is a boarding high school in New Jersey.
(28:17):
Um, and those kids were a challenge, but also really, really helpful because then you have, you know, some folks who have tons of experience and tons of skill because they were like third runner up Billy Elliot on Broadway.
And you also have folks who have never really gotten to make music before, and they're finally in a place where they can be supported as they do that.
(28:40):
Um, but yeah, it's, for me, it's been practical, but also really gratifying and, and grounding.
You know, you can't get too deep in your head when you remember that there are people at way different parts in their development who are still making meaningful music.
We could all name teachers that have had an influence on us for our entire life.
(29:03):
And you can surely have that too, but I'm curious about what some of your teachers imparted on you that you now feel that you must impart to your own students, passing it on.
No, I feel like the legacy I'm carrying is pretty astonishing.
(29:24):
Um, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.
Um, on one hand, I want every one of my singers to know how the thing works so they can feel empowered by information.
And that's not to say that, you know, I need like 3% more antagonism on my cricothyroid.
(29:44):
Um, cause also what's important to me is not that they just, that they have the information, but they know how to access the information for them.
They know what are the images?
What are the exercises?
What are the actions?
What are the habits that help me get in to access those things?
And for me, that's one of the really fun things about teaching is figuring out the way into the human.
(30:06):
And that is something that Sanford Sylvan was exceptional at understanding the human.
Like I always said, for me, he had just the right mix of, of science and voodoo where, where he knew if he just put his hand on your lower back in this one moment, you were going to be right where you needed to be.
(30:28):
Or if he really just needed to tweak your shape in this one e-vowel or mess with what your tongue was doing when you said duh.
Um, and for me, that was, I tried to live into that mold where he, where we're always encouraging folks to be equipped.
And then here's the other big piece of this to make their expression heard, because what each one of us has to say is important and what they have to give has value.
(31:01):
So if they can figure out where their value is, what they want to share, and then they have the equipment to share that, then I feel like they can make music for the rest of their lives.
And then I feel like I've done my job.
If they can have that grounding, I've made myself as obsolete as I can.
And that was definitely one of Sandy's isms was his goal was to make himself obsolete.
(31:27):
He teaches you out of his studio.
And one I, and I want my singers to feel equipped and not that they're going to graduate knowing everything, but that hopefully they understand what it takes to do the thing and what tools they have and how to keep building tools and keep finding other stories to tell and keep finding other ways to tell those stories.
(31:49):
That's what's important to me.
Most of your students now are college students.
Are most of them working on classical repertoire or do you work with, uh, within a variety of genres with these students?
I, the only hill I will die on is that they must do music when they, some part of their singing process has to be music that was intended to be done acoustically.
(32:17):
Because learning how to coordinate and resonate in efficient and repeatable ways is very, very mission critical for long-term health and flexibility.
So that's the one hill I will die on repertoire wise that takes all sorts of different forms.
Um, I was telling Ron earlier today, you know, probably solid 35% of my current student body does not speak English as a native language.
(32:41):
And, um, they're coming from all sorts of different backgrounds and I don't want to privilege any repertoire as more better, or I do think any of these repertoires can be done at a level of excellence that we want to strive for.
Um, so all of my students will sing some, I also am deep into exposure.
(33:05):
Like we do repertoire shopping by YouTube rabbit holes.
So like we do an exchange.
I'm like, tell me what you're listening to that you're really vibing with.
And I'll tell you what I think you should go, you know, check out this on YouTube or check out these things.
And what's shocking to me is like, right now I have students singing everything from Mariachi and musical theater to Handel and Ricky Ian Gordon.
(33:30):
And, um, you know, we are limited at juries.
I have to play with piano.
So like, I mean, and I have a student like producing his own, like super techno pop stuff right now.
Um, I have grunge singers.
I like, they just don't get to only do that.
Um, cause like my, my main job is to make sure they're singing forever.
So also like knowing what they can do with amplification versus what they can do not with amplification.
(33:54):
Um, so I'm always curious and I really have a deep geek streak in most of the things I undertake.
So I want to know, you know, what are the ends?
How can we make these things happen?
Um, I mean, I'm pretty sure that's going to be the subtitle of my biography, my autobiography someday.
My life as a deep geek.
(34:17):
What is the most rewarding part about teaching?
What was the, when was the last time you said, Oh, I'm so glad I'm doing this.
What are those, what are those moments like you have, uh, specific students that, that really you're proud of because.
Sorry, I just got all.
I just got all verclempt, um, cause I'm leaving a school right now.
(34:39):
So I'm.
Tell us about that.
You're going to leave where?
Swarthmore.
So I have been at Swarthmore college since I finished my master's degree.
Um, and so I've really grown up there and I love those students.
They're incredibly smart and incredibly creative and incredibly motivated and, and they outdo themselves in ways that are inspiring all the time.
(35:07):
And you're going to miss them terribly.
Oh, well, I just, um, I have one senior in particular that I did.
Um, she wasn't in my studio when she matriculated.
And when we finally found each other, she delights in the process in a way that's incredible.
And she does such incredible work.
(35:29):
And she just gave a senior recital a few weeks ago.
That was astonishing.
She held, and I mean, she's a political science major with the music minor.
Um, well, maybe I'm sorry, Ava, if you're a major, but one way or another, she's a double major.
And, um, you know, she held an audience completely wrapped and gave an incredibly poised, beautifully executed.
(35:56):
She did not let one consonant go to waste of Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben as well as a whole bunch of killer Handel arias and some Amy Beach songs.
But I was just, you know, she is now allowing herself to dream about a life that's going to include this thing that gives her so much joy.
(36:17):
And that shares so much with her audiences.
And then, and then I think, okay, we're going to keep creating these spaces.
Yeah.
And you're, and you're moving to?
Duke University. So in starting in the fall, I'm taking on a professorship at Duke, and I'm very excited about this community and the structures they have to support, um, music and, you know, music for students who are music and bright scholars who also make performance.
(36:47):
And that to me is, that's what I want to be helping build musical citizens.
And I do think that'll be really exciting, but it's definitely a transition.
Uh, well, what a thrill to get to know you and to understand you and to, and to have you here in St. Louis singing with The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
(37:07):
Thank you so very much.
That is another thing that gives me great joy, which is making this kind of music with a community that cares so deeply and give so much of themselves to it.
It's a really special thing and it's not everywhere.
So it really, I'm very grateful to be here.
(37:31):
We leave you today where we began with soprano Clara Rottsolk along with violinist Lenora Anopp and the Laudamus Te from Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor.
Only this time from her most recent appearance with The Bach Society of Saint Louis in April of 2025.
(37:52):
Musical portions today were taken from concert performances by The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, Dennis Sparger, music director and conductor.
We also heard from pianist Sandra Geary.
Our recording engineer is Paul Henrik.
(38:12):
Guests of the Bach Society stay at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac Hotel, featuring old world charm at the intersection of comfort and convenience.
We thank them for accommodating our conversation with soprano Clara Rottsolk.
Bach Talk would like to hear from you.
Take a moment if you would to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform.
(38:38):
Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us reach more listeners, tell our story and keep the conversation going.
If you have comments, questions or suggestions about Bach Talk for our team or for any of our guests, we would love to field them.
You can use the quick and easy comment form on our website at bachsociety.org slash bachtalk or send us an email directly bachtalk@bachsociety.org.
(39:12):
The associate producer of Bach Talk is Scott MacDonald.
Additional assistance provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations, along with Danielle Feinstein.
I'm Ron Klem.
(40:05):
Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
This is Bach Talk.
On one hand, I want every one of my singers to know how the thing works, so they can feel empowered by information.
For me, that's one of the really fun things about teaching, is figuring out the way into the human, where we're always encouraging folks to be equipped.
And then here's the other big piece of this, to make their expression heard.
(00:26):
Then I feel like they can make music for the rest of their lives, and keep finding other stories to tell, and keep finding other ways to tell those stories.
That's what's important to me.
That is another thing that gives me great joy, making this kind of music with a community that cares so deeply, and gives so much of themselves to it.
(00:46):
It's a really special thing, and I'm very grateful to be here.
(01:07):
That's soprano Clara Rottsolk, along with violinist Lenora Anopp, and the Laudamus Te from Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor.
It was a surprise appearance by Clara with The Bach Society of Saint Louis in 2022.
You'll hear why in just a moment.
(01:28):
And from her comments, you can already tell, Clara is passionate about teaching, and about her students, preparing them not just for the performing arts, but for life itself.
Hello, and welcome to Bach Talk.
(01:51):
I'm Ron Klemm, lauded by the New York Times for her clear, appealing voice, and expressive conviction.
Clara Rottsolk is a brilliant and accomplished concert artist.
Her solo appearances have taken her across the United States, the Middle East, Japan, and South America.
(02:11):
As you've heard before on this podcast, The Bach Society of Saint Louis presents Bach's B minor Mass frequently.
This past spring, they presented it again, and again Clara was the soprano soloist.
Bach Society Assistant Executive Director Danielle Feinstein and I sat down with Clara in the Versailles room at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac to talk about it, but this time was nothing like the last.
(02:41):
May of 2022, and it's spring, and singers are busy, and you're having a busy time, right Clara?
I, yeah.
And do you remember where you were?
I was in New York City.
You're in New York City, doing what?
I was working on a Schubert program with Fortepiano and a period clarinetist.
(03:05):
And the phone rings, and it's our Executive Director Melissa Payton.
And what does Melissa say?
She says, our soprano has COVID and is not going to be able to sing B minor Mass this weekend, and I believe it was a Friday, and she said, can you be here tomorrow for our dress rehearsal?
And I said, I'm sorry, I can't be here tomorrow for your dress rehearsal.
(03:28):
I have a concert in New York on Saturday afternoon.
But I said, I can be there Saturday night and sing the concert on Sunday, if that works for you all.
But you know, by all means, find someone who can do your dress rehearsal.
About an hour later, I got a call back and she said, nope, we want you.
So yeah, so I finished my concert in New York on Saturday afternoon and flew down to St. Louis on Saturday night and worked with a couple of the singers in a piano rehearsal on Sunday morning and met the maestro, shook hands and walked on stage.
(04:03):
And saved the day.
Well, I mean, B minor is something I've been singing for close to 20 years.
It's something that's always in your system.
Once you have Bach in your system, it stays.
First of all, obviously your reputation preceded you, so there was no problem there.
But you also, as a singer, have a routine.
(04:26):
You have a plan.
And you probably were looking forward to Sunday, oh, day off.
I can just put my feet up and relax.
But when you come into a situation like this and you're completely thrown off of your routine, what kicks in?
What do you do?
How do you handle it mentally?
(04:48):
Well, I joke that as the child of two church musicians, I am always expecting the unexpected.
There are always surprises.
There are always various crises when you're growing up in church music.
So on one hand, I think I'm pretty used to things just going sideways and you fix it and you do your best.
(05:09):
And actually, that's one of the liberating things about being a last-minute person is that you get to really just do your best and everyone's just grateful you're standing there.
And so in a way, it can be liberating to just say, okay, we're going to make the music go first.
And it doesn't matter.
I didn't have control over making sure my morning routine was perfect.
(05:31):
I didn't have control over what dress was in my suitcase.
I didn't have control over the fact that I did not have my score.
Melissa handed me a score.
So I didn't have any of my usual markings or any of my things, but again, it's music.
You hopefully know really well.
And if you don't, you're learning it on the airplane, which I have also done.
And I think in a way for me, it means that all of the little bits of you that like to try to control your routine, try to control all the variables, you just have to say, ain't going to happen.
(06:01):
So you just give over and try to stay focused on what matters, which is making each breath count, making every phrase matter, and hopefully comes out into a performance that people are happy to hear.
Where did you learn that lesson?
At home, at church, or on the plane?
(06:21):
I mean, because not everybody can move that fast to come to that point.
I think it's a life lesson.
I think it's a survival tactic.
This business is potentially unrelenting and potentially unforgiving and figuring out how to negotiate the practical side of it and keep the music alive.
(06:52):
I made a deal with myself when I got into, when I decided that I was going to go to music school and I was going to try to do this for a living, I made a deal with myself that if it ever ruined the music making for me, it wasn't worth it.
Because it's the best way I know how to tap into my humanness.
It's the best way I know how to communicate with other people.
(07:12):
And I never wanted to lose that.
So I think on one hand,
and then also when one is a young person in the business, and one is constantly putting
oneself out there for everyone else's opinions to come your way, and judgments to come your way,
and opportunities, and you're asking time and time again for their approval or their patronage or
(07:36):
whatever, it's potentially very unmooring if you don't have some sense of what your worth is and
why you're doing what you're doing.
So I think for me, it was largely a survival mechanism.
How do I survive this rat race of auditions and rejections?
And oh, I have a pantheon of massive amounts of rejections, or confusing feedback and still feel like you have a kernel of yourself because you have to, in order to get up and share something with humans, you have to have some sense of what you have to share.
(08:07):
So I think for me, that was a big journey in my education time and in my early professional life.
And it's something we're always retooling.
I get to a point where I sometimes feel like it's just a job, and then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Now I'm not able to do what I actually mean to do in it.
I never want it to feel perfunctory or functional.
(08:28):
I always want it to feel expressive and important and vital.
So it's a constant evolution, but I think really it was when I was learning how to negotiate all of that kind of gauntlet of early professionalhood that I feel like that's where a lot of it came.
At least that's where I figured out what center I'm trying to work towards.
(08:50):
Was there ever a time where singing professionally started to feel not so worthwhile?
Or have you been pretty fortunate that you are just forever leaning into that?
I'd say I had a pretty big crisis moment.
I mean, most of us were trained in my day to do opera.
(09:13):
That's what the school was for.
That was the professional track.
That's what you did.
And so it's funny because I always had the side hustles.
I was always singing in professional choirs.
I had a church job.
I had a synagogue job.
I was doing lots of pick-up pro-choral work to support my audition habit and teaching as well.
(09:40):
But there was a very clear in my head one weekend where I was for the second time in the regional round of the Metropolitan Opera Competition and also in the final round of a Seattle Opera Young Artists Program audition process.
I thought I sang really well all weekend and I just got the most mystifying feedback from everyone.
(10:06):
And after that I was so unmoored and so disheartened that I was like, you know what?
I quit.
I quit auditioning.
And how old were you?
I was probably 28, 27.
Yeah.
And I was just like, what if I just practice for the work I'm actually getting, which is all this pro-choral work and some chamber music work and lots of early stuff because that's just sort of what found me and actually practice for that stuff and actually focus my energy in that direction.
(10:38):
And I'll tell you what, somehow the universe conspired because pretty much then ever since I have been the person, like one of my big breaks was being at the Carmel Bach Festival in the pro choir and the soprano got sick.
And who do they call?
They call me because I'm the idiot who will get up there and sight read in public.
(10:59):
So, and that's turned into, you know, now in these last few seasons, I've been the primary soloist of the Bach Festival.
And that's, so I think a lot of it has been actually more gratifying because then it's about relationship building and it's about singing the repertoire that speaks to you and really getting to do lots of chamber music and lots of the things that I think are where more of my superpowers and the things I care about musically come together.
(11:26):
That's soprano Clara Rottsolk with The Bach Society's Danielle Feinstein.
I'm Ron Klemm and this is Bach Talk.
You gave us a hint of some things about your beginnings.
Tell us about your earliest recollection of music in the home and about some of those early aspects of your musical upbringing.
(11:52):
Wow.
I'm not sure I even have a conscious memory of that.
I mean, there are photos of me playing the piano in diapers and I mean, my mother, she would, she'll blush to hear that I call her a singer.
She was a singer who became a conductor and an educator.
(12:14):
And my father was an organist and with some musicological streaks.
And so it was just always the thing in the house.
Like I don't remember learning to read music.
I don't remember, like it was just always there.
My sister and I used to give like little cabaret performances for my parents' dinner parties.
(12:34):
So I think there were probably some surreptitious like home videos of me singing.
I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair at age five.
There's money in commercial gigs, by the way.
Well, I mean, oh yeah.
And my sister and I had a record of the Humperdinck Hansel and Gretel that we used to do a marionette show to the whole thing.
(12:57):
No one ever sat through it.
I would die to see that.
Yeah.
And my sister is four years older.
So like a typical younger child, I was always chasing her.
So I actually really couldn't tell you what my first memory is, but there was always music.
I mean, I ruined Palm Sunday by being born to the organist and the cantor.
(13:20):
I believe they did Palm Sunday with bagpipes.
Well, I'm thinking about how that might work, but now maybe we shouldn't go there.
I mean, one of my mom's other favorite stories to tell is that they realized they couldn't have me as an infant in church anymore because the organ was in the balcony and my mom would canter from up front and I would apparently respond to everything she's saying from up front.
(13:49):
So, I mean, and this is still nonverbal in a crib.
So I think in some ways, like it's just how it's just, it was in the water at home and it's just what we did.
And as long as I can remember, my sister and I were the ringers in my dad's church choir.
At some point, a light went off and it was, oh, I can do this.
(14:13):
When did that happen?
I was in my, I can't remember if it was my junior or my senior year of high school, and I was actually a very serious flute player at the time.
And I was still in the children's chorus for the Seattle Opera, and it was a production of Turandot.
And Cynthia Haymon was singing Liù and Jane Eaglen was singing Turandot.
(14:39):
And I just remember sitting in the wings during that production and being so deeply overwhelmed by how beautiful everything was and not feeling like I could choose if I wanted to be on the stage or in the pit.
And so it was at that moment I was like, okay, I have to really try to do this, to see what it can be. So I actually applied for music school as a double performance major, which
(15:04):
Instrumental and vocal?
As a flute player and as a singer.
Yeah.
Was there a specific role or piece of music that made you decide, okay, singing is the way to go?
No.
So I should go get a flute and let you play?
(15:26):
No, I have not played in a while.
No, I actually injured my hand.
I crashed my bike.
Really?
My sophomore year of college.
And it's not actually that I can't play, but it took me out for a couple of months of not being able to hold the flute for very long.
And so by the time I recovered, it was going to take me so much longer to finish the degree to get in all the rotations in orchestra and all of the things I had to do for both degrees that that was not practical.
(15:54):
And so basically between really being miserable playing orchestral excerpts in the practice room by myself for five hours a day and really, really enjoying getting into more of how text and music interplay and really getting more into languages and those kinds of things that, I mean, I wept through the first orchestra concert I didn't play in.
(16:17):
It was very deeply emotional, but it also, it was definitely the right choice for me personally.
It's just, I think, if I had known then what would have been possible in chamber music and other sorts of things.
I mean, I was in an orchestral training program.
That's what we were doing.
So maybe things might have been different and I would have kept professional things open on both sides more.
(16:41):
But even, I mean, I played right through graduate school.
Yeah, but definitely singing was my main.
But it sounds like that was a moment of closure.
Oh, it was definitely, okay, singing is going to take the front seat now and we're going to see how that feels.
And actually it felt really great.
It was handy when I went to Westminster Choir College for my master's where you had 400 singers on one city block, basically, and you were very popular for the thing you did that wasn't singing.
(17:09):
So actually like lots of my singing breaks happened because I was sitting there playing in the orchestra for the Bach Cantatas class or for a summer Bach week or whatever.
And, oh, hey, can you hop up and do these things?
Sure.
Why not?
Yeah.
So that's my funny life sideways.
Things tend to happen sideways.
You grew up in the Northwest?
(17:30):
I did.
I grew up in Seattle.
Okay.
And so you went to high school there.
And where'd you go to college?
I went to Rice University.
Okay.
Uh-huh.
Who discovered Clara Rottsolk?
Who said, oh, we need this person.
Who are your earliest mentors?
Oh, wow.
On the pedagogical side, the voices I still have in my head are actually my childhood flute teacher who taught me a huge amount of what I know about music and how to practice and how to make meaningful change in your habits.
(18:07):
I would say when I was in college, that actually, that title goes to Dr. Brady Knapp, who actually harassed me into joining his church choir.
He called my college voicemail like every three hours until my roommates were like, you have to call him back.
And I was like, I don't want a church job.
(18:28):
Anyway, but he was a doctoral student at Rice when I was there, and he was teaching the pedagogy class.
And he was directing music at an Episcopal church across the street from campus.
And he was an incredible pedagogue and musical mentor.
And he was the first one to say, you know, you're really good at singing this early stuff.
And let me help you negotiate doing this in a way that's going to be healthy and your voice teacher's not going to kill you about.
(18:54):
And my undergraduate voice teacher was an incredible musician, an incredible musical actor, and an incredible interpreter, but he was not a technician.
And so Brady really, really helped me start to sort out some of the things I needed to sort out technically.
Then I did my master's degree with Sharon Sweet.
(19:15):
She was deeply, deeply important to me.
Hey, Sharon, you're amazing.
In what ways?
Well, she was the first one to sit me down and be like, you need to stop mimicking anybody else and figure out what you are.
Did you sense you were doing that?
I think no, but I do think I had real clear expectations in my brain of what I thought certain kinds of singing or certain kinds of repertoire should sound like.
(19:42):
And I remember very vividly this lesson where she like got her finger right up in my face and was like, you will never be as good at being Elly Ameling as Elly Ameling is at being Elly Ameling.
But she said, but no one will be as good at being you as you are.
We just have to figure out what that is.
(20:04):
Interesting.
Interesting that she caught that in you.
She really is such a deep empath.
And she really wants you to connect fully to what your instrument can do and explore that fully.
And that was huge for me.
And then as sort of my life took 16 other turns, I found Sanford Sylvan when I was at Carmel.
(20:30):
And, you know, Sharon, when I stopped pursuing opera, Sharon was not able to support me in that.
So Sandy was huge in sort of being my guiding light through my 20s and into my 30s, just being that touchstone of person.
Professionally, huge, huge, huge, huge shout out has to go to Andrew Megill, who was another person who, I mean, he found me my first day at Westminster and was like, hey, so do you want to be in my choir?
(21:02):
And I've been making music with him ever since.
The answer is always yes.
Well, it was not my intention when I got to grad school, but he got me.
He's like, just come to one rehearsal and see how it goes.
And I was hooked.
So no, a lot, a lot goes to Andrew Megill and the folks I met through him.
And it's so much just relationship building.
I don't think there was one conductor who pulled me out of oblivion or I mean, Andrew Megill is as close as they get, actually.
(21:30):
But it's so much about, yeah, making the relationships with the people you want to make music with, being as fully equipped a musician as you can be.
And then, yeah, hopefully being a good citizen.
What was the transition post-school like for you in terms of performing?
Were you able to just transition into performing regularly?
(21:53):
Was there a gap?
What did that look like?
Now, why are you laughing?
No, I'm laughing because I made my professional Baroque orchestra debut as a countertenor.
What?
I'm not kidding when I say my life has been hopping in.
When I was in my second year of my master's degree, the student Baroque ensemble that Andrew Megill was conducting was teaming up with Andrew's professional ensemble, Fuma Sacra, to do a concert with Tempesta di Mare.
(22:22):
And this was the spring of my second year of my master's.
And the night before we started rehearsals with the orchestra, we got a call saying hey can the folks in the choir cover the countertenor solos in this Purcell ode and this Blow ode.
And Andy was like, you're the only one that can read this.
(22:43):
Can you just pretend for the week and just don't say anything?
Don't tell anyone you're a soprano.
Just do the thing.
And I mean, he knew I could pull it off.
And a lot of times I sang alto in choir because I could.
And anyway, so that was my second year of my master's.
Does Jay Carter know about this?
Oh, definitely.
Oh, OK.
(23:04):
All right.
Just want to make sure.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry I interrupted you.
No.
So in some ways, like, I mean, I never felt like it was like suddenly I was the professional.
I felt like I was at one time at the same time doing some of these kinds of things where you're in the ensemble and you do the step out solos while also trying to be an opera singer and doing some young artist programs.
(23:27):
And I did some stuff at Spoleto, but I sort of stepped away from pursuing that hardcore when I was, yeah, when basically I burnt out on auditions.
It was really sucking my will to live and the joy out of music making, at which point you just can't like if you don't know what it is you have to offer because you feel like what people are receiving is not.
(23:51):
Yeah.
If people are telling you you are something and those things that they are telling you are so wildly different.
It's very unmooring.
Well, we could talk about this for a long time, but I'm very curious whether you whether you did the self-analysis and you said, I'm not having any fun anymore.
There's no joy in my life doing this.
Or if someone recognized it in you and and said, you got to you got to take a break here.
(24:16):
I mean, how did this all happen?
No, really, I finished that weekend and I was like, screw this.
I'm out like I'm not auditioning anymore.
I'm happy teaching.
I was teaching at The Lawrenceville School and I had a handful of students at the at Swarthmore College.
And, you know, that was enough to like pay my rent and feel stable.
And I was like, I'm just going to regroup and see what kind of music making with what kind of people I want to be making music with and see how that goes.
(24:41):
And that was really pretty restorative in lots of ways.
So, yeah, no, it was definitely me just throwing a tantrum and being enough.
You don't throw tantrums anymore.
I mean, not in public.
You have to vent sometime.
(25:02):
That's Soprano Clara Rottsolk and with The Bach Society's Danielle Feinstein, who apparently is sympathizing with her.
This is Ron Klemm and you're listening to Bach Talk.
(25:30):
So, Clara, you mentioned that you were teaching all the while you were amidst that audition circuit.
So you decide I'm going to step back, regroup, but you're still teaching at that time.
So it sounds like you've been teaching all throughout your career.
So what has the teaching side of it looked like?
Well, kudos have to go back to Brady Knapp, um, where, you know, when I was having challenges as an undergraduate trying to figure out just the mechanism, how to make the thing work.
(26:00):
You know, you have this glorious day and then the next day you're like, wait, I don't understand.
Why do you not work?
And so I, so Brady was like, well, just take my pedagogy class.
We'll unpack some of this for you.
And I took the graduate.
It was not offered for undergrads, but I sweet talked my way into the course.
And I took a pedagogy class my last year in my undergrad.
(26:22):
And I was like, so empowered by how demystifying it was and how much less of a victim I felt of circumstance and how I felt like, okay, this knowledge is actually going to be deeply important for me as a singer.
Um, and then it also turned out to be super duper practical.
(26:45):
So I was at the time working at the Episcopal church at Palmer Memorial in Houston and, um, working with the kids' choirs.
And so I would start to do individual sessions with like the middle schoolers and I found it so gratifying to watch them build skills and so gratifying to watch them negotiate tricky parts of life as a singer in ways that were much more equipped than what I had done, just sort of trying to wing it as a young person.
(27:13):
Um, that it just always felt like not only does it make me a better singer, but it's really gratifying.
And I do think that's one of the things that's helped me sort of stay grounded or at least keep coming back to feeling like I feel like there's worth in what I do.
Um, you know, my students will always keep me honest.
(27:34):
Um, so then I, my master's is actually a double performance and pedagogy degree, which is a big part of why I went to Westminster.
Um, because there was so much happening there at that time in voice science and in teaching, um, teaching philosophy and stuff.
So, um, yeah, it was definitely like originally a practical thing and originally a selfish thing.
(27:57):
And then I turned out to really enjoy that process.
And so for me, it's been really, again, I don't have to live in a suitcase all the time.
I can go home and be in my bed for a while.
And there are relationships I have that are continuing as well as the new exciting ones on the road.
And so I started after my master's degree with The Lawrenceville School, which is a boarding high school in New Jersey.
(28:17):
Um, and those kids were a challenge, but also really, really helpful because then you have, you know, some folks who have tons of experience and tons of skill because they were like third runner up Billy Elliot on Broadway.
And you also have folks who have never really gotten to make music before, and they're finally in a place where they can be supported as they do that.
(28:40):
Um, but yeah, it's, for me, it's been practical, but also really gratifying and, and grounding.
You know, you can't get too deep in your head when you remember that there are people at way different parts in their development who are still making meaningful music.
We could all name teachers that have had an influence on us for our entire life.
(29:03):
And you can surely have that too, but I'm curious about what some of your teachers imparted on you that you now feel that you must impart to your own students, passing it on.
No, I feel like the legacy I'm carrying is pretty astonishing.
(29:24):
Um, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.
Um, on one hand, I want every one of my singers to know how the thing works so they can feel empowered by information.
And that's not to say that, you know, I need like 3% more antagonism on my cricothyroid.
(29:44):
Um, cause also what's important to me is not that they just, that they have the information, but they know how to access the information for them.
They know what are the images?
What are the exercises?
What are the actions?
What are the habits that help me get in to access those things?
And for me, that's one of the really fun things about teaching is figuring out the way into the human.
(30:06):
And that is something that Sanford Sylvan was exceptional at understanding the human.
Like I always said, for me, he had just the right mix of, of science and voodoo where, where he knew if he just put his hand on your lower back in this one moment, you were going to be right where you needed to be.
(30:28):
Or if he really just needed to tweak your shape in this one e-vowel or mess with what your tongue was doing when you said duh.
Um, and for me, that was, I tried to live into that mold where he, where we're always encouraging folks to be equipped.
And then here's the other big piece of this to make their expression heard, because what each one of us has to say is important and what they have to give has value.
(31:01):
So if they can figure out where their value is, what they want to share, and then they have the equipment to share that, then I feel like they can make music for the rest of their lives.
And then I feel like I've done my job.
If they can have that grounding, I've made myself as obsolete as I can.
And that was definitely one of Sandy's isms was his goal was to make himself obsolete.
(31:27):
He teaches you out of his studio.
And one I, and I want my singers to feel equipped and not that they're going to graduate knowing everything, but that hopefully they understand what it takes to do the thing and what tools they have and how to keep building tools and keep finding other stories to tell and keep finding other ways to tell those stories.
(31:49):
That's what's important to me.
Most of your students now are college students.
Are most of them working on classical repertoire or do you work with, uh, within a variety of genres with these students?
I, the only hill I will die on is that they must do music when they, some part of their singing process has to be music that was intended to be done acoustically.
(32:17):
Because learning how to coordinate and resonate in efficient and repeatable ways is very, very mission critical for long-term health and flexibility.
So that's the one hill I will die on repertoire wise that takes all sorts of different forms.
Um, I was telling Ron earlier today, you know, probably solid 35% of my current student body does not speak English as a native language.
(32:41):
And, um, they're coming from all sorts of different backgrounds and I don't want to privilege any repertoire as more better, or I do think any of these repertoires can be done at a level of excellence that we want to strive for.
Um, so all of my students will sing some, I also am deep into exposure.
(33:05):
Like we do repertoire shopping by YouTube rabbit holes.
So like we do an exchange.
I'm like, tell me what you're listening to that you're really vibing with.
And I'll tell you what I think you should go, you know, check out this on YouTube or check out these things.
And what's shocking to me is like, right now I have students singing everything from Mariachi and musical theater to Handel and Ricky Ian Gordon.
(33:30):
And, um, you know, we are limited at juries.
I have to play with piano.
So like, I mean, and I have a student like producing his own, like super techno pop stuff right now.
Um, I have grunge singers.
I like, they just don't get to only do that.
Um, cause like my, my main job is to make sure they're singing forever.
So also like knowing what they can do with amplification versus what they can do not with amplification.
(33:54):
Um, so I'm always curious and I really have a deep geek streak in most of the things I undertake.
So I want to know, you know, what are the ends?
How can we make these things happen?
Um, I mean, I'm pretty sure that's going to be the subtitle of my biography, my autobiography someday.
My life as a deep geek.
(34:17):
What is the most rewarding part about teaching?
What was the, when was the last time you said, Oh, I'm so glad I'm doing this.
What are those, what are those moments like you have, uh, specific students that, that really you're proud of because.
Sorry, I just got all.
I just got all verclempt, um, cause I'm leaving a school right now.
(34:39):
So I'm.
Tell us about that.
You're going to leave where?
Swarthmore.
So I have been at Swarthmore college since I finished my master's degree.
Um, and so I've really grown up there and I love those students.
They're incredibly smart and incredibly creative and incredibly motivated and, and they outdo themselves in ways that are inspiring all the time.
(35:07):
And you're going to miss them terribly.
Oh, well, I just, um, I have one senior in particular that I did.
Um, she wasn't in my studio when she matriculated.
And when we finally found each other, she delights in the process in a way that's incredible.
And she does such incredible work.
(35:29):
And she just gave a senior recital a few weeks ago.
That was astonishing.
She held, and I mean, she's a political science major with the music minor.
Um, well, maybe I'm sorry, Ava, if you're a major, but one way or another, she's a double major.
And, um, you know, she held an audience completely wrapped and gave an incredibly poised, beautifully executed.
(35:56):
She did not let one consonant go to waste of Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben as well as a whole bunch of killer Handel arias and some Amy Beach songs.
But I was just, you know, she is now allowing herself to dream about a life that's going to include this thing that gives her so much joy.
(36:17):
And that shares so much with her audiences.
And then, and then I think, okay, we're going to keep creating these spaces.
Yeah.
And you're, and you're moving to?
Duke University. So in starting in the fall, I'm taking on a professorship at Duke, and I'm very excited about this community and the structures they have to support, um, music and, you know, music for students who are music and bright scholars who also make performance.
(36:47):
And that to me is, that's what I want to be helping build musical citizens.
And I do think that'll be really exciting, but it's definitely a transition.
Uh, well, what a thrill to get to know you and to understand you and to, and to have you here in St. Louis singing with The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
(37:07):
Thank you so very much.
That is another thing that gives me great joy, which is making this kind of music with a community that cares so deeply and give so much of themselves to it.
It's a really special thing and it's not everywhere.
So it really, I'm very grateful to be here.
(37:31):
We leave you today where we began with soprano Clara Rottsolk along with violinist Lenora Anopp and the Laudamus Te from Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor.
Only this time from her most recent appearance with The Bach Society of Saint Louis in April of 2025.
(37:52):
Musical portions today were taken from concert performances by The Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra, Dennis Sparger, music director and conductor.
We also heard from pianist Sandra Geary.
Our recording engineer is Paul Henrik.
(38:12):
Guests of the Bach Society stay at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac Hotel, featuring old world charm at the intersection of comfort and convenience.
We thank them for accommodating our conversation with soprano Clara Rottsolk.
Bach Talk would like to hear from you.
Take a moment if you would to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform.
(38:38):
Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us reach more listeners, tell our story and keep the conversation going.
If you have comments, questions or suggestions about Bach Talk for our team or for any of our guests, we would love to field them.
You can use the quick and easy comment form on our website at bachsociety.org slash bachtalk or send us an email directly bachtalk@bachsociety.org.
(39:12):
The associate producer of Bach Talk is Scott MacDonald.
Additional assistance provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations, along with Danielle Feinstein.
I'm Ron Klem.
(40:05):
Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
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