A couple of evenings ago, there was a tribute concert at Carnegie Hall. The recital celebrated Mahon Bishop, a voice teacher in the New York City area for more than 40 years. The performance was held in the Weill Recital Hall, an elegant and intimate space within the Carnegie complex. It was the perfect setting for such an evening— a beautiful chandeliered ceiling before the proscenium, creamy white walls dressed in blue draperies— offering a sense of closeness to the performers that left you feeling like you were having a private audience in a stately ballroom.
I was supposed to attend the recital with my friend Molly and her mother, but a day or two before they both cancelled. Molly’s mother, whose friend was performing, got sick and could not travel— she was flying in from North Carolina; Molly was busy at work. I rang my daughter Chelsea, an aspiring mezzo-soprano, but she also wasn’t available. In short: It was either go alone, or not at all.
It seems strange to attend a tribute for someone you’ve never heard of, a bit like stumbling into a wake by accident. I arrived early, and found a seat. I was glad I had. Gradually, the auditorium filled, amid a dull, steady buzz, as friends and family hugged and gave cross-aisle nods of recognition. There was a sense of reunion, or a well-dressed revival meeting, a familiarity that in the moments before it started left me wondering if I belonged. But, there is a ritual to a tribute, which lent an orderly formality to the evening, a decorum that put me, the outsider, more at ease.
The evening began with one of the performers, Keith David, an African-American actor and former student of Dr. Bishop, offering a welcome. Narrating in a deep resonant voice as lush as his red velvet dinner jacket, David recited a brief biographical sketch: Born in 1935 in Greenville, SC, son of a mill worker, the factory established a scholarship that allowed him, then others, to go off to university. Bishop studied church music first in Louisville then at Union Theological Seminary in New York, followed by a nascent career as a solo performer. A baritone specializing in German lieder, there were recitals in New York and Vienna, Paris and Hamburg, all of which drew solid notices during the late 1960s. While still a student, Bishop became choir director for a church in New Jersey, and spent years at two or three other churches in the area as well, until the mid 1990s. Around 1970, he cut short his performing career in order to teach singing: Molly’s mother’s friend, LaVerne Thomas Eager, I now learned, was his very first private student. The celebration tonight was a tribute to his 40 years of teaching.
The event was exactly the kind of tribute that any of us would love to have paid to us: 22 people from across the years, some there from a great distance, all showing their love and gratitude by their presence, all demonstrating the difference that Dr Bishop had made in their lives through the gift of their song. One by one, they sang— Broadway show tunes from Gershwin, Kern and Bernstein, Negro spirituals, leider by Richard Strauss and Ralph Vaughn Williams, cabaret songs, operatic arias by Mozart and Bellini, Puccini and Gluck. The first performer, clearly a place of honor, was LaVerne, who charmed us all with a spirited performance of a favorite Gershwin song of mine— "Someone to Watch Over Me." Serving as her own accompanist, she was by turns funny and poignant, effusive and restrained, ending with a great dramatic flourish that left the audience roaring with laughter.
A couple of highlights for me, aside from LaVerne: a performance of a cabaret piece called "Grateful," sung in a luscious baritone by one of the older performers, again serving as his own accompanist (but from a wheelchair); a lively performance of "A Simple Song," a deceptively complex piece for soprano from Leonard Bernstein's Mass (a piece that I remember encountering as a teen and had not thought of in years); a dramatic (and quite funny) performance of a moment from "The Desert Song," a 1920s operetta by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein— the performer, dressed in long black gloves and a beautiful long gown looked every bit the part of the sassy young French flapper; and, finally, a stunning performance of an aria from Bellini's "I Puritani," by young soprano Mari Moriya, who dazzled with the precision of her range and expression.
Finally, the entire bunch ended the night with a jolly performance of "Liviamo Ne'Lieti Calici," from Verdi's "La Traviati," a few of them waltzing in pairs, turning the stage into a Viennese ballroom. By the end, Dr Bishop was coaxed onstage and sang along, clearly basking in the pride of having his musical progeny alongside him. For his part, he brought down the house with a few, but very moving words, reflecting on a lifetime of working with such a talented and passionate band. Then, no doubt recalling that the roots of his own passion were in church music, he sang a gentle and touching version of "This Little Light of Mine," the weaknesses of age compensated by tenderness and strength of heart. It was a beautiful end to the evening.
Because of the length of the performance, and the crowded scrum of well-wishers at the end, I was not able to give my regards to LaVerne as I hoped I might. She went through a stage door and the crowd proved too much. I would have loved to say hello and offer congratulations, but in truth it was a moment for students and their teacher, a private party of stories and memories, less a time for introductions. So, I left as discretely as I arrived, alone, and headed into the subway toward home. As I sat for the half hour ride, I found myself thinking about where my daughter Chelsea's career may one day lead. Not about European capitals or glamorous recital halls, although I would be very proud should that happen. But about whether a life spent under stage lights, shuffling between cities for performances, can ever feel like home. I have a parent’s worry about how she will fare the competitiveness of performance, or cope with the brutality of evaluation and artistic criticism. But, this night, I was grateful to see the joyous community that exists among performers. I was reminded that mentors can nurture kinship as well as talent. I hope Chelsea finds a Mahon Bishop of her own.
