Opera singer Courtney Bray hops the length of vocal coach Michael Trimble’s oriental rug singing warm-ups, her clear voice sliding up and down the scale on impact.
She pauses to stand on one leg and extend the other behind her, singing scales and trills that ascend more than three octaves as she slowly bends forward from the waist.
The exercises are a standard part of the young vocalist’s daily routine during her extended stay here with parents David and Susan Bray, to study and to sing a July 26 benefit for the Bainbridge Community Piano Fund.
The concert is a rare chance for islanders to hear the rising young performer, who returned from engagements in Germany for the occasion.
“This is one of the most important young voices in the world,” Trimble said. “She is a vocal phenomenon who can do everything from mezzo soprano to dramatic soprano to Mozart soprano to high coloratura soprano.
“And she’s still very young.”
Bray grew up in a house full of music – “all kinds, all the time.” She sang in choirs and in school, but, while people complimented her voice, commitment to a career came later.
Nonetheless, she took first place in a statewide competition in her senior year at Bainbridge High School and consistently studied.
Her teachers were not always helpful, however. One misguided coach told Bray that she had a “small” voice.
Bray was taken aback but not done in.
“I always had my parents’ support,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I kept on singing. I just always kept on. But I was singing all the wrong repertoire.”
A key ingredient missing was the right teacher to make the most of a promising instrument.
When Susan Bray – always on the lookout for the perfect teacher for her own vocal studies – met Trimble, who had retired to the island in 2001 with his wife Pamela, she encouraged Bray to try him.
“As I had that first lesson with him, I knew that was it,” Bray said. “I knew it was going somewhere.”
Tenor and teacher
As soon as Trimble heard the young prodigy, he knew he had just rejoined the international opera scene.
During a four-decade career, he had garnered acclaim throughout Europe, Canada and the United States for his more than 60 leading tenor roles.
Later, he won recognition for his vocal coaching. In 1990, Opera America – a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit linking professional opera companies nationwide – recognized Trimble as the leading authority in the vocal training and development of young singers.
Trimble’s unique combination of yoga and sound production is geared to preparing Bray for the rigors of the opera stage.
“There’s nothing a stage director can ask her to do that she can’t do,” he said. “Stage directors would literally ask singers to stand on their heads, so I decided my students were going to be prepared for anything.
Bray contrasts her daily lessons with Trimble with the approximately 15 voice lessons she received per semester at University of Connecticut and then at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J.
“We paid how many thousands of dollars?” she said. “I would have been better off studying languages.”
Bray, like other singers, must know German, French and Italian, the languages of the repertoire. She will spend the fall in Italy, to study the mother tongue of Verdi and Puccini.
She became fluent in German during a year’s sojourn there during her junior college year.
A return trip gave Bray the chance to perform with opera companies such as Oper Leipzig, Deutsches National Theater Weimarand Wermigerode Schlossfestspiele, in roles ranging from Susanna and Barbarina in Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” to Berta in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.”
After Italy, Bray will return to the island for more lessons, then back to Germany for more singing experience.
How her career develops from that point will depend on talent, timing and luck.
But as Bray’s voice develops so does her vision of what’s possible and her faith in finding the right path.
“You need to be very clear about where you are going,” she said. “You need to find that direction.”
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Courtney Bray joins island vocalist Pamela Kordan and David Gluck of Germany for “Bel Canto – An Evening of Beautiful Singing” July 26 at 8 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church.
Tickets are $15, available at Vern’s Winslow Drug or at the door. Information: 842-9708.
