A conversation in song

Merlyn Quaife puts great store on the words she sings.

One predictable highlight of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's American Songs concert will be Melbourne soprano Merlyn Quaife singing Samuel Barber's lovely Knoxville: Summer of 1915. The American composer's setting of James Agee's memories of a Tennessee boyhood is one of the jewels of the soprano songbook.

"It's so intimate," says Quaife. "It needs to be so soft and gentle and that becomes the challenge for the conductor and the orchestra to accompany it so it can be conversational.

"The images are so lovely, too. It really captures the feeling of those times. You can almost see those old cars and old-timers, in the way the music is written. In fact, you can almost feel what the weather's like for those people sitting on the porch in their wicker chairs."

Quaife, who has just performed Schoenberg's Second String Quartet with the renowned Arditti Quartet, puts great store on the words she sings and feels that American composers have a special gift for setting texts. She enthuses over Russian composers like Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich - "geniuses in giving you everything" - but has reservations about some Australian composers.

"I don't know whether it's because they're less poetic, but they sometimes don't seem to have that feeling for the music that is inherent in language itself," Quaife points out. "This comes naturally to singers and we find it disconcerting when the music goes against the natural rhythm of the words."

Despite these misgivings, she is deeply involved with contemporary composers on various projects. One is Emma O'Brien's Avatar, due for performance in Melbourne this April. "We're calling it a witness opera," Quaife explains. "It's about real people's journeys. We sing about the transformation some people go through when they suffer from cancer."

She is also close to composer Gordon Kerry, having performed many of his works. "Gordon has a great literary mind with a wealth of knowledge. This means he can draw on interesting resources to put his music together."

As for working alongside composers, "you can pick their brains as to what they really mean", Quaife laughs. "And, if something is undoable, you just say this is very tricky and they change it."

On the lighter side, Quaife has become known as the soprano who fired off the Queen of the Night's aria astride a horse as part of the equine spectacular Lipizzaners with the Stars.

"The horse was the star, not me," she laughs. "And it was 'at the walk' only. I had ambitions to do the Spanish walk but I couldn't sing Mozart and do it as well."

The horses had no problems with the singing, even when it came to Mozart's high Fs, although "they hated the loud percussion in some of the marches", Quaife says. "One of them would always bolt off when the Radetsky March came up."

Although she doesn't teach so much these days, Merlyn Quaife is a singer who cares for the wellbeing of the voice and the person.

Her website (merlynquaife.com) includes tips for singers experiencing jetlag as well as an insight into her own teaching philosophy.

"In a way we've got a very self-centred generation coming up," Quaife says. "They expect everything on a platter. However, music and creativity, if you are going to do them well, can't just be churned out.

"You've got to have the discipline and technique to be able to do the fancy stuff. It's a matter of trying to convince young singers that they need a work ethic behind them. It's just not enough to have a beautiful voice if you're not willing to put the yards into getting things happening."

What: American Songs, with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday, 8pm