Vocalist Wade Returns To Chatham Church For Spring Concert

by Debra Lawless

            Imagine this: A young aspiring singer with “a pretty big voice” who shares a house with a saxophone player and a pianist. Next door is a violinist.

            At practice time, the Somerville neighborhood rings with music. “I’m just the crazy singer,” mezzo-soprano Ashley Wade jokes.

            Wade grew up in Harwich and began singing at age six or seven in the children’s choir of the First Congregational Church of Chatham. On March 8, a day before her 25^th birthday, Wade will team up with soprano Elizabeth Lingemann-Jones in a one-hour concert at the church called “Voices of Spring.” The concert will feature classical music, operatic arias and American folk music. Pianist Art McManus will accompany the singers.

            “This is where I started to love learning and performing music,” Wade said of the church during a recent telephone interview from her job in Boston. “I played the piano, I sang in youth choirs, played parts in pageants, and was even a member of the church's youth hand bell choir. I love singing there.”

Mezzo-soprano Ashley Wade.

            At 13, Wade, daughter of Tim Wade of Chatham and Joni Tuttle of Harwich, began formal voice lessons. She credits her grandmother, Jane Wade, with encouraging her and driving her to lessons. In 2006 Wade graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with a degree in vocal performance. After that, to stave off what she calls “the starving artist complex,” she found a day job with cMarket, a firm that helps non-profits raise funds online. She has also joined a new group of about 40 young singers called Lyricora which performs choral music. “The vision is to make this a professional group,” she says.

            As a “mezzo-soprano” Wade can reach every high note a soprano can but her register is lower. “The voice will have a quality that’s a little deeper than a soprano,” she says. (The contralto is one register lower still.) A singer’s voice doesn’t come to full maturity until the age of about 35, Wade adds, and  “before the 30s, you’re not completely sure what you’re working with.”

            At this time of year “there is a flurry of auditions” for competitions, for the new season of the Boston Lyric Opera and other performance troupes, she says. Wade might audition four or more times in two months. And an audition might give a singer as little as four minutes to strut her stuff.

            “That might not sound too bad, but trust me, auditions are a fine art form that is very hard to master,” Wade says. “If you have a full-time job, then it’s very hard to find the time and dedication to give to the preparation that’s necessary.

            “I try to sing a bit everyday,” she’s adds. Usually she sings at home after work, or on the weekends at Gordon College in Wenham, where she takes lessons from Tom Brooks, the head of Lyricora and chair of the college’s department of music.

            Networking, checking job listings on the Boston Singers’ Resource, practicing, auditioning successfully, these are keys to getting hired to sing. “Once you get a few good performances under your belt, its just a matter of staying ambitious,” Wade says.

            “I want a performance career,” Wade adds. “I’m really dedicated to that. This culture of performance is very competitive. There’s a lot of ego. A lot of intentional intimidation. A lot of singers who have started a career are hard to talk to.”

            Wade says that rather than admiring stars in the music business, she admires the singers who have coached and guided her along the path of her budding vocal career.

             “They’ve had the career, they’ve done it. They’re real,” Wade says. “I can share with them.” She cites contralto Carole Buttner Maloof of Chatham as one mentor.

            Wade met Lingemann-Jones in college when they both studied vocals. They performed their junior recital together. Lingemann-Jones grew up in a career Air Force family and has lived all over the world.

            Of Lingemann-Jones, Wade says, “She has one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. It’s a seriously gorgeous voice.” Lingemann-Jones will begin graduate work at the New England Conservatory of Music next fall.

            The program for the one-hour concert is “well rounded,” Wade says. Wade will begin by singing a set by Gustav Faure. Lingemann-Jones will follow with a set by Franz Schubert. They will share a set of Samuel Barber music. They will each also sing an aria from an opera and the program will end with a set of American folk songs.

            Wade stresses that translations of all the operas will be given on the program “so people can read the poetry. One of the reasons we chose these songs is the poetry. Music brings it to life and makes it beautiful. We want people to read the poetry and own it a little bit.”    

            “Voices of Spring” will be performed on Saturday, March 8 at 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Chatham. The concert is free.