47: Music and Spirit. A conversation with Patrick Summers.

Music offers one of the most potent spiritual metaphors that exists, and Patrick Summers, the artistic and music director of the Houston Grand Opera, has plenty to say about the subject of spirituality and music. He positions the operatic voice as the expression of a unique sonic vocal print that vibrates atoms between the singer and the listener’s ears. In his book, The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit, he writes, “But precisely because music is both an intellectual and an aesthetic pursuit, it is the perfect metaphor for how I believe one must live: with vast respect for provable knowledge and genuine expertise, but never at the expense of the deep joy and wonder of that knowledge, using what can be learned to marvel at what can never be explained” (2018, p. 147). The science and theory of music notes that an E flat played anywhere at any time in the world is still an E flat, but the infinite ways in which this note can be contextualized and performed open the notes, timbre, rhythm, beat, and melody to communicate that which cannot be reduced to the former collection of sounds and spaces. Patrick is a champion for struggling against the dominance of our culture’s tendency to force art and aesthetic practices into a transactional container. As it would appear that the only justification for an arts program today is the capacity to measure the ways in which art increases math skills, which it does; but I would argue that nobody brought to tears listening to a piece of music or by reading a beautiful poem considers the utility of the quadratic formula in that moment. We discuss the fact that while the arts in education may not teach a person how to get a job, they may, and often do, help a person discover who they are and how to be in the world. Summers graduated from the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in music in 1986. Upon graduation, he participated in the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program as an apprentice coach in 1986 and 1987, and won the Otto Guth Memorial Award for excellence in vocal coaching both years. Summers’ first professional engagement, with San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theater, was conducting La bohème in their 1986/87 season. In 1989, Summers began his tenure as the music director of the San Francisco Opera Center, a training program for young singers; his first mainstage production, Die Fledermaus, was in 1990. In 1998, Summers was made Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, a position he has held since. 1998 also saw Summers’ Metropolitan Opera conducting debut in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. As Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, Summers oversaw the foundation and development of the HGO Orchestra. Prior to the orchestra’s foundation, HGO hired outside orchestras for its productions. Since 1998, Summers has conducted over 50 productions at Houston Grand Opera, including seven world premieres (notably Carlisle Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree in 2000). In 2011, following Anthony Freud’s move to Chicago Lyric Opera, Summers was named Houston Grand Opera’s Artistic and Music Director. In 2002, he won a Grammy Award for his audio recording Bel Canto, with soprano Renée Fleming and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Summers's book The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit released in 2018 from University of Chicago Press. https://www.houstongrandopera.org Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the Week: Renee Fleming and Patrick Summers, Bel Canto Music Page: https://music.apple.com/us/album/ren%C3%A9e-fleming-bel-canto-scenes/1452542018 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/