The Invisible Mentor

On Wednesday and Thursday I present Mary Lou Fallis,  and on Friday, I present Lois Fallis, her mother. This is something I am experimenting with.

I am always changed by these interviews because I learn so much by and about the interviewees. In life we face disappointments all the time and it’s often been said that when one door closes another one opens. Mary Lou was in the finals for her auditions at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City but she didn’t win. It was a huge disappointment for her because she had to change her career path, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. As a result, that event gave her longevity, while most of her friends in the business are no longer singing and performing, Mary Lou is still having the time of her life. Read Mary Lou’s interview, I’m sure that you will learn a lot.

One of the things you’ll notice is that I am no longer focusing solely on just business people for the interviews. I think diversity is important, and I also think we can learn from others who are very different from us. After you have read and processed the interview, what are five lessons that you can learn from Mary Lou? How can you apply the information to your life?

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Mary Lou Fallis Tells Us About Herself from Avil Beckford on Vimeo.

What’s a typical day like for you?

A typical day for me today is much different than it used to be because I no longer have children at home. For 20 years I had to get the kids up and off to school, but now for a typical day my husband is going off to school in the morning. He used to be in The Toronto Symphony Orchestra but now he is taking an art course so he gets up and goes to school and I walk my dog Percy, which is a good way to start the day because I get out and meet a lot of people in my neighborhood. There is a gang of us who walk together. It’s always a nice way to start the day, it’s very social and I enjoy that.

When I return home I have breakfast and read the Globe and Mail from stem to stern, it takes about half an hour. I check my Facebook and email at about 10 am, and I take care of most of the personal stuff. And at about 10:30, I go into my office at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre for Faith Justice and the Arts. It’s my church as well, and I have a little cubby hole on the second floor where I have my books, my music and my files, a phone and computer so that I can service all the contracts that I have. A day might also involve talking to my agent. It could be talking to Canada Council about funding, or a choir director about a concert that I am doing. In could be doing things in my library in terms of making music files. I may be writing an article for a newsletter, or I may be updating my website, and I also teach. In a day I’ll teach two classes in the afternoon. Around 4:30 pm I go home and walk the dog again. Unless I am going out for the evening or having a concert, I have a cocktail with my husband around 5 o’clock and we sit there and talk about our day. His is often more interesting than mine because he is doing all this art courses and I guess what I also wanted to say is that I do not have any typical days.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I think that it is fairly difficult particularly because you go through many periods in your life and your needs are different. Early on you are very hungry, very driven and have to make an income, and I think when you grow older, and I do not want to generalize, but your priorities change. I know that when my kids came along I was less eager to be away, and I started to do more writing, and there are times when you are not motivated, and you just feel as if you’re doing the same-old, same-old, doing the same concerts for the same people for the same audiences and you do not feel as if you are moving on. I find that new projects motivate me, and I find them for myself, and other times people ask me to do things. I think it’s very important as a freelance artist, by and large, is to keep yourself open to forces that might provide you with the impetus to create and move on, and that’s the only way to reinvent yourself. Look at Madonna, she is one of my heroes.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I’m not sure that I would have done anything differently, although I think I would have concentrated on learning more languages. I would have loved to have a smattering of German, French, and Italian. I would have loved to be able to speak more, and be more fluent in a lot of languages because that gives you access to tons more cultural resources, and ways of knowing the world.

Also, I may have had more children because I come from a large family. I have only two kids and there are some wonderful things about larger families, and I think there is a false dichotomy with my generation of women that you should either have children or have a career, one or the other, so I was in the early stages of feminism so I felt that if I wanted a career I couldn’t have as many babies as I wanted to.

What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

I think that I am coming to terms with growing older in terms of my own aging. I am now over 60 and it closes some doors for me, but at the same time I am coming to terms with it and it’s okay. One of the nice things now is that life is good. My husband left the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and is now a student, so our income is much lower than it used to be, and I am finding that less important because he is very happy. We’re comfortable and not suffering.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

I would have to say social media and much more use of YouTube, the internet, iTunes and those sorts of things in dispersing and disseminating music. Classical comedy is what I do, and now you can do a concert by Skype.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

1. Aging, and we live in a youth culture
2. Non-live performances, in other words people are using more and more recorded performances, and I don’t mean the social media aspect. I am talking about things on video and television, or it’s not broadcast anymore, a lot of the stuff that I used to do for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Luckily I am still working on things for CBC but a lot of people are not so lucky because frankly the broadcasters are using dead people’s music
3. Changing demographics: There is a shift in demographic of what people are listening to

I am handling these threats as best as I can, I need to do more video for myself. The stuff that I do lends itself to live performances, because it’s kind of like comedy. It’s so in the moment so live performance is best.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

I guess it’s a service to make people laugh. What’s unique is that very few people in the world do what I do, which is make fun at, and satirize classical music. Not that many people listen to classical music, let alone make fun of it. And the people in the field have not had the extensive training that I have had in classical music. I’m the only one in Canada who makes fun at classical music, who is actually classically trained in music, and there are about three people in the US. There may be 10 or 15 people worldwide.

What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?

I think what I do, or try to do without being intrusive or sucky, is to connect on social networks with the younger generation. I think for a performer and a teacher, that it is very important to know what people between twenty and thirty are doing because that’s where most of the ideas come from. I have been very lucky because when I was on the board of the Laidlaw Foundation, we got plugged into a lot of very contemporary movements – hip hop literacy, and grassroots youth led things. I don’t think that the kinds of organizations that I work with, the Symphony, the Opera, these people are a bit stodgy when it comes to reaching out to the next generation and providing things that are interesting. One thing that I am quite proud of is  the kind of audiences that come to my shows. I have kids who come to my shows, and this makes me feel very good.

Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.

I was in an audition for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and was in the finals and didn’t make it, and that was a major disappointment for me because I thought that I was going there. I was really devastated that my career was going to take a different trajectory. My husband was not particularly supportive of me being away at that time, and he wanted kids and all of that, and I kind of realized right then and there that there would have to be some sort of shift in what I was going to do. So gradually over the next two to three years, I made this shift from doing opera to being in a chamber music group which was less demanding. To do an opera you are away for four weeks minimum, and it’s very hard if you have kids, unless you’re going to take them with you. I would go with this chamber music ensemble as a soprano and it was a lot of fun and I did that for a number of years.

When I was about 31 or 32, I was given an opportunity to write a comic and I thought, “I shouldn’t do this, this is awful, my colleagues won’t speak to me, it will be just terrible,” but I took the risk and did it anyway and that was a challenge to not only change my focus this much but to also make fun of what I had done. But what I realized is that when I went to write the comic, I’d always been doing just that, making fun of what I did. But that was a difficult thing for me to do. And I moved from straight stuff into comedy. And it has turned out to be more durable. Here I am at sixty and still performing, while all my singer friends are no longer singing and performing professionally.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

• I think that I have learned that you have to give yourself time to heal because you cannot pull up your socks and say, “well okay that didn’t work, I’ve been given lemons and I’m going to make lemonade.” You eventually do, but at the time it doesn’t feel like that. If you have the wherewithal you’ll recover.
• Life goes on and you bloom. “You end up doing what you do second best.” If you did what you do best all the time you’d be exhausted. You have a bit of room to maneuver if you do what you do second best. I believe that everybody finds their niche
• If you are going to be doing peak stuff, at a peak level, you have to be at the peak, and that’s why performers at the Met get paid so well because they have to be at their best all the time. You have to look physically good, be mentally sharp all those things, and I do not want to live like that

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

I think it was the Met because I had gone so far in the auditions, which helped me to get hired her in Canada. And the other thing was the CBC had a big talent festival and I won that and it really was the biggest thing. It was around 1974, 75, 76, a good thirty years ago. When you get to that point people start to hire you.

I also did a reality show, Bathroom Divas (American Idol for opera singers and the person who wins gets to sing an aria with the Symphony) for Bravo Television about three years ago which gave me some profile and I won a Gemini Award for it. I did it for two seasons.

Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

I would say the biggest failure was the Met thing. The first year I was down there I got sick and wasn’t able to sing so they invited me back the next year, in that way it was the timing. It was like gearing up for the Olympics and you go and something happens like you get injured so you cannot compete and they tell you if you re-qualify you can come back the next year, but it isn’t the same.

I was still devastated when I didn’t go on to the finals. I don’t think that I learned any lessons from the experience because I was pretty bitter, mad, frustrated and it took me a long time to work through it, and then make fun of it. I did turn a failure into something successful and have been at it for 35 years.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

I was teaching at Queens University when I had my two children. When I had Ben, I took him down to Queens with me, and my sister looked after him at the house where she was living, when I was teaching. I did that for a 1 ½ years, then I got pregnant with Anna, and I felt that I couldn’t do it with two children, so I decided to leave my job at Queens. I could have had more of a career in academia if I had moved to Kingston instead of staying in Toronto, and I would have had much more to fall back on as an artist. I would have had a pension because they asked me to be Head of the Vocal Department two years after I had started teaching there. Eventually I got another teaching position at another university in London (Ontario), and I taught there for 10 years. My husband and children always drew me back to Toronto. So to answer your question, the toughest decision I ever made was to leave academia. Academia makes for lovely conditions for freelance artists who have their credentials together. They can have a steady supply of students and a steady income.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. My grandfather’s death when I was 16. I was very close to him and I realized that the people you love are not with you forever.
2. Writing the show Primadonna, and having it orchestrated and put on at Roy Thompson Hall with the Toronto Symphony, and being able to tour across Canada was quite gratifying. To look out the window in Fredericton, New Brunswick and see on the marquis Prima Donna,  it’s narcissistic in a way, but quite pleasurable. It was playing your own life on stage for five years.
3. The birth of my children

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Writing the show Primadonna

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

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1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Nathalie Lussier
2. Mentor Yourself With Michael McCleary, Live Unconditional Part Two

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