Stetson Has My Heart Singletary and Oney both received their voice training here in Maddox’s laboratory. Oney said he is “so grateful” for Maddox’s voice training. Raised in Lynn Haven, near Panama City, Florida, Oney grew up in a musical family, performing in churches and at community events. He attended Stetson with plans to become a high school choir director, and he also sang as a tenor in Stetson’s Concert Choir. It was while working as student conductor for the Concert Choir that his career arc veered in a new direction. He was demonstrating how he wanted the female sopranos to sing a particular phrase, and a friend commented later that Oney might have the vocal range of a countertenor. Oney didn’t know what a countertenor was at the time. But he did some research. Countertenors are rare. They are men who can sing in the highest register — in the full range that a woman can, plus what a man can sing. “I brought the idea to Dr. Maddox,” Oney recalled, “and he assigned me a song, and he listened to me, and he said, ‘Let’s start working on this. Let’s see where this can go.’ And I’m so grateful that he allowed me to explore that part of my voice, because if he had not I really don’t know if I’d be where I am today, to be honest.” Maddox, a Stetson professor for 33 years, has taught only three countertenors in his career. Oney made the change during his junior year and won the School of Music’s Giffin Vocal Scholarship award — the top in-house voice competition. After graduating from Stetson, Oney earned a master’s degree in voice performance from Boston University, a graduate diploma from the New England Conservatory and an opera performance diploma from the Royal College of Music in London, where he now lives. “Stetson really does have my heart,” added Oney, 32. “I really got a chance to get to know who I am as well as those around me. Even nine, 10 years later, I still talk about Stetson as being the best and the greatest experience of my life, honestly. It was the sense of community. That’s something that is so unique.” 24
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Top: Stetson School of Music senior Maria Gikas sings for Professor Craig Maddox as the voice spectrogram breaks down the sound frequencies in her voice. Gikas, a vocal performance major, hopes to be a professional opera singer. Bottom: Professor Craig Maddox works with senior Lucas Coura inside the Hollis Voice Laboratory in Presser Hall. Photos: Bobby Fishbough
So Much Competition Down the corridor in Presser Hall, Voice Professor Jane Christeson, M.M., was working with another student, Jack Sumrall, who came to Stetson from Jacksonville Beach to major in music education but had since been “bit by the bug” — the opera bug, as Christeson described it. Stetson has a rich tradition of voice training and choirs, dating to its founding in the 1880s and growing out of its Baptist origins. About 80 students are majoring in voice performance, out of approximately 200 students in the School of Music. The singers each have fine voices or they wouldn’t have been accepted into the program. But becoming an opera singer requires much more than a great voice. Students must take one semester each of Italian, French and German, followed by a second semester in one of those foreign languages. They take language diction classes, so they can sing in those languages, pronouncing words correctly and without an
American accent. They learn music theory, opera literature, movement, posture, breath work, acting and more from Maddox and Christeson, as well as from the director of Stetson Opera Theatre Russell Franks ’88, M.M., conductor Anthony Hose and coach Kristie Born, D.M.A. “If you say you want to be an opera singer, you have to treat your voice like an instrument, and you have to learn all the other skills that it takes,” said Christeson, an accomplished pianist and mezzo-soprano who has performed around the world. “There’s so much competition. The odds are minuscule that you make it to the level that these three guys have made it. But having all the gifts in the world — doesn’t matter how talented you are — you have to have the breaks and you have to be willing to work really hard.” Aspiring opera singers also need experience on stage, and that’s where Stetson stands apart from the vast majority of music schools in the country. Stetson is one of only