John Glenn Paton lives in Granada Hills, in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. He and pianist Joan Thompson have been married since 1987. They are both retired from full time teaching and continue to teach privately at home.
Paton received his bachelor of music in voice from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in 1955. He studied voice with Sonia Essin (student of Anne-Marie Schoen-René), piano with Melba Smith, and organ with Parvin Titus (student of André Marchal).
Paton spent the summer of 1955 at the Tanglewood Festival singing as a tenor chorus leader in performances under Leonard Bernstein, Charles Munch, and Hugh Ross.
After two years in the U.S. Navy, he studied at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester (NY) with Julius Huehn (another student of Schoen-René). He received the Master of Music in Music Literature with an applied voice emphasis in 1959. His master’s essay was a study and performance edition for Psalm 39 by Benedetto Marcello, an excellent preparation for his later career as an editor of Italian Baroque vocal music.
Paton remained at the Eastman School one more year to earn the Performer’s Certificate. He sang a newly composed work, “Fern Hill” by Richard Lane, with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Howard Hanson.
On a Fulbright scholarship, Paton studied German lieder in Stuttgart, Germany. With his mentor, Prof. Hermann Reutter, at the piano, Paton sang recitals and recorded for Südwestfunk (Southwest German Radio). He also recorded contemporary American songs for broadcast by Studio Basel (Switzerland).
From Germany, Paton went directly to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he taught from 1961-1968. During those years he made seven annual recital tours, performing lieder of Romantic and contemporary composers, including Prof. Reutter. He sang tenor leads in the first productions of the UW Opera, Dido and Aeneas and Cosí fan tutte and in the first production of the Madison Opera, La Bohème. A highlight in Madison was a full recital of Schubert lieder with Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda at the piano.
In 1965 Paton returned to the Tanglewood Festival as a soloist. His performance of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes is available from the Tanglewood archives. He sang in several concerts conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, including Wagner’s Lohengrin, which was subsequently recorded with the Boston Symphony in Boston.
In 1968 Paton began to teach at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he later chaired the Vocal Dept. At this time his editing career took wing, with the publication of his first two pedagogical works, Vaccai: Practical Method of Italian Singing (Schirmer 1975, researched in London) and L’aria barocca (Leyerle 1985). While at Boulder performed in the Boulder Opera production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. For two years John served as a travel coordinator for the University Study Abroad program, and he took students to Regensberg, Germany for their university study. He continued his love of research of original song manuscripts and began working on his bestselling anthology, 26 Italian Songs and Arias (Alfred, 1991) visiting the research libraries of Rome, Venice, and Paris.
In 1986 John’s farewell recital in Boulder was comprised entirely of songs by faculty composers, accompanied by Joan Thompson. He moved to Los Angeles and continued his voice teaching at American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and then at University of Southern California where he stayed for 17 years, teaching private voice, pedagogy, and diction. During this time he published many anthologies and textbooks, notably Expressive Singing Song Anthology (McGraw-Hill), Italian Arias of the Baroque and Classical Eras (Alfred, 1994), collections of songs by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Hensel, Donizetti, the Garcia Family, and the complete cantatas of Rosanna Scalfi Marcello, as well as a collection of Spanish Theater Songs. The Marcello cantatas were recorded by the noted counter-tenor, Darryl Taylor, in 2015. The Gateway Series (Alfred) consists of Italian, French and German diction textbooks and song anthologies.
In his retirement, John continues to coach privately and enjoys mentoring students and friends. His pleasures include concert-going, informal singing, church music directing, travel, gardening, dogs, dinners with friends, and loving companionship.
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
John Glenn Paton, December 2021
“Now I walk in beauty, beauty is before me, beauty is behind me, above and below me.” This is the text of a “Navajo Prayer Song.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that became a way of thinking that we instill in our students? In our own teaching and singing?
I try to adhere to that principle in my teaching: Search for the beauty in each vocal phrase, each vocal sound, as the song is only as beautiful as you sing it. This search is done in a variety of ways, as we consider the basics of breath, tone production, and diction, and explore the meaning that the song holds for the student.
It is vitally important to value and respect each student’s own starting point, and build from there, finding some aspect of beauty that we could draw upon and develop. I can recall at the beginning of every semester, instead of battling the rest of the voice faculty for the “best” students, I would prefer to take the students as they are and see how far we can grow. And how exciting those students were! And after one such student whined that I was too demanding, I replied, “Haven’t we just added four notes to your upper range this semester?”
Julius Huehn, my teacher at Eastman, said very little about the teaching methods of his own teacher, Anna Schoen-René, so it’s hard to ascertain if he took on her methods of teaching. As most of us would, he likely internalized her methods as he continued to build on them with his own. I believe it is incumbent upon the teacher, in whom students have placed their trust, to teach the fundamentals of healthy song production, being true to the music and the text, while still being open to accepting new techniques of teaching, and insightful enough to determine each student’s needs.
I try to encourage experimentation and creativity in repertoire choice and interpretive possibilities, while urging the student to listen to as many fine singers as possible from the wealth of beautiful song performances around us. That way, the students can find their own niche, specialty, or primary vocal style. In doing so, I must recognize my own limitations, and re-direct the student to a different teacher if necessary. I am not the only book on the shelf. While it may be tempting as a teacher to step out of our area of expertise, it may be vocal malpractice to assume that we are experts enough in all styles, qualified to teach them to the inexperienced singer. It must be done with adequate pedagogical preparation and experience.
My responsibility as a teacher is to inspire and encourage the process of singing in a safe and supportive atmosphere, using the finest literature and resources; the student’s responsibility is to be willing to be flexible, courageous, and diligent. This is a pact to which we must both agree in some way. As long as we can each uphold our end of the bargain, we can walk along the path of beauty in our music.
Mr. Paton is a highly regarded author of vocal pedagogy & diction textbooks and editor of vocal music. His many books and CDs are available on Alfred Music and Amazon.