14 minute read
A Talented Tenor
As he prepares to enter an elite opera program in the fall, Luke Norvell says TMU provided him with the vocal and spiritual training he needed
Luke Norvell loves opera. That’s about as understated as saying the recent graduate of The Master’s University has just an OK singing voice.
Norvell, who will soon attend the Academy of Vocal Arts, one of the world’s premier institutions for training opera soloists, wears his devotion to opera on his sleeve.
“Opera is an art form that encompasses all art forms,” says Norvell, who also earned acceptance to The Juilliard School. “There's music. There’s dance. There's visual arts. There's singing. There’s instruments. It has everything you need.”
As it turned out, Norvell’s passion for opera led him to briefly consider transferring after his freshman year to a larger music program near his home in Washington state. But that never happened.
by MASON NESBITT
Ultimately, an exceptional voice teacher in TMU’s School of Music and a curriculum based on the Word of God helped convince Norvell to remain at Master's. And after graduating summa cum laude in May, he says he’s glad he stayed.
Looking back, he says he received both the vocal and spiritual training he needed.
You can’t tell the story of Norvell’s time at TMU without mentioning Eric Carampatan.
An accomplished baritone, Carampatan has performed all over the world. He's wowed fans in some of Europe’s best opera houses. He’s been a soloist in Sydney. He’s served as a guest artist at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
Carampatan is also a follower of Jesus Christ. And for the last four years, he’s served as an adjunct professor in TMU’s School of Music. That’s where, in the fall of 2017, he met a freshman with an impressive voice and room to grow.
“Luke said without hesitation that he wanted to sing opera,” Carampatan says. “So I said, ‘We have great work to do, and no time to waste.’”
The son of a doctor, Carampatan often begins his lessons by emphasizing the anatomy of singing. He points to charts of rib cages, lungs and diaphragms — insisting that proper breathing technique is as important to singing as air tanks are to scuba diving. In both cases, you don’t want to run out of air. “The consequences would be dire,” he says.
Another key area of development came in urging Norvell to be himself. Young singers, Carampatan says, often want to imitate famous voices, like Adele or Pavarotti. “But we've already had those,” he says. “I tell every student, ‘You’ve got to be what God made you.’”
Despite the early progress, Norvell considered transferring to a university closer to home that featured a voice teacher he’d worked with previously (the school was also scheduled to put on two shows that piqued Norvell’s interest).
On the other hand, Norvell believed in Carampatan. He appreciated the instructor’s attention to detail and ability to merge musicality, presentation and vocal technique. He also trusted that TMU’s School of Music, which is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music, would help him take the next step in his career.
He wasn’t disappointed.
Over the next three years at TMU, Norvell continued to unlock a storehouse of natural talent. Carampatan helped him successfully transition from singing as a baritone to a tenor, a better fit for his voice, and together they worked on Norvell’s stage presence. “When I came here, I didn't really think about acting. All I thought about was singing as well as I could,” Norvell says. “But the reality is, if you can't convince the audience that you really believe what you're saying, then you’ll lose them.”
Norvell didn’t want that. So, he watched himself in the mirror and on video, analyzing how he could better embody the characters he played and growing more comfortable day by day.
Meanwhile, Norvell sang with The Master’s Chorale and University Singers. He also improved his diction in Italian and French classes offered by the School of Music, and in a class on conducting, he learned how a production’s score should influence character and vocal decisions.
Onstage, Norvell took cues from Sarah Dixon, TMU’s director of vocal studies. He debuted in “The Telephone” as a sophomore, and he starred in the school’s opera scenes as a junior and senior.
In the process, his voice continued to mature.
“His voice is full, but not too heavy,” Dixon says. “He moves smoothly from note to note. And he can powerhouse the high notes, which as a tenor, you've got to be able to do every time — and he does it.”
It helped that Norvell always put in the work. “He
never came to a lesson unprepared,” Carampatan says. “Never.”
TMU’s commitment to Christ and Scripture was another major reason Norvell decided not to transfer.
As a teen, baseball games had often kept Norvell from church — something that he says stunted his spiritual growth and knowledge of the Word. So, as a freshman, he was awestruck by Dr. Abner Chou’s Essentials of Christian Thought class. Norvell especially enjoyed the course’s focus on how to study the Bible.
“That’s something that’s going to carry me for the rest of my life,” he says. Norvell’s time in the School of Music had a similar impact; professors like Dixon and Dr. Paul Plew emphasized the true reason to pursue the craft. “It’s so easy as musicians to idolize what we do, and to do it for the wrong reasons,” Norvell says. “We’re called to use the gifts that God has given us as an act of worship.”
Christians are also called to encourage one another, something Norvell experienced firsthand at TMU.
“It was so valuable to have people in my dorm who know the Lord and are able to keep me accountable,” he says. “Just being with other godly men who are in the same stage of life, to be able to talk to them about the Lord and study the Bible with them was something I wouldn't have had hardly anywhere else.”
There was fun to be had, too, like day trips to San Diego or the beach and a visit to Downtown Disney. “Some of my best friends are from my dorm,” Norvell says.
Then there was chapel, where messages pointed Norvell to Christ. One preaching series that stood out was on “Compelling Christianity."
“It got me asking the question, ‘How can I best have a compelling faith that helps people see Christ and want Him,’” Norvell says. As the director of vocal studies, Dixon always tells incoming students about additional performance opportunities at nearby opera companies in the greater Los Angeles area.
Norvell took full advantage.
In addition to performing at TMU, he appeared in more than 10 other shows, one of his favorite roles coming as Prince Charming with an opera company in Orange County.
On several occasions, Dixon and other TMU professors traveled to watch Norvell — often receiving similar feedback from directors and cast members. “They always say, ‘Oh, Luke is the best. He’s always prepared. He’s always on time. He's always kind,’” Dixon says. “Whether they know it or not, Luke is representing the Lord well.”
Sometimes that has led to conversations about Christ — conversations Norvell hopes to have during the next stage of his journey.
Accepted to The Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music and several other prestigious programs, Norvell chose the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, in part, because tuition was free and it specializes in performance training (in four years, he’ll receive an artist diploma).
One day, Norvell hopes to perform with opera companies in the U.S. or overseas — an aspiration Carampatan believes is well within reach.
“He’s a tenor and he can sing difficult parts,” the instructor says. “He has the work ethic, and we know that whatever God wants you to walk into, you’ll be prepared for it. Luke has the talent to be very successful.”
MASON NESBITT is the communications manager at The Master’s University.
AIMS TO HELP CHRISTIANS
UNDERSTAND THE CONNECTION
BETWEEN WHAT THEY FREQUENTLY
DO AND THEIR HEARTS
A BIBLICAL
PE R SPECTIVE on
“As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
So said Aristotle. From this idea we have gotten the memorable and Instagram-worthy line, “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle’s point was that happiness and character are not the result of one event, but instead flow from what a person does habitually every day. The Puritans thought and wrote often about this same idea, pondering how habits fit into the sanctification process. But nowadays, it seems like only secular psychologists and productivity gurus write about habits.
That’s why Dr. Greg Gifford, an associate professor of biblical counseling at The Master’s University, set out to write his new book “Heart & Habits: How We Change for Good.” He wanted to give believers a Scripturebased resource to help them learn how to glorify God with their habits. Gifford says that, at its core, his book is about the “interplay between what we frequently do and our heart.” He hopes to address two errors that Christians make when it comes to habits. On the one hand, some people approach habits by emphasizing the actions and ignoring the underlying motivations. On the other hand, Gifford believes that more people make the mistake of neglecting habits entirely.
“There is this spirit of, ‘Well, I’m not going to obey until I really feel like doing it, because that would be phony,’” he says. “‘I’m not going to wake up and do my devotions this morning because I don’t feel like it. My heart’s not there.’ That new form of legalism, ‘Don’t act until you feel like it,’ involves a serious misunderstanding of the heart.”
The antidote to this new legalism is learning how God uses our habits to change our hearts.
Gifford begins the book by borrowing a Puritan metaphor that compares the sanctification process to a
by KAELYN PEAY
campfire. God gives the initial spark of change, but it is the believer’s responsibility to stoke the flame through spiritual effort.
“Once we have that symbiosis — once we have that flame burning well — it’s much easier to maintain the campfire. And that’s the way it works for habit development. Once you’ve developed good, godly, beneficial habits, change will start becoming easier over time. So much so that you can begin doing what honors God in a habitual way without thinking a lot about it.”
Gifford gives the example of a car accident. If a believer has practiced thinking about and approaching situations in light of God’s sovereign and loving purposes in everyday life, it’s more likely that their knee-jerk reaction to an accident will be trust, not panic.
The key to developing this sort of instinctual faithfulness is by beginning to act faithfully even when we don’t feel like it. This is because, as Gifford explains, “God uses what we do to shape what we want to do — to steer and direct it.”
In his ministry as a biblical counselor, Gifford has often observed this heart/habit dynamic and guided people through it. “If a person says, ‘I don’t really have the warm fuzzies for my spouse,’ I’m like, ‘That may be true right now. But how do you get the warm fuzzies for your spouse? It’s through Spirit-filled obedience. It’s through the practices you do every day as you habitually do what God has called you to do. That’s how the warm fuzzies come about.’”
In Gifford’s own life, church attendance was something that began as a habit and moved to the heart.
“There was a time when going to church was a hard habit to practice. But now it’s not. And that’s true for a lot of people; we just know that Sunday morning is church time, and we don’t have to wrestle with that. And that habit of going to church has shaped our hearts so much that now we want to go, and it’s just part of what we do.”
Every believer, regardless of maturity level, is in the middle of this process. We are all putting off bad habits, putting on godly ones, and experiencing the resulting heart change. No one has arrived, but every one of us can look back on our lives so far and see progress. Gifford hopes that his book will become a valuable tool for people in this journey — a biblically faithful alternative to secular resources.
Rachel Miller, a recent graduate of TMU’s biblical counseling program and one of the book’s proofreaders, says, “There are a ton of books on habits out there, but they’re very self-help, pull-yourself-up-by-yourbootstraps books. Dr. Gifford’s book comes from a biblical perspective. It talks about how change actually happens and the balance between personal responsibility and the work of the Spirit.”
Gifford plans to continue developing new resources, including a series of videos on the book’s website and a companion workbook for those wanting to get serious about habit development. In the meantime, this book will help readers overcome common misconceptions about obedience and encourage them to be faithful even when it feels difficult.
“One of the most admirable steps of obedience is doing something even when you don’t feel like it,” Gifford says. “If you let your emotions — your state of being in the moment — prevent you from being obedient, you are never going to see heart change. But if you say, ‘God, I don’t want to do this, but I trust you, and I’m going to do what you’re calling me to do according to your Word’ — boom. That’s money.”
You can purchase Gifford’s book on Amazon or learn more at heartandhabits.com.
KAELYN PEAY is a writer in the marketing department at The Master’s University.
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