WWeek - May 2009

Keith Miller: From the backfield to center stage

By Emily Goldman

Bass-baritone Keith Miller performs as Ramphis in the Portland Opera's production of Aida, opening Friday. I spoke to Miller last week about the show, his life as an opera singer and his previous career as a professional football player. You can hear Miller and the rest of the Aida chorus on NPR's Morning Edition tomorrow, May 9.

Is this your first time singing in Aida?

Yes it is.

And you've sung in Portland before, right?

Yes, I did Madam Butterfly about three, four years ago.

WW: How did you get into opera?

Keith Miller: Well, it was about 1996, '95-'96 and I took a girlfriend to Phantom of the Opera and while I was sitting there, I just kind of fell in love with the show—the music, the theatre, the lights, the stage and costumes, everything, and started listening to musical theatre. Everything, Beauty and the Beast, West Side Story, everything, and when I ran out of musicals to listen to, I listened to the Three Tenors, and Pavoratti was singing Nessun Dorma and he had this look on his face that just registered with me as soon as I saw it. So I went to the music library at the University of Colorado and I bought a little pad of staff paper and I hand-copied the piano-vocal score of Nessun Dorma into the pad, and someone there saw me and knew that I was an outsider not in the music school, and asked me what I was doing. I told him and he gave me some opera to listen to and I went to La Boheme and then I watched a video of Don Giovanni and I heard the low voices and that kind of really did it for me. And I started listening to opera pretty much from then on because I really felt a connection to what I heard. And then I just continued to listen to opera and then in the Spring of 2002, I think it was 2002, there was an audition to be part of the "Pine Mountain Music Festival" in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and I went in and I auditioned with the one piece they requested and was given the spot and then and that began my singing career and was admitted to the Academy of Vocal Arts that fall, in October.

So I understand you had a prior career as a football player?

Yes, yes.

And to be perfectly candid, how does the earning potential for a professional football player compare to singing opera?

Well, in the big picture, you can't really compete with the music industry. I mean, you've got to really be a Vince Young or someone to really have the earning potential of some of your top opera stars. I mean, some of these people are pulling in $5, $6, $7 million dollars a year for 30 years, versus in the league—NBA, NFL, anything—you're talking about a very short-term career and most of the times it's a gamble and one of the other benefits to singing, when it comes to just financing, you have a lot of expenses so your overall income is much higher. You know, a lot of these top-rated stars, they're paid to train at the facilities so they have no expenses there and they're in fact incurring more income so in the end, the music industry is very lucrative and it was a very pleasant surprise when I switched over because when I did it, I just enjoyed it and I had no idea that I could make a living out of it. I was looking at sports casting, I had already done some work with a radio station, calling some games and you know, you always entertain the idea of coaching but that wasn't really what I wanted to do, so it was a nice surprise.

Was it difficult to transition from a career in sports to a career in singing?

No. It was very – They're very similar. The physical preparation, I mean, every time you take on a role, you really have to physically prepare that role because they're all different. Even the different productions of the same opera are very different and you have to physically prepare for about 4-6 weeks, which is basically about a two-a-day period. And just like two-a-days, you're asked to kind of sing the role through twice a day and by the time you get to performance, you—you're preparing all this for one show, for that one first pre-game, pre-season game and when you play that game in the first non-conference schedule, when you're playing the game you have to make sure all those pieces are put together and that everything is in line. The competition is equally stressful, I mean, much more so in sports. There're just so few opportunities if you're not in the very top level to actually make a living. It's just so difficult and the opportunities to sing are much more wide-spread.

How many opera engagements do you have a year versus how many solo gigs you do or are you doing opera most of your time?

Yeah, I'm mainly, I would say 90% of the time, 95% of the time, I'm just doing opera although now the chance to sing recitals and oratorio concerts is really coming up and I'm filling in time with that which is also stressful because I don't have the background in some of the oratorio rep. It is like preparing a full opera score. It seems like an easy job at first because you're brought in, you have two rehearsals and then a concert so you're talking about, you know, four days total but the problem is you have to have these pieces physically prepared. Now, when you're booking your schedule, especially time in advance and you say okay, well, I've got this opera – I'm trying to think, guesstimating, 10 operas in the last year and that's a big chunk of music to learn as well as I did some recitals and I did two oratorical concerts, one that I had never done before so, there was a lot of preparation that went into it and a lot of work, that 90% of it is opera.

You played for the Seahawks, right?

No, no no (laughs). There's a lot of ballooning that has happened with my story. I was a three-year starter at the University of Colorado. I went to five Bowl Games and played professionally for a team in Finland. I played arena ball with the Stallions, the Fargo Freeze—at this time there were also start-up leagues, the equivalent of the World League or the NFL Europe, here in the States. The first one was the regional football league and there was a Spring football league and I played in both of those. And that turned into the XFL and then that just kind of fell on it's face and at the time I also had a series of workouts with the Raiders and the Broncos, for the last two seasons while I was playing with other teams, they were calling me and I did three workouts for them and they would call every Wednesday and let you know whether or not you were going to get brought in to the season that week or not so it was kind of like a reserve roster with them and the unfortunate thing was about the time I was really in the mix— I had had my best workout, I had all my game film in place—they switched their offense and they went about three seasons without a fullback and that was basically it. I had a couple of chances – I could have done some workouts with Browns and the Rams but at that point, you know, a special teams situation for about a year or two or go into this other career. And it's different you know, it's different when people don't understand. They always call these leagues, "semi-pro" which just really gets under your skin. It's like saying that if you don't sing at the Met, you're not a professional singer. So, it's a big misconception when people say you've played professional football unless you see some of the articles that come out and you're like, well, he was on a Superbowl team and you just want to beat your head in. But no, I was, I was very good. I had five seasons I played after college and I had to make a choice kind of to either keep going down that path or give this a go and so with the switching of the offense, it kind of made the switch for me. I was all set to go into camp probably about, 2002 and the bottom just dropped out.

Was it a lot easier to break into music then?

Oh no. Breaking in – It's like a fraternity. It's really, really hard to get in, but once you're in, it's almost hard to get out, as long as you do your job. The hard thing is, you're limited on spots every year in football. So matter what, if you really don't crack in your first couple three years, you have to work like a dog and you hear stories of guys that make it and I was headed down that track to get back in. In fact, a couple of my friends got back in. There's a tight end, a good friend of mine named Adam Young who we played together in this regional football league and he got called in and he played for the Giants and the Chargers so you know, it happens, it happens. But it's tough. And there's a lot of politics involved and it's just like singing. I mean, sometimes for whatever reason, someone sees something in this person versus another and you have to deal with it, you have to battle with it. Thankfully, because sports careers are so condensed that experience helped me deal with the singing career which you know, some people don't really hit it until they're 40, 50 years old and then they make their break and they become stars, if that's what you want to call them but it's a very small window for athletics and you have to work to be able to pay your bills because not everybody makes LeBron James salaries.

Do you find you get typecast as the "tough guy"?

Funny you ask, when I did my first audition, they called one of my good friends and they said – the MET called him – and they said, "Hey, he had a really good audition but he looks like a mercenary. What's this guy like?" And he called me and he said, "Hey, I think you kind of came off a little rough" – because the aria that I sang, it was a very aggressive aria and also, when I audition, I take out my contacts and I focus really intently so they thought I was a mercenary, yeah, like they said and I called them up and I said, "Look, can I take you out to lunch or to coffee? I just don't want you to get the wrong impression of me because of my audition." So we went out to lunch and we talked and they got to know me and they've been the most encouraging, welcoming group of people and advisors that I've ever met. But yeah, when you get cast as the bad guy all the time and you have a bald head you can be physically imposing. (chuckles)

As a baritone in general, you're going to get a lot of bad guys.

Yeah, it's like a bad rap. You never get a stage kiss.

Tell me about Ramphis.

You know, he gets a bad rap too. Well, he is in charge of protecting the country and he calls the shots and everybody looks at him as the guy who condemns this romance, but if he's not in place, the country gets taken over and their women get raped, their country gets pillaged, their temples get burned, they get turned into slaves and executed and he does what he has to do to protect the country because obviously, the people who are in charge, from a political stand-point, don't have the strength or the foresight or the wherewithal to remove themselves from their emotional state of being and run the country. So, he has to oversee this and weigh in on a lot of the politics and remove his emotion. I mean, he's a high priest. I guess you could probably equate him to somewhat the Pope, I mean he has no love interest that has shown in the stories or anything else. He's got no personal life. His only job is to oversee the running of the country and make sure that they maintain their position as far as status and the surrounding areas. So, it's a tough job and he always is the bad guy and when you look over the course of the text, the father, Almarado is always seen as the good guy and he's trying to help his daughter but he tells his daughter that she's dead to him and he calls her a slave to the Pharaohs and this guy is terrible and all the Ramphis is follow the rules that are in place and he tells them. He says, "Look, these guys are going to do this, watch out." And they do exactly as he tells them so I mean, he can't be a bad guy because he predicts exactly what is going to happen.