Handel's "Messiah" and George Flores come together tonight

WHAT: Handel’s "Messiah"

WHEN: Dec. 13, 2009

TIME: 8 P.M.

WHERE: International Christian Center

2855 Paredes Line Road

Brownsville, Texas

ADMISSION: Free

George Flores poured all his energy into the music before him, glancing back and forth between the notes and the conductor.

"Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest!" he and the other members of the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College Bravo Opera Company sang in preparation for this year’s "Messiah." The 120-member ensemble also includes students from the Brownsville Independent School District and other community members.

The group will perform Handel’s "Messiah" at the International Christian Center, 2855 Paredes Line Road, on Dec. 13. The performance is free to the public.

Flores, 21, was singing in the chorus at a recent rehearsal, but he impressed judges in early November at the National Association of Teachers of Singing Competition at Texas Tech University in Lubbock with his solo rendition of "Herbststurm" by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Flores, after competing in the contest several times with no success, managed to place sixth this year.

"It was definitely unexpected," said Flores, a senior voice major. "I had never placed before. I had never even advanced past preliminaries. In that particular competition I had competed twice. In similar smaller competitions I had advanced past the preliminaries once."

The most challenging part of the contest for the young tenor was trying not to feel intimidated.

"It’s a huge competition and I was the complete underdog," he said. "Nobody had ever heard of me. I had never advanced at all, and I am going up against the guys who have taken this competition three years in a row. I recognized at least one. The one I recognized is the guy who always wins first."

What made the difference this time?

"Just the fact that every time I didn’t advance, rather than being defeated, I just saw it as an opportunity to improve," he said. "So every time I didn’t advance, it was just back into a practice room."

After awhile, he decided a practice room wasn’t enough. Instead, he began exploring the music and "taking it in its historical context and analyzing it in the time period that it was of and trying to perform it in the way that the composer would have intended it to be interpreted.

"It was more of everything," he said. "It was more intellectual, more spiritual, more emotional."

Of the 17 students taken to the competition from UTB-TSC, Flores was the only one who advanced to the finals, said Amy Brownlow, director and vocal coordinator of the Bravo Opera Company. She is also Flores’ voice coach, and the piece he chose to perform was a great challenge.

"It’s very difficult rhythmically," she said. "It’s very long, what we call a through composed piece, where it doesn’t just repeat. It has three different sections."

One of the judges in the semifinal rounds, she said, approached her after the audition and expressed admiration for Flores’ ability to perform such a difficult piece.

"He didn’t have the biggest voice, but she said it was such difficult music he had to get credit for that," she said. "And she said, for them that’s why he really advanced because there were a lot of other bigger voices. His obvious advancement as a musician is what really put him above the rest."

Brownlow said she teaches healthy singing so that performers can sing without wearing out their voices.

"If you’re singing for long periods of time loudly, just as if you would speak for long periods of time loudly, you’re going to tire out your voice," she said. "Over hundreds and hundreds of years the unamplified sound has been perfected through special techniques. Before we had electronic equipment and people had to project their sound in opera and stuff like that, this technique was introduced and used for singers who wanted to preserve and have longevity in their voice."

Most competitions, however, focus on the "biggest" voices, which Brownlow said is a shame because there are lots of voices like that of Flores that aren’t big but are very good. Fortunately, the judges at this contest appreciated Flores’ talent for taking charge of a difficult piece using the unamplified technique.

"That was a real win on our part, because at our school we really promote healthy singing and a lot of teachers don’t do that," she said. "They give their students music that is not appropriate for their age level. And unfortunately they win. And so this was a real boost for us teachers who want to make sure our students are always healthy. And we don’t give them the big guns and stuff so they can go in there and just scream and blow their voice out. It was just a real shot in the arm for us here."

Brownlow said that when Flores first came under her tutelage, he did not have a real developed voice.

"It was a very nice choral sound," she said. "It was a small voice, kind of straight toned, a type of voice that would blend with other voices. As we started working, I wanted him to develop a more full-bodied operatic sound, which is what I do. I train singers to be soloists."

Brownlow said Flores was a quick learner and worked very hard.

"He had problems with always matching the pitch," she said. "He worked really hard, lots of practicing building up his breathing stamina for singing. He worked on his voice. He does all the exercises. He prepares very diligently, and just over the years his voice has just gotten better and better and better."