Meyers & Linder offer their talents to benefit Thermal Belt Outreach

Mary Meyers and Rob Linder have been inspired by the warm welcoming they received in Tryon. When Mary first visited with her son Jonathan they were fortunate to meet Myrna Viehman of Foothills Realty who shared with them her love of the history and artistic culture of Tryon. They have barely settled into their new home they found site unseen with Myrna’s help, and are already offering their talents to the community. The following is the continued conversation we had about their transition from the Metropolitan Opera to Tryon.

I assume you went to college and studied voice?

I studied music at a state teacher’s college in New Jersey and continued to study privately with voice teachers. I won awards from the Metropolitan Opera, the Philadelphia Lyric Opera, and the Baltimore Opera. Major awards and smaller awards from other places, but those were the three major ones. It was many years between the award I won at the Met and getting into the chorus, so there was nobody left there who knew me. It was just a fluke how I decided, “I’m auditioning for everything. I’ll audition for the chorus.” I was working a summer job that was very ugly that I did every summer because it paid the rent.

Rob: Which was actually doing Broadway stuff.

You said it was ugly?

Rob: The director was...

Mary: An i—

Rob: …a nice man. Not nice to work for, yet people did it summer after summer because they needed the money. I did it too.

Mary: They complained bitterly, but they did it. Actually, I found him less obnoxious to work with than many people did. Somehow we had it worked out that he wasn’t obnoxious to me. I always had all the solo work I wanted. I auditioned during summer and I got a call back and everybody was so excited. They said, “Do you know what that job is?” I said, “I really don’t.” Then I got the job and I still didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know it was six days a week and 10 a.m. to midnight and so forth. But, it never occurred to me to even question. I just did it. That’s what I’d always done, and so I did that.

Rob: And did you mention that right after you came out of college you taught public school?

Mary: In the inner city.

Rob: Passaic, New Jersey.

Mary: I didn’t even know where Passaic, New Jersey was, but it was where they offered me a job. I didn’t drive, I didn’t have a car.

Rob: You conducted senior citizens choruses and then taught voice.

Mary: Synagogues and churches…

Rob: That’s another money maker for legit singers.

Mary: Up in that area, not here, I’m sure they don’t pay soloists in churches here.

Rob: We actually met singing at a church in Inglewood, New Jersey that paid soloists. That’s how we met.

Mary: Across the chancel. He was doing things to try to catch my attention. But, the only thing that worked was flattery. He flattered me. It worked.

Rob: I started out as a French horn player and I went to Mannes College of Music in New York. I did that for a while, but I had a problem with my embouchure, a palsy, and couldn’t play anymore. Singing had been my other talent when I was younger, the one I decided not to go with, but as a necessity I switched to singing when my French horn playing went south.

You have to have an excellent ear to play French horn.

Mary: He’s a superb musician. He had absolute pitch at that time. I don’t know if he still does, but he did.

Rob: It fades.

Mary: He used to transpose by hand for people.

Rob: Music copying.

Mary: Beautiful, but useless now, computers do it. Before we met he was a music director in a church. He could conduct. He could do just about anything you could think of musically, plus he has knowledge about music and musicians and composers that is just mind boggling. I don’t know how you have a computer brain like that but you don’t balance a checkbook. It’s just amazing.

Rob: Mary does all the paperwork.

Mary: All the paperwork, yes indeed. I don’t dislike it, except occasionally. It gets a little too much occasionally. But, I am nowhere the musician that Robert is.

Rob: Mary actually has great instincts as a musician. Mary is a great voice teacher. She really knows how to do it. She helped me maximize what I have.

You said 2008, so you’ve just retired this year.

Rob: I’ve been here since April. Mary’s been here since May. We’re quite recent.

You’re brand new and already involved with a benefit.

Rob: I knew a million people already (I’m exaggerating) by the time Mary got here just from walking the dogs. This property goes right down to Harmon Field, and I met so many people just walking the dogs that when Mary got here I had this passel of people and we had a big party.

Mary: They had invited him to brunch or dinner.

Rob: People here are so welcoming.

Mary: So we had a big open house in July. We must have had 50-60 people and we sang a little for them, so people heard us and that’s how that happened. Somebody heard us and told somebody who told somebody who told Lynn [Chalmers], and that was it. Today I just sang publically for the first time here at the Foothills Music Club where I have joined. I haven’t had a cold in I don’t know how long, and this morning I woke up with an ear ache. But it was okay, just allergies.

After you’ve finished with this event, how do you see yourselves blending into the Tryon Community? You mentioned Foothills Music Club, any other plans for involvement? Are you truly in retirement, or still interested in working from here.

Rob: I’m interested in doing stage work. I had set up an audition for the Christmas show they are doing down at the Warehouse Theatre in Greenville. It turned out that this benefit was going to conflict and I found that out the day before the audition. I went to the audition anyway and recited a lengthy Ogden Nash poem because they are doing an Ogden Nash Christmas program. I love the guy that’s the head of it, Paul Savas. Things went really well, I had a lot of fun and I said to him “Can you tell me anywhere in the area to take Shakespeare classes.” He said, “I think we’ll have Shakespeare classes in the spring, but even if we don’t we’re doing Hamlet and I want you to come audition for Hamlet in the spring.” I said in terms of the Christmas show I can’t do it, but I figured I’d come anyway since I had the appointment just to say hello.

So hopefully you’ll be involved with some of the regional theatres.

Rob: I came to theatre by accident. I was just doing musical theatre and I went to audition for Brigadoon and thought I was getting a singing part, but I got Mr. Lundi, a man who has this one huge scene where he does a lot of back exposition. I ended up with a speaking role and I loved it.

Mary: He had a really quirky different approach to it. I loved it.

Rob: So I came back to New York and wanted to take acting classes and start doing some straight acting. That’s how that happened. It’s not easy to get started as a straight actor when you haven’t schooled through it because they say, “Oh, you’re a musical theatre guy, that’s cute.” But I was serious about it and I studied and that became part of what I was doing.

Mary: They have in mind a certain type they want, they have no imagination. So he did Mr. Lundi in a very imaginative and different way, but when you look at him you wouldn’t think Mr. Lundi.

Rob: Mr. Lundi is sort of elfin.

Mary: But, he doesn’t fall into any type.

Rob: That’s right. I’m a tough type.

Mary: He can do anything, but someone would have to be willing to put aside their prejudices of what they think of a given role and use him and see what he could do with it.

I see you have Peter Kutt playing with you.

Rob: He’s a dear friend. That happened because he was recommended as someone who could help me find the piano and he rebuilt the inside of the piano. He’s going to play, but he’s also our friend.

Mary: Actually it was Peter who got me singing again because he was here all the time working on the piano. He wanted me to sing something from the Barber Hermit songs.

Rob: He loves the Barber Hermit songs and he wanted Mary to sing one of them with him.

Mary: So I wasn’t really in good shape, but I tried it and we sang for an hour through a whole bunch of stuff. Afterwards I felt really strong and we’ve done that a number of times since. At that first party in July I felt good enough to sing.

Rob: We know Elisabeth through Mary’s yoga teacher Beverly. She said, “Oh, my daughter sings at Twigs.” So we went there to hear her and we thought she was wonderful. We thought she was lovely. We thought she was very talented. So when they asked us about doing the program we though it would be nice to introduce a young performer.

She is such a wonderful person too.

Mary: This allowed us to spread the program out…

Rob: add a little more variety…

Mary: and there were a couple of things that I was anxious to hear her do that were ingénue things that I couldn’t do. She is learning those.

Rob: Since we are on Pearl Harbor day for the concert there’ll be a section of the program toward the end where we’ll acknowledge that.

Join Mary Meyers & Rob Linder for an evening of Broadway favorite from Gershwin, Kern, Sondheim, Rogers & Hart, Kurt Weill, and more at the Thermal Belt Outreach benefit “Strictly Broadway.” This one time performance will be at Tryon Fine Arts Center Saturday, December 7 at 3 p.m. Tickets may be purchased at TFAC, The Frog and Swan, The Tryon House, The Bookshelf, or the Thermal Belt Outreach offices at 134 White Drive in Columbus. For more information call 828-894-2923.