The setting for the music lesson is an austere sixth floor studio. This spacious but underfurnished room features a piano with a large blue/green exercise ball underneath it. Two faded rugs cover some of the floor and a motley collection of prints adorns the walls. The best thing about the room is its picture window looking out over Boston Common, the buildings beyond, and a gray sky.

This is the setting in which the singer performs for his teacher, a dignified professional in his mid 70s who sits at the piano guiding his student. The student, a tall man  with blondish hair, small beard, sideburns and a slight mustache first sings the usual voice exercises, O’s and E’s up and down the scale as the teacher strikes the appropriate notes.

Then come further sounds that draw praise from the teacher: “I thought that was damn good.”

This preparation leads into the singing of the first four songs of Schumann’s “Dichterliebe,” that the student is slated to perform soon at a meeting of a Germanic interest group. After each song, the teacher makes suggestions such as “You have to internalize this tactus” and “You will need rubato,” both followed by explanations of these technical terms.

The teacher’s admonition –“that nasal sound seems effortful” – requires the student to repeat a phrase. So does: “You’re singing an E instead of an F sharp.” As an encore, the singer renders a song called “To Celia.”

The teacher completes the session advising the singer: “Practice with the metronome beating and you conducting.”  

Such is the routine that the singer, 64-year-old Vernon Howard, undertakes each week as he pursues his retirement goal of resuming his interrrupted career as a professional singer. This new career will bring him back to his original ambition, one inspired by his father, a lead tenor with the Royal Danish Opera.

Although he often performed in earlier adulthood, usually in a lecture/recital format, in time he turned away from music toward a career in academia. He had become concerned about finding himself without the financial resources needed for a secure life. That anxiety drove him to get a doctorate in philosophy from Indiana and to seek a university appointment. Ultimately, he had become a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, teaching there until he retired in 2000.

Starting over as a professional singer is not easy in one’s sixties. Vernon Howard himself confesses to his questions and hesitations in a manuscript that he hopes will be published in the near future:

“From the time I first heard the Siren’s call beckoning me back, I was plagued with doubts and many of them. Was I too old to start over? What toll does age extract from the voice? Do the vocal cords lose flexibility? Do they atrophy and grow brittle like rubber bands in the sun?

“If I couldn’t run like a 35 year old anymore, maybe I couldn’t sing like one either. The issue of age and neglect haunted me from the start and came back vengefully with every setback, with every cracked top note, with every loss of endurance. Yet I was determined to reclaim my vocality.”

Howard knows what he is getting into but relishes the challenge. He savors the rewards that come “when you get it right.” That is why every day, he does his vocal exercises and structures his time so as to make himself into the best singer possible.

At the same time, he continues to keep a journal that details his experiences. The weekly voice lessons figure large in the pages of his diary. His teacher, Mark Pearson, demanding but sympathetic, guides the aspiring singer within the framework of a structured adult-to-adult relationship.

It’s possible, of course, to exaggerate the difficulties encountered by retirees like Vernon Howard. Former Harvard professors have certain advantages, being able to afford the expenses required to start a new career and blessed with the personal connections they may need.

Nonetheless, I draw inspiration from Vernon Howard and his like because they summon up within themselves the courage to try something different. They belong to a huge legion of people all across this country who show how initiative and guts can enhance later life.

A retired first-grade teacher, now 65, told me recently with enthusiasm: “I consider retirement the best time of my life. I have met so many new people and have discovered new activities that have given me great pleasure.” She cannot understand why some of her age peers find the time empty.

Vernon Howard plans to sing as a tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah in New Brunswick next winter. One of the other soloists has a well established professional reputation that tempts Howard to feel intimidated. But then, he gets a hold of himself and says: “I’ll just do it.” And he will.

Richard Griffin