We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Korrie Yamaoka a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Korrie, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
We moved a lot when I was a kid. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, then we moved to California for my dad’s job, then back to Ohio, then back to California. I went to 4 elementary schools. When you’re constantly the “new kid,” you get good at reading a room, learning new environments, making friends, and being okay hanging out on your own. Not to mention, everything around you is unfamiliar – your house, your neighborhood.
I remember on the first day of school of 3rd grade, I took the bus home from school, but, the bus dropped me off at a stop that did NOT look like the one I got picked up at that morning. I looked at the the sign for the gated community and it was the name if the community I lived in, so I got off. I didn’t recognize a thing. I started walking up this huge hill, no idea where I was. I kept walking, absolutely terrified. I looked at each street name that I came to, and none of them were familiar. Then as I finally got to the top of the hill, I saw the community pool. I knew we lived 3 doors down from the pool! I kept walking and finally my house came into view! I ran into the house, just wanting to find my mom and cry in her arms. But, she had a friend over, and I didn’t want to cry in front of her so I acted like it wasn’t a big deal. It was one of the scariest moments of my life to this day. That will definitely build resilience!
Being that “new kid” also directly applies to the work I do now. As a music director and musician, I’m always in new situations – teaching a new group of singers, interacting with different creative teams and theatre staff, assembling a new group of musicians for a gig. I thrive on being put in a new situation and figuring it out. There’s always change. And I love that.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Sure thing. I’m Korrie Yamaoka, and I’m a vocal coach, music director, and host of the Studying the Song podcast, where I talk all things auditioning and vocal styling for musical theatre. And, I’m super excited to share that I’ve also started composing and songwriting again after many years of it being on the back burner.
As a Vocal Coach, I love helping singers create their Audition Book, their personal collection of song excerpts (AKA “cuts”) that they audition with for musical theater gigs. The Audition Book is like a window into their artistic soul. It should reflect different parts of their personality while also showing off their vocal skills and acting prowess. When you do your actual audition it’s such a short amount of time and you have a huge job to accomplish: you’ve got to help the casting director and creative team get to know you and start imagining you in their production. Your song choices and nuanced interpretations play a huge part in helping that happen. And that’s what I work with singers on.
It might seem funny that this can be an entire area of specialty in the vocal coaching world, but it IS! One of the hardest things for artists to do is to identify what is special about themselves and feel confident sharing that. There’s so much competition and we’re inundated with digitally manufactured recordings that make professional vocalists sound flawless. It takes an incredible amount of self-knowing and smartly curated song choices to be able to confidently say, this is is who I am and I freaking love singing and you should cast ME in your show instead of the other 100 people that auditioned.
I’m also a music director for theatre productions, which basically means I teach the music to the cast, play piano for rehearsals, and conduct the orchestra for the performances. This really uses all my training as a pianist and musician since I get to not only coach the singers but to also work with the musicians in the orchestra. There’s a special camaraderie I feel amongst musicians, and I just love making music with them. You end up creating something that you could never have done on your own.
One of the highlights of my career was music directing a show called “Everybody’s Talking: The Music of Harry Nilsson.” You may not know his name but you know his songs… “One,” “I Can’t Live Without You,” and of course the title song, “Everybody’s Talkin” from the film, Midnight Cowboy. In this show, the 5-piece band was center stage and the 3 actors literally acted all around us on a circular stage set. I also got to flex my singing muscles by singing background vocals throughout the show, and even stepped out of the band for an a capella moment alongside Tony Award winners Alice Ripley and Greg Jbara. It was amazing.
These days, what’s inspiring me is writing music, and specifically, my upcoming song cycle, “White Space: A Song Prism,” that will be playing for 2 nights only this July 16 and 17 at New Village Arts in Carlsbad. (You can find tickets on their website!)
“White Space” is the result of about 10 years of songwriting, during which I had some major life events happened – got engaged, married, had my beautiful son and became a mother, endured a pandemic, and then bought a house in a new city. All very adult things. All very “life-y.” Which is awesome. But, throughout that time, the artist in me started to feel neglected. My life had undergone a complete facelift, and I felt unrecognizable.
So, whenever I could spare a few minutes away from my kid/husband/job/crippling pandemic anxiety, I would write songs. I never sang them for anyone, and I had no plans of putting them on an album. They were just little moments of my artist self trying to live again and create.
And now, 10 years later, I started playing through them and realized that they actually have a connective thread, which is: What do you do when you no longer recognize who you are? And how does an artist/mother/any person really break free of the overwhelm and return to themself?
These songs have come together into a piece called “White Space: A Song Prism,” which reflects on these questions.
I’ll be joined by some amazing San Diego vocalists, Sasha Weiss (co-creator/director) and Faith Carrion, and I’ll be accompanied by San Diego songwriters and theatrical musicians Evan Bethany (violin, backing vocals), PJ Bovee (guitar), David Ryan Norgren (Bass) and Jason Yamaoka (drums, acoustic guitar). Performances are June 16 and 17 only, 7:30 p.m at New Village Arts. Tix available at newvillagearts.com.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Oh man, there are so many things I could answer this with! But, I’ll stick to three.
1) Be willing to take on the scary/difficult/challenging gigs. There were so many times I took on a gig that scared me in some respect – conducting a particularly hard musical score, taking a gig where I was really challenged vocally, or substituting for a music director at a performance without any rehearsal. Every time, it was hard and there was a possibility for failure. But, in every case, I busted my butt to learn the material, practiced regularly, and, in the end, I did it! These challenging and scary gigs were major catalysts for my growth and gave me more confidence going into each subsequent opportunity.
2) Be easy to work with. The theatre community is so small. Everyone knows everyone. If you become known for being good at your craft AND easy to work with, you’ll never be wanting for work. Create a reputation for yourself as kind, hard working, collaborative, open to others’ ideas, punctual, prepared, respectful, and encouraging to others. Leave the arrogance, entitlement, and insecurity at home. Come to work and do the work. No drama.
3) Follow the arrows. I’ll explain. You know how a lot of productivity and business experts tell you to create a 3-5 year plan with smaller goals along the way? I’ve never been good at this. I’ve always looked at the future as a blank canvas. And, the canvas would start to be filled in as new opportunities found me. I couldn’t predict that a certain person would reach out with a gig or a theatre would ask me to music direct a show. I just had to follow the next opportunity that became available. And then the next. And the next. It begins to feel like you’re on a path with arrows always pointing you to your future. One great example is when I did an internship during my graduate degree in musical theatre at San Diego State University. I was associate music director on the show, Tommy, at the San Diego Rep. It paid pennies, but I took it anyway. While working on the show, I developed a great relationship with the music director who then became somewhat of a mentor of mine and hired me for a bunch of gigs over the next 10 years. I could never have predicted that. I just followed the opportunities, the arrows.
My advice for people starting out is always, be open to opportunities coming for anywhere! You just cannot predict which scenario will help you make relationships that will guide your career or build skills that you’ll be able to use for future projects. The especially true in the beginning when you’re getting offered gigs that are lower paying. While I know we want to make money and we have bills to pay, also take into consideration the other “benefits” of the job. Is this an organization you want to get your foot in the door with? Is there someone working on this project that you could learn from and would be good to know for future opportunities? Is this a project that satisfies your artistic goals? All these can be great reasons to take a gig despite the pay being low. The beginning of your career (when you’re often single and without family responsibilities) is the time to explore the whole panoply of opportunities!
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
I think it’s always been musical artists that have taught me what I needed to know at a particular moment in time. When I was in high school, I heard Ben Folds for the first time and he blew my mind. He taught me that a piano player could lead a rock band and that pop music could be full of interesting melodies and complex harmonies. In college a boyfriend introduced me to Ani Difranco’s music, and she taught me that a woman could speak her mind through her lyrics, that no topic was off limits, and that you didn’t need a record company in order to have a successful career.
After college, I got really into Bjork and she taught me that there’s a place where dance, pop, orchestral, and avant garde music meet. She is a total artist, where you can see her unique vision through her clothing, the cover art, the music, the musicians, the projections during concerts, etc. She also taught me that you can change your music from album to album, that you should follow what is interesting to YOU in that moment and ignore everyone else expectations.
Also in my post-college years, I became obsessed with Bob Dylan and purchased every documentary I could get my hands on. I was never sure that I liked him as a person, but I learned so much from his lyrics. He explored various kinds of meter and song forms. His rhymes were ingenious. And when he chose not to rhyme, the lyric hit your gut like a ton of bricks. Even to this day, when I listen to him, he fuels my curiosity about new song forms. How can I push this lyrics outside the standard 4-line verse and 4-line chorus format? How can I place the title in the lyric so that it lands with particular emotional weight in the rhyme scheme? So many lessons to be learned from Dylan!
I think the common thread here is to FOLLOW WHAT FASCINATES YOU. For me it was these musical artists and their songs. They got my mind turning and searching and investigating, and my skills grew because of that. There’s a definition of “fascination” that I love – attention without effort. What things are you attentive to that take very little effort for you? You don’t have to discipline yourself to do it. You just do it because it’s so interesting to you. Pay attention to those things and see where it leads you.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.korrieyamaoka.com
- Instagram: @korrieyamaoka
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/korrie.yamaoka
- Linkedin: Korrie Yamaoka
- Youtube: @korrieyamaoka3050
Image Credits
Jason Yamaoka Dave Rumley Photography
