From The Met to Mercer Island – Opera singer is local choir director
Published 6:46 pm Monday, November 24, 2008
By Diane de la Paz
The choir director at Mercer Island Congregational Church leads a double life.
There’s Erich Parce, the baritone who had the audience swooning through Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Silver Lining” finale this month. That was one highlight in a career that has included stints with New York City’s Metropolitan Opera.
Then there’s Parce, the Mercer Island teacher who enjoys seeing once-shy students sing solos in church. In his 25 years as choir director at Mercer Island Congregational, he’s managed to also sing at The Met and with other opera companies across North America and Europe.
But for four years now, he’s opted to stay home more, for several reasons.
“You might say to a singer who’s sung at The Met: `That must be great,”’ Parce says. “But really, other than the paycheck, that’s no better than a Sunday morning at Mercer Island Congregational, because it’s about that moment, that contact with people,” and how the music lifts their spirits.
Longtime choir member Joan Shrader says Parce has a gentle way of encouraging inexperienced singers. “He can work with just about anyone,” and gives lessons before choir practice each week.
“I understand what it takes to get out there and do it,” says Parce. “It’s almost harder to stand up and sing in front of your friends in church than in front of an audience of people you don’t know.”
Shrader adds that in church, Parce deflects attention away from himself.
“So many directors and musicians have a lot of ego. They think of themselves as performers; they want to be the center of attention,” she says. Parce and the choir share the attitude that “we’re not performing. We’re part of the worship service.”
Still, “he’s a very charismatic person.”On stage, Parce seeks to turn each song into a story, and offer it with understated grace. His hope, he says, is that he will “take the audience somewhere they’ve never been before ? When it comes down to it, that’s what everyone wants: to be taken away from whatever normal life is. Even (in) opera, it’s like watching `Star Wars’ or something like that. You become engrossed in those moments of fantasy.”
So opera is like “Star Wars”? Obviously Parce is no snob. And Valerie Piacenti, the soprano he performed with in “Silver Lining,” was surprised to find this baritone’s ego isn’t as big as his voice.
Before Piacenti, whose background is in musical theater, met Parce, she feared he’d be like some opera singers and consider himself above her. “But he was just down to earth. Talking to him is like talking to the guy next door — who just happens to have this fabulous voice ? and a list of credentials about 3 feet long.”
“Silver Lining’s” last song, “All the Things You Are,” is Piacenti’s favorite. “We get to look right at each other and sing to each other,” she says. “I really can hardly wait to get out there and sing that with him.”
At the same time, Parce is passionate about opera, and urges the uninitiated to try it.
“The first thing to do is pick famous operas: `La Boheme,’ `Carmen,’ `The Barber of Seville.’ They’re famous for a reason” he says. Their music is irresistible and their stories fairly easy to follow. You do have to get used to the medium, since “you’ve got people screaming at the top of their lungs ? in a very cultured way, of course. But there’s something fabulous about how operatic singing touches you emotionally. It’s based on big, emotional sounds humans make.”
When singer and audience connect, the air is electric, Parce adds.
“The feeling is like what athletes describe when they say `You’re in the zone.’ It feels like pure energy, like the entire audience gives you the energy.”
Ironically, Parce came close to pursuing a different career. He earned a pre-med degree at Western Washington University, and planned to become an orthopedic surgeon, he says. But after college, in 1978, he went to Santa Barbara, Calif., for a summer music program at the Music Academy of the West. He was soon offered several singing jobs, and never went back to medicine.
A year later Parce returned to Seattle, where his father was the minister at Plymouth Congregational Church on Capitol Hill. When his father retired, his parents moved to the Island, and his mother, Hanna, still sings in the Mercer Island Congregational choir.
Parce lives in Bellevue, but his spiritual and musical ties to the Island are significant. On June 25 he’ll marry Jenny Knapp, the music director at St. Monica Catholic Church. They met when he was assistant-directing Mozart’s comic opera “Cosi fan Tutte” at the University of Washington; she was singing the role of Dorabella.
This could be quite the operatic wedding — but Parce says no.
“We’re having no singers in the wedding, because if you ask one, all the others wonder, `Why wasn’t I asked?”’ Instead, a violinist and a harpist will play.
Parce says he looks forward to staying home, being married, and directing operas around the region. He also enjoys a good Catholic Mass each week.
His singing bride “has a huge following. I go to St. Monica’s every Saturday night,” he says.
Might the couple collaborate on an Island concert of some sort?
“Probably,” says Parce.
