Sheela Ramesh gets off the 28X airport shuttle that she boarded at the Pittsburgh airport. The senior mezzo soprano voice major is back on Carnegie Mellon's campus after a weekend excursion to New York City. She starts walking to her off-campus apartment, hauling her canvas suitcase packed with clothes, including THE dark suit. It was a recent purchase, bought for a life-defining moment—her interview before the Marshall Scholarship committee in New York. The interview ran for only 20 of its allotted minutes—perhaps a bad sign, she worries. She'll know very soon. According to protocol, the verdict for the Marshall—which underwrites graduate study in the United Kingdom—will come sometime today.
The interview had taken place in midtown Manhattan, in the parlor of the British Consulate—grand piano, elegant tea service, plush chairs and couches arranged in a circle. The first question challenged Ramesh's understanding of music history:
What’s so special about Mozart?
Mozart, Ramesh answered, comes after Bach, who dazzled the world "with all these crazy transpositions, which showed that a composition could be played in more than one key." By contrast, she pointed out, Mozart simplified his music—one melody, one harmony—in a way that is so catchy you can sing the music in your head.
So far, so good, she thought.
If Mozart is so simple, why is his "Queen of the Night" aria considered to be the most difficult piece to perform?
The aria, Ramesh explained, takes a very special voice to pull it off. Its high note is out of reach for many sopranos—a high F over high C. Challenging enough, but then the singer has to land especially forcefully on a high B flat, which is not in the most powerful part of a soprano's typical vocal range.
Ramesh eyed the piano nearby; it might have been easier to demonstrate. No, too nervous.
One by one, the committee members continued around the room with their questions. One of the interviewers was a gruff-looking military man. She tried not to stereotype him. Maybe he was an opera lover. Maybe she wouldn’t have to sell him on the idea that opera is worth supporting.
If you were going to sell me on opera, what one opera would you tell me to go see?
Oy. Think. Think. Think.
"La Bohème," she answered, because everyone who sees "La Bohème" falls in love with the music. "It doesn’t matter if you don’t catch the words. It affects people viscerally. That's why music is not speech."
Did she get through to him? The only feedback he gave was a nod.
Later, she would think about everyone's advice, which had been: Be yourself. That's not what happened. "To be honest," she says, "I think anyone who says they were so confident they just sat back in the chair and were themselves would be lying through their teeth."
No wonder. As academic awards go, the Marshall Scholarship is one of the most prestigious. It was established in 1953 by an official Act of Parliament to reinforce the ties between Great Britain and the United States and to foster in future leaders a continuing appreciation of British culture. The program honors U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the architect of the post–World War II European Recovery Program, popularly known as the Marshall Plan. This year, only 44 U.S. students would be chosen out of a highly select field of 982 candidates who were nominated by their schools.
During the 40-minute ride from the airport on the 28X, Ramesh was on her cell phone nearly the entire time with her brother, Sridhar Ramesh, who earned his undergraduate degree in 2006 from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/). He is at Stanford now, pursuing his PhD in theoretical math and philosophy. But during his sister’s bus ride, his focus was just trying to keep her calm, which was draining her phone battery. When the 28X reached campus, phone bar level low, they reluctantly said good-bye.
As Ramesh walks back to her apartment, about four blocks away, her phone rings. Is it Sridhar again? No. It’s the chair of the Marshall Scholarship committee. “How are you doing today?” he asks. “Great,” she answers, just as the phone beeps … and dies. Her desperate run home is a blur. Does she almost get hit by a car? Is she praying out loud? She scrambles into her apartment, plugs the phone in to its recharger, takes a deep breath, and returns the call.
The news is good. Very good. She will be among the Marshall scholars this year who will pursue fields as varied as ancient philosophy, biomedical sciences, city design, economics, refugee care, medical anthropology, and creative writing. For Ramesh, who completed a dual major in voice and psychology last spring, her home for the next two years will be at the Royal College of Music (https://www.rcm.ac.uk/) in London, one of the world’s leading conservatoires. There she will continue her voice technique and performance training, honed at the School of Music, as well as study composition, theory, and vocal music of the early 20th century. “Royal College has the top music psychology research in all of the U.K., so I want to get involved with that—in addition to performing and working with composers and doing new opera,” she says.
Ramesh has made history as the first Carnegie Mellon student to receive this honor. When Pittsburgh Post-Gazette classical music critic Andrew Druckenbrod announced the award on his blog, one of Ramesh’s teachers was quick to respond. "Needless to say, a lot of us are pretty proud of Sheela," wrote music history lecturer and classical music broadcaster Paul Johnston. "As you say, it's surprising that no one from Carnegie Mellon has ... gotten a Marshall Scholarship before. But it isn't surprising that Sheela qualified. I had her in classes for four semesters. She has a fine critical mind, but she's also a superb communicator in writing and in person. To round it off, as a singer she's gifted with a really decent set of vocal chords—a very mezzo mezzo. So, she's the whole package. And we knew her when."
The plot of Ramesh’s life story preceding the phone call begins with her very first memory: She is two years old, sitting on the staircase of the family’s New Providence, N.J., home, trying to plunk out Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on a Muppet Babies keyboard. If you press a couple buttons, the toy will play a few little songs and rhythms. But all the toddler wants to do is figure out this one melody. She goes through it note by note.
"The keyboard didn't have black keys on it, only white. I'm assuming I pressed C, because it’s the only one that makes sense," she says. She kept at it, trial and error, until she got the whole song. At first, no one was paying attention. Then her parents realized what she was doing.
"I wouldn't call me a prodigy," she laughs. "I also ate mud at the time," trying to give the triumph some perspective.
Formal piano lessons did not come until she was five. She also began learning Indian cultural music around then because of her family’s Indian heritage. "That was my introduction to Indian vocal technique, which is interesting because it’s soooo different from the way we’re taught to sing Western music classically. In lots of ways, it'’s the opposite. In Western classical music, most of what we focus on are the higher resonances—your head voice—and distinguishing between notes. There’s vibrato and a bigger sound because you have to sing over an orchestra. Whereas in Indian cultural music, you’re never accompanied by more than two or three instruments—a violin and percussion. It's all much lower, so you are in your chest resonances. And Indian music is based on melodies, not harmonies. It's more important to make interesting combinations of notes, and so they go in between the notes and scoop around the notes. It’s not a discrete 12 different notes the way we would plunk it out on a piano. It was a good complement to what I was getting from piano at the time."
Her love for music grew grade by grade. But the idea of Ramesh going to college to be a voice major was tricky. The topic had come up "a trillion times" with her parents, both computer engineers who came to the United States from India in their 20s. They wanted her to pursue "practical" studies that could lead to a "stable" career. But by the time their daughter reached high school, they couldn't ignore the recognition Ramesh was receiving from singing. With each award, Ramesh could see her parents becoming more understanding. It didn't hurt when her voice teacher and piano teacher supported her wish to study voice in college. Finally, her parents agreed. But try to find a second major that would be useful, they strongly suggested. "When I chose psychology, my dad said, 'Why can’t it be engineering like us?'" she recounts with a smile. "But ultimately they were supportive."
Carrying two very different majors made for an interesting four years. Ramesh worked in psychology labs starting in sophomore year while doing all the music productions. It wasn't easy. "Vocally, it’s hard to not sleep and then sound good in rehearsal," she says. "They don't give you any breaks here. They don't care that you were up all night and had three finals that morning. They have a rehearsal to run, and if you don't sing your note the way they want, they're going to make you keep doing it until you get it."
She has no regrets, though, because of the added perspective it gave her. In particular, she recalls a course she audited during her sophomore year, Music and Mind, which looked at how sound affects cognition. Her professor offered her a position in her lab where she was doing research on sound and speech perception. "I thought it could be an interesting way to see how the two majors combine," she says.
The work provided her with an unexpected epiphany. "I realized I didn’t have to be just a singer. I didn't have to ignore the intellectual side of me or the academic side—or the scientific side," she says. "So much of what we're taught as singers is follow instructions and do what we're told. In a lot of ways, performers are the lowest people on the totem pole. The composer comes first, then the director, then the conductor—and performance just fits in. It reminded me, at a point where I needed reminding, that I have other skills and I can use them."
She's going to need all of her skills and experience. Her ambition is no less than to revitalize the field of opera. Classical music, she believes, has become an esoteric form where the only ones who appreciate it are the ones who studied it.
"Opera used to be for the masses. It used to be this holistic way of affecting you because you see it and hear it and you get everything all around," she says. "My vision is to bring it back to that place and affect an audience whether they understand every nuance or the words of the musical aspect. I think that's where my background in psychology comes in—in understanding how auditory perception works, what combinations of overtones have what kind of effect on the human mind."
Ultimately, what Ramesh hopes to do is create an opera company dedicated to creating and performing original, stimulating operas. The plan is in the elementary stage, one that she expects to evolve during the next two years. "After all, if I went by the plan I made four years ago, I would just be singing somewhere right now."
She is singing somewhere right now, at the Royal College of Music in London.
Sally Ann Flecker is an award-winning freelance writer. She is a regular contributor to this magazine.
