(Above: Among her many appearances with The Shedd Institute for the Arts, Shirley Andress played Annie Oakley in the musical Annie Get Your Gun, opposite Matt Musgrove; photo by Paul Carter)
By Daniel Buckwalter
Shirley Andress and her husband own 48 acres in the Pleasant Hill area, and she routinely walks her dogs on the rural property.
I ask her if she ever exercises her vocal chords and sings while on those walks.
Andress laughs. “You mean to the deer?”
The deer may be her captive audience for the next several weeks as we face the coronavirus pandemic and the Stay Home, Save Lives executive order signed by Oregon’s Gov. Kate Brown on March 23.
Like everyone in the performing world, Andress, a singer who has been a staple at The Shedd Institute for the many years and who next year also will mark 25 consecutive years with the Emerald City Jazz Kings, is trying to find her way during this downtime.
“We’re all trying to figure out how to make an income,” she says. “We’ve all been in kind of shock with this. We don’t have our normal schedules.”
On the one hand, Andress is fortunate because she had nothing to cancel in the months of March and April. That was by design. On the eve of the coronavirus shutdown, Andress had just finished the second installment of her tribute to Barbara Streisand.
I did not see the sequel, but I took in the first Andress tribute show to Streisand in 2019. It was a powerful performance that forced the Pleasant Hill native to reach deep and deliver an emotional, even athletic, performance.
The sequel, Andress says, had the same vibe and left her in need of some rest.
“My voice was pretty shot after my (second) Streisand show,” she says.
But now, Andress has one show postponed from late-May. More could come, but she still has 14 students, now via online teaching.
This is where things get tricky for Andress. For starters, she says, top-notch internet service in rural areas is spotty at best. Often, getting online one day is different from the previous, or the next.
Then there is the technology itself, typically Zoom, the free meeting app. Andress has heard of, and witnessed, the differences in teaching instrumentalists and vocalists on Zoom. The sound in general is not always great, Andress notes, and there is a lag time in the software that, for vocal training, can be difficult for the teacher and student to navigate.
It’s not easy, Andress acknowledges. “It has changed my style of teaching.”
I asked Andress about Jim and Ginevra Ralph, the founders-and-force behind The Shedd Institute for the Arts, a grass-roots miracle, really, on Broadway and High streets in downtown Eugene.
Andress says she has spoken to Jim Ralph twice since the coronavirus pandemic has taken hold, and he’s confidently busy planning the annual Christmas show.
She emphasizes that she doesn’t want to speak on behalf of the Ralphs, but she doesn’t feel too worried about the couple.
“They’re the kind of people who don’t let things get them down,” Andress points out. “They always move forward.”
Let’s all look towards the day we each can move forward.
