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Life outside the mechanical engineering lab:
Paul Wright, opera singer
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Wright, who holds the distinguished A. Martin Berlin Professor
of Mechanical Engineering chair, prefers jazz and opera
(like the Vaughn Williams piece he’s rehearsing) but
appreciates all musical genres.
BART NAGEL PHOTO
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"Keep the energy up!" a voice instructor booms to his
student. "Be resolute! Make sure you hit the final consonants."
The student, Professor Paul Wright, listens intently, glancing
at the sheet music in front of him. He pauses, and then in his
best basso profundo intones the opening lines of Ralph Vaughan
Williams’ opera Bright is the Ring of Words.
"Good!" the instructor says. "But support the sound
with a cushion of air. Again, please."
Wright has been studying opera under critically acclaimed San
Francisco tenor Ross Halper for three years. Last year, the engineer
had his operatic debut in Halper’s chorus for the North
Bay Opera’s production of Jacques Offenbach’s Tales
of Hoffman. In March, he landed his first solo with the company
in Puccini’s Tosca, playing the sociopathic Sciarrone.
While Wright is relatively new to the realm of arias and librettos,
music and performance have been lifelong passions. He remembers
a "house filled with music" growing up in Watford, England.
His father, he says, hammed it up on the piano, while his mother
often crooned along to 1940s jazz tunes. As a child, Wright taught
himself piano and then, as a teenager inspired by Bob Dylan and
the Beatles, graduated to guitar.
"In my teens and twenties, I had real difficulties deciding
whether to pursue music or engineering," he says. Wright
eventually made his choice. In addition to his smart
helmets project, he’s collaborating with Ed Arens, director
of Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Design Research,
on a project within the CITRIS realm to develop "demand-response"
thermostats and utility meters.
Sponsored by the California Energy Commission, the researchers
are building intelligent thermostats and meters that take advantage
of time-based pricing structures. The thermostat could receive
real-time pricing information wirelessly from a utility company
and, coupled with data from energy and temperature sensors around
your home, automatically control heating and air conditioning
equipment to establish the desired temperature at the lowest price.
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Under Halper’s direction, Wright
runs through a regimen of vocal exercises. Lip trills help
to brighten his voice, lifting the notes out of his mouth.
BART NAGEL PHOTO
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"It’s important for engineers to talk about technical
issues, but they must also temper that within a broader social
fabric," Wright says. "I think you can become a better
engineer if you can integrate your 'feeling side' — whether
that’s an interest in the arts, nature, or social issues
— with your scientific side." Even as a busy young
professor at New York University in the 1980s, Wright felt the
lure of the Manhattan music scene, occasionally singing jazz with
a small band at area nightclubs. He even shopped a studio recording
to several record labels.
After moving to Berkeley in 1990, his focus shifted to raising
his three sons as a single father and establishing the College’s
state-of-the-art Berkeley Manufacturing Institute. Once his children
had grown and his research was in full swing, music returned to
his life.
"I realized that if I was ever going to do music again in
a loving way, this was the time," he says. A conversation
with a College staff member, also an opera buff, led Wright to
Halper.
"As I was getting older, I realized that opera is a style
you can sing in your later years," Wright says. "Nobody
wants to see a mid-60s rock and roll singer."
While jazz singers Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald are mainstays
on Wright’s CD player, he has grown to love classical Italian
opera. As a Brit, he’s also naturally drawn to early twentieth
century English composers like Williams and Peter Warlock.
"Their music can really capture the drama and romance of
the English countryside in the evening," Wright says. "It
sounds corny, but music has to resonate with some deeper level
of the soul. It has to speak to me in some way." Wright hopes
to work up a set of Vaughan Williams songs for voice and guitar.
In the meantime, he and his new wife Taun, who holds a music degree
from UC Santa Cruz, play the occasional duet at home.
"We have musical friends too," Wright says. "So
occasionally when we get together for drinks and dinner, we have
a little sing-a-long. It’s quite lovely, really."
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