It\u2019s gospel music day in professor Louise Toppin\u2019s class, \u201cMusic as Culture: The Music of African-Americans.\u201d The course is a survey of the music of African-Americans from its roots in Africa to hip-hop, through the lens of the classical composer.<\/p>\n
One minute Toppin, a soprano opera star, is playing and singing Charles Albert Tindley\u2019s \u201cStand by Me\u201d on the piano in her Kenan Music Building classroom. Then her class of about 50 students watches a YouTube clip of Mahalia Jackson singing \u201cPrecious Lord.\u201d But the culminating moment comes when Toppin invites students (many of whom she knows by name) to gather at the front of the classroom to create an informal gospel choir.<\/p>\n
They perform, with energetic encouragement from Toppin, an improvised, gospel-ized version of \u201cTwinkle, Twinkle Little Star,\u201d complete with hand-clapping and swaying.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want that congregation to feel like those stars are twinkling!\u201d Toppin says, laughing. \u201cYou see what it\u2019s about? It\u2019s a communal activity used to inspire the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toppin, who became head of the voice area<\/a> in UNC\u2019s music department<\/a> in fall 2010, has a passion for sharing her love of music and inspiring students to succeed. She was recruited from East Carolina University, where in 2001 she won the system-wide UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. She also received the ECU Alumni Distinguished Professor Teaching Award and the ECU School of Music Teacher-Scholar Award.<\/p>\n \u201cI take the time to find the individuality in my students and to find their strengths,\u201d she says. \u201cMy job is more than developing the next great opera singer. It\u2019s trying to develop a person who will make a contribution. I talk with my students so they don\u2019t get so self-absorbed that they forget there\u2019s a larger world out there.\u201d<\/p>\n Toppin received a bachelor\u2019s degree in music in 1983 from UNC, but she didn\u2019t head to Carolina to pursue a singing career. She initially was on the pre-medicine track, hoping to become a cardiologist.<\/p>\n She grew up surrounded by music and arts and academia, with both parents being scholars at Virginia State University. Her dad, a historian and native New Yorker, loved the Metropolitan Opera, and her mom, an English professor, would play opera recordings of Leontyne Price. As a youth, she met legendary jazz greats Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughn, as well as Willis Patterson, who played King Balthazar in NBC-TV\u2019s 1963 production of Menotti\u2019s opera \u201cAmahl and the Night Visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n She was doing well in her UNC classes but was torn between her love of music and medicine. Then one day her father, who never interfered in his children\u2019s decisions, called her.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018I know you\u2019ll be a phenomenal physician, but you have an extraordinary gift as a musician, and you should consider going down that path,\u2019\u201d Toppin says.<\/p>\n So she changed her undergraduate major to music, focusing on piano. After graduation, she was admitted to Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned master\u2019s degrees in both piano and voice. Then she went on to pursue a doctorate in voice at the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n There she worked with George Shirley, a professor and the first African-American tenor at the Metropolitan Opera, who today remains one of her mentors.<\/p>\n \u201cGeorge Shirley taught me so much as a teacher about patience,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was once a young woman who was disrespectful to him, but I watched the grace in which he handled the situation and how he never gave up on people.\u201d<\/p>\n Toppin has performed all over the world. She was a finalist in the Munich International Competition and won the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions. Her new CD, \u201cHeart on the Wall,\u201d featuring art songs with symphony by African-American composers, was released Nov. 1.<\/p>\n Still, as much as she loves performing, Toppin says she also values passing on the rich tradition of singing to her students. It\u2019s exciting to see them grow and develop, she says.<\/p>\n Toppin opens the door of her office and welcomes first-year student Kathryn Frye, a music major from Lexington, N.C., for a vocal lesson. She patiently takes Frye through some breathing exercises, then encourages her to hit a high note.<\/p>\n \u201cThis time pull my arm when you get to the top note; that\u2019s the amount of energy it takes to get there,\u201d Toppin says. \u201cThere it is! Did you feel that?\u201d Then Frye practices channeling the character Luisa as she sings \u201cMuch More\u201d from the musical \u201cThe Fantastiks.\u201d Toppin takes notes on the performance in Frye\u2019s musical score.<\/p>\n