Recently Jeremy and Gillyanne were invited to the first night performance and party of the spectacular Cirque du Soleil show Varekai. Jeremy met up with singer on the show Craig Jennings, and a few days later interviewed him between shows on his job, his new CD, and his top tip for performers. A full transcript of the interview is published on the website, but to whet your appetite, here's Craig talking about his first audition with Cirque in New York:

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Jeremy: Well, you’ve actually led beautifully into the next question which is: because I’m a specialist in auditions, I’m really fascinated to know how you came to audition for Cirque and what you did – what were the songs you did?

Craig: OK, again I wish it was a little more – I’d be more proud if I could say it was a bit more formal! And that it was done because I was recognised for greatness! But it wasn’t that way at all.

Basically at that time I had been in a band for six years and my band had broken up. We did a big tour on the West Coast, and we came back and for whatever reason our Mojo was gone, and everybody decided they wanted to play other things. And I had heard about the Cirque du Soleil audition that was going on and I just showed up.

J: Brilliant!

C: I showed up with my acoustic guitar and they told me when I got to the space (it was 890 Broadway and any actor – I mean I had auditioned at so many jobs at that place – everybody knows like “Oh, Cirque is coming here” so I just showed up.

J: Yes.

C: And they said the spaces were assigned. In other words they were by invite only. And I asked if they were doing standby, and they said I could go standby, and the first person didn’t show up so I went in at 9am. And I went to pull out the guitar and they said “Well, we won’t be interested in the guitar”, and I said OK, so I went to the piano player and I asked him if he knew Les Feuilles d’Automne – the Autumn Leaves in French.
I just happened to know that particular song on guitar and he said he knew the Autumn Leaves. So I sang a little bit of that and they asked me if I had anything else, and the piano player - the accompanist was a sweet man and he had a fake book and he just handed it to me with a sort of a smug look on his face and I opened it up and saw the song Shout! Which is [sings] “You know you make me wanna Shout!”

J: Yeah, it’s the Lulu song

C: And I thought to Autumn Leaves that would be a good second, you know?

J: Absolutely!

C: And he started cranking into that and I started singing that and they all laughed at how spontaneous the audition was. And they asked me to sing along with the song Let Me Fall (which I ended up singing for five years in Quidam) and it’s actually in Corsican – they changed the lyrics from English to Corsican.

They asked me sing along and vocalise over the CD for them. So I sang and they were apparently very impressed and they gave me a tape and asked me to send in a tape.
Oh, I’m sorry, the woman asked me to do a little bit of movement. She wanted me to move while I sang. She wanted to see if I could do two things at the same time! And they asked me to send in a tape and if I could do it pronto because at that time the lead singer on Quidam had resigned and they were kind of in a bind looking for someone serious, you know.

So I turned that around to them and didn’t hear anything back. I called the studio and they said that they had hired someone else.

And I just kept going to my voice lessons anyway and every weekend – I had a little four-track machine – and every weekend I’d just make another tape for me. I made another tape and another tape and then one day I got inspired and decided I was going to send all my tapes. And I sent eight tapes!

And I was on my way to my voice lesson and I got a phonecall from one of the casting agents saying “We just received this package – very impressive”. And I said “I’ve been doing these and I just want you to know that maybe you could put them in my file” And she said “Actually would you be interested in coming up and doing a session?” And what they meant was another audition – I thought maybe I was getting a recording session. And so I went up there and I did like an hour of work being monitored by the artistic director and the artistic coordinator with their vocal coach. And they hired me. They just said “Do you want to go on the European Tour” and that was it!

And as a back story, apparently the other guy who they had hired he and the vocal coach were not getting on at all, and the vocal coach had gone to the casting director and said “If you want this guy, you’ve got to find someone else to train him because I’m not working with him” So they fired him [the singer] and obviously I got the job. So that’s kind of how it happened.

J: That’s quite a story!

C: Yeah. At the end of the day I feel like I walked in the door backwards, do you know like Mr Magoo.

J: Well, I tell you what I hear, which is fascinating; and it’s fun because I’ve just been advising somebody to do that myself in one of my coaching sessions. You basically gatecrashed the audition and stayed there and said “Look, I’m quite happy to wait until you want to hear me”. And you were serious, you were going to stay there until they heard you.

C: Well yeah, I would have stayed there all day.

J: Absolutely. And the other thing is having done the audition – actually there’s three things. You did the audition and you stayed with the process because they asked you to do all sorts of different things. I mean, you were really winging it on that audition weren’t you?

C: Oh, completely! I had never auditioned for something like that before. I had auditioned for Stomp a couple of times. At one time I got like three cuts away from actually getting the job, which is pretty far if you know how many people were in line for audition in New York! I don’t know what it’s like in London, I’m sure it’s pretty much the same.

J: Oh, I should think there’d be more in New York. So the second thing was that you actually picked up on what they wanted and did it, and that’s quite something. Because you were staying with the process, you were in it. And the third thing is having finished the audition, you then decided because you were recording your stuff, you decided to send it off, and it sounds like that was the third thing that actually got you the recall.

C: I think so, and they were so impressed that I had been doing this. And it was all dated. I had basically kept dates of my progress. Maybe you could advise me on this, Cirque, they very much fancy a self-starter, someone who is going to do it that they don’t have to manage every step of the way, that is just going to do it.

J: Yes. What it sounds like is that they are looking for someone who is independent and able to follow direction.

C: Yes, exactly. That’s it.

J: Which is great. And that’s a great energy to work with. When you know that somebody is happy to go into the improvisation are but is also disciplined enough to be able to do it over and over again.

C: Exactly. It’s like when new people come in that are familiar with show process that’s different from Cirque, oftentimes I find them speaking their frustration when they say “Last week they told me to do it this way, now they’re telling me to do it the complete opposite way”.
But that’s exactly what Cirque is!

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The rest of the transcript, including how Craig got into singing (and it's not the usual route), what his singing teacher in New York had to work on, and his descriptions of the genre mixes on his CD, are all on the website. You can read the rest of Craig's interview with Jeremy here

***And as a special extra, Craig has agreed to let us use the soundfile of the part of the phonecall where he demonstrates Tuvan throat singing. It's an extraordinary moment in the phone interview where you hear Craig moving between conversation and TWO types of overtone chanting with barely a beat rest. He also reveals the particular everyday sound he used to access the chanting - it certainly works for him!

Access Craig's overtone singing mp3 here (Craig and Jeremy are on different channels in the recording. Recording opens in a new window and may take up to 30 seconds to download)