SEQUIM — After nearly four decades apart, two of the top voices on the Olympic Peninsula reunited.
In 1980, Robin Reed, now 68, and Louise Pluymen, now 65, competed for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and won.
They were among the 11 finalists chosen over thousands of aspiring opera singers through district, regional and semi-final stages before singing in the finals at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
“It helped pave my early career and made it easier to open doors,” Pluymen said of the competition.
A small world
Fast forward nearly 40 years: The seasoned singers both live in Sequim but didn’t cross paths until a mutual friend connected them.
After moving to the area in 2013, Reed began singing with the Sequim Community Christmas Chorus but stopped in the last two years as he traveled back and forth to Los Angeles, Calif., to see his family.
Pluymen moved to Sequim in the fall of 2016 and took over for retired chorus director Gary McRoberts last year.
Reed said Pluymen’s name clicked in his mind after he read about her taking over in a newspaper.
While in Linda Bauer’s business Bauer Interiors in downtown Sequim, Reed mentioned to Bauer he knew Pluymen and Bauer felt it “would be cool to reconnect them.”
As the pair began to talk, memories began to flow about the competition.
Pluymen, a University of Washington student at the time, said she made the semifinals in her second year but she fell ill in New York City.
“I remember when I was there, I got the flu,” she said. “They sent me to the Metropolitan Opera doctor and he gave me a shot of cortisone in my larynx and he did all these weird things.
“He put steel rods up my nose and sprayed warm oil. But man, it was like the flu was gone. It was just amazing.”
She said becoming sick is one of the most terrifying things someone can experience as a singer.
“You live with that all the time,” Reed agreed. “You get up in the morning with a scratchy throat, and some people just shrug it off. But this (pointing to his throat) is where the money is.
“If you can’t sing, you’re not making money.”
He said all singers are remembered for their last note.
”Whatever it was. That’s just the way it was. They remember you by the last thing they heard.
“And if it’s not good — the pressure is tremendous.”
Reed made the finals in 1980 after five attempts, and made the semifinals three times as a tenor.
“Tenors are a very exciting voice group,” said Pluymen, a soprano.
“They can sing high — not quite as high as sopranos — but their high range is still in the mid-range of what the human ear can hear. Their high notes are very visceral.”
Leading up to the semi-finals and finals, Pluymen said they received two weeks of coaching from MET professionals as they readied five individualized pieces.
Reed said there were 26 singers in the semi-finals and from that judges chose 11 people as finalists.
“It was the first year in the history of auditions where they had no places,” he said. “We were all awarded equal amounts of money.”
Funds were used to promote one’s career and for coaching, the singers said.
Reed said finalists had the opportunity to go back and audition again to receive more funds.
He went back, he said, and received about two-and-a-half times the amount he received the year before.
“But I was really working hard studying and paying top-level people,” Reed said.
Pluymen said she was still attending college and didn’t make her debut until a year later with the Seattle Symphony.
The final auditions were broadcast over the national radio, the singers said.
Pluymen remembers her mom home sick with pneumonia listening, and Reed’s wife listening from home because she had to work.
During the auditions, the pair sang a duet together from the opera “Carmen.”
Reed said his family recorded it over the radio, and he said he hopes to find his copy and share it with Pluymen.
While the competition opened doors for her career, Pluymen said she feels conflicted, particularly for the singers who didn’t win.
“The whole idea of having a competition among artists rubs me the wrong way,” she said.
But being able to put the competition on her resume helped along with the money, which she used to make publicity brochures and travel back to New York to meet with agents.
“(The auditions have) a practical meaning, but philosophically I see these young things doing the competition and I just hope they won’t get their hearts broken,” she said.
“It’s a weeding out process that is brutal,” Reed said. “We’re a perfect example. We had OK careers. We weren’t famous but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have to. It’s inside of you.”
Growing up musical
Reed said his whole family was musical and his parents told their children not to be professional musicians because “it will only bring you grief.”
“They were successful with one out of five. One of my brothers went into the Air Force but everywhere he went, he sang,” Reed said.
The rest of his siblings, including his sister Judith Beckmann, a popular German opera singer, pursued music. Reed also performed in Germany and across the U.S.
Reed opted to perform in Europe, he said, because there were more opportunities.
“I had a full-time opera singing job with eight weeks off in the summer and it was fantastic,” he said.
While things are more different than 1980, wage disparity remains for men and women, Pluymen said.
She too came from a musical family, with her grandmother being a singer and choral conductor.
Her mother sang in high school and her father was a professional violinist before segueing into music administration.
Once she graduated from the University of Washington, Pluymen performed as a soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Dallas Symphony and Florida Philharmonic.
At age 45, doctors found a pre-cancerous thyroid with a goiter pushing on her vocal chords, so she stopped singing for three years and went back to school to pursue a degree in conducting at the Conservatorium Maastricht in the Netherlands.
While the opera singers reunited after nearly 40 years, Reed said goodbye to Sequim in July.
He moved back to Los Angeles to be closer to his family.
He said he hopes someday to return permanently to the Pacific Northwest.
He does plan to return in late September for the Port Angeles Symphony’s Pops and Picnic concert to see a friend’s daughter sing.
Pluymen followed her sister and brother-in-law to Sequim, and will lead the Christmas Chorus starting this fall.
Her husband Rob splits time between the Netherlands and Sequim.
For more information on the Sequim Community Christmas Chorus, visit www.facebook.com/SequimCommunity ChristmasChorus.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
