Something new must have started showing up in northern New Mexico’s water starting 25 or 30 years ago. Not only new, but beneficial, unlike most such discoveries. Two 20-something-year-old classical musicians from our area code achieved enormous career breakthroughs this year — a young soprano who won a grand prize in the nation’s most prestigious vocal competition and an even-younger bassist who was offered a full-time gig with a major international orchestra, as its associate principal, no less.
The population of Tijeras, a small village 60 miles southwest of Santa Fe nestled in the foothills of the Sandias, is 462. That means the odds of a resident becoming one of the five grand prize winners of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions earlier this spring were .00068%.
The odds weren’t zero, but they were close — unless your name was Lydia Grindatto. Then they were 100%. Her cash prize of $20,000 wasn’t just bus fare, and the value of the career-launching intangibles — national exposure, talent validation, and professional relationships — is incalculable.
The road to the Met’s enormous stage started in her family’s living room. “My whole family loves music; we play different instruments, and we can all jam together,” she says. “My mom is the real musician in the family.
She studied piano and voice in college and has sung and been a soloist with the New Mexico Symphonic Chorus for many years.” Grindatto says she was a desultory student of the piano and v.
