{"id":6855,"date":"2013-05-22T10:09:18","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T14:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=6855"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:09:54","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:09:54","slug":"the-texan-who-made-the-world-his-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=6855","title":{"rendered":"The Texan Who Made the World His Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"santa-fe-tim\"<\/a>
Timothy Nolen, a 1963 music graduate of the College, has performed in opera houses around the world.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Timothy Nolen<\/strong> looked at the audience in the Bordeaux Opera House and thought, \u201cSweet Jesus, they are going to kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks to an orchestra strike, the matinee performance of The Marriage of Figaro<\/em> was delayed by 40 minutes, and the crowd was expressing its displeasure by hurling objects onto the stage. As the title character in the beloved opera, Nolen now had to quell a room full of savage beasts.<\/p>\n

The musicians finally filed into the pit and started the overture. He was up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t hear the orchestra, because the crowd is still yelling and screaming and hollering,\u201d says Nolen, a 1963 TCNJ (then Trenton State College) graduate. \u201cAnd I\u2019m alone on stage when the curtain opens. I walk to the footlights, look down at the orchestra, and I began to count.\u201d The opera begins with Figaro singing out measurements in his bedroom. Dieci. Venti. Trenta.<\/p>\n

The crowd fell silent. Then, the noise returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, they jumped to their feet and started bravoing and screaming and hollering and applauding,\u201d says Nolen, 71, in a bright, dusty voice befitting his nickname of Tex. \u201cThey saved my bacon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luck, he says, was a theme in his 43-year singing career, one he\u2019s happily left behind for days of golf and nights of movies and spirits with his wife, Kaari, in Santa Fe, NM. Not everyone gets to perform in the world\u2019s opera houses, take the stage in 15 productions of Sweeney Todd<\/em>, or succeed Michael Crawford in The Phantom of the Opera<\/em> on Broadway.<\/p>\n

Nolen is quick to add that he was good, which is both valid and unnecessary. The last time we checked, a lottery wasn\u2019t held to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.<\/p>\n

A Long Way from Home<\/h2>\n
\"Phantom-act-1\"<\/a>
Nolen played the title role in the Broadway production of “Phantom of the Opera.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nolen grew up in Henderson, TX. As a kid, he rode in rodeos until a broken back ended that pursuit. Instead, he sang country tunes. When his sister and her husband, \u201ca genius\u201d who was the head of electrical research at Bell Labs, moved to Cherry Hill, NJ, 15- year-old Tex and his widowed mom moved east and moved in. Necessity led Nolen to then-Trenton State College. Money was tight and the education was free.<\/p>\n

Academics were not Nolen\u2019s strength. (\u201cAs long as I can count up to four, I\u2019m fine,\u201d he jokes.) Extracurriculars were another matter. \u201cVery quickly,\u201d Nolen says, he discovered one of college\u2019s rarely promoted purposes: to party and have fun. Also, Nolen committed himself to every musical activity TSC offered. Or he created his own: Tex and the Radicals, a jazz band featuring Nolen on trumpet, trombone, and flugelhorn, played the college circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just got involved in anything musical where he could shine \u2014 and he did,\u201d says Gene Giancamilli \u201971<\/strong>, a classmate and bandmate. He remembers Nolen, even as a freshman, having a \u201cgorgeous and professional-sounding\u201d singing voice.<\/p>\n

\u201dWe knew that he was destined for the big time, \u201c Giancamilli adds. \u201cWhatever route he wanted to go, he would make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone agreed. The head of the music department\u2014Nolen has forgotten his name for obvious reasons\u2014was alarmed at the young man\u2019s workload. Nolen was starring in college theater productions. He was conducting carolers and Theta Nu Sigma\u2019s big band. There was Tex and the Radicals. He was writing music. And his brother-in-law had gotten Nolen a job sweeping the floors at Bell Labs. No one could do this much and do it well, the professor said. Nolen disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeonardo da Vinci did a lot of things well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are not Leonardo da Vinci.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"sweeney\"<\/a>
Nolen has taken the stage in 15 productions of “Sweeney Todd.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nolen fulfilled the College\u2019s two-year teaching requirement before getting his master\u2019s degree in opera theatre at Manhattan School of Music. \u201cWe were all studying to be teachers,\u201d Giancamilli says, \u201cbut Tim would say, \u2018I don\u2019t know if I want to teach. I don\u2019t know if I want to get bogged down in a schedule like that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur Smith, Nolen\u2019s college voice professor, steered the brass major toward singing and away from an 8-to-3 lifestyle. A few years after graduation, Smith called his former student. The San Francisco Opera was in New York; did Nolen want to audition? Nolen grabbed the baritone lead in Cosi fan tutte<\/em> in 1968 and didn\u2019t stop singing until last June. It was just time, he says. Besides, Santa Fe, with its golf and opera scene, is paradise.<\/p>\n

The Final Act<\/h2>\n

Nolen acts occasionally and performs radio scripts with the Santa Fe Light Brigade comedy troupe. Music always seems to find him. He plays banjo and sings in a bluegrass band, Railyard Reunion, that tours throughout New Mexico. The band, consisting of musicians who used to jam together at Cowgirl BBQ in Santa Fe, is scheduled to make a CD in July.<\/p>\n

He writes the songs, of course. Forget about luck. Disregard skill. The lyrics, he says, make their way through the cocoon of sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even in retirement, former “Phantom of the Opera” Timothy Nolen \u201963 still pursues his passion for music. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":6859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-may-2013"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}