ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 11, 1996 TAG: 9610110083
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
She's made a career out of rescuing others at the last second - and when she needed rescue herself, the people she needed most came through for her.
Soprano Marianne Sandborg's accomplished vocal technique and coolness under fire have become the stuff of legend in Western Virginia music circles as time after time she has stepped in for ailing singers - almost literally at the last second - and turned in bravura performances.
When other musicians talk about her, you hear phrases such as "larger than life," "outgoing and strong" and "amazing innate musicianship."
"She has all the aspects of the diva that are wonderful and positive with none of the negative nastiness and neuroses," says Roanoke Symphony Orchestra concertmaster James Glazebrook.
But a few years ago, when Sandborg was the victim of a brutal attack in her own home, she needed help from others to recover. And she says that everybody, from her husband and her church to a good counselor and a therapy group, were there when she needed them. She credits her counselor with "saving her life" when the chips were down.
Sandborg is an adjunct professor of voice at Roanoke College where her husband, Jeff, is a music professor and choir director. Jeff Sandborg is also director of the Roanoke Valley Choral Society and music director at Second Presbyterian Church in Roanoke, where Marianne Sandborg is an organist.
Marianne Sandborg is attractive, animated and enthusiastic about music and - considering her talent and reputation - surprisingly modest and self-effacing. "I'm not at all sure I have a pretty good voice now," Sandborg said. "The last time I heard myself on tape, I was disgusted. I was not at all happy. I am definitely very supercritical of myself and detail-oriented."
Sandborg's modesty may be the result of an early life in which she had to work hard for everything she got. Despite the fact that she was a church organist in her teens, she is essentially self-taught on the organ. Her first keyboard teacher was her mother, a nurse, whose advice for the organ consisted of the phrase: "You crawl around like a spider on the keys."
Her family was not well-to-do, and she paid for her own education at Old Dominion University and later at the University of Illinois with a combination of part-time jobs and student loans.
When she and Jeff Sandborg came to Roanoke College in 1985, she had been promised a job as a music director at a local church. But the job fell through "because of politics" and that put a financial cramp on the young couple for their first few years in the area. Sandborg now has a dozen voice students at Roanoke College and teaches 14 more in her private voice studio.
Sandborg's peculiar sideline of pulling other people's chestnuts out of the fire started in 1988 in a Martinsville performance of Handel's "Messiah," when she was called on opening day to fill in as solo soprano for an ailing singer. By all accounts, she did a brilliant job.
The next year, she stepped in at the last second for a performance of Handel's "Esther" at Greene Memorial United Methodist Church in Roanoke.
Her highest-profile rescue took place in May 1992, when she got a frantic call on opening day from Opera Roanoke to sing the major role of Zerlina in Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Her performance earned rave reviews both from this newspaper and the national publication Opera News.
Sandborg's most dramatic rescue operation occurred in February of this year, when she got a call a half-hour before curtain time to sing the solo soprano part in Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" with the Chamber Orchestra of Southwest Virginia.
"I told Jeff he was going to have to drive, because I was going to have to warm up in the car," Sandborg recalled.
Conductor James Glazebrook said, "She got there during intermission and I told her, 'We could talk about this, but let's not - let's just see what happens.'"
Sandborg wound up singing the part mostly from memory, Glazebrook said. The crowd went mad.
"It was a fabulous performance. It was the highlight of my own career, in a way," Glazebrook said.
The next month, Sandborg stepped in at the last second for the "Gloria" by Francis Poulenc with the Blacksburg Master Chorale.
Though hardly an unbiased critic, Jeff Sandborg says his wife's ability to capture the essence of any style or period astounds him. "She can sound just like Joni Mitchell or Ella Fitzgerald or Eleanor Steber, and that's what's amazing to me."
Opera Roanoke General Director Craig Fields says he has witnessed a number of Sandborg's last-second rescue operations, and "it's pretty amazing. I've never seen anybody as cool under fire - she really delivers the goods with very little notice."
The singer's greatest trial occurred in December 1989, when she said she was raped and viciously beaten by an intruder in her home. "He had a gun and just beat me to death with it. He said he was going to kill me." The man tied her up on her bathroom floor, leaving her with severe bruises and a scar on her forehead. Her attacker was never caught.
Sandborg credits Dave Peterson of Roanoke's Total Life Counseling for help that "saved my life." She plunged back into work. "I couldn't stay home. My work was definitely an escape. I was maniacal about it for a long time."
Sandborg calls herself "a late bloomer. I'm 41 and I know I'm getting better every time I sing." Though she appears to have had ice water in her veins for years, she claims to have been plagued by preperformance jitters until her 30s.
The biggest lesson she's learned in music? "Whatever instrument you study, you can't give up in good times and bad if you feel deep down in your heart that this is the profession for you. You develop your character when you stick to it."
Your next chance to hear Marianne Sandborg will be in Martinsville, when she reprises her role in the Opera Roanoke production of "Dido and Aeneas" on Sunday.
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN SPEARMAN/Staff. Marianne Sandborg says the biggestby CNBlesson she's learned in music is that "whatever instrument you
study, you can't give up in good times and bad if you feel deep down
in your heart that this is the profession for you." color.