We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kirsten C. Kunkle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kirsten C. , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Success is extremely personal, and I believe that it takes time and reflection to decide what success means to you as an individual. Success can mean financial success, which is fairly self-explanatory. I believe that most people initially assume when you say that you are a success, it means financially.

Success, to me, means that I am doing good work with worthwhile people, and am constantly moving towards my goals or creating new ones. I have always taken a more unconventional route towards success, which was not necessarily how I planned my life. I believed that I would go to college, get my degrees, and find jobs in my field fairly easily because I was a hard worker and dedicated to my craft.

My career did not fall into my lap. I had to work on networking, developing my personal brand, and facing repeated failures before I got almost any experience in the “real world” at all. It was only by taking calculated risks and being open to experiences beyond a straightforward or traditional path that I have been able to forage success.

I think that success builds upon success, just as work begets work. If you are constantly striving to create quality work, work with like-minded individuals who are invested in success, and set achievable, but slightly lofty goals, you can find personal fulfillment. To me, that is success.

My advice is to become comfortable with realizing your perception of success may be different than someone else’s ideal. You have unique talents and skills that are valuable and should be assets to your personal brand.

Kirsten C. , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Dr. Kirsten C. Kunkle cvhocefkv tos. Mvskoke towis.

My name is Dr. Kirsten C. Kunkle, and I am a Mvskoke citizen. Mvskoke is also known as Muscogee, sometimes Muscogee-Creek or just Creek. We are part of the “Five Civilized Tribes,” and we were some of the people affected by the Indian Removal Act put into place by Andrew Jackson, which resulted in the Trail of Tears.

I am a classical soprano, impresaria, composer, librettist, poet, entrepreneur, arts administrator, voice pedagogue, recording artist, actor, daughter, wife, and mother. These are among my most important hats that I wear, but I also wear others. I am deeply invested in the advancement of classical music as both a feminist and a Native American, and I bring that to the majority of my work as a creator.

I decided fairly in my life that I wanted to be a classical singer, so I chose to go to college for voice performance at Bowling Green State University, through which I also spent a year abroad in Salzburg, Austria. I achieved my voice performance Bachelors degree, as well as German and Italian minors. I received both my Masters and Doctoral degrees at University of Michigan in voice performance. My initial professional career was primarily in higher education, with jobs in Ohio, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. While I was living on the East Coast, I co-founded a women and minority run opera company called Wilmington Concert Opera, which has thrived both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, and continues to do so.

In 2020, I moved back to my home state of Ohio. I navigated the pandemic by doing numerous at home recordings, creating new works, and developing my network. I produced and created online content, wrote libretti, became a magazine author with OPERA America, collaborated with many artists and composers, and continued to adapt and develop as an entrepreneur and artist.

Major career highlights for me have been performing at Carnegie Hall, recording for the Naxos recording label, making my solo European debut with the Sofia Philharmonic, writing the story and libretto and premiering the all-women opera “Girondines”, being commissioned to write the poetry and music for world premieres at Yellowstone National Park and Chicago Fringe Opera, and serving as Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Wilmington Concert Opera.

I am available for vocal repertoire consultations, voice lessons, composition and libretto commissions, and singing engagements. Please spend some time on my websites to learn more or reach out via social media.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Things were going really well during my doctorate, until my world came crashing down at age 25 – just shy of completing my coursework. My grandmother died, and two weeks later, my mother passed away very suddenly. My mother had been my best friend, my confidant, and my biggest cheerleader. In the blink of an eye, she was taken away from me, and in that moment I had to re-evaluate my life. I had always had a bit of a “carpe diem” mentality, but when your world changes so abruptly, you have two choices: You can either get by and muddle through, or you can take action and become the best version of yourself that you can be. I chose the latter, mostly because I knew that’s what my mother would have wanted.

I graduated and got my doctorate and thought… ok, what’s next? I had achieved my biggest goal. I had done everything I had set out to do, but I was only 26. I taught. I found collegiate jobs throughout various parts of the United States. I auditioned, which was and is an uphill battle, but I got some great singing accomplished. Then something happened when I lived outside of Philadelphia and was teaching at a college.

I had been singing in a production, playing a secondary role in with a small opera company, when the director asked me to be involved in a one night only show with a local theater company. She wasn’t directing, but she knew the director would love to have an opera singer. I agreed, and the show was a great success. That night, there was a party in the bar over the theater, and I overheard her and the two founders of the opera company talking about their next project. They were going to be doing a brand new work, and it hadn’t been written yet. Well, that was like a bright light and a siren telling me opportunity was knocking, and I just had to open the door. So, I screwed up every modicum of courage I ever had, walked right up to them and said, “Can I be in it? Will you write a part for me?” And they were blown away, because they didn’t know I would be available or even interested.

From that moment on, I was a prized member of the company. I created role after role, and I became a specialist in new music, because I was doing world premiere after world premiere. My voice in my early 30s wasn’t at its prime yet, but I was working. I was learning to adapt and grow on stage. I was taking huge risks and coming outside of my comfort zone. I became a much better performer and an invaluable asset to my colleagues. I like to recount the moment when I knew I was utterly committed to stagecraft and my art. The aforementioned new work involved my having to pick up a glass, pretend to drink from it, and put it back down. In performance, I put it back down, and the glass shattered. It was at a musical interlude, and so in that brief pause, I looked at my hand, saw blood drip down it, found the next beat, and stayed in character until I went offstage. I joke that I would bleed for those people, because I actually did. The injury was superficial, but my dedication to my craft was solidified.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

The thing that I thing most people with standard 9-5 style jobs do not generally understand about being an opera singer, and all of the other hats that I wear, is that I am never not working. There is traditional work, such as emails, updating resumes and websites, artist contract negotiations, and meetings. Those things are among the least time consuming of what I do. There are no standard hours or a time clock. I create lists of everything that has to be done. Some of the things on those lists need to be accomplished that day, some are for a few years away. I have to be both detail and big picture oriented. I am my own product, which I am selling constantly. Perhaps more than any other type of musician, singers have to be extremely careful of their limitations, from food or drink sensitivities to physical exertion and sleep schedules, and so forth, because we carry our instrument with us at all times. Most people network for the sake of growing their network. I network because each job is temporary, and each person within the network can lead to the next job. The role of social media is not for fun or entertainment. It is job networking. Most of my work comes from word of mouth, not auditions. Keeping those connections via social media is a skill that I have honed to the same extent or more than most people I know with communications degrees. These are not things that are taught in music school, or at least they were not when I was doing my advanced degrees.

You can be extremely good at what you do as an opera singer and not get work. You can be the best one in the audition room and not get work. You can also spend more money than you ever thought possible on “pay-to-sing” work to build your resume post-graduate degrees. It is an extremely difficult lifestyle, and I have only been able to stick with it to the point of building a lifelong career because of tenacity, an exceptionally supportive family and friend base, networking, and a bit of luck.

Having a career in a creative field with a family involved is also difficult. Having elderly parents or children makes any person’s life more difficult to navigate. Doing so when you are also trying to create, and especially if you are trying to support that family with the money made from your creative endeavors, is an astonishing feat. I am also often away for a few weeks at a time, which makes my family life quite non-traditional.

The other thing people may not realize is that if we thought we could be happy doing anything else, we probably would have done it because it would have been an easier path. Singing opera, being surrounded by classical music, teaching voice, and creating new works through both text and music is so incredibly fulfilling to me that I cannot imagine any other life. I have tried to have traditional jobs to help pay bills. They are fine, but my drive to create music has never lessened. I am truly so much happier when I’m involved in creating what I consider to be the most beautiful music in the world. There is no other option for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kirstenckunkle.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/divavoce
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/kirstenckunkle
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-c-kunkle-2836bb13/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/kirstenckunkle
• Other: www.wilmintonconcertopera.com

Image Credits
Jason Dick, Lori Pacholka, Rachel Mascari, Julie Smith, Johnny Sturgis, Reggie Thomas