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Wednesday, July 26, 2006
by Agnes Jasinski
It was during the first dance at a wedding on Connecticut Avenue more than 10 years ago that Michael Suser noticed something was wrong.
He was slated to sing a tune by "The Crickets," a pop group from the 1960's, but the breezy rendition was more difficult to get through than usual.
I couldn't hit a note I always hit," Suser said, "So I faked it."
Suser, a 60-year old Silver Spring resident who traded his folk roots for jazz riffs in the early 1960's, thought at first that his struggles were just a fluke. It must have been a case of laryngitis or a cold. But the problem only got worse, beyond being able to pretend there was nothing wrong.
Suser was no longer able to call for his dog, Thelonious Monk. He had to sue a bullhorn at his day job as a federal probation officer to be heard at meetings. Worst of all, his croon was reduced to a whisper.
"I felt like he was constantly biting his tongue. But he wouldn't talk about it...He was always professional, said Ellen Riger, Suser's business manager and close friend. "I know it was just grating on him. Something was missing...something that he really needed to do."
That something was a need to sing. A fan of Frank Sinatra since his childhood, Suser went to music camps, joined the high school glee club and musicals and led doo-wop groups as a teen. He was a performer.
So Suser began his "odyssey," as he calls it, to determine what was ailing his voice. Doctors didn't know. He was tested for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-Lou Gehrig's disease—since the voice is one of the first things to be affected with neurological problems. He went through six months of allergy shots. He took voice and speech lessons to reverse the damage.
After nearly a decade of painful treatments and disappointments, Susur happened upon a solution that not only gave back his voice, but cemented his love for jazz music. He has since recorded a CD titles "Second Act," released in the spring, and has returned to the local jazz circuit playing weddings and a weekly Friday nights gig with his trio "Night and Day" at the Hollywood East Café in Wheaton.
"I feel blessed right now," said Suser, who recorded his CD in part to have a record of how he sounded if his voice went way again. I've been lucky so far."
Come rain or shine
Suser's life reads like a list of songs sung by Sinatra. His favorite son, which seems to have become his anthem, is "They Can't Take That Away From Me,' where he can sings not about a lady love, but a love for something he feels may be even less constant: his voice.
For five years, Suser was examined by specialist after specialist. Singing coaches told him his voice would never be the same. His answer was to dive into practicing the piano to become a better accompanist.
"A lot of people don't have anything left," he said. "I knew I still had this talent, so that's what I focused my energies on."
But now that he was more proficient on the keyboard, he wanted to be able to accompany himself. Suser wasn't content as the silent pianist, so he decided to look for a way to realize his dream.
A temporary solution gave Suser hope. A doctor at the Penn Center for Voice at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital recommended collagen injections into his throat to reduce the gap between his vocal cords that appeared during screenings from a painful tube through his nose. Three months later, the swelling from the collagen shots had reduced enough to give some semblance of the voice Suser once had.
For three months, he was able to sing again. But, as he was warned, the temporary solution wore off.
Dejected, Suser sought a different avenue. As he read up on what other singers did for injured voices, he found a doctor at the Vanderbilt Voice Clinic in Nashville who had a surgical solution: thyroplasty.
Not wanting to have to fly to and from Tennessee whenever he needed follow-up visits, Suser looked for a local doctor. He found Dr. Steven Bielamowicz, a specialist in the surgical procedure he was looking for at the George Washington University Vocal Clinic.
"He told me I would sing again," Suser said. "I can't even describe how I felt at that minute."
The procedure worked, said Suser, who was awake during most of the surgery. The doctor inserted plastic nodules that would more permanently reduce the gap between his vocal cords and ease the pressure on his weakened voice.
Although he was told no surgery was foolproof, and that the damage to his vocal cords going in was so great that he could lose his voice again at any moment, Suser attacked the stage again.
After two weeks of silence following the surgery, and doctor's orders, he was ready. And his friends say he sounds better than ever.
"There's a fullness there that wasn't there before," Riger said. "He knows what he has to do, and what to do to get there."
All the Way
Relearning the sing techniques he had grown so comfortable with while performing jazz tunes wasn't Suser's only hurdle. He also death with the suicide of close friend and voice coach Pam Bricker, who died shortly after his surgery in 2005. By chance, he found another teacher who specialized in injured voices.
"When he started to sing, he wasn't sure he was going to be able to do this," said Cate Frazier-Neely, Suser's new voice teacher, who has been working with recuperating artists for more than 20 years. "Singers talk about their voice as if they're third entities....He would constantly say, "I think I'm gonna lose him."
Suser had to relearn how to breathe to find his signature sound again. And he also had to find his confidence, as he was worried whether undue pressure on his voice would cause it to disappear. "Now he has even a more authentic sound," Frazier-Neely said. "Being a jazz singer worked in his favor, because jazz singing often does not require the pure vocal cord closure that classical singing requires. And he had to build physical and mental stamina to make it through rehearsals and gigs."
Suser will continue singing as long as he can., and do what he can to avoid any future complications with his "instrument." He avoids caffeine before shows because it dries out his voice. He goes to the doctor at the first sign of a cold. But he doesn't take it easy when he is on the stage.
"It scares me all the time...It's so fragile," Suser said, "But every song I do, I just sing with everything I've got."
» Listen to cuts from Mike Suser's latest CD, "Second Act"
