Former Electrical Engineer Goes From Volts to Vocals

For Donald Wilkinson, who calls himself “an unbelievable hustler,” a singing career demands a rich baritone, steel nerves and a computer.

It has meant singing with well-known conductors and orchestras, as well as performing at nursing homes, often without pay.

At 29, Wilkinson is a former electrical engineer who in 1987 quit his $29,000-a-year job with GTE in Needham, Mass., to take a very vocal chance. Now, he’s $9,000 in debt, but with a voice as rich as his promise.

In Phyllis Curtin’s master classes, his voice blossomed. To release his tense neck muscles one morning, Curtin asked him to sing the highest note he could reach with his head dangling over a chair. In another class, she massaged his lips while he was singing.

The unusual efforts paid off: Out came a vibrant tone that boomed into the rough-hewn wooden slabs of the small theater like rich, controlled thunder.

“For me it’s a perfect time, all kinds of colors are coming into my voice,” he says. What loosened him up, he says, was thinking of Curtin’s idea of “a tree and roots and blossoming at the top.”

At home in Brighton, Mass., a personal computer holds another secret to his future: files containing information on orchestras, choral societies, opera companies and festivals for which he can audition.

“Having been an engineer, I’m very organized,” he says. “Building a career means constantly going through papers, updating phone numbers, trying to get out of some secretary what they’ll be doing next year.”

Meanwhile, Wilkinson, who is single, has had no health insurance for three years.

While he was still an engineer, his bosses let him rearrange his schedule so he could go to auditions and rehearsals. That often meant working Sundays and evenings, or going to work at 4:30 a.m. and leaving at 8:30 a.m.

Now, besides singing with such prestigious groups as Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, he earns money at funerals and weddings. And nursing homes, at $40 or less a shot. When elderly people enjoy his performance, he sometimes sings for free.

But each year is better financially, he says, and he is inching up to his engineer’s salary.

“It’s really difficult,” he says. “You have to be an unbelievable hustler, calling people, saying you’ll drive five hours to audition, even if they don’t give you a job.”