Right before I went to bed last night, I got an email from my friend, Jennifer. She's the one who runs operamission and presented the #artsongjam. When she was leaving her studio last night, she noticed that there was a Medical Examiner's ambulance outside her building, and that there was medical equipment and personnel on the floor where her (/mine) studio is. She figured that one of the residents on the building had passed - there are a lot of elderly tenants, and, alas, ambulances are a common sight at her building.
Tragically, it turned out that one of the other voice teachers, Marianne Challis, had passed in her studio. Some of her students had shown up for lessons, but weren't getting an answer when they knocked on her door. One of them knew Marianne's daughter, so they called her to see if she knew where her mother was. She didn't. So she came over to check to see if something had happened since she had a key to the studio. Sadly, when she stepped in the studio, she found her mother had died. -And, apparently, it happened sometime yesterday afternoon.
A dear friend of mine was a student of Marianne's, and I've played for a few of his lessons. Marianne also had a cabaret act, and she performed at The Metropolitan Room and Feinstein's.
We're all hoping that she died of natural causes, and that no foul play was involved.
R.I.P. Marianne Challis
