Professor takes nearly 25-year break before returning to music in earnest
When Peter Barton was 7 years old and living in Paris, he used to get up in the bay window of his kitchen and sing La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, to all of his neighbors outside.
This Saturday, Barton, 51, will be singing the American national anthem, as well as the USC alma mater, to 80,000 football fans at the Missouri–South Carolina game.
The School of Music professor may have graduated to a bigger venue, but he hasn’t forgotten his performances in France.
Barton said the praise of his Paris neighbors helped him build his confidence.
“They would always applaud, and I think maybe that early applause is what encouraged me to continue to sing. But I have always loved to sing,” Barton said.
His passion for music carried over into high school, where Barton was a pop-rock singer — a successful one at that.
He was offered a recording contract with a small record company at the age of 17. Barton’s father, however, didn’t co-sign the contract, saying his son needed to go to college.
So Barton went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and studied music and played soccer, becoming the leading scorer on the school’s freshman team.
Barton had to give up the sport, though, when he was accepted into the best voice studio at Chapel Hill.
“A varsity sport in college just takes up so much time,” Barton said. “And as any music major knows, it may not be the hardest major on campus, but it’s definitely the most time-consuming.”
After graduating from Chapel Hill, Barton went on to the University of Texas to pursue a master’s degree. Halfway through the curriculum, though, he decided he wanted to pursue an opera career in New York City.
The career “never really worked out the way I wanted it to at the time,” Barton said, and at 30 he figured it was time to get a steady job with health insurance.
Barton entered the financial industry, where he worked with a number of companies for almost 25 years as he continued to perform, keeping his passion for music alive.
Then, four years ago, Barton rediscovered his first passion in earnest, thanks to the help of a colleague from Winthrop University.
“I met Jerry Helton, who had been teaching at Winthrop for forever and a million years, and I did some singing for him,” Barton said. “And he said, ‘Why don’t you come and finish that master’s you never finished?’
“So I finished my master’s while working at UNC Charlotte, and during that period, I can’t tell you how I decided it, but I decided I really wanted to get out of financial services finally and go back to my original passion.”
That decision brought him to USC, where he received his doctorate last December.
Barton started teaching a survey of opera class shortly thereafter. This semester, he’s teaching voice lessons to 20 students.
As he worked toward his doctorate last fall, Barton had the opportunity to sing the alma mater and national anthem at the Auburn football game.
While that game was the biggest crowd Barton had performed in front of, he said, he was “fiercely concentrated” rather than nervous.
Since then, Barton has performed at 10 Gamecock baseball games, and he’s got a good track record, too.
The team, he said, has gone 9-1 when he sings.
But the same didn’t hold for football, as the Gamecocks fell to Auburn last season, and that’s a record Barton said he wants to correct.
“This year, I need to be 1-1,” Barton said. “We definitely need to beat Missouri. With the Gamecocks’ record in baseball, (my 9-1 record is) not so hard to do, so I need to bring the football team luck this Saturday as well.”
Barton applauded USC for featuring voice faculty from within the school, since department faculty usually sing at sporting events.
Now, 11 performances and three years later, Barton’s allegiance has changed, and his support has shifted from UNC to USC, saying, “It’s hard not to become a Gamecock fan.”
“I think at this point, even if they played North Carolina, I’d root for the ‘real Carolina’ which is [in] my mind now the University of South Carolina,” Barton said.