Voice of experience

MANILA, Philippines - Others raise their wine glasses and wish for “health, wealth and happiness.” Russell Watson just wishes for health and happiness.

Since he survived two life-threatening tumors, the British tenor behind the album La Voce had a complete change of priorities.

“We don’t need wealth,” he explains. Health and happiness — that’s all that’s important. As long as you have it, you don’t need anything else. “

He looks at how eager people pursue wealth these days and Watson can’t help but complain.

“Life is so busy, so hectic. People are tied up making money, closing the next deal, driving the fastest car and having big houses. They get sidetracked and blinded with what’s more important in life.”

Watson knows whereof he speaks. A gold record was farthest from his mind when he recorded La Voce for Sony Music Entertainment.

He’d rather give listeners a peek into his own soul, his own spirit.

Thus, he calls La Voce “a gift of the spirit,” meant to move, evoke feelings, search for the god within.

In return for that gift, Watson got more than he expected. He got the wealth he never pursued in the first place.

As he says, when you realize wealth is not the most important thing in the world, “it will come to you.”

It all started June last year, when Watson recorded La Voce in Rome.

“It’s just hard work,” he humbly relates. “The album is organic, back to basics. It’s the good old melodies. I sang with the orchestra. And I sang with emotion.”

The languid Adagio in La Voce makes you slow down and think things over. Another track, the soaring Intermezzo, says Watson, is just as spiritual. Watson never runs out of such uplifting tracks in La Voce.

“I’ve truly given my heart and soul to this album,” Watson reveals.

The public obviously liked what it heard. Watson reports that La Voce turned gold the first week it was released. Sales reached 320,000 copies over the Christmas period. And Watson is holding a show in Singapore next week to promote the album.

Sentimental soul that he is, Watson is dedicating the Singapore show to “my dear grandma,” who passed away a few weeks ago.

The lilt in his voice during this phone interview makes you think Watson’s eyes are sparkling and his face glowing as he talks about his family some more.

The father of two — Rebecca and Hannah — talks nonstop about his girls, especially the youngest, Hannah.

“Oh, she can be the next Mariah Carey or the next Rihanna,” he gushes. “She watches musicals, takes piano and voice lessons. She also dances! I won’t be adverse to seeing her involved in the music industry.”

But he’d rather she carve a name of her own, away from her famous dad’s big shadow.

Another item in Watson’s wish list is a collaboration with Barbra Streisand, whose voice he finds “fantastic.” And oh yes, another trip to the Philippines, where he performed almost six years ago, would be great. He hasn’t gotten over the “sweet and friendly” people he interacted with during his show at PICC Plenary Hall.

 But if he doesn’t see his sweet, friendly Pinoy fans again, or if he doesn’t get his other wishes, Watson will not rant, rave and wear a long face. The guy doesn’t plan for the long term anymore. That’s what the battle he won against his sickness has taught him.

“There’s no point in planning too far ahead,” he relates. “ I just go with the flow. I try to enjoy everything. I’m happy to be alive. And I feel fortunate to be here.”

Sure, there are problems. But Watson — on his second lease on life — has learned to face them squarely.

What matters, he thinks, is not so much how you solve the problem but “how you respond to it, how you run over the hurdle.”

Watson knows more than anyone else that life offers no guarantees. So it is with the music industry.

“You just gotta go with it and hope for the best,” he says. It’s like putting up a painting for sale, he goes on. The artist doesn’t know if the painting will sell or not.

For now, he just enjoys all kinds of music and counts his blessings. He describes himself as “highly vigilant about my voice.”

“I’m very grateful for what I have. The fact that I’m still here is a blessing,” Watson reveals.

And he feels rich, not in terms of money, but in terms of the spirit. Give him family, friends, relaxing classical music — even rock and R&B and Watson is in seventh heaven.

But don’t give him those worn-out pop songs they play over and over on radio.

“They don’t have that sense of spirituality,” he explains.

What he wants is music and lyrics “that flow from inside, something that is not formulaic.”

And he knows one when he hears one, even without knowing exactly why. He just knows — the way an artist knows he has created something worth hearing or seeing for a long, long time.

Meanwhile Watson takes things one day at a time. He takes care of his health and his voice and hopes for the best, knowing that his fate may change at the flick of a finger.

“The song that best describes my life these days is Frank Sinatra’s My Life,” reveals Watson. “I remember the lines You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.”

It’s a sign, not only of Watson’s priorities. It also explains that easy laughter, that feel-good vibes that make talking to him like speaking to an old friend you won’t mind staying in touch with, for keeps.