Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah!!

I realize I'm way behind the curve on this one, but I couldn't let all of December pass without sharing some Season's Greetings!

The picture is from the school's lobby. Every year, one of the undergrad classes is charged with decorating the main hall. (I've gotten conflicting responses as to whether it's the sophomores or the freshmen.) They did a terrific and hilarious job, touching nearly everything in sight as you can see above. Hanukkah was not excluded; handmade signs and a menorah also graced the room.

I hope all of you have swirled around in some holiday cheer with your loved ones! And may tonight's New Year's Eve be a wonderful dessert to the season!

~Hope

Better Than Candy Canes

Yesterday, I was rushing around to get to a review session for this morning's Music Theory final exam. I ThrewOnMyCoatGrabbedMyBagCheckedMyKeysOpenedMyDoorAnd... Stopped. Short.

There was a box. A big box. A box whose name was Pro Flowers.

e sent me the most beautiful roses: 9 red, 9 white, all long-stemmed, and all so fresh and gorgeous. I promptly melted.

Now these lovely beauties are gracing my dining room table while I flutter around amidst papers on 19th century opera stars. But every now and again, I get to look up from my notes and feel all hot chocolatey.

~Hope

Recitals and Recitations

I've been to three recitals in the last three days - one a day - and it's been wonderful. Sitting with my fellow voice students in the beautiful hall, I find it really magical to watch these incredible performers offer themselves through the music to us.

Saturday afternoon, J., a woman in my voice studio gave her degree recital. The first set was with a small orchestra - a bass clarinet, a clarinet, an oboe, 2 violins, a viola, a cello, a harp, 2 flutes and a piccolo, complete with student conductor. Beautiful and eerie music set to such lovely French poetry, I think by Ravel. She also performed some works with piano and then a Christmas set with just harp. Tempted me to try to take harp lessons here. When I was about 3 years old, I told my parents I wanted a harp for Christmas. They laughingly indulged me in a lap harp. It's not the same. Not that I mind their decision; why would you get a 3 year old a full concert-sized harp, especially when a) that wish might be the same as "I want to be a ballerina no a fireman no an astronaut no a...." and b) there aren't that many harp teachers in central PA? But I still have this hidden 3-year-old's delight that wonders, "What would it be like to place my hands upon those strings?"

Anyway, the performance was incredible. J. has double gifts: a beautiful voice that just rings and spins with this rich yet clear vibrato, and a talent for acting that would make her successful in straight plays if she so chose. She also is just a lovely person, and that warmth of her soul is exuded in her singing. Gorgeous.

Sunday's recital was for a baritone who sang several interesting pieces, including a Russian set - Dances of Death, I believe. Beautiful. His pianist actually played a piece alone after the intermission, which I liked. So often we don't pay enough attention to the gifts of the accompanists, but they are equally important in a performance, if not more so. A good accompanist can bring out new colors in your voice because he/she can feed you with a supportive texture, inspiring you to feel the music in new ways. It's also important to have someone who can follow you, sensing where you want to go with the piece and where you need more/less time, etc.

Today, we heard a potentially new faculty member. A bass with a very rich, dark voice, he sang a piece in Polish, one in Russian, one in German (Wagner), and one in Italian. All lovely. He's performed major roles in all the major houses, and it's a real treat to get to see a consummate professional like that. Tomorrow, he'll give a masterclass with students so that we all can get a sense of his teaching style. He also has a Q&A with just the students.

In between these lovely performances, I'm studying theory theory and more theory. Final exam is Wednesday, and I'm still trying to cram various details and techniques into my head. Yesterday was my final keyboard audit of the semester, and I have to say I'm relieved to have that finished! Wish me luck with the exam!

~Hope

Poetry Meets Music

A Scottish friend told me tonight, "You are nauseatingly perky." I'm in my almost-bouncing-off-the-walls-because-I'm-so-excited-and-JOYfully-Happy mood :) Life is absolutely, wonderfully amazing!!

Partly it's that I'm still on a high from the Tuesday night Messiah, partly it's that my performance commitments for the semester are done (a big relief from worrying about how much sleep I'm getting or whether I'm getting a cold), and partly it's that my opera workshop in-class final sing went really well.

Mostly, however, it's this Incredible Project that I get to be a part of.

Every year, through a grant from a lovely woman here, the school brings in a living artist to collaborate with composers and singers. Some years it's a sculptor, some a painter, some a filmmaker. This year, it's a poet.

Lia Purpura is an American poet who writes wonderful vivid work that reminds me in part of William Carlos Williams "This is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox" poem.

The composers are current students here. Tonight, we met with Ms. Purpura in a roundtable discussion to hear her read some of her work and have the opportunity to ask questions. It was fascinating. Here's this woman, offering her inflections of a genre that usually remains on the silent page. We get to hear where she was when she was inspired to pen these words, what came to mind, whether there are any associations we should be aware of. She's a huge proponent of seeing the playfulness in poetry, not letting it be a "tricky little machine" that needs to be taken apart. Very accessible. A sense of a conversation between her and the reader. Ideal for singing.

The composers asked about how amenable she is to repetition - do they need to respect the words as written? She's very flexible and in fact has already begun editing her work with an eye towards song. She'd even be open to changing beats. And repetition is fine by her.

At one point, Ms. Purpura commented that she'd placed one poem in the "no" pile in her mind because she thought the words "In fact, indignation" might not be easy to sing. I was the only singer who came to the seminar tonight, so I spoke up.

"Actually, juicy consonants can sometimes be really fun. The words themselves aren't inherently difficult to sing. What makes something hard to sing is really how the words interact with the music. For instance, for a woman, it's much easier to sing an "ah" vowel up high than an "ee" vowel. We'd need to modify an "ee". But really, the words themselves are fine - it's all about the combination of the music and words."

She was very interested in that, and I think she is intrigued at the intersection of sung words vs. read words. (She intends her poems to be read silently on the page, although she does speak them aloud when writing to hear the rhythms.)

The composers then asked more about certain works. They were concerned, too, with the tension between how much to respect her inflections and interpretive ideas and how much to take the work alone and infuse their own ideas. Several spoke of the need to "ignore" her readings, while another liked hearing her sense of the sounds. Ms. Purpura celebrated the tension and basically enthused that the composers should revel in the friction since "That conflict is where your response will spring from."

It's an interesting question, a passing of a baton or a layering of a cake in a way. The poet provides the text. The composer layers on top his or her own sense of the atmosphere by creating notes and instrumentation colors around these words. The singer takes the composer's piece and adds her own interpretation to it, bringing some of herself. In a way, the singer almost brings it full circle, becoming the human instrument of expression that mirrors the way the poet was the original human instrument of expression.

I'm so amazed that I get to be a part of this. At the outset of tonight's event, the professor supervising and coordinating it introduced himself to me. "Ah, you're Hope! I've already had several students request to work with you!" Since I knew none of the composers in the room, I was really surprised. At the end, one composer introduced herself and complimented me on the Messiah performance. "I really love your voice!" she said. So I guess some of them might have come to hear that. Pretty cool :)

I don't yet know how much I'll really be a co-creator in the composition process. The spectrum could be anything from "Tell me your vocal range and tessitura, and I'll go write the piece that you'll sing" to "Let's sit down together and figure out what kinds of things your voice likes to sing, what your ringing notes are, what qualities are unique to your voice, and I'll write something that suits you." The latter is the model from the 19th century opera world, and I would really be thrilled if that were the case. How neat would it be to have something tailor-made, tailor-written just for you, where your voice really shines?

Well, enough rambling. Most of you know that I talk a blue streak when I'm delighted with something. I guess this long blog entry shows that.

Happy Friday!

~Hope

Lachen und Weinen

Tonight, I got to see the final dress rehearsal for the black box theatre operas that are going up tomorrow through the weekend. The evening was a double bill, and it really was "Lachen und Weinen" - or more like "Weinen und Lachen".

The first piece, For a Look or a Touch by Jake Heggie, is incredibly powerful and incredibly anguished. Gad, now an old man living alone in Germany, is visited by the ghost of Manfred, his lover when they were young. During World War II, both were persecuted by the Nazis. Manfred perished in the concentration camp. Gad survived but buried his experiences under shame. Homosexuality was still a crime after World War II. Unlike the other Holocaust victims' experiences, his suffering was not immediately recognized. Manfred returns to help Gad remember, to open the floodgates and help him make peace. Very simple in its conception and staging, this work is unbelievably intense and had me sobbing. Manfred was played by a guy in my voice studio, and his performance was astonishing. It may be one of the top five performances I've seen ever. In my lifetime. And I'm not just thinking of the operas I've seen -- I mean any performance from film to straight theater to musicals to opera. Just stunning.

The second piece is a complete inverse. The world turns topsy-turvy in the absurdist work The Breasts of Tiresias by Poulenc. Bright, almost gaudy colors in the costumes, bizarre storylines, dialogue and acting that are deliberately over-the-top all meld in this strange, weird, hilarious mocking of the post-World War II command to "go forth and procreate." In the prologue, the singer talks explicitly about how the moral of this play is to encourage everyone in the audience to "go make babies." The last line of the show, sung by the entire chorus to the audience, is "Go right home and make babies now!" In the work, a wife becomes fed up with her wifely duties, cuts off her breasts which are depicted as balloons -- not a violent gesture, more a weird, funny mugging as she snips the strings of the helium balloons which float out of her costume to hover above her head. She renounces her husband, grows a beard, and changes her name from Therese to the male "Tiresias." Tiresias throws a rope around her/his husband, who now is in a housedress, and pulls him along. He rebels and decides that, since she won't do it, he'll make babies for the entire town. He constructs this vast babymaking machine and creates thousands of children. The town starts to starve from the population growth, but he insists that the children can increase the wealth instead of eating away at it because "This one is a published author. He's already sold 750,000 copies!"

The story of Poulenc's opera doesn't even fully give the flavor of how bizarre it really is. I read the synopsis in the program and thought it would be odd, but I had no idea until I actually saw the stage interactions and the costumes and heard the music and text. Unbelievable. The whole audience was guffawing throughout.

Definitely an interesting night at the theatre. The two pieces are deliberately associated through their World War II linkages as well as their questions about "what makes a person a valuable contributor to society?" According to the director's program notes, one of the justifications for persecuting gay people in Nazi Germany was that they were "depriving Germany of the children they owe her." Chilling.

Besides the obvious questions the shows raise with respect to society and societal values, there's a directorial question as well: Does it enhance or detract from theatre to have two such wonderful yet vastly contrasting pieces juxtaposed? Is the Heggie piece more powerful if it stands alone? Or does the Poulenc provide much needed relief and release? Is the Poulenc more powerful because we're so surprised by laughter at that point, so astonished to find that we want to and can laugh after such a wrenching subject?

Absolutely phenomenal productions. The performers just have me in awe. I'm stunned and oh so grateful to be here, able to see professional quality productions from a front row seat that's only a few feet away from such stunning performers. Just amazing.

~Hope

PS The title of this post means "Laughing and Crying". It's the title of a German art song by Schubert.

Magical Creatures in Music

The title of this entry is the premise of the outreach performance I did on Monday. My fellow students and I visited a fifth grade music classroom. We each had 30 minutes to present to the kids -- a different class for each of us.

The first person, K, gave a great interactive performance with her violin. She did a song called "Rye Whiskey" (although she didn't tell the kids the title), and she asked the students to make a movie to go with the song. First, she played the entire piece, accompanied by the piano. Then, she pulled up a PowerPoint presentation with different pictures and asked the kids to vote on the time period, the location, and the set for the "movie". They picked the 1850s Wild West with a farm family. Next, she had them listen to each section of the piece again and then volunteer suggestions for what each spot might paint visually. One kid kept insisting, "And then, there's a pile of mud, and the guy comes in and he slips and falls on his face." "And then, there's a bucket of mud, and the guy comes in and he slips and falls on his face." The other recurring theme was offered by a boy: "Somebody's drinking milk, and he starts to laugh and it comes out his nose." "Somebody's drinking orange soda, and he starts to laugh and it comes out his nose." The overall story ended up being a party where people are dancing and then start to leave, perhaps as the children fall asleep. Very fun. K did a fantastic job at keeping them engaged and excited about it.

A was up next. He sang three pieces by Faure in a group, but he didn't tell them the meaning. Then, the students broke into three groups and drew three pictures with markers showing the story. Each group took one piece. A went around to each group to answer questions. Then, he displayed the pictures and sang the song cycle again. The first piece turned out to depict a man who is lonely but notices a woman and thinks that his loneliness might be over. The picture was of a grassy hill, a man lying on the hill and dreaming and singing, and a woman at the base of the hill about to climb up. Very vivid.

The second piece A. sang was about the man losing this woman. A. had sung the piece in a very angry tone, and the kids picked up on it. They drew a large face, very outsized for the body that accompanied it, and giant black raindrops falling all around the angered face. The cheeks were red, "like yours were when you sang," they said, and there was blood on the brow. Amazing.

The third piece was about the final break up of the lovers. This picture was a bit more "comic strip like", as my professor described it this morning. Two people with cartoon bubbles above their heads faced each other. The woman's bubble said something like "Goodbye forever", while the man's bubble said "I don't want to break up."

My favorite bit in A.'s presentation was when one kid raised his hand with what we all thought might be a tangential question. Instead, he said, "I just have to compliment the pianist." So thoughtful and sensitive. As adults and even as musicians, it's all too easy to focus on the soloist and ignore the accompanist. But it really should be a partnership, an equal performance. What a wonderful kudos from this dear student. We all gave H.J., the accompanist, a round of applause.

A.'s presentation ran a few minutes over, so I tried to do some quick thinking about what I could cut in mine. I figured I might be short on time, so I'd deliberately designed it to be about 20 minutes long, figuring I could expand it by letting the kids ask me questions at the end about music school or whatever they wanted.

My piece was Debussy's "La Romance d'Ariel," based on Ariel's longing for Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest. I started off asking if any of the kids had ever heard of William Shakespeare, and the whole class raised their hands. One told me that he was a poet and a writer. Then, when I asked them if they knew any of his plays, they enthusiastically rattled off, "Romeo and Juliet!" "Hamlet!" and "Macbeth!" I was so impressed. Then, I told them about The Tempest and the basic idea - that Ariel loves Miranda but she falls in love with another and leaves the island where Ariel lives.

"How do you think Ariel felt?" I asked.

"Disappointed." "Angry."

"Yes, you're right, and maybe sad and hurt, too. Do you do anything when you're feeling sad and hurt or angry? I talk to my friends or my mom and dad, and sometimes I sing. Did you know that singing is a great way to express emotions? Songs can be happy or sad. What kind of song do you think Ariel would sing?"

"A sad one."

"Great! What about before he knows that Miranda has left him, when he thinks she might be coming back?"

"A happy one."

"Right, and maybe a hopeful one, too! Well, two people wrote a song that they imagined Ariel might sing."

We talked briefly about Debussy and Paul Bourget, the poet. Then I told them that I would wave my hands and they would all have Magical Composer Powers.

"One, two, three, Abracadabra! You all have magic composer powers now! So together, we're going to try to discover how Debussy might have written the music for this song."

I went through various bits of the piece, asking them to picture some things in nature that might be in the song since Ariel is a sprite who lives in the woods. They came up with nearly all the elements Bourget included.

We also talked about how flower petals look when they fall, and I had them use their hands to show me. Then, I asked them to sing how they thought flower petals might sound when they fell. One girl gave me a descending chromatic scale - excellent! Another gave me a more loop-d-loop melody. I sang Debussy's bit, which happens to use duple and triple meter alternating to give that jerky descent that flower petals take on the wind currents. They liked the high part (it goes up to a high D flat -- 3 above middle C).

We next talked about the words Gaiment ou Douloureusement -- essentially translated as "happily or sadly." They learned the French, and one kid spontaneously said, "J'y douloureusement."

"Ah! I see we have someone who knows French! That's great! Je suis douloureusement!" (Actually, douloureusement is an adverb. I think the phrase would be "Je suis douloureuse/douloureux", but I didn't think of that at the time. Might have confused them if I did. Anyway, great initiative on that kid's part!)

We talked about how you might say the words differently, and they tried that. Then, we talked about how you could sing them differently. They were a little hesitant to sing. In retrospect, I think I should have had us all sing something together first so they'd be more adventurous about trying things on their own. Something to incorporate next time.

Finally, I told them that the beginning of the piece had the same notes and words as the end: "Across the sweet mountains, won't you come to the call of your Ariel?" We talked about how that would be different at the beginning, when Ariel thinks Miranda will come, vs. the end, when Ariel knows he's lost her. A couple kids spoke the phrases differently for me, infusing emotion. And then I sang just the melody, without much expression, inviting them to listen carefully and think about the differences when I sang the full piece. I also asked them to listen for the flower petals part and for the "gaiment ou douloureusement."

My accompanist and I performed the whole song for them then. They were very attentive. At the end, they acknowledged that they'd noticed the different parts. We talked a little more about how the beginning vs. the end were different. Some kids thought the end was actually "lower". It's not actually lower in pitch, but it is darker in color. I talked about the idea of color, and my accompanist played that passage two different ways on the piano. I sang it two different ways. Again the idea of "lower" came up. One kid actually noticed that my pianist had brought out the lower registers of the piano more in his second playing. Very, very impressive.

All too soon it was time for them to leave. I love doing this sort of work! No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I really hope I can make outreach a significant part of my professional life.

~Hope

Rejoicing Greatly

Last night was the Messiah Sing-In for which I was singing the "There were Shepherds" recits that precede the "Glory to God" chorus and the "Rejoice Greatly". I was a little worried since we had very limited rehearsal time with the orchestra. On Sunday, they were all sight reading the work (unless they'd played The Messiah before elsewhere), and we barely even got to run the full "Rejoice Greatly" piece. The violin part in that is especially difficult, and they were having trouble keeping it moving. It's very hard for a coloratura soprano if it doesn't move because your coloratura has a natural tempo at which it likes to move. For me, that's around quarter note = 100 or so in this piece.

Last night, we got one more run through with the orchestra right before people started to arrive at the church. Happily, my conductor very kindly told the violins that we needed to take a faster tempo, and we all settled on a wonderful tempo. They sounded fantastic!

In case you've never been to a Messiah Sing-In, let me tell you a little about how they work. Around the country in December, various musical groups will hold these events. People in the community love it because they can come and sing the choruses in a work they enjoy hearing around the holidays. Sometimes, as it was last night, these are used as fundraisers; people can pay about $5 or so to rent a Messiah score once they get there. Soloists are usually auditioned to sing the parts, and there may be just a soprano, alto, tenor, bass, or there may be lots of different soloists. There may also be more than one conductor. The orchestra is usually volunteer - sometimes just meeting there that night to play for the first time together.

Last night, the fundraiser was for our local chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. There were 14 different conductors, all students and all having their own little group of pieces. It was a great chance for them to get some more conducting experience in this famous work. Some of them were also soloists. We had 10 soloists in all. Probably 100-150 people showed up to sing the choruses. Not a large gathering, but definitely an enthusiastic one.

First up, we had a tenor who sang, "Comfort ye, my people" and "Ev'ry valley". He's a grad student, and he has a lovely, rich tenor voice. Perfect for a comforting voice. The congregation came in on "And the Glory of the Lord" to finish this group.

Next was a bass who did "Thus saith the Lord" and "But who may abide/Refiner's fire". These are some of my favorite pieces in the whole work. It really requires a voice with presence and agility plus richness. And this guy had it! Unbelievable. He put a fabulous "k" on "shake", so it really sounded like the booming voice of God declaring that, "I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land!" He gave us a wonderful preface to the "And He Shall Purify" chorus. At this point, the congregation was really starting to swing into it.

Another treat, a gorgeous mezzo, came next to sing "Behold a virgin shall conceive" and "O Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion." She has a rich voice but a large voice too that carries and has clarity throughout. Very wonderfully proclamatory for this piece. It was just beautiful. Her piece flows right into a chorus echo, and I think we all wished she would keep singing.

"For Unto Us a Child is Born" came next, and I was starting to prep myself for my parts. At the final chord, I walked across to the front of the sanctuary with my conductor for the recits. He conducted a lovely Pastoral Symphony, and then the congregation stood since my recits lead right into "Glory to God."

Instead of an organ, they were using a keyboard set on some organ-like instrumentation, and it was very hard to hear. I think the speaker was turned away from me or something. Perhaps it was also the rather muted instrumentation. The organist hit my first chord, and I did my best with "There were shepherds", but I have no idea whether that was in tune. (The keyboard was a surprise to me since we didn't rehearse the recits in the church before last night's performance.) Luckily, the violins come in after that first line for "And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them". Got through the recits, and the chorus came in. And then it was time for Rejoice.

My other conductor came up and started the tempo for Rejoice perfectly. I was thrilled! My runs just flowed, and it was so much fun!! I'm still working on how to sing the slow middle section better - I try to get a more tender quality there, but I'm still not happy with it. But the fast runs which start and end the piece feel really good. Yay! It's really exciting when you figure out what your niche is, what your voice just loves to sing. For me, that's definitely this piece.

Afterwards, I sat in the congregation behind two lovely people from my regular chorus commitment who had come to hear me and to record the performance for my family. Together, we got to hear a gorgeous "He Shall Feed His Flock" and a soaring "Come Unto Him". What's really neat about this is that it's like the conductors could pick the ideal voice for each part. The Messiah has some arias that just seem best suited to different voices, even if they're all labeled "Soprano" or "Alto". And at a Messiah Sing-In, you can get all those different voice types. Very cool.

"His Yoke is Easy" and "Behold the Lamb of God" were the next two choral parts. And then a red-headed mezzo sang "He was despised." She has an incredible presence and a voice that I really want to have on CD since it's one of those that you can just listen to for hours. She's playing Cherubino in the spring production of Figaro, and I'm so excited to see her!

"Surely he hath borne our griefs" and "All we like sheep" came next. All the soloists found out last night that we were supposed to sing to support the congregation after we had done our solos, and I had a lot of fun doing these choruses that I haven't done since college. Some of the melismas (fast little notes/runs) weren't quite in muscle memory anymore, but it was fun to see them and attempt them again.

Next was another chorus "He trusted in God", which isn't typically done to my knowledge. I know I'd never sung it before. Another great thing about a Messiah Sing-In is that you can take the opportunity to do pieces that may not otherwise be frequently performed. Usually choruses/ensembles performing the work will pick selectively from it rather than attempting it in its entirety. Over the years, certain pieces have become commonly cut. And this, while beautiful, happens to be one of them. For me, it was like discovering an unknown Handellian work. There are bits that I knew how they'd go because the style is like the rest of the Messiah. And there were bits that surprised me. Very cool.

A lovely clear-as-a-bell tenor came next to sing "Thy rebuke hath broken his heart" and "Behold and see if there be any sorrow." A plaintive color to his voice made these pieces so expressive and lovely.

Then the chorus did another new one to me -- "Lift up your heads" and the old favorite, the "Hallelujah" chorus. I think of this as the typical ending for a Messiah Sing for some reason, but last night, we went on to "Part the Third." I'm so glad we did because a gorgeous, dark soprano voice sang "I know that my Redeemer liveth". She had such spinning long notes. I think her voice may be more of a Slavic soprano.

Chorus again -- "Since by man came death". Then a baritone doing the joyful "Behold, I tell you a mystery" and "The trumpet shall sound." He has a ringing "ah" vowel that was really terrific in "shall" from "The trumpet shall sound". The rest of the vowels were good too :)

Finally, we closed all together with "Worthy is the Lamb" and the "Amen" chorus. Overall, a very lovely evening. I'm incredibly happy that it went well!

The two friends from chorus who came were just dear and brought me flowers, which you can see in the picture below:

(Yes, those are my cheesy Hallmark snowman-and-dog that sing Jingle Bells. Much to e's chagrin, I love that kind of humor. :) )

Even if you're not near a Messiah Sing this December, I hope you take the time to listen to at least one song from it. Go to iTunes and download the Hallelujah chorus. And be joyful :)

~Hope

Opera: Dead or Alive?

Had an interesting conversation tonight that started with a man telling me, "Good luck with your future plans! You're up against one big obstacle: opera is a thing of the past."

You can imagine how that turned out.

Suffice to say that I believe there is plenty of evidence to show that younger audiences are indeed growing, that the Met and others are cultivating the future audiences of opera, that opera remains relevant and vibrant as an art form and a vital expression for us as human beings, and that the fate of opera rests in the hands of the artists who decide when, where, and how to present it and make it accessible and inviting to others.

I'll step off my soapbox before I get too wordy. Always interesting to get a spicy conversation starter, though.

~Hope

Bittersweet

A little sad tonight. I just got home from what will likely be my last choral concert for a very long time, possibly forever. I used to love singing in choirs, being part of that amazing mass of sound, all connected to each other and to the music and to the instrumentalists, moving as one. To me, choral music is the ultimate selfless music. There's no room for being an individual performer; you are part of the group. Ideally, no one will ever hear you as you.

But now I'm at the point in my vocal journey where singing in a choir tends to make me hoarse. I'm not entirely sure why this is. It's definitely not because I'm oversinging (i.e. singing too loud); I am very committed to blending with the other voices. But regardless of why it happens, it does, and that means choral singing is out for me now that I've fulfilled my one semester requirement.

We sang a beautiful program tonight: Requiem fur Mignon by Schumann, Schicksalied by Brahms, and the Beethoven Mass in C Major. The soloists and the orchestra were top notch, and the choir seemed pretty well-blended and expressive overall.

The last word I sang with this group was "pacem". Fitting, I think.

~Hope

PS The picture is of bittersweet - what else? - chocolate. 99% cacao content isn't anything I would recommend to anyone unless they're looking for the ultimate in strong "take the roof of your mouth" experiences. But it is worth trying once.

Hops, Skips, and Jumps

Lots of hopping, skipping, and jumping around today. My morning was filled with warming up, a few errands, and then classes. First was Bibliography, in which we discussed the relative merits of various search engines to the lovely gustatory background of Hershey's "dark" (they're really semi-sweet) and cherry-filled Kisses. Delectable!

Next was my voice lesson, which was focused mostly on the Messiah recits I'll be singing on Tuesday. My teacher helped me find whole new levels of expression and color with them. I just hope I can incorporate everything well for Tuesday! We also ran the Rejoice Greatly, which is still so much fun!

A neat little aside -- on my way to my lesson, I walked through the lobby of the school. The staff had already hung a huge wreath, complete with bow, at the top of the grand staircase. Right at the entrance, they were assembling a giant artificial Christmas tree that looks very realistic. While this was happening, a 20-30 person clarinet ensemble -- yes, all clarinets (bass, tenor, and alto, I think) -- was playing Christmas carols in a lunchtime concert. Beautiful!

At this point, it was a quick skip home to cram in some theory homework and make myself an early dinner. Another jump back to school to meet with the conductor for the Rejoice Greatly and make sure our tempi and ornaments are aligned. If you sing a piece without talking to the conductor in advance, it can be difficult to make sure things sit right for you. Rejoice has so much coloratura (the fast little notes) that if it's too slow, I end up needing to give so much breath to slow my coloratura down that things sound airy, like they have an "h" before every note. Not good at all. Since I'm a coloratura soprano, my voice has a natural rhythm, a band of metric beats within which it likes to live when skipping among those fast little notes. Helping a conductor know where I'm most comfortable means that my tempo at the performance is likely to be better suited. In the Rejoice, for the fast sections, that's about quarter note=100 (beats per minute). Since music is collaborative, it's also key to find out what the conductor's interpretive ideas are - would he or she like you to add certain ornaments (extra notes/frills)? Are there spots where (s)he wants a ritardando (deceleration)? Happily, my conductor and I were aligned on all these things!

After the rehearsal, I ran to the promenade floor to cram in some more theory homework. One of the classical guitar students was practicing in this resonant space, so I had about an hour of gorgeous background music giving a wonderful lift to my homework!

Soon, it was off to a mini-recital given by one of the candidates for an open voice teacher position here. A bass-baritone, he had a wonderfully resonant voice and a very sunny demeanor. He sang a piece from Verdi's Falstaff, some Hugo Wolf, a bit of Debussy from the Fetes Galantes, Schubert's Das Fischermadchen and Ganymed, a Charles Ives piece, and something else that I'm forgetting. He was so expressive, especially in the Falstaff, that he had everyone in the audience bubbling with laughter.

After the concert, I went to our next-door coffee shop for some hot chocolate and---more theory homework. It was peopled with students crouched over the little round tables in the dim lighting, trying desperately to plod through the last bits of work in the semester's final crunch. A few community members also sat enjoying their food and drink, perhaps smiling at the rest of us since they are in relaxation mode. Not that I mind. Being able to sit in a coffee shop at 5:30 at all is quite a miracle to me, and working on music stuff? So much the better!

All too soon, it was time for the final 3 hour dress rehearsal for tomorrow's choral concert. By the end of it, I was so dead on my feet that I was ready to drop straight into bed. But I plied my brain with chocolate cookies and apple cider, trying to bribe it to finish my theory homework. Success! I'm done for the night! And now to sleep...

~Hope

Searching

I now know way too much about the various search engines that are on the web. Lest you are a Google Unitarian, as I was before tonight, let me enlighten you in the other, often inferior, options. I feel like I should have some Tom Lehr melody accompanying this (the guy who sang the entire periodic table of elements). You can pretend you hear some cheesy, rip-roaring piano accompaniment: Metacrawler, Dogpile, Ixquick, Metaeureka, Alta Vista, Excite, Ask.com, HighBeam Research, Lii.org, Yahoo, Infomine Scholarly Internet Resource Collections, BUBL Link, and Blingo.

Don't you feel educated now?

Welcome to my world of Bibliography Class Homework.

Besides online searching, my brain has been wandering around a couple other subjects today. First up was Outreach, a class that helps us learn how to perform in schools, retirement homes, and other community areas. I love this class; these performances are the most rewarding to me. I really hope I can make outreach a significant part of my professional life. Today, we reviewed our scripts for next week, which is when we'll be heading into elementary schools. I'm taking my old friend, "La Romance d'Ariel". More on that next week.

The next class was theory, in which we talked about musical "sentence structure". In a piece, there are sections called "phrases", and they end with "cadences", which are the equivalent of question marks or periods or ellipses. A couple phrases can be joined together to make a "period" - sort of like a sentence. We worked on identifying and classifying them by looking at a score and then by just listening to musical excerpts. There are several types of periods depending on whether the melody reoccurs in the second half of the period, what kind of cadences are there, and whether the key changes from the beginning to the end.

The afternoon was filled with all kinds of errands and practicing. And now I'm working on Bibliography homework.

Well, enough procrastination. I'd best dive into the other 200 search engines on the list to ferret out their advantages and disadvantages.

~Hope

Day in the Life

It's been a while since I've actually blogged about what a day here is like, so I figure it's about time I give that wide angle lens view.

Today, I hopped out of bed around 9 and dashed to the library to battle with the copy machine. It finally relinquished my slides, and I slid into my 19th Century Opera Singers class about 5 minutes late.

First up to present was M, who told us all about the development of the baritone voice type in the nineteenth century in Europe. Initially, people thought baritones were just basses with a high range on top. Then, as the century progressed, people came to separate out the baritone voice from tenor and bass. Later, individual fachs - specializations within the voice type - emerged. (Dramatic baritone, lyric baritone, etc.) M showed us how composers used these new voice types and helped define them by the operas they wrote.

I presented next. My paper is on two American opera singers in the late nineteenth century. So that I avoid boring you to tears, I'll just say that the high-level premise is that they represent two divergent yet equally valid paradigms of success in America at that time.

K gave her talk last. She is examining Carmen and the original singer who created the role. This woman was particularly responsible for the uncensored sensuality of this role, something a bit scandalous in nineteenth century France at the Opera Comique. There's also a colorful anecdote told about her fainting in the wings, having pulled the death card in the tarot card scene. When she came to, she supposedly said "Bizet est mort!" and he was.

My next class was Bibliography - how to use the library. Today was focused on contemporary music and jazz, so we examined a few modern reference books and periodicals. I learned that there are special magazines and journals devoted solely to computer/electronic music. The other interesting point is how primary sources differ for jazz vs. classical music. In classical music, if you want to write an article, you go back to the original score or to letters written by the composer or publisher. In jazz, your primary source material is the recordings themselves - what is heard - because so much is improvised. It is also a 20th-21st century art form, so the original recordings for Brubeck are more available than those for Bach ;)

At 12:30, I ran across to meet a professor, crossing through the lobby of the school where a small wind and brass ensemble was performing. They filled the echoing space with gorgeous music, and many people were loitering with their lunches, soaking it all in. I opted for lunch at the coffee shop next door and encountered A, a friend from the UK.

A is absolutely hilarious. He could easily be a standup comic instead of the amazing pianist that he is. Maybe a Victor Borge act is in his future. ;) He told me some great stories about meeting with the people who sponsored him to come to the US. All of his fellow grant recipients were en route to study medicine or get their MBAs from Harvard. They all showed up in "The Black Suit", while he arrived in "powder blue with gold shoes and a scarf." "You're so Bohemian," they all told him.

A also talked about shepherding a group of 10 year olds on a choir field trip from the UK to the US. Evidently, choir schools in the UK are often comprised of upper class students. So when they arrived in the US, one bright pink suitcase was left on the carousel. "Whose suitcase is this?" he asked. "Oh," said a little girl, "doesn't someone collect them for us?"

After delicious laughter and lunch, I ran to the practice rooms to warm up and run through my music. I started with the Messiah recits, and things felt a bit tight, so I moved to my Figaro recitative for my Opera Workshop class since that sits a bit lower. Some memory and expression work meant that time passed very quickly, and it was off to studio class.

Studio class is where all the students in my voice teacher's studio perform for each other. We're broken into two groups. Half go one week and half the next. Today, due to illness, we only had two classmates performing (instead of the normal six.) One sang "Porgi amor" in this huge, beautiful, gorgeous voice. She's playing the Countess in the spring production. I still can't believe that I get to sit five feet away from people and hear them sing like this! The second person who sang did two pieces: one from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and then a Lee Hoiby piece based on a Walt Whitman poem. He is transitioning from a baritone to a tenor, and he has a major voice - beautiful, rich, flowing. Incredible.

Immediately after studio class, I ran to Opera Workshop where we worked on our recits. Recitative is often thought of as the introduction to a piece, especially in Handel or Mozart operas. The recit. has great flexibility; you can speed up or slow down as you want. You are supposed to infuse it with an almost speech-like character in its flow. I think its purpose was originally to move the action along before getting to the main aria. Because recits are so stylistically different, they often scare singers. But they can be incredibly fun if you learn how to do them.

In our black box theatre classroom, the stage is already up for next week's opera productions. So we actually got to stand upon a platform to perform for each other. We each stood up with our scene partners and performed the recits. The professor gave us feedback along the way, working with different parts: "You need to be more slimy there. Take more time!" "This should be under your breath, as if you're saying "Oh s***"" "Let it move here!" "You need to rush in and think that something is really the matter with these two women. It's like they've slit their wrists and are lying in a pool of blood!"

After two hours of class, it was off to home for a quick dinner and a few emails before running back to school for our three hour dress rehearsal for Friday's choral concert. We were in the large theatre on campus, which has the most incredible acoustics. We stand on black risers on this lovely acoustically reflective stage with a full orchestra in front of us (complete with harp) and only our conductor separating us from the red seats and the crystal chandelier out in the hall. We're singing the Bach Mass in C Minor, Schumann's Requiem fur Mignon, and the Brahms Schicksalied. Our soloists are absolutely incredible, and it takes all my effort not to get lost in their singing and forget my own entrance with the soprano section. The soprano soloist is in my voice teacher's studio, and she has a rich, lyrical voice. When you hear her, it's like satin ribbon is being pulled from her - such a smooth, vibrant and clear yet round and warm sound. The alto is like cream. And the others are gorgeous, too.

Tonight, it's a few emails accompanied by hot apple cider and then off to sleep! Tonight, I'm awarding myself nine hours of sleep because I've been shorting sleep for the last week. So looking forward to this!
~Hope

Amenitease

I'm currently creating slides for my 19th century opera singers presentation tomorrow. They're really handouts for my 30 minute lecture, but I'm much faster composing layouts in PowerPoint than in Word thanks to the consulting training.

That said, I'm missing the Macros we had in consulting. These were lovely automatic templates, like columns and boxes, that would pop up with just the right format when you hit a custom toolbar button. Creating them from scratch is taking me much longer. Vista is at times helpful and at times a learning curve since I haven't used it much. But it looks like Microsoft added a few bells and whistles perhaps based on consulting firms' feedback. It's just enough to make me miss the old amenities.

Ah well. Enough grousing. The upside is that I'm still thinking about all kinds of interesting and very cool aspects of 19th century opera.

Back to the bullet points....

~Hope

Cheesy Tenors and Other Fun Things

Last night was my high school class reunion. What a great event! So many people are doing so well, and warmth and good cheer abounded. I'm so glad I was home to go to it.

With the exception of those few hours of visiting and Thanksgiving Day, I'm working away on a paper for my 19th Century Opera Singers class. Definitely up to my ears in 19th century newspaper articles, reviews of singers, biographies of singers, books on the context of the time in terms of opera history, class ambivalence (desire to advance to the upper crust but antipathy for the aristocratic "snobbery"), gender roles (women rarely worked outside the home. The stage was one of the few career paths open to them), and religious aversion to "those immoral theater people".

My favorite quote so far? From Clara Louise Kellogg's Memoirs of an American Prima Donna:

"Tenors are queer creatures. Most of them have their eccentricities and the soprano is lucky if these are innocuous peculiarities. I used to find it in my heart, for instance, to wish that they did not have such queer theories as to what sort of food was good for the voice. Many of them affected garlic. Stigelli usually exhaled an aroma of lager beer; while the good Mazzoleni invariably ate from one to two pounds of cheese the day he was to sing. He said it strengthened his voice. Brignoli had been long enough in this country to become partly Americanised, so he never smelled of anything in particular."

What do you think: should I try the cheese, the garlic, or the beer before I sing in the Messiah next week?

~Hope

Sing We Merrily on High

On Friday, I auditioned for some soprano solo parts of the American Choral Director's Association Messiah Sing here. They'd asked for us to come in with a piece from the work, and I walked in with "Rejoice Greatly", an air (aria) that's filled with all kinds of melismas (all the fast little notes.)

At my voice lesson last week, I learned that I'd been adding extra notes in many of the melismas. I think this is because I learned the piece when I was in college, and my voice had a tremolo then -- a really fast vibrato that is due, at least in part, to throat tension. (Thanks to a few Amazing voice teachers, my vibrato is now normal, and, man, am I grateful!) So I spent several hours in the practice rooms last week, taking the piece completely apart and singing the melismas on staccato notes. My abs certainly got a workout! Happily, by the time I got to the audition, everything was sitting much better in my voice.

The audition went well :) They asked me to sing a couple of the recits -- "There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying" These are the preludes to the chorus's "Glory to God". I adore this part of the work. Every year, as I sit next to my family at church on Christmas Eve, I have this insatiable longing to sing those recits as the pastor reads that very text from scripture. It just seems so much better to me, so much more expressive and joyous, with Handel's music carrying it along.

Anyway, today, I received an email congratulating me on getting the parts! I'm SO EXCITED!! The concert comes right after my crazy busy first week in December, and I'm sure there will be rehearsals which will add to the flurry, but that's okay. I just hope I can sing this incredible piece with all the joy and delight it merits.

~Hope

Recital Time

One of my classmates gave her degree recital tonight. Resplendent in a floor-length, plum-colored gown with her black hair and creamy skin adorned with sparkling jewelry, she looked every inch a diva.

Her program crossed many countries, time periods, and genres from 18th century Handel to 21st century Broadway. When the evening began, there were six chairs and a harpsichord onstage. Out walked two violinists, a violist, a cellist, two French horn players, and a keyboardist to accompany the Handel piece from Alcina: "Sta nell'Ircana". I was surprised and delighted. To think that you can have a Real Chamber Orchestra for your recital here! No "making do" with the piano reduction. So incredible!

The other pieces on the program were:

• "Frauenliebe und Leben" by Robert Schumann - a gorgeous and poignant song cycle about the stages of life through love - youthful infatuation, falling in love, gaining the one, becoming married and devoted, separating from friends to follow one's spouse, having a child, being delighted and rapturous over one's child, losing one's spouse to death, and finally blessing the child and passing on wisdom about the path

• "Connais-tu le pays" from Ambroise Thomas's Mignon

• A set of Spanish art songs by Fernando Obradors: "En el Pinar", ¿Corazón, porqué pasáis…?", and "El vito"

• Some Cabaret Songs by William Bolcom: "Over the Piano", "Waitin'", and "Amor"

Her encore was a hilarious piece about how mezzo-sopranos never get the solos or the melodies but are always asked to sing the alto line. It uses excerpts from recognizable Broadway tunes that are harmonized as if an alto were singing them: "The hills are alive" from The Sound of Music, "Touch me, it's so easy to leave me," from "Memory" from Cats, etc. She has so much personality and expression that the entire audience was laughing throughout.

What a wonderful performance!! She has this beautiful and rich sound that just floated out over all of us, pulling us in to the incandescent web of song. And her expression was so nuanced and grounded and engaging.

I'm so glad that her recital went well!! Yay!!

~Hope

The Alps

The first "real" snowfall happened today. The inch or so stuck for a few hours, giving a glimpse of the winter wonderland to come. The sun melted most of it by the time I left for home this evening, but the blanket will be here to stay soon enough.

The snow wasn't the only thing putting me in mind of the Alps; the semester is really beginning to crunch. In most academic environments, it seems like there is a peak around midterms followed by a trough until the ramp up for finals. But here, things peak mid-semester and then intensify through till the end. I'm in the midst of a whirlwind of papers, practicing, and performances. But mostly papers, papers, papers. I'm beginning to schedule in time for sleep. It's not exactly the consulting lifestyle - the Alps are definitely a hyperbole - but I'm still running.

Or maybe I should say climbing... :)

~Hope

Milestone

A wonderful present was given to me on Halloween. That day, I had to perform "Laurie's Aria" (from Copland's The Tender Land) in Opera Workshop. When I got to class, for the first time ever, I couldn't wait to perform. There was no nervousness, no anxiety, just an excitement to get up there and do it.

This is really big for me.

Every time I've sung before, I've had this mixture of a love of doing it that was completely overshadowed by stage fright. It didn't matter whether I was singing for 2 people or 20 or 200, whether I was among friends or strangers, or whether I was in a big hall or a small classroom; I still quaked.

But then Halloween came. And everything changed.

I sat there in that class and was the first to volunteer to sing. I was so excited to be able to take what I've been doing in the practice room out for a spin. Granted, the situation was helped by really lovely circumstances: I had a fantastic accompanist, the class is about drama instead of technique (usually I'm nervous because I self-critique my technique), the room acoustics are perfect, and my classmates are friendly and celebrate when folks sound great and understand when things don't go well. But still.

What's really neat is that my chutzpah has lasted. The following Monday, I went to an Alexander Technique class where I knew nobody, and I volunteered immediately and without a drop of hesitation to be a guinea pig. I sang "Laurie's Aria" again, this time unaccompanied, and let myself be fiddled with. In studio class this past week, I was a little butterflyish, but the nerves left and only excitement remained when I stood to sing.

If this present sticks around, if I can continue to be joyful when I get to perform, if I can keep recognizing that no performance is ever perfect and that's okay, realizing at the same time that it's perfectly valid to perform while you're still journeying and learning and improving, that's a pretty fantastic milestone.

What a wonderful gift.

~Hope

All is Well

The happy news is that my vocal cords are completely healthy, smooth, and normal. The ENT did a videostroboscopy, which is when they stick a camera down your throat to photograph your vocal cords while you sing various pitches. Quite interesting, actually.

So that means the pain I'm feeling is just muscle tension. My voice teacher said yesterday, "I want you to have a massage no less than two times a month."

I think I can live with that prescription :)

~Hope

Complicated

Such a twisty and complicated little instrument we have. All of us. Anybody who sings in the car or the shower or just the occasional lullaby uses his/her voice. And folks who use it to sing opera just expand that a little bit.

But despite its relative ubiquity, its accessibility in terms of almost anybody being able to "play it" without training (think of how 2 year olds make up songs), this instrument also seems insanely complicated to me. It is hidden. I can't tell which of the thousands of little muscles I'm manipulating when I sing, and I'm not really supposed to. The only time I really notice them is when something is wrong. Then, they protest and hurt. Which is what has been happening over the past few weeks after I practice.

So I'm off to see the otolaryngologist tomorrow. I feel lucky that this community has people who really specialize not only in the ENT side but especially in dealing with singers. The gentleman I'm seeing is supposed to be fantastic, so I'm sure he'll get me right as rain in no time. But in the meantime, I confess to having a smidge of worry. I do love to sing, and it is a little disconcerting when that part of me and my life feels "off".

~Hope

Happy News

The cast list for the spring opera, Le Nozze di Figaro/The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), was posted tonight.

I GET TO SING IN THE CHORUS!! I am a very happy camper :)

The people who were cast in the lead roles are tremendous. Both Countesses (it's double cast) and one of the Susannas are in my voice teacher's studio, and I just melt every time I hear them sing. I know one of the Counts, and he has a beautiful baritone voice, very rich and mellifluous. And the Figaro is fantastic, too. Literally everybody whom I know in this cast sounds beautiful and has a lot of charisma. It is going to be an incredible production!!

The chorus will be 20 people, 5 on each voice part. I'm so thrilled that I get to be a part of this show!!!! I'm going to learn so much from the director, who is wonderful, and from watching all the leads learn and perform. It's going to be oodles and oodles of fun!!

I think I'll go eat some more ice cream to celebrate.

~Hope

Musical Dinner Party

My friend M.E. (not me) decided to throw a dinner party tonight. There were seven of us: 4 music education masters' students, a PhD music ed. student, ME's next door neighbor who is a chemical engineer, and me. ME made salad and a refried bean and cheese dip appetizer and then ordered Pizza Hut pizza and breadsticks as our "entree". Most people brought beer or wine. I decided to bring dessert.

The cake you see above is a chocolate gingerbread swirled cake from a Scharffen Berger dessert cookbook (thanks, Stacie :) ). After finishing it and contemplating its likely taste, I realized that something was missing. More Chocolate. There just wasn't enough swirled through for my liking. So I decided to make a chocolate sauce to go along with the cake. That way, people could choose how rich they wanted their dessert. Mine had lots of sauce.

Over dinner, conversation batted among pedagogy class comparisons, descriptions of learning to play various instruments (music ed students have to learn a wide array), why jazz musicians now only play a couple sets and go home instead of staying through the night to jam, how jazz education occurred in the early years, and a smattering of chemical engineering talk to help ME's neighbor, N, feel more comfortable.

We soon migrated to the living room where ME played some popular tunes and the piano and created a mini singalong. Then, the two jazz musicians stood up to play. One trumpeter sat down at the piano and began some incredible jazz piano, while the other one pulled out ME's practice trumpet, muted it, and played. "I Got Rhythm" was first up. Then came "All the Things You Are". And finally "Summertime." I sang some, as did the rest of the room. My jazz sense is so rusty, and I never sang with an instrumental combo, so I'm not that comfortable with it. But it was so amazing to be a part of that music, even as a complete amateur. And hearing those two players...wow. The trombone player in the room joined in midway through - playing the walking bass line on the piano. It was a private and personal and spontaneous jazz performance, and it was wonderful. Take the typical "we're all at a party and there's a piano so we gather round" and kick it up about twelve notches. I would have paid to hear these guys perform. The improvisation and the cool swing of it...There's a reason I love jazz so deeply.

As that set ended, we sat and visited for a while. Then ME pulled out her flute and did a few lovely pieces on it. She has a gorgeous sound. This led to someone asking whether we'd ever heard the beatboxing flute guy on YouTube. (Look it up. Seriously and insanely amazing. A conservatory-trained classical flute player who riffs popular tunes while beatboxing.) The next hour or so was spent gathered around ME's laptop watching various YouTube specialities. Numa Numa. French techno dance. Oscar Peterson and his trio. Santana Shreds. Jaco Pastorius Shreds and then the real deal. The Rachmaninoff Prelude in C# Minor as a hilarious skit by an Asian guy with small hands. (Rachmaninoff had incredibly large hands and a very wide span. His music is extremely difficult to play without that dexterity.) I contributed the Muppets' Carmen. (Swedish Chef and Beaker :) )

The final set of videos we watched was of two varieties of Indian classical music. ME's neighbor, N, is from India, and she had been asking about the differences between Western jazz and classical music. This is an interesting question and not as straightforward as you might think. Certain pieces can be either: Summertime was originally written for the opera Porgy and Bess. You can hear this piece sung by Renee Fleming in a fully classical style. It is also one of the greatest and most played jazz tunes of the 20th century. Rhapsody in Blue is another that can defy characterization. And it seems there are exceptions to every rule. Think string bass is always plucked in jazz? Think again. There's a jazz guy downtown who evidently bows his bass when he plays. And there's some group that takes classical tunes and syncopates them and changes other aspects to "make them jazz". Very exciting.

Anyway, the discussion of jazz vs. classical led to a question about Indian classical music. N showed us hindustani and the other variety and talked about the differences. We all sat riveted for a while and then the commentary flowed.

"It's interesting. The variety all comes from the rhythms and the melodic line. There isn't really an underlying harmonic structure."

"And there are so many more notes. The tuning is different." (Many of the pitches arise between what we think of as the notes in the scale.)

"The drone underneath - what's making that sound?"

"I think my roommate has a machine that does that. It sounds like that."

"It's very rhythmic, almost trancelike."

N cut off the final video at the 7 minute mark or so, fearing that we were finding the sounds and repetitive nature grating. Instead, as soon as she clicked stop, groans erupted from most of the people in the room. "It was almost to the climax!" moaned one person. "Yeah," echoed another. It was the same outburst as when you're in an exciting movie and the projector cuts out right before the bad guy gets thwomped.

Everyone was so fascinated, deeply intrigued, by different kinds of music and their applications. We played everything on both YouTube and on real instruments from classical to pop to jazz. And our conversation hopped from the music of America to Africa to China to India to "Western Europe." Very, very diverse.

The close of the evening was a lot of wonderful conversation back and forth on a variety of non-musical topics. It was one of the most interesting and engaging evenings I've had in a long time.

Very happy. And not just because of the chocolate :)

~Hope

Scatterbrained

So many different snippets floating around in my mind right now that I need to blog about. I'll give you a hodgepodge for now.

The picture is from election day. A neighborhood coffee shop put out two tip jars. Needless to say, the music school community is a bit more liberal than conservative, so the Obama jar was significantly richer by the end of the day.

Brilliantly disturbing was the opera I saw tonight. Britten's Turn of the Screw, cast in a new light that fit beautifully. Flat out one of the best productions I've seen in my life - professional or not. I spent most of the evening with my mouth open, and I found myself reminding myself to breathe. The acting, the singing, the orchestra, the sets were all so tremendous. Usually, I'm enamored with one or two singers, clinging to their sound and wanting them to sing forever. Tonight, every single person but one had that effect on me. The one who didn't was an exception in the best sense. He was a high tenor who played Peter Quint, and he was so creepy in everything he did that I had a visceral recoil reaction to him. Just amazing. I don't want to spoil the concept by revealing it in case there's anyone reading this blog who still wants to see the opera, but I'll link to a review next week if I find one.

My current struggle is learning how to "be" and not "do". Given my propensity for making to-do lists, for creating a plan and sticking to it, and for wanting to "get it right", this whole "being" thing is proving harder for me than I'd like. I'll blog more about this when it's not 1 am. For now, let's just say that I'm working on letting go while still checking off the things I need to accomplish on my daily to-do list.

Well, I've had my chocolate, and I'm about to prescribe myself some Muppets before I go to sleep. I'm hoping those will prove sufficient antidotes to the opera tonight. Not sure I want the nightmares that the cast members have been dreaming for weeks.

~Hope

Music, music everywhere, and oh what waterfalls to drink!

After I turned in my Verdi-Varesi paper and took my midterm yesterday morning, I got the most wonderful treat for the next 10 - yes, count them, 10 - hours: Total Music Immersion :) It may be better than chocolate. For those of you who know what a chocolate addict I am, this is saying something.

First, I got to spend an hour with the new piano in my favorite practice room. Gentle warm ups for my voice, engaging work with my new pieces and Laurie's Aria, and stretching and warm ups for my body made the time such a delicious luxury. The contrast with my past three days of desk work was amazing and made me appreciate singing even more.

Next was my hour-long studio class. My fellow students who study with my voice teacher are just flat out amazing. It doesn't matter whether they are undergrads or grads; they have a depth of expression, technical fluidity, and raw vocal talent that are all so powerful to see. Professionals in the making for sure. And I got to sit less than ten feet away from each of them as they performed everything from art song to opera. Big-voiced sopranos, an incredibly high tenor, and a lyrical baritone-tenor (he's in transition) all made for a wonderful concert. And then I got to do what I think a lot of musical people want when they see a concert: to jump up there and perform myself.

What's really neat about this environment of the studio class is that it is really a way to build deep confidence. It provides a super-positive performance experience in an intimate setting (often the scariest for singers because you can't ignore the audience). The other students are so warm and supportive; they exude genuine delight when you do well, and they are completely sympathetic if something goes wrong because they've all been there themselves. My voice teacher is completely positive. She jumps with joy when something you've been working on fits well, and she always starts the feedback portion with a very genuine compliment. She won't say something nice just to do the sandwich we see in business; rather, she picks something that really was good and celebrates that victory. Then, she moves on to the "area for development". But this never comes across as negative feedback. Instead, it's presented as a way to make the piece even better. And you try singing again, incorporating this new information. Except for diction (and even with diction sometimes), nothing is a quick fix. She points out something meaty enough that it will take time to fully incorporate. But you try it anyway and whole new dimensions of sound open up. I know from seeing my fellow students do this. It's like the piece leaps to another level. And the audience is delighted, and you're excited that you're making progress. It's all a wonderful celebration of the unending journey towards being a better artist. And that means that you don't leave focusing on the "right side of the review"; you leave feeling great, like you're already doing some things well and isn't it exciting that you're getting even better?

After studio class came two hours of opera workshop in which each of the 16 students performed his/her aria. The room is a black box theatre, and it's just right in its resonance: not too much so that you would lack clarity or get a "reverb effect" but not at all dry. These students are so gifted that it was an incredible concert. It's not just hearing an extraordinary sound; it's being drawn into the world they create for their characters. You are taken on an emotional ride through the whole class, feeling the anger of Donna Anna, the anguish of Orfeo after he watches Euridice die, the excited joy of Manon about to take her first big trip, the mischievious knowing of Oscar the page, and more. What is it that tips people over that edge from dramatically aware to can't-take-your-eyes-off-them-compelling? So, so neat to see. I can learn so much from all of these wonderful artists. What a gift to be here!

And then, to close the day, I had 2 1/2 hours of choir practice. By this point, I physically couldn't sing much. (You're supposed to sing no more than 2 hours a day or your voice can't handle it.) So, I lip synced a good bit and was able to listen across the wave of sound caressing Beethoven's Mass in C Minor, Schumann's Requiem fur Mignon, and Brahms' Schicksalslied. Just beautiful.

I dreamt of singing last night.

~Hope

The Scientific Method

A few months ago, there was a series of eye-catching ads along Logan airport's security line for JetBlue. "Scientists" of all genders and ethnicities were shown in odd climates together with an IBM Thinkpad. One woman wore a temperature proof suit as she blasted the heck out of the laptop. Another person floated together with it in space. Yet another wildly parachuted with the computer. Not that any business person would normally experience these conditions, but the message seemed to be "we find the limits so you don't have to." Reliability. High performance under any conditions.

Today I caught a glimpse of what it means to test the limits of my own performance. To me, being well-rested is an important and ideal precursor to a good singing day. Sleep gives me an extra smoothness and togetherness in my throat and body, and I have more energy to expend on breath support. Avoiding caffeine is another factor; I can feel my throat drying out and the muscles tightening when I do have some espresso or coffee. So at least for the day before I perform (and preferably longer), I make a point to get lots of rest, stay hydrated, and avoid caffeine as though it's squeezed from brussel sprouts.

I broke those rules today.

We're in the midst of midterms here, and I had a perfect storm of deadlines that reminded me a bit of Steering Committee Meeting build-ups. The weekend saw me hitting 5 hours of sleep a night. By last night, I was down to 3. The only way I'd get through today's paper presentation and midterm was with espresso. I've had more caffeine in the last three days than in the last three months.

Devoid of sleep and hopped up on caffeine, I figured my studio class and opera workshop performances would be a disaster. It was my first time performing Copland's "Laurie's Aria", in which Laurie sings about her wide-eyed feelings the day before she graduates from high school. One of my classmates today called Laurie's sentiment "optimistic fear." The aria requires solid breath support as well as a total surrender to naivete and hope infused with sincerity.

3:00 rolled around, and I stood up to sing in my studio class's medium-sized classroom. To my mind, the notes were nebulously there, but things were very fuzzy. My throat felt tight and dry, and I couldn't hear or feel things the way I wanted. Ah well. Everybody has an off-day, I reasoned. I focused on expression and supporting the sound as best I could.

Much to my shock, my voice teacher commented that I had used significant projection. My sound didn't sound fuzzy to her or anybody else in the room. Yet another reason why singers are half-crazy; what you hear in your own head is never what people outside your body hear.

So I guess all of this is to say that today I learned that I can still sing well even when I'm feeling less than ideal. The differences I sense inside me are evidently much less perceptible to others. And in fact, the lack of sleep may help me "get myself out of the way"; I don't have enough energy to sit there and self-critique as I sing. Knowing I can make it work if I have to on low sleep and high caffeine is invaluable since those conditions will probably roll around again in the future. Not that I'm planning it that way; it's still a really uncomfortable experience for me. But if I'm stuck, at least I have some confidence that I won't flop.

For the record, though, I don't plan to test my singing while skydiving.

~Hope

Buried Treasure

Those two little objects you see in the picture are as good as gold to me these days. Maybe better.

I love my apartment, and it is fairly close to most things, including school. But one luxury I miss from my prior place is the in-apartment washer and dryer. Here, there's a laundry room on my floor, but the coin-operated machines are a bit, well, ravenous. $1.75 per load of wash and $1.50 per dryer spin mean that I run out of quarters fast.

Amazing how you find yourself willing to subvert the natural laws of money, thinking about finding a neighbor and offering to pay $1 in exchange for 25 cents in coin form. Luckily, my wonderful family took pity on me and emptied their coin jars before coming to visit. May they find dollar bills sprouting in unlikely places in return. Especially these days.

~Hope

Neapolitan Days-Part IV

Monday night, I attended our department's "Departmental Voice Recital". About 16 of the 100+ voice students sang over the course of the hour. They were in one of the best halls here, and that is such a joyful experience. Being in a wonderful acoustical space makes such a difference in your energy as you perform. (At least for me it does.)

Each person sang one or two pieces in a very fast fashion. What I love about this is that it really does integrate music into daily life. Much of the experience here is geared to make performing feel natural and frequent. We sing in studio class and opera workshop. We audition for choral concert solos. We sing in lessons and in the hallways. And there's no big deal made of any of it. What a gift.

The pieces on the recital ranged from Spanish, French, German, and Italian art songs to a bit of opera to one musical theatre selection. The guy who sang the musical theatre piece performed a number from Pal Joey. He looks like he's about 19 or 20, but his baritone voice is a rich and beautiful 35-40 year old's instrument (in the good sense, not in the fatigued sense.) He really reminded me of the excellent musicians I've seen on Broadway, like Brian Stokes Mitchell.

The expression people exuded, the polish and poise, and the genuine love of it was so neat to see. Most people were still a bit nervous, but it was a controlled nerves.

I'm so, so excited to be here among such wonderful musicians!!

~Hope

Neapolitan Days-Part III

Friday morning, I heard my opera coach speak to a group of alumni. They were gathered in a large hall in a local art gallery, and several of my fellow students sang. There was one student from each year of undergrad, a master's student, and a doctoral student. Amazing to hear them sing one by one. It was a beautiful tour of what this education does for you and what they each have to look forward to.

Besides warmly introducing each of my colleagues, my professor spoke with enormous enthusiasm and pride about the school. What I'd love to share with you, though, is what he said about opera singers in general.



"When you go to see a voice teacher, there's only 3 things they can tell you. They can tell you a little about how you sound since you can't hear yourself. They can tell you what worked for them. And they can give you some ideas of what might work for you. Other than that, there isn't much they can do. You know, voice is unlike any other instrument. It is unique because these singers are the only ones who play their instruments."



What he means is that each voice and each body is unique. That means that no one else knows exactly what it feels like for you to sing. No one knows exactly what will work for you. It's very much trial and error. and no one has your timbre or muscles or the exact structure you have. That's one reason why singers find it beneficial to study with different teachers. "No voice teacher in the world has all the pieces of the puzzle. They'll each have some, and some teachers have more than most, but that's why voice students study with different people over time."



He also spoke about why the profession is so difficult:



"You have to be a master of not just your voice and technique. You must be fluid and hopefully fluent in at least French, Italian, and German, and preferably Russian and Czech as well. You need to be a phenomenal actor. You have to have "the look"." And there's more I'm sure that I'm forgetting as I try to remember his speech.



Overall, it was a neat experience to watch him espouse the virtues of my colleagues and opera singers in general. It is a difficult profession, and that's a very helpful thing to remember as we watch performances. Besides the fact that singing is intensely personal - people have the opportunity to hear your instrument, not a Steinway or Yamaha, but your voice - it is also generally a tough game to play. So the next time you see an opera and the singer is having trouble, critique with empathy :)

~Hope

Neapolitan Days-Part II

Saturday, I went to see Dave Brubeck, who is perhaps best known for "Take Five". He is still on a whirlwind concert tour, although he has a conductor who probably organizes most musical things (that an agent doesn't handle.) Brubeck still plays the piano, and he has extraordinarily long fingers, about 25% longer than most male fingers I've seen. He sat upon the stage and talked with a member of our jazz faculty.

Brubeck grew up in a musical family. His mother played piano and taught his two older brothers piano. She intended for them to both be professional musicians. Dave, however, was commandeered by his father. "This one's mine," he proclaimed. Dave's father was a cowboy on a full ranch out in rural California, and he wanted a ranch hand. When Brubeck grew old enough to go to college, his mother insisted he attend. "Only if he becomes a veterinarian and comes back here to the ranch to help me after he graduates," said the dad. "That's fine by me!" said Brubeck. Turns out he loved being out on the ranch with his dad, spending time all together. "He was a man's man," said Brubeck lovingly during his talk. You could tell that he holds really fond memories of that time with his dad.

"So I started school pre-med," confessed Brubeck amid laughs from the audience. "That lasted until I got to zoology. There, the professor said to me one day, "Brubeck! Your mind isn't here with frogs in formaldehyde. It's over at the conservatory across the way. So do me a favor and go over there next semester and leave me in peace!"" So Brubeck went across the way to major in music. But, unlike the other students, he didn't have the theory or performance background. His brothers had had the training, but he had been out on the ranch with his dad. It's possible this is what allowed him to step outside the boundaries and look at things in a new way with his composition and performance. Certainly, I don't recall hearing about the other Brubecks in a significant manner.

He then talked about the music education portion of his life. ""Go wake up Brubeck," the professor would say to my classmate, "and ask him what chord I just played." So he'd wake me up from where I was half asleep, and I'd say, "Oh, that's the first chord in "Don't Worry About Me." But the professor would say, "That's not a proper answer. Why don't you come up here and play it?" So I'd go play it, and he'd say, "Well, that's right. That's the chord I played. But why can't you just say, "It's a dominant seventh with a flat ninth?" You see, I knew the chords but I never knew the names for them, and that's the way a lot of the great jazz musicians were. They'll know all the harmonies inside and out but they don't know what they're called.

"I didn't even read music. Now, each year, you had to take an instrument. Strings one year, winds the next, and so forth. I did fine until I got to piano my senior year because I could play by ear. Then, I knew I was in for it. So I sat down in my first lesson, and 5 minutes later, the teacher went to the dean. And the dean called me in and said, "Ms. so-and-so tells me you can't read music."

""That's right," I said.

""Well, I'm sorry, but I can't let you graduate."

""That's okay."

""Well, what will you do?"

""Oh, don't worry about me," I said. "I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to play jazz."

"So, I left his office, and then my professors went to see him. My counterpoint teacher went and said, "You have to let him graduate! He's written the best counterpoint I've ever seen!"" [Brubeck also mentioned another professorial advocate or two at this point, which I forget.]

The conductor for Brubeck stood up and said, "Tell them what happened. What were the conditions under which they let you graduate?"

"That I promise never to teach," said Brubeck. Ripples of laughter flowed through the auditorium. "Of course, now my college - the College of the Pacific - has a Brubeck Institute. And I get in a few suggestions every now and again. But that's true. I promised never to teach."

Brubeck also mentioned that "a lot of wonderful musicians can't read music. They can write, but they can't read, and I'm the same way. Somebody ought to study it because it's a phenomenon that's more common than you'd think. And you think, "Well, if you can write it, you can read it," but that's not necessarily true. And if I told you some of the names of these people who can't read, you wouldn't believe it." He refused to share, so some must still be living. Pretty interesting.

He also spoke about writing a classical piece. "A friend asked me to write a symphony. "But I don't know how to do that!" I protested. "Tell you what," he said. "Write it like you would for piano and then you just write down how you think the orchestration might go, what instruments you think might play. Just do the first movement and then show it to me and I'll correct all your mistakes." So I wrote the first movement, and I showed it to him, and he said, "Good. It looks great." And he didn't change anything. So I wrote the second and third movements, and he looked them over. And then he said, "Go write the rest of it and don't show it to me until it's all done." So I did.

"Years later, a young choreographer went into a second-hand record store and asked, "Do you have anything that's a mix of jazz and classical?", and the owner said, "I think I might have something in the attic," and he pulled out this record. So the choreographer created a ballet. And somebody called me and said, "Dave, I really enjoyed your ballet in Paris!" And I said, "What ballet in Paris?" And then it came to Vancouver, and someone called and said "Dave, I really enjoyed your ballet in Vancouver". So I thought I should check this out." :)

What's really exciting is that some lost recordings of Brubeck's are going to be issued soon. They were found in a fireproof vault. Why weren't they released before? "We were on Columbia's label", said Brubeck. "But we were doing an event, and the RCA trucks were there. Unbeknownst to us, they secretly left their mics on. And we just found these reels. We're listening through them now, and there's some really Wild stuff on there! Just WILD! I didn't know I was that wild," he said. So funny. He's now a pretty frail man with a halting voice and hunched walk, so to hear him (very correctly) talk about his wild younger days is a comical juxtaposition.

In any case, another amazing talk.

Neapolitan Days-Part I

Like Neapolitan ice cream, this last week has been filled with a multitude of flavors. I've had a lot of reading and interesting classwork, but I'll skip the descriptions of that in favor of tastes of the performances I've seen.

A bit more on Charlie Strouse, the Annie and Bye Bye Birdie composer:

The dean interviewed him, and Mr. Strouse was just charming, like a dear neighbor down the street from you. He described his time at Eastman and spoke about fond memories of certain professors. When he graduated, Nadia Boulanger and Aaron Copland took him under their wings, mentored him, and Ms. Boulanger pointed out that he "had a talent for light music", meaning Broadway. After so many successes, he still wakes up every day and composes. Someone asked him where he thought Broadway musicals were going, and he said, "If you know, tell me because I want to be on that train!" He is so interested in moving forward, doing new and different things. Of course, he's had experience with the cutting edge since Bye Bye Birdie incorporated the new genre of rock when it was written.

Another audience member asked whether there were any current composers he really respected. He mentioned Sondheim and some others but comically implied that he didn't focus on others because, "I like to think that I'm the best, you know. I go to a musical and I sit there and think, "Oh I could do that better" or "I can't do that as well." But you see, it's all about me," he smiled. It was said in a very delightful way, not egotistical. I can't quite convey the humorous honesty of it. In a way, it was actually self-deprecating in how he said it. One thing that was very clear from the evening was his humility and sense that he's been blessed, had a charmed life.

Mr. Strouse also told a few colorful stories about the characters he's encountered over the years. One audience member asked whom his favorite and least favorite people were to work with. He didn't address the "least favorite" part, but he did mention Lauren Bacall as a favorite.

"She really taught me a lesson," he said. "We had just done Applause in Baltimore, which was a flop. But the night of the first performance, we were still waiting for the reviews. We were all gathered in her hotel room, and there was a reporter there from Look magazine. This was a big deal - it had about 25 million readers. And we were all nervous. The producer was saying, "Would you like a Coke?" and the director was saying, "Oh, maybe you'd be more comfortable in this chair?" and I was contemplating committing suicide. Finally, the door opened and in walked Lauren. There were flashbulbs going off everywhere from God knows where. And she came in and closed the door and asked the reporter, "So, how did you like the show?" He said, "Well, it was...interesting." And do you know what she said? (Can I use this kind of language here?)" Mr. Strouse asked as an aside. "Well, she said, "Go F*** yourself!" It was a very powerful and very short lesson for me in how to stand up for yourself. After this, that reporter became her slave. And I thought, "Well, if that's all it takes...""

Another great story was about Alan Jay Lerner, who collaborated with Frederick Lowe to write My Fair Lady. Strouse collaborated with many people. When he worked with Lerner, he said, he had never experienced anything like it. "Lerner would just sit while I composed and smoke and smoke. He would read the newspaper and just sit there. But every now and then, he would poke his head up and say, "That last phrase...why don't you keep it going up instead of turning and going down?" And that advice often turned out to be terrific, but his suggestions were always interesting. It turns out that Lowe didn't like to work. His mother used to chain him to the piano. So Lerner had just gotten in the habit of sitting there while Lowe composed."

Strouse also talked about his musical All American, which was about a Russian emigre who "falls in love with America for all the reasons we often hate it - the vulgarity, the brashness... It was a flop, but we got one big hit tune out of it. Now, there are many reasons why things flop. In this case, I had wanted a European actor to play the Russian emigre. I had flown to London and auditioned and even signed an actor, but the director insisted on Ray Bolger." Bolger was the Scarecrow in the Judy Garland Wizard of Oz movie. He was American through and through. "Bolger was doing his own version of a Slavic accent," said Strouse. "I knew we were in trouble, when Mel Brooks leaned over to me and said "Why is Ray speaking Japanese?""

It was an incredible evening.

To save this post from being even more indigestible than it actually is, I'll put my next description in a new entry. In the meantime, feel free to grab that Prilosec off the shelf.

~Hope