Immersed

It's been a relatively crazy few days (well, crazy by current life standards at least. Nothing compares to consulting.) As of yesterday, I attended my fifth recital in three days. Yesterday also saw me either singing or listening to singing for 5 hours. Pretty amazing. I love being able to do this!

The recitals ran the gamut -- a marvelous baritone from my voice studio, a high spinny lovely soprano, a couple creamy mezzos, two high tenors, and then a smorgasbord at the Departmental Recital.

"Departmentals," as they're fondly known here, basically involve a smattering of singers from freshmen to masters' students. All voice types are represented, and you spend an hour hearing about 15-20 singers churn through. Each sings 1-2 pieces, and they don't spend any time pausing. It's fascinating to watch people at all these different levels, each clearly talented but each at different points in their performance growth. The younger singers typically sound amazing but may have some diction yet to solve or may still be somewhat awkward onstage. I completely sympathize since I'm still trying to polish my own diction and stage presence - not easy things to do when you haven't grown up performing.

Overall, having the chance to go to all these events is just amazing. It immerses me in a continually high level of performance, and, since it's my fellow students, people at my level, it makes me believe that I can do that too. There's something about building that intuitive kind of confidence that's really important. Singing especially seems predicated on psychological beliefs that engender the ability to walk onstage and Perform with aplomb.

Another amazing occurrence I saw this past weekend was a friend who sang with a terrible cold. She had her doctoral recital, and there was no postponing it. The first half was 30 minutes of Berlioz without a break. She just sang it straight through. The next half was a German set of Mignons (many of these have been written) and a Spanish set. She stood there with her incredible mezzo voice and not only made it through; she shone. Especially in the second half when she realized that she didn't have to preserve so much anymore, she really let it fly. This is very, very hard to do. It's like bowling with a broken finger or ice skating with only one skate. You feel totally off when your instrument is compromised. But she knocked everybody's socks off. Truly incredible.

At this point, I leave you with a terrific story on one of my favorite subjects: The Muppets. It's on CNN.com, and you can click here to see it.

~Hope