Juries

Today marked the first time I've sung for the entire voice faculty since my audition here last year. The event is called "juries". All first year grad students sing for the faculty in the spring semester of their first year. It's a way to show progress, to help the faculty get to know all the voices in the department, and to provide some sort of evaluative sense for the teachers themselves. (If a student doesn't improve or gets worse, this is not a good indicator for his/her voice teacher.)

My voice teacher kindly told me that the faculty would be evaluating her rather than me. She meant this to be comforting, a way to say, "Don't worry: it doesn't matter for you." But I would MUCH rather the department evaluate just me based on how I sing. It's far more pressure to think that she'll be judged based on how I sing and how well I control my nerves. After all, I love studying with her. I don't want her reputation besmirched by my performance.

Fortunately, no matter who people were evaluating today, I think my jury went fairly well. The cold I'd been battling finally left the building, and I was able to sing clearly with my Real Voice back at last. Welcome home, darling, welcome home. (Here's your initiation to another singerly tendency: singers find themselves occasionally talking about their voices as though these instruments are other independent beings. This is not too far off; it is a quintessentially human instrument, with all of the uniqueness, personality, and vibrance of a person, and "the voice" also can operate independently. A singer can have the best intentions to hit that note, hold that support, get the agility into the run, and no matter what the breath support or mental processes, "the voice" can have a mind of its own and decide not to cooperate.)

The way the juries are set up is like an audition format. You dress up, make up (if you're female or if you happen to be a guy who enjoys makeup), and print out your list of jury pieces. They ask for four pieces in three different languages, one of which should be English. You walk in, announce your name and your accompanist's name, and tell them what piece you would like to sing first.

Our juries were held in the black box theatre, which is a fairly large room (large for a classroom, small for a theatre) whose walls, floor, and ceiling are all painted in black. Theatrical lights hang from grids on the ceiling. Because Cabaret will soon be going up in that room, there is also a wooden set there right now. Fortunately, the set was somehow folded up to provide clear space in half of the room. As you enter, the faculy are all seated along a long table along the right wall. The small grand piano is to your left, along the left wall. The faculty greet you warmly because they all know who you are, even if they haven't all heard you sing yet.

For my first piece, I chose "Pierrot", one of Debussy's Quatre Chansons de Jeunesse. It's a lovely comic piece about a drunk mime. Very funny, great to get nerves out, and with lots of high notes, which is where my voice automatically engages. It's much easier for me to deal with pieces like this that swoop up to a high B and high C when I'm nervous, especially since it's a fast one. I don't have time to assess. The notes aren't held out, and they just fit in my voice. That means even when my breath is a little shaky because of nerves, this piece is there. It's also a great way to get breath support going. I have to support to hit those notes, and my body just automatically knows what to do - no mental effort required. Plus, the colorful characters and comedy mean that I have a wonderful distraction from "critiquing" myself in the midst of the performance; I have to focus on expressing this wry humor.

This piece went well. Then, the faculty chose the next piece from the remaining three on my list. Their options were Castelnuovo-Tedesco's "Ophelia", Debussy's "Pantomime" (also from Quatre Chansons de Jeunesse), and Faccio's "Sortita d'Ofelia". They picked the Faccio, as I thought they might. This piece is a wonderful Puccini-esque work from a little known opera. I love it, and it feels and sounds good in my voice. I'd give my performance a 90%. I was definitely nervous, which affected my breath support and forced me to end a diminuendo early at the end. But the held high C and following downward arpeggios went well. Hooray!

It was an interesting day. I wore the same dress I'd worn when I auditioned here last year, a minor tip of the hat to the closure of a year. I can hardly believe I've been here a year already. It now seems second-nature to be immersed in music all the time, to be thinking about practicing and performing so much instead of contemplating PowerPoint. My performance anxiety has dissipated much more than I ever thought it would. Performing is feeling more and more natural to me. My voice itself has rounded out in color, volume/support, richness, and resonance. And I feel so much more whole as a person. There are always challenges and questions, and I still don't know exactly what path I'll take next. But it is such a gift to be here, to be able to pursue my passion completely.

This is definitely one of the best decisions and opportunities of my life. I am so, so grateful.

~Hope