The week of the recital finally arrived. My significant other came a few days before the Big Day and helped me tape the dress rehearsal, which was on Thursday. Afterward, my voice teacher told me not to watch or listen to the dress, worried that I'd over-analyze and try to fix too much, I think. She was about to hand me her notes and make me promise to "only pick four things to do", but then realized I'd still read them all and try to implement them all. So she condensed them for me into a summary version that dealt largely with diction. Evidently, once you get into that hall, you have to triple everything you're doing or people won't understand it. I asked my boyfriend for his opinion - whether he could understand the English pieces. His comment? "You were singing in English?"
Guess what became my focus for the next two days?
Because my boyfriend and I don't often get to see each other, I spent too much time talking after the dress and felt a bit hoarse on Friday. Time for Total Voice Rest. I actually took out a notepad and wrote to communicate for about twelve hours.
Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. My voice was okay. I spent the morning getting ready - hair, makeup, the dress, and the all-important vocal warm up. I did my usual five minute warm-up and stopped. No sense singing out my voice before the performance.
We left the apartment at 12:20ish to get to the hall. The management company in my building decided to show my apartment that day, but they were kind enough to give me until 12:30 to leave. I apologized in advance for the mess that I knew would be there, at least in the crammed closets. What can I say? On a performance day, I really don't worry about what is strewn where.
When we got to the hall, my boyfriend dropped me off and went to find parking. I entered the hall only to find my family. I quickly scooted them off since I didn't want to be distracted before singing. They were wonderful to come, and they brought the traditional refreshments for afterward - so nice not to have to worry about that.
I placed my program notes on the music stand in the lobby of the hall and greeted the usher, who is also a singer, so I knew she'd be good. I went to the Green Room to drop off my belongings and then stepped onstage with my accompanist to position the piano. It's always a trick to get it properly centered so that the sound and the lighting are the best. On any stage, there tend to be a few sweet spots.
We finalized things, and then I went to wait in the Green Room. I was slightly nervous but feeling pretty happy and confident overall. Soon, it was time.
The first couple sets went fine with a few minor voice cut-outs. I'm not sure whether that was due to my strong diction focus or whether I was just a bit cloudy with allergies and dryness. Regardless, the audience evidently couldn't hear it in the reverb of the hall. It shows up on the recordings, though.
What I was most surprised about was how confident and in control I felt. For the first time, I felt the audience energy - something I had always considered a bit "woo woo" as one of my professors says. But it was there. And it suddenly became clear to me how to control and shape it along with my performance. My nerves were the "in-line butterflies" that Bobby McFerrin talked about, and I was riding the wave of energy instead of drowning in it.
Then I left the stage for the second time.
I sat down backstage, a bit drained, and the nerves really hit me. I walked out again for the most intimate of my sets, the stillest and rawest one - Desdemona's Willow Song. It is utter grief and despair without the gauze of insanity that Ophelia has. Totally naked. And I was struck with nerves. My breath got high, and they went from what would have been extraordinary to something just mediocre. The Vocalise that came next was a bit stressed because my breath was still high in my body. Happily, it wasn't anything that most amateur audience members would be able to detect, I think. But it was still disappointing.
The second half of the program was more comfortable. I was back to myself. A few mishaps here and there, but largely okay. The encore was a bit of a fiasco, but it was a funny fiasco. In the dress, last minute and without running it, we had changed a four measure piano part to a two measure piano part. Each measure repeats, and this bit shows up throughout as the intro and the interlude to all the verses. Right before we walked out onstage for the performance, the one baritone said "2 measures, not 4, right?" And we all nodded. But sure enough, when we started, I missed it. (I've sung this piece for over ten years, always with the 4 measure interlude.) So our entry was a little shaky. I missed it again on the next verse part and ended up pretending that it was meant to be only the guys singing. Pretty funny overall. Fortunately, at this point, the piece was an extra bit of fun jazz gravy for me.
We had a crowd of about 45 people. The 20-30 person contingent from the main donor group was absent (but for one lovely lady) because the Met HD broadcast of Armida was at the same time. And as one woman said to me, "Well, it was either you or Renee Fleming - Hope or Renee, Hope or Renee - sorry Hope." With two other voice recitals that Saturday and finals the next week, about half the audience skipped out without staying for the reception. But folks managed to say hello and congrats in the ensuing days.
Most remarkably, a couple of dear friends flew a private plane in just for the recital. They stayed for tapas that night with my significant other and me. (My family skedaddled right after the recital because they had a long ways to travel home.)
Overall, it was a really wonderful day. I feel like I've finally exorcised the demons of my college senior recital. And while this one wasn't perfect and definitely fell short of my best hopes for it, at least moments were good. And it was definitely a learning experience. Watching the DVD and listening to the CD, I've learned what I need to do next time. For instance, happiness doesn't read nearly as easily from the stage for me, so I need to really project that more in joyful pieces. Sadness or anger is much easier. And mixing languages in the same group can be tough. And knowing the acoustics of the hall is invaluable - for my voice, the overtones that come through can be richer, but I need to add bright ones for certain halls like this one.
On the upside, a Serbian guitar professor who knew nothing of my diction struggles told me that he didn't even need the program notes; he got every word. Score!
~Hope
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
7 days
On Thursday, I was hit with the realization that my recital was 9 days away, and a fresh burst of terror struck me. The past couple days, I have been in the hall where I'll sing, watching other students perform their juries. Just walking in, my pulse speeds up and my palms start to sweat. I sit there in the audience, picturing myself on that stage, feeling every ounce of fear if any of the performers are showing it, and hoping against hope that I will stand there 7 days from now with a clean voice, a healthy voice, and breath that doesn't fail me like it did 8 years ago.
In my senior year of college, I gave a recital. It was a disaster. I walked onto that stage in the 1000 seat hall that looked like an amphitheatre (placing me in what felt like a low-power position - below everyone), and started to shake so badly that I couldn't hit and sustain notes above the G above G above middle C. My program was liberally sprinkled with high notes, so this wasn't good.
Part of the issue was that the deck was stacked a bit out of my favor. My main voice teacher had moved after my junior year, and I switched to someone in the community whom we thought would be good. She was helpful in many ways, but one thing that she didn't realize was that a senior recital should be no longer than 40 minutes. Mine was 2 hours. Also, a dress rehearsal should be at least two days ahead; you need one day to rest your voice completely after singing a program. My dress was the day before. So I walked into the performance already exhausted.
I also wore a dress that was too tight around my ribs, constricting my ability to breathe.
I know all of these things, and I know that my recital here is different. I am no longer 22 and light of voice. I have performed literally hundreds of hours more than I did in college. My program this time is 40-50 minutes, and it is carefully structured so that I don't have too many big pieces or too many small pieces. My technique is infinitely more solid, and I have excellent teachers here who will not let me fail.
All that said, I still look ahead to next Saturday, and I worry. I want so badly to do well, to express the full impact of these two wonderful years of learning, to put into practice all of the things my teacher here has taught me so that I don't get the same reaction I did 8 years ago when my teacher then said, "You could have knocked the *@!$ out of that and you so didn't!"
But that's only part of it.
In truth, I think I have largely been able to shed the ghost of the old singer who gave that awful performance. I know my music well, and I am concentrating more now on expression, on being inside the text and the flow of the characters rather than on the perfect tone or breath or resonance. Still this performance looms large.
I think the rest of the weight of the day has to do with this being the end. It is the final touch of two years of music making, two years where all I've thought about has been sound and characters, notes and words, expression and breathing and being. This is it. I am not going to make performance my career - and for very good reasons. I don't want the travel, and it is too financially unpredictable. I like bits of my other professional life, too. But I will miss this.
I will miss waking up in the morning and deciding where and when to practice.
I will miss walking the wood-paneled halls and hearing a cacophony of classical music sifting through the air, various instruments all played at their highest levels of proficiency striving for that extra spark that most people can't even define but will notice as an extra-special performance by a really gifted performer.
I will miss sitting in studio class every week, crammed into a one-armed desk in a classroom typical in every way but for the Steinway at the front that serves as a backdrop for some of the most talented singers and actors I've ever known.
I will miss walking into my voice teacher's studio, collapsing into the cushy green armchair and talking to her as she eats lunch.
I will miss standing in front of a music stand in front of that teacher and watching her joyful eyes dance as she instructs me in some musical or technical nuance. "Mean what you say!" she'll exclaim, and suddenly my sound will round out and sparkle.
I will miss breathing and singing and listening to my extraordinary accompanist who knows just how to support me to bring out the best expression.
And so this upcoming recital is vested with all of that, too. It is the culmination of and it is my goodbye to these incredible two years of music. I'm trying to hold off on processing that part of it too much because I'm not sure I'll be able to focus on the music itself if I start thinking of that during the show.
So instead I look at my pictures. I've printed paintings and photographs for each piece in my recital, visual images that I try to place myself within so that I can evoke the character and mood better. I will stand backstage and study those spots of color, and I will walk onstage and spin the stories that describe those pictures. I will sing not to make a pretty sound or to display perfect technique but because it is the only medium that fully expresses the emotions and colors of these characters. It breathes life into the words and makes them vivid.
I just hope I can convey it all. I so hope it goes well.
~Hope
In my senior year of college, I gave a recital. It was a disaster. I walked onto that stage in the 1000 seat hall that looked like an amphitheatre (placing me in what felt like a low-power position - below everyone), and started to shake so badly that I couldn't hit and sustain notes above the G above G above middle C. My program was liberally sprinkled with high notes, so this wasn't good.
Part of the issue was that the deck was stacked a bit out of my favor. My main voice teacher had moved after my junior year, and I switched to someone in the community whom we thought would be good. She was helpful in many ways, but one thing that she didn't realize was that a senior recital should be no longer than 40 minutes. Mine was 2 hours. Also, a dress rehearsal should be at least two days ahead; you need one day to rest your voice completely after singing a program. My dress was the day before. So I walked into the performance already exhausted.
I also wore a dress that was too tight around my ribs, constricting my ability to breathe.
I know all of these things, and I know that my recital here is different. I am no longer 22 and light of voice. I have performed literally hundreds of hours more than I did in college. My program this time is 40-50 minutes, and it is carefully structured so that I don't have too many big pieces or too many small pieces. My technique is infinitely more solid, and I have excellent teachers here who will not let me fail.
All that said, I still look ahead to next Saturday, and I worry. I want so badly to do well, to express the full impact of these two wonderful years of learning, to put into practice all of the things my teacher here has taught me so that I don't get the same reaction I did 8 years ago when my teacher then said, "You could have knocked the *@!$ out of that and you so didn't!"
But that's only part of it.
In truth, I think I have largely been able to shed the ghost of the old singer who gave that awful performance. I know my music well, and I am concentrating more now on expression, on being inside the text and the flow of the characters rather than on the perfect tone or breath or resonance. Still this performance looms large.
I think the rest of the weight of the day has to do with this being the end. It is the final touch of two years of music making, two years where all I've thought about has been sound and characters, notes and words, expression and breathing and being. This is it. I am not going to make performance my career - and for very good reasons. I don't want the travel, and it is too financially unpredictable. I like bits of my other professional life, too. But I will miss this.
I will miss waking up in the morning and deciding where and when to practice.
I will miss walking the wood-paneled halls and hearing a cacophony of classical music sifting through the air, various instruments all played at their highest levels of proficiency striving for that extra spark that most people can't even define but will notice as an extra-special performance by a really gifted performer.
I will miss sitting in studio class every week, crammed into a one-armed desk in a classroom typical in every way but for the Steinway at the front that serves as a backdrop for some of the most talented singers and actors I've ever known.
I will miss walking into my voice teacher's studio, collapsing into the cushy green armchair and talking to her as she eats lunch.
I will miss standing in front of a music stand in front of that teacher and watching her joyful eyes dance as she instructs me in some musical or technical nuance. "Mean what you say!" she'll exclaim, and suddenly my sound will round out and sparkle.
I will miss breathing and singing and listening to my extraordinary accompanist who knows just how to support me to bring out the best expression.
And so this upcoming recital is vested with all of that, too. It is the culmination of and it is my goodbye to these incredible two years of music. I'm trying to hold off on processing that part of it too much because I'm not sure I'll be able to focus on the music itself if I start thinking of that during the show.
So instead I look at my pictures. I've printed paintings and photographs for each piece in my recital, visual images that I try to place myself within so that I can evoke the character and mood better. I will stand backstage and study those spots of color, and I will walk onstage and spin the stories that describe those pictures. I will sing not to make a pretty sound or to display perfect technique but because it is the only medium that fully expresses the emotions and colors of these characters. It breathes life into the words and makes them vivid.
I just hope I can convey it all. I so hope it goes well.
~Hope
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Spinning
Well, I made it through the orals - and passed! I'm very happy. Now I just need to clean up the aftermath that is my apartment. It looks like a Xerox machine exploded in here.
This coming week, I'm going to attempt to knock out the remaining academic and graduate assistant to dos so that next week, I can focus entirely on recital preparation. I also need to keep practicing and finding my mental pictures for the performance, continuing to work on being in the flow and in the moment.
On the upside, I've seen some amazing performances over the last week or so that are great examples to learn from! Last Saturday, I attended three voice recitals - all wonderful. Last night, I saw a phenomenal double bill featuring two professors from the voice department. The first piece was a Coffee Cantata that Bach wrote. It premiered at a coffee house in Leipzig during a time when coffee was the newfangled thing in Germany. According to the program notes, there was tension during the 18th century between the old guard, who thought good ole German beer was the only way to go, and the younger set that really loved coffee. In the cantata, a father threatens his daughter with old maid-dom if she refuses to give up coffee. She accedes :) It's a really cute 3 person chamber work (father, daughter, and narrator). They performed it with cello and piano.
The second opera was by Lee Hoiby. Called Bon Appetit, it sets an episode of Julia Child's cooking show to music. She makes a chocolate cake. The performer actually mixed up real ingredients onstage on a play set, singing the whole time. This requires incredible coordination. Backstage secrets? The egg whites she whips into peaks (in a race between the electric mixer and her hand mixing in a copper bowl) are really Cool Whip. (The professor said she tried real egg whites and couldn't make them work during the time allowed for the mixing in the music.) And the chocolate she melts on the "stove" has a healthy dose of Hershey's syrup so that it looks liquid when she lifts the spoon out.
It was an incredible performance.
And today, I went to see four hours of musical theatre, operetta, and opera at the Lotte Lenya competition. The contestants, who are judged on their ability to sing all three well, were all tremendous. Many are in young artists' programs at big name houses, like the Met or the Lyric in Chicago. Others have already been on Broadway or performing at Lincoln Center. The bios read like a "Who's Who" of up and coming artists. A great, great show.
Let's hope that some of these amazing performances trickle down into my own work for the recital!
~Hope
This coming week, I'm going to attempt to knock out the remaining academic and graduate assistant to dos so that next week, I can focus entirely on recital preparation. I also need to keep practicing and finding my mental pictures for the performance, continuing to work on being in the flow and in the moment.
On the upside, I've seen some amazing performances over the last week or so that are great examples to learn from! Last Saturday, I attended three voice recitals - all wonderful. Last night, I saw a phenomenal double bill featuring two professors from the voice department. The first piece was a Coffee Cantata that Bach wrote. It premiered at a coffee house in Leipzig during a time when coffee was the newfangled thing in Germany. According to the program notes, there was tension during the 18th century between the old guard, who thought good ole German beer was the only way to go, and the younger set that really loved coffee. In the cantata, a father threatens his daughter with old maid-dom if she refuses to give up coffee. She accedes :) It's a really cute 3 person chamber work (father, daughter, and narrator). They performed it with cello and piano.
The second opera was by Lee Hoiby. Called Bon Appetit, it sets an episode of Julia Child's cooking show to music. She makes a chocolate cake. The performer actually mixed up real ingredients onstage on a play set, singing the whole time. This requires incredible coordination. Backstage secrets? The egg whites she whips into peaks (in a race between the electric mixer and her hand mixing in a copper bowl) are really Cool Whip. (The professor said she tried real egg whites and couldn't make them work during the time allowed for the mixing in the music.) And the chocolate she melts on the "stove" has a healthy dose of Hershey's syrup so that it looks liquid when she lifts the spoon out.
It was an incredible performance.
And today, I went to see four hours of musical theatre, operetta, and opera at the Lotte Lenya competition. The contestants, who are judged on their ability to sing all three well, were all tremendous. Many are in young artists' programs at big name houses, like the Met or the Lyric in Chicago. Others have already been on Broadway or performing at Lincoln Center. The bios read like a "Who's Who" of up and coming artists. A great, great show.
Let's hope that some of these amazing performances trickle down into my own work for the recital!
~Hope
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Crunch Time
I'm in the midst of preparing for my oral exams, which are on Wednesday morning. I also have a recital Tuesday night. Tack on a large theory assignment on Prokofiev which is making me run screaming to Mozart, and you pretty much have my life for the next few days and the last couple weeks.
In the meantime, there were three voice recitals today that I had to attend. All were beautifully done. Two were my studio mates' degree recitals. It's always so neat to see people do well. I tend to get teary-eyed at the end of these because they work so hard and it goes so wonderfully, and that just makes me happy for them.
So I'll focus on those happy thoughts while I go back to battling Prokofiev.
Charge!!
~Hope
In the meantime, there were three voice recitals today that I had to attend. All were beautifully done. Two were my studio mates' degree recitals. It's always so neat to see people do well. I tend to get teary-eyed at the end of these because they work so hard and it goes so wonderfully, and that just makes me happy for them.
So I'll focus on those happy thoughts while I go back to battling Prokofiev.
Charge!!
~Hope
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
More Happy Things
Today was another good day.
I just got home from a phenomenal concert conducted by a wonderful, Grammy-award-winning musician who teaches here. The repertoire? Rameau's Suite from Nais, Telemann's Suite in Bb, Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, and an extraordinary set by Francis Poulenc entitled La Bal Masque.
A friend of mine sang the baritone part in the Poulenc, and he had a complete character. Clad in a long suit coat and light grey pants, he looked quite the dandy. Placed beside his chair was a wine bottle (filled with water) that he deliberately drank from during the instrumental interludes. The poetry was wonderful and surreal, and my friend's acting created a full story all the way through the cycle. His singing was fantastic and funny, and his gestures really allowed the drunken storyteller to come through in spades. He filled the large hall with his dramatic persona.
Earlier in the day, I was fortunate to be able to help out a couple folks. And I remembered that yesterday, a visiting prospective student, who is currently a senior at another academic institution, asked me whether I was a senior here :)
Tomorrow, I get to dive into Debussy!
~Hope
I just got home from a phenomenal concert conducted by a wonderful, Grammy-award-winning musician who teaches here. The repertoire? Rameau's Suite from Nais, Telemann's Suite in Bb, Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, and an extraordinary set by Francis Poulenc entitled La Bal Masque.
A friend of mine sang the baritone part in the Poulenc, and he had a complete character. Clad in a long suit coat and light grey pants, he looked quite the dandy. Placed beside his chair was a wine bottle (filled with water) that he deliberately drank from during the instrumental interludes. The poetry was wonderful and surreal, and my friend's acting created a full story all the way through the cycle. His singing was fantastic and funny, and his gestures really allowed the drunken storyteller to come through in spades. He filled the large hall with his dramatic persona.
Earlier in the day, I was fortunate to be able to help out a couple folks. And I remembered that yesterday, a visiting prospective student, who is currently a senior at another academic institution, asked me whether I was a senior here :)
Tomorrow, I get to dive into Debussy!
~Hope
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Happy Day
I had a happy day today.
Partly, this was because the sun came out for the first time in a few days, and the temperature increased yet again.
Partly, this was because I had enough time to practice.
Partly, this was because I had a great coaching where the professor offered some very useful expressive tidbits. For the Nielsen piece I'm doing, I was trying to find a way to differentiate between the two verses. He suggested that Ariel might be talking to two different people instead of just Miranda (from The Tempest.) Although he initially thought of Ferdinand as the other one, he then came up with Prospero, which is perfect because the way Ariel would talk to his master and the wizard of the island is very different from how he would talk to the young woman, Miranda, whom he may or may not love (depending on which poet you follow). Then, my professor reminded me that I should make the whole thing less jumpy - more legato - despite the dotted rhythms, and that made it even better. And then we moved on to the Honegger, where a faster tempo my professor took made all the difference in the first section of the piece.
It's always good to feel like you're making progress, you know?
The other reason today was fantastic was that I gave a good performance in studio class. I've been working with Strauss's Drei Lieder der Ophelia, which are a bit challenging to say the least. The depict the character in a state of madness and grief, and I kept thinking about how to convey madness onstage. A series of comments from my professors and revelations from my own thinking over the past few months finally clicked yesterday:
Interesting.
Of course, that is a stage that I need to pass through. I don't want the mistakes a month from now in the actual performance. But it may be that they are part of the gradual letting go of my vise-like monitoring of my accuracy.
She and my classmates also pointed out that there were moments when I stopped communicating, when the language that was so present with the audience was suddenly pulled back towards myself. These were the times when I was listening to myself, judging, and analyzing what I was doing.
So much of vocal performance is a flow idea - the notion that you are completely immersed in this moving stream of notes and words. It is critical to be able to stay within that flow, in the water, rather than pulling out and watching from the shore. I'm working on being in the current all the time.
And now I get to go read about Honegger and Debussy. How great is that?
~Hope
Partly, this was because the sun came out for the first time in a few days, and the temperature increased yet again.
Partly, this was because I had enough time to practice.
Partly, this was because I had a great coaching where the professor offered some very useful expressive tidbits. For the Nielsen piece I'm doing, I was trying to find a way to differentiate between the two verses. He suggested that Ariel might be talking to two different people instead of just Miranda (from The Tempest.) Although he initially thought of Ferdinand as the other one, he then came up with Prospero, which is perfect because the way Ariel would talk to his master and the wizard of the island is very different from how he would talk to the young woman, Miranda, whom he may or may not love (depending on which poet you follow). Then, my professor reminded me that I should make the whole thing less jumpy - more legato - despite the dotted rhythms, and that made it even better. And then we moved on to the Honegger, where a faster tempo my professor took made all the difference in the first section of the piece.
It's always good to feel like you're making progress, you know?
The other reason today was fantastic was that I gave a good performance in studio class. I've been working with Strauss's Drei Lieder der Ophelia, which are a bit challenging to say the least. The depict the character in a state of madness and grief, and I kept thinking about how to convey madness onstage. A series of comments from my professors and revelations from my own thinking over the past few months finally clicked yesterday:
- What makes madness so chilling is the sudden changes - the way someone flips from being in one emotional state to being in another just instantaneously and without warning.
- People who are crazy think that they are normal. So Ophelia can sing each section truthfully.
- The madness in these pieces is very much in the accompaniment. I don't need to add too much on top of that.
- And, the big one, from my voice teacher last week: "Just tell the story, like you're telling it to children."
Interesting.
Of course, that is a stage that I need to pass through. I don't want the mistakes a month from now in the actual performance. But it may be that they are part of the gradual letting go of my vise-like monitoring of my accuracy.
She and my classmates also pointed out that there were moments when I stopped communicating, when the language that was so present with the audience was suddenly pulled back towards myself. These were the times when I was listening to myself, judging, and analyzing what I was doing.
So much of vocal performance is a flow idea - the notion that you are completely immersed in this moving stream of notes and words. It is critical to be able to stay within that flow, in the water, rather than pulling out and watching from the shore. I'm working on being in the current all the time.
And now I get to go read about Honegger and Debussy. How great is that?
~Hope
Monday, March 29, 2010
Finito
Yesterday was my last performance of our opera gala. It was also my last opera here and my last time performing in our large theatre. It was a rather bittersweet day. (Please forgive the chocolate picture pun :) )
I wasn't singing yesterday - my singing scene had been double cast and it was the other cast's turn. But I was doing my little French speaking part as the Maid in Manon. It was nice to have this as a little "encore" performance since it enabled me to gradually process the fact that this was it - finito. I also got to snap quite a few photos, which you can see on Facebook. Pictures are often my way of processing something and saying goodbye.
So here's to the wonderful folks in the cast and crew and to all those, both inside and outside the school, who have made my experience here phenomenal! I send you all chocolate hugs. And these are made of milk chocolate - no bitterness in sight.
~Hope
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)