The biggest risk I ever took in an audition

The last show I did was A Cudahy Carolers Christmas with In Tandem Theater in the winters of 2003, 2004 (onstage) and 2005 (run-outs, private parties). That was my first and only musical theater experience, other than the cabaret work that Ryan and I have been doing. Since my auditions for classical music have always been rather staid and presentational, I decided that I would do something a little different for the initial audition for this gig.

I had to prepare a Christmas carol. I knew that they knew that I could sing it beautifully, but I didn't know if they knew what else I could do. So I decided to pick a carol that lent itself to a different interpretation. And in fact, I almost didn't get to sing it, because Jane and Chris both knew that I could sing beautifully, and didn't need to hear it. But I said, "Oh, please... this is going to be something a little different than what you might have expected."

I sang "Silver Bells," a song that I never found particularly comforting or joyous, but more of an expression of the frantic nature of the season. Especially since I do not have children and do not find masses of them screaming "Santa!" even remotely endearing. Nor incessant bell-ringing. Nor jostling for position in department stores.

So... I sang it as a mad scene.

"Christmas makes you feel EMOTIONAL!

It may bring parties or thoughts devotional -

Whateverhappensorwhatmaybe ....

Here is what Christmas time means to me...."

Hard to convey in writing but I got the role.

Merry Christmas! (And put down that bell.)

Trampoline

I've been using the analogy of the trampoline lately in approaching high notes. If someone is on a trampoline and wants to go high into the air, do you stand in the middle of the trampoline and jump up? No, you jump into the trampoline and let the momentum "ka-boing" you into the air. If you just jump up, you won't go very high and you'll probably fall down and hurt something. Point being - ground yourself, support the lower note and the high note will be there for you (assuming your articulators are all free and nothing else is in your way).

Of course, I've never actually been on a trampoline, so that analogy is strictly from observation. I'm afraid of heights, so going up into the air is a frightening prospect, albeit less frightening than it used to be. I was afraid of high notes for the longest time, but they're less frightening than they used to be also.

So now that I've had this big realization that opera and classical singing really need to be a part of my life, where do I take this?  I've decided that it is time to plan my recital for next fall. I've hired David Sytkowski to be my accompanist, I have a tentative date (September 23) in mind and will be finalizing with Dr. Harper at Carroll University in January, and I have a program in mind:

Rossini - the two pieces I sang this past Sunday and another
Marx and/or Zemlinsky
Kilpinen
Either the Judith Weir pieces for the Classical Celtic program in March OR
Libby Larson's "Love after 1950"
Two musical theater pieces:
   "Here alone" from Little Women
and
   "Fable" from Light in the Piazza
"Dodecaphonia" by John Corigliano (the only place you can do that piece is in academia)

So that's the plan. I've taken a few practice bounces, and I have a couple more in mind. Now it's time to go for the big jump.

Leap and the net will appear.

Ka-BOING!

Opera Plus self-review

Today I had my MacDowell Club performance of the two Rossini concert arias. In the past few years, many of my performances and auditions have been compromised by performance anxiety which has frustrated me. It's left me vocally dry, unable to unlock my breath, consequently affecting my legato and sostenuto. Sometimes I've gotten around it by emoting a whole lot at least to seem artistic. But sometimes, even that doesn't work.

It has reminded me of when I was a legal secretary and would take pre-employment typing tests. Even though I could type at well above 80wpm, the minute that timer started, I felt as though I was numb, that I was out of my body, that the whole thing wasn't real. And while I did well, I always felt that I could've done better, that my speed was good but my accuracy was not what I expected of myself, and that I would never be hired again. (And I always was.)

This didn't happen today. As I wrote a few days ago, this was my return to operatic singing. I remember the last time I sang operatically and in Italian - it was 1999, Cosi fan tutte with Milwaukee Opera Theater (Dorabella). It was a great performance, but after that, I moved into my house in Tosa and really started to develop my studio, so that was pretty much it. I've auditioned for things in Italian, but performing? Nope.

Today, I felt, as I said before, at home in my classical voice the way I haven't since Cosi. There was a sweet spot on stage that made me feel like "Hey, this is working! I don't need to do anything but let it go!" And Carla Coonan played wonderfully for me. Even though she hasn't accompanied a lot of singers, she was on the spot for everything I did.

So... no performance anxiety. No vocal fatigue. It's kind of a miracle what your body will do for you when you give it what you need. In this case, what I need is Rossini.

This doesn't mean I'm giving up cabaret or musical theater. I'd like to work on Margaret in Light in the Piazza and perhaps Madame Morrible in Wicked, Emma Goldman in Ragtime (no? too belty?), and I still want to work with Ryan on cabaret rep. But this has to be part of my life. It just has to.

Re-defining myself - again

When I came back to Milwaukee in 1996, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who I had become. I was an opera singer. Period. I also had decent skills as a legal secretary, but that was something I could do, not something I was. It paid the bills for awhile - and when I got a tired of typing, I thought I'd give teaching a shot. I figured it would be a little supplemental income between gigs, but that of course I would continue to audition for things and go off and sing wherever I could.

It didn't happen that way. I found, much to my surprise, that I really enjoyed teaching. And more than that - I was good at it. Really, really good at it. And as time passed, my performing slowed down. Partly because I wasn't putting myself out there - partly because this is Milwaukee ('nuff said) - and partly because I got married and changed my name and discovered that people thought I'd left town.

I haven't sung in an opera in 2003 and everything I've sung has been either in English or an English translation. I stopped singing in choruses or church choirs because it interfered with my teaching.

So my definition changed. If someone referred to me as an opera singer, I corrected them and said I was a classical singer. As my interest in contemporary commercial music and the cabaret genre increased, I started to define myself as a singer, as a cabaret artist. And above all that, my professional definition was "teacher."

I no longer thought of myself as an opera singer and I wasn't even sure if I could sing in that style anymore, and wasn't sure that I even wanted to. It is a lot of work to be an opera singer - I would liken it to being a professional athlete (without the salary). You are at a very high level of technical achievement, and you have to keep on top of it consistently. You need to keep in shape and my singing was largely limited to demonstrating scales in other people's lessons. I thought my opera life was over.

And then - Alan Nathan came to UWM to play for a recital for Melanie Helton. Alan had been my chorusmaster at Washington Opera and a major musical figure in my life. I hadn't seen him for 14 years and as I watched him play, I remembered, "Oh yeah... I was an opera singer. I sang at the Kennedy Center Open House, I had roles in operas and sang in the chorus of two of the country's best opera companies. I forgot. That's who I was."

And I missed that part of me. So I started thinking about doing a recital next year, just to see if I still had it and thought about it as possibly a farewell performance, at least to the classical repertoire.

In the meantime, I was asked to be on an Opera Plus program this Sunday with the MacDowell Club. I decided to sing two of the Rossini pieces I was contemplating for the "farewell" recital.

Much to my surprise, it all came back. Despite not having sung in Italian since I don't know when, not having sung in an operatic style since 2001 (there was not enough singing in Viva la mamma to count, really), it all came back to me and boy, did it feel good. I felt at home in my classical voice for the first time since I left Washington. I have no doubt that I will feel the same way in Sunday's performance.

I am an opera singer. I am also a teacher. I am also a director. I am also a cabaret artist. I am a wife and a puppy mama. I have organizational skills I never dreamed I had.

I don't know where I'm going with this new (again) definition. Do I go out and audition again? For opera chorus, for roles? I don't know if I need to do anything. But I know one thing.

I am an opera singer and don't you (or I) ever forget it.

A musical colleague lost, but a musical memory remains

At 7:30 Friday morning, as I was sitting in the lobby of UWM's recital talking to friends about the upcoming day of the NATS auditions, I got a message on my phone.

A high school friend of mine, Bruce Adrian, had died. I don't know all the details of his passing, but Bruce had battled diabetes for some time, and a mutual friend had expressed concern about him earlier in the week. Especially when Bruce, who I once referred to on Facebook as "liberal firebrand," did not respond to the results of the midterm elections. There should've been at least 10 links on Wednesday decrying the GOP taking back the House! When there were none, we were all concerned.

Bruce sang with me in Milwaukee Hamilton High School's swing choir and concert choir, and we were in all three musicals together - Music Man, South Pacific (I'll never forget his coconuts in "Honey Bun"), and Guys and Dolls. He was, as someone else said, "Larger than life." He could imitate a bicycle horn and often did ad nauseum. He made this sound -- "Haugh!" -- that bears a striking resemblance to the sound my dog has been making recently....

After high school, we went our separate ways, as I did pretty much with everyone in high school at that point. We really did not see each other again until our class reunion in 2001 and really reconnected on Facebook a couple of years ago.

I remember him getting into a Facebook argument with a conservative ex-friend (long story, I didn't really know the guy, he was married to someone from HS and was using her FB name to write stuff on other people's walls and I unfriended him not because he was conservative, but because I didn't really know him and he insulted my real friends). The two of them went back and forth debating a topic, with me interjecting a few things before I got tired and went to bed. When I finally did that, there were 16 comments to the original post... when I woke up the next morning, there were 64. All between Bruce and Larry.

Bruce apologized for cluttering up my wall. I said I felt like the hostess with the guests who wouldn't leave, and I left them in the living room and went to bed, only to find them both passed out on the floor surrounded by overflowing ashtrays and empty beer cans. (Which kind of sounds like a swing choir party I remember way back when...) But I didn't mind.

Today I taught a girl the song "All the things you are" by Jerome Kern. As she was singing it, I had a sudden flashback to singing it in swing choir and saw Bruce in my mind, at 17, dancing and singing and full of life.

I wish I'd gotten to see him one more time. I had told my husband how much he would like Bruce - they had the same taste in music and politicians - and I'm sad that neither of them had the opportunity to meet. They really would've liked each other.

Rest in Peace, Bruce Adrian... you are missed.

NATS 2010 - good news!

I am thrilled to announce that, for the 9th consecutive year, the studio had finalists in the Wisconsin NATS auditions. This year, the competition was held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and there were 6 contestants from the studio:

Kat Geertsen
Jane Engelking Heer
Lissa DeGuzman
Leah Vogel
K.C. Rasch
Stephanie Kritzell

Kat & Jane were both finalists in the HS Girls Musical Theater division, and Kat took 2nd place! All the other singers received excellent comments from the judges, offering constructive advice largely echoing the advice I've been giving for months. :)

All the musical theater singers were accompanied by Ryan Cappleman, who did his usual outstanding job of providing a musical foundation for them to soar above. Stephanie sang in the HS Girls Classical division and was accompanied by Madison pianist extraordinaire David Sytkowski.

Congratulations to everyone involved. This was probably the best prepared group I've had yet in terms of knowing their music backwards and forwards well before the competition - subsequently, a good time (and a good experience) was had by all!

What NOT to wear

With the NATS auditions coming up, I thought I'd address a couple of things about appropriate attire for performing.

The studio gave a recital last week for a couple of new singers and the kids who are singing on November 5 at UWM. No one dressed horribly but there were a couple of missteps in choice of shoes, dress length, etc. While they didn't bother me all that much, they bothered my father-in-law, who had come from Maryland to visit that weekend.

Now, my father-in-law is rather conservative in every aspect of his opinions. He has a very strong sense of propriety. Some might call him an old fart. I would never say such a thing. Aloud. Or in print. He went on for the rest of the day about the things that bothered him about the performers' attire. He could not get past them, even though he liked the individual performances.

Perhaps his reaction was excessive. (The discussion of it certainly was.) But... if he reacted that way, perhaps someone else will as well. Someone who might be your judge. Or deciding on whether you are coming to their school. Or casting people for an upcoming opera or musical.

So you might as well play it safe. Two articles just came out in the September and November issues of Classical Singer magazine:

"Judged by your appearance: What university professors really think about your audition attire" (September 2010);

and

"Judged by your appearance: What artistic directors and hiring agents really think about your audition attire" (November 2010).

In both articles, both the directors and the university professors were horrified by the number of people dressing overly provocatively in audition settings - clothes too short, too tight, too low, too high (heels). Obviously this applies to females more than males. For men, wear a tie and a jacket. (You can take the jacket off if it works for the piece you're singing, but wearing it at the beginning of the audition makes you look more professional!)

Musical theater gives you a bit more leeway than classical singing. You can be bolder in color, and perhaps a bit more casual in terms of length, but never too short, especially if you are singing on a level higher than the audience.

Dress in a way that works with the material you are singing and what you are auditioning for. I went to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to audition for the chorus and someone came to the audition in a formal gown. That's as bad as showing up in a track suit (which a former Washington Opera chorister did - and I emphasize "former" - she had already ticked off the chorusmaster by being unprofessional in rehearsals in terms of preparation and to show up underdressed just confirmed the level of her cluelessness).

I, on the other hand, dressed around the fact that there was snow on the ground and I was going to wear boots. I needed to pick out something that would hold look good with my boots and would hold up in the car after a 90 minute drive. (I have planned clothing choices around shoes way more often than I really should.) I don't remember what it was, but I got hired!

One time I judged NATS lower college musical theater women and a young woman wore a horizontally striped top that was very tight across her abdomen, and this was not a part of her body that should have been highlighted. Particularly when she inhaled, because there was a great deal of expansion and not only did she expand, so did the stripes! It was very distracting. I had to figure out a way to tell her, "Never wear that again, it makes you look fat," without actually saying, "Never wear that again, it makes you look fat." So I chose to write:

You may want to consider wearing a pattern that does not draw attention to your breathing mechanism and away from your very expressive face.

I hope that got the point across. Which was, of course, "Never wear that again, it makes you look fat."

Summarize:

• If your skirt is short, you have to wear tights or leggings. The latter is more appropriate if you're doing musical theater.
• The little black dress has been deemed practical but forgettable. Find something distinguishing to set you apart.
• If you're going to wear a shawl, be able to work with it so it's not awkwardly sliding about your shoulders or constraining you. Better yet, don't wear a shawl.
• I don't have a problem with open-toed shoes but some of the respondents in the articles did. Everyone has a problem with flip-flops. Don't wear them!
• If it's tight enough that you have to wear Spanx or the equivalent under it to look good (and you've never sung wearing Spanx or the equivalent), it's too tight. If you don't wear them, you'll look like a sausage bursting out of its casing. If you do and you can't get a good low breath, then it doesn't matter how good you look. (Although Marianna said she liked singing in a corset because it gave her something to work against, I want freedom!)

75% of directors admitted that a singer's poor clothing choices might have an effect on his/her being hired. You have to be really good to get away with not looking good (and I'm not talking about physical attractiveness, only clothing).

However, only 42% admitted the opposite - that a well-dressed singer had an advantage. While the first impression is made when you walk on stage, what comes out of your mouth is the deciding factor.

In business, people are told to dress for the position they want rather than the one they have. Your job right now is student. The position you want is performer. Dress authentically and professionally - convey your personality and tell the truth about yourself.

REVIEW - The Singer's Ego: Finding Balance Between Music and Life

I recently read Lynn Eustis' above-titled book. Dr. Eustis is on the faculty of the University of North Texas and did 3 session on Mental Health and the Singer at the NATS conference in Salt Lake City this summer. They were excellent, often cathartic sessions on discussing just why singers are so neurotic. And how teachers can help and also harm their students in their growth as performers and as people. Based on Dr. Eustis' engaging personality and the value of the information in these sessions, I ordered the book before I left Salt Lake City. I looked forward to how I could use her insights as both a singer and a teacher - in fact, the subtitle of the book is "A Guide for Singers and Those Who Teach and Work with Singers." I finally got around to reading it on my recent mini-vacation.

The book is organized like a textbook, with questions following almost every chapter (except, interestingly enough, the one on the benefits of therapy, which I thought cried out for some self-analysis!). It is in two parts: Part 1 - the inner world of the singer; and Part 2 - the outer world. The book could be used with the college music student, and there are many things that would apply more to the singer starting out than to the ... mature singer (i.e., me).

I found Part 1 particularly valuable. There were some extremely good points made about how singers are different from instrumentalists. I especially liked the analogy of how if an instrumentalist's instrument breaks down on him before a performance, he can get it fixed! He can get another one if he has to. He might even have a backup instrument. Pianists are another story - a traveling concert pianist has to work on a different instrument everywhere he goes. If he's famous, he can specify that he wants a Steinway or a Baldwin to play on, but it's still a different instrument.

We are our instruments. If we get sick, don't sleep well, need emergency dental work, get into an argument with someone on the day of a performance - our instrument is affected. We can't go get another one. We have to either cancel or make do, and especially if we've been practicing under perfect conditions, and suddenly fate kicks us in the teeth, it's heartbreaking.

Dr. Eustis doesn't hold anything back. She admits that she is not a natural performer and that while she might have been the best singer at any given audition, she often didn't get the part because she was considered "boring." She had to work at inhabiting the music and letting it take her to the next level. Like her sessions at NATS this summer, her focus is on finding the truth in what you are singing. I found her analyses to be extremely insightful, inspiring, and often humorous.

But one thing about the book bothered me, and that happened in Part 2, the outer world. In the chapters regarding competition and relationships and the world of professional singing, she told stories about other singers who had done her wrong and how their actions affected her. I can appreciate that. I remember a fellow mezzo introducing me to a conductor and saying, "This is Christine Thomas. She's a fine choral alto." At which point I said, smiling, "And a mezzo soloist as well!" My problem was not with her telling these stories, my problem was the specificity of the stories.

At one point, she told a story about how a soprano in an apprenticeship program said something vile to her immediately before going on for the 2nd act, in which she had a major aria to sing that required intense focus. My problem was not with the story itself - it was that she said where it happened, which role she sang, which role the other girl sang and which opera. In this day of the internet, it is not hard to imagine that someone would say, "Gee, I wonder who that bitch was," and with a couple of keystrokes, find out.

I did. I Googled Dr. Eustis, the role she mentioned, and the opera house. In 5 minutes, I had a review of the performance and I found the offending soprano. And then I found her website. If I could do it, so could a casting director. Or an agent. It was 20 years ago - the soprano could have had her own issues that year. Maybe since then she's found Jesus. Or a new partner. Or better medication. Or she just grew up. Why bring this up now? And so specifically?

That specificity spoiled the book for me in some regards because it wasn't necessary. She could have - she should have - kept it much more general. It would make her look better . And I don't think she's a petty person. I've met her - she's not. I think it was a mistake, and one that her editor should've had her change. Telling these stories in a workshop is one thing - but print is forever.

I can recommend the book in so many ways. The insight into the singer's mentality is invaluable - there is so much truth in this book (maybe too much truth) - and she offers the reader a great opportunity to become self-aware by answering the questions at the end of chapters. (What is my goal for my voice lesson? Besides getting there on time? Really, I'm supposed to have a goal? Oops!)

As I've said in the past, quoting the now-defunct TV show Eastwick, "I am here to inspire and facilitate." And Dr. Eustis opens the book with an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the last two lines of which I found applicable to that thought:

"Leaving it you to prove and define it,

Expecting the main things from you." 

I look forward to her upcoming follow-up, The Teacher's Ego. 

Chick Singers

I was doing some thinking about female pop singers - aka "chick singers" - whose work I particularly enjoy. I'm not including musical theater singers who moved into pop (e.g., Streisand, Midler) because I wanted to be a purist about this, although I may include some who went the other way. Some of these singers may be ones with whom you may not be familiar.

Linda Ronstadt
Ann Wilson
k.d. lang
Alanis Morissette
Patsy Cline
Christina Aguilera
Lady Gaga
Annie Lennox
Amy Winehouse
Pink
Lisa Moscatiello
Shakira
Queen Latifah - on her Dana Owens jazz/pop CD
Patricia Barber - jazz
Joan Baez
Judy Collins
Grace Slick
Florence + the Machine
Fergie
Jennifer Hudson
Juice Newton
Joni Mitchell
Aretha Franklin
Shaun Murphy
Cher (a guilty pleasure)

And locally -

Ellen Winters
Alaria Taylor

Most of these are big voices - if not belters, just big and full and rich.

I'm planning to read The Singer's Ego while I'm on vacation next week and write a review of it. That'll be my next post. There are a lot of things going on in my head right now, many ideas, some restlessness. I'm hoping I can find some kind of focus for them all.

2010 so far....

This is what I've accomplished in 2010 (and the few weeks before):

1. Got my nearly-blind eyes fixed. Sometimes I miss taking off glasses at night, because I'm so used to that being part of the going-to-bed process. But being able to see in the middle of the night - you can't imagine what a miracle that is.

2. Got a smartphone. Still get a kick out of the notification sound, "DROID!" Scares the heck out of my husband, especially in the middle of the night. (Note to self: Turn off phone)

3. Bought the car of my dreams (not entirely true - I wanted a VW Beetle, but they've stopped making them in stick except for the base model, and at my age, I don't want the base model).

4. Got the personalized license plates I'd wanted for years - MEZZOID. This has become my brand - it's my email address, it's part of my Facebook address, it's my website domain name, and it all started with a little joke made during a choral rehearsal:

Choral Director: All right, altoids, let's turn to...

Me: Excuse me, I am not an altoid. I  happen to be a mezzoid.

Choral Director: What's the difference?

Me: I'm still curiously strong, I just sing a 3rd higher.

And that's where that began. This summer when I showed up at NATS in SLC to pick up my registration forms, someone looked up and said, "You're mezzoid!" I was nonplussed. I was famous. Hopefully not infamous. Makes me think twice about the things I post on the internet. 


5. At the age of ... whatever I am .... I decided that I was going to run. And not just run, but train for a 5K. So I downloaded Couch to 5K Lite (the free app) to my Droid (see above) and got myself running for 42 consecutive minutes over a 3 month period. I did my first 5K at Irish Fest a few weeks ago. 


It didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I couldn't run the whole way, and I can relate this to singing, like I can relate everything to singing....


I didn't check the house, or in the case, the trail. I didn't scope out how much shade there would be, and since I had trained running on the shady sides of streets, running in blazing sunlight two hours later than my usual training time made a HUGE difference. 


I trained wearing specific outfits - sleeveless tops, light fabric. I ran the race wearing a short-sleeved Irish Fest/Arthritis Foundation t-shirt. Not smart. Between the annoying sleevage and the blazing sunlight, I was ready to fall over. I could not do what I'd done in training. It's like wearing flats in rehearsal and then putting on heels for the first time in performance. Or getting new reading glasses to do a concert and realizing that you have not mastered the skill of looking down at your music and up at the conductor and you are not going to master it in performance (I did that one a few years ago....)


But I will try again.


6. I got to be really good at Zumba. I think I am, anyway. And I'm contemplating becoming certified to teach it.


7. I switched from PC to Mac! I'm really enjoying the new levels of creativity that this change is going to offer me. 


There are more things that I've done and more things that I intend to do. And as this week of break continues and the new school year begins, I want to keep trying new things, going new places, and exploring new ideas in singing and teaching singing. I'm hoping to give a recital next spring at Carroll, I'm coordinating a MacDowell Club recital for next March, and Ryan and I are putting together a bunch of cabaret shows that we want to market here and outside Milwaukee - outside Wisconsin, for that matter!

Jane Pesci-Townsend, 1959-2010

A DC performer that I had the good fortune to encounter during the wonderful 9 year period I lived in the DC Baltimore area just passed away this past Friday. I did not personally know her, but she was an authentic performer and teacher who will be missed by many, including people who will not have had the opportunity to be touched by her work. 

Please enjoy the video at the bottom of this obituary.

What sort of diary....

Dominick Argento set parts of this entry as the opening movement (and returned to it in the final movement) of his brilliant Diary of Virginia Woolf, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. It's the way I feel about this blog and my journal:


"What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time.”
Virginia Woolf


I hope to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself - and refined itself and coalesced as such deposits so mysteriously do - into a mould - transparent enough to reflect the light of our life.....

The "Ecstatic Experience" and the Authentic Singer

I've been doing a lot of thinking about authenticity, which makes me wince because I do not want to be a New Age-y cliche-spouting person, but all of a sudden I'm finding a need to define what it is I want to be, how I want to teach, and what I want to hear and see in performers.

This past week I've been describing to my students how I recognize authenticity in performers. It's a very visceral reaction on my part that is almost impossible to describe verbally.  I shake my head, my hands flutter, I suck in air ... it sounds like I'm having a seizure. But then I found a book on my porch that hit the nail on the head, and I'd like to quote from it.

On page 27 of Sarah Ban Breathnach's book, Something More: Excavating your authentic self, Breathnach describes (via Emily Dickinson) the "'ecstatic experience': what excites us or moves to tears, what makes the blood rush to our heads, our hearts skip a beat, our knees shaky, and our souls sigh." In my case, it's the rapid shaking of the head and hands, but that's what's happening inside.

Some performers that trigger this in me include:

Young Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl)
Audra McDonald
Kristin Chenoweth
Idina Menzel
Kelli O'Hara
Angela Lansbury
Lady Gaga (seriously)
Brian Stokes Mitchell
Placido Domingo
Bette Midler
Nathan Gunn
Marin Mazzie
k.d. Lang
Samuel Ramey
Jerry Hadley
Leontyne Price
Matthew Morrison
Chris Colfer

Performers who do not trigger in this me (although they might be extremely talented):

Older Barbra Streisand
Madonna
Michael Bolton
Lea Michele (heresy, I know)
Celine Dion (don't get me started)
Marilyn Horne
Jose Carreras

I may applaud the latter group when they perform. I may cheer. (Well, not in the case of Bolton or Dion because I choose not to listen to or watch either of them for any length of time.) But I'm not really touched - I don't feel that "ecstatic experience." And in the case of Bolton and Dion - I don't believe they do either.

But this is an individual reaction. Clearly, based on their success, Bolton and Dion are touching people, and perhaps the same people are not moved by any of the artists who move ME.

I wouldn't dare presume to list the students who fall into either of these categories, but think about this - have you ever made someone cry or catch their breath with your performing, whether it's me or someone else?

R.I.P. Richard Weber 1940-2010

Yesterday morning, as I was waking up in Monterey (on the final leg of my Westward Ho! vacation), I reached for the phone to see if I had any messages.

I was sad to read (and even sadder to write) that the disappearance of my dear friend Richard Weber has been solved, and not in the way I had hoped. I had hoped that Richard had checked himself into a mental hospital or had been laying low with some non-music friend that none of us knew, but instead it was reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that a body pulled out of the Milwaukee River last Friday had been identified as Richard's.

I'm chagrined that someone who identifies himself as a pastor at a church at which Richard played said in the comments, "I knew this would happen." Really? You read of the death of a talented man you knew and the first thing you can write is a smug "I told you so"? Really? Perhaps Richard had demons which I only suspected in the last few years of his life that I attributed to health, aging, and the vicious beating he took in 2007, but is the comments section of a newspaper article really the place to write "I'm sorry to say I knew this would happen"? NO. The remaining balance of his comments were all that needed to be said: "I had known him since 1996. I was pastor at the Church where he played the organ from 1996-1998. Many people were worried about him. My prayers are with his family."

Whatever church has this guy for a pastor, I don't want to go there. (See previous post on why I'm not doing church right now - attitudes like this are a major element of my ambivalence toward organized religion.)

Anyway, I know that whenever I pull out a piece of music that Richard gave me - and those gifts comprise a large part of my music collection, particularly in my file cabinet of sheet music - and see the words "ex libris Richard Weber," I will smile and think of him fondly. I'll think of his quips about organized religion - the elderly Presbyterian congregants at Calvary were "God's frozen people," one of my church jobs in DC was at "the National Shrine of the Inaccurate Deception," and he'd ask me how things were at "Mrs. Paul's." And his politics were unabashedly liberal but often peppered with completely politically incorrect commentary that sounded like it came straight from my ultra-conservative father's mouth.

I can't help but think of Richard leaving a message for me with my husband: "Tell her not to call back tonight, because I will be in the arms of Morpheus."

Sleep well, dear Richard.

Singing in church for fun and profit (oh, and spiritual growth, too)

I just sat down this  morning and thought about how many denominations for which I have I sung professionally in the last 20+ years....

Presybterian - Calvary, Milwaukee (my first gig for Richard Weber)

Lutheran - First English, Baltimore; St. Mark's, Baltimore; Bethlehem Lutheran, Milwaukee (again, for Richard Weber)

Christ Science - a variety of the churches in and around Milwaukee

Jewish - Rodef Shalom, VA; Washington Hebrew Congregation, DC; Oheb Shalom, Baltimore; Congregation Sinai, Milwaukee

Unitarian - First Unitarian Church, Milwaukee

Catholic - National Shrine, DC; St. Patrick's, DC; Mount St. Sepulchre, DC; Fort Belvoir Chapel, VA; St. John's Cathedral,  Milwaukee

Episcopalian - St. Andrew's, VA; St. Gregory, IL; St. Paul's, Milwaukee

I don't think I've ever sung for the Methodists or for UCC. Maybe for a wedding, but the above listing is for soloist/section leader work. Needless to say, I have never sung at a mosque. 


As liberal as I am, I don't want to sing in services that are too loosey-goosey and contemporary. Give me the incense and the robes and the chanting and I'll be happy. (Surprisingly, the most high church setting I've ever encountered was at St. Mark's Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Baltimore. And because James Harp, chorusmaster of the now-defunct Baltimore Opera, was at the helm, we got to sing very full-bodied operatic literature. "Christ est ressuscité!" from Faust on Easter Sunday was a particular highlight.)

My extremely Catholic father always told me that it was a sin to go to any church other than the Catholic Church. And heaven forbid (quite literally) I should ever enter a synagogue and sing in Hebrew. It's funny that when I do sing for temple gigs, I'm asked if I'm a Russian Jew. Now that would horrify my mother - especially the Russian part.


When people say, 'I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual," it's usually a way of saying, "I don't go to church" without the implications of "I am a godless heathen." 


During the years I sang as a section leader, I identified myself as "pay-theist" or "mercenarian." After choosing to leave church singing, at least for now, I thought I'd go to church for my own spiritual development, but that hasn't happened yet. While Tim Russert was alive, I identified myself as a member of Our Lady of Meet the Press. But that hasn't held my interest since then (sorry, David Gregory).  For awhile, Comedy Central was running Dogma on Sunday mornings and any movie in which Alanis Morrissette is the Divine Creator has to have some spiritual value. Lately, I've taken to going to the gym for Sunday Zumba classes so I have changed my status to Zumbafarian, which has some interesting Rastafarian implications that I rather enjoy. Maybe I should wear dreads.


I hope my participation as a church soloist/section leader has given people some comfort, hope and enhanced their worship, however they practice that. Right now, I don't really feel as though I have it to give - for money or for my own spiritual expression. Perhaps I will again. I hope that for now, how I'm choosing to live my life as a teacher, as a wife, as a puppy mama, as a friend, as a writer, and as a singer will offer some kind of benefit to someone somewhere.

You need something to fall back on....

There's a phrase I have always hated. "Something to fall back on." As if what you're doing with your life is unreliable, frivolous, unimportant, and worst of all, something that you're really not that good at so don't even bother to pursue it, no matter now passionate you feel about it.

But I've given that phrase a bit of thought this last week. I attended Lynn Eustis' sessions at the NATS conference on Mental Health and the Singer. Lynn is on the faculty at University of North Texas and is the author or a book called The Singer's Ego. She is writing a follow-up book called The Teacher's Ego, which I will be ordering when it comes out. Her sessions were largely discussions between her and the attendees about why singers are as crazy as they are. A singer's instrument is so personal. If three singers get up and sing "Caro nome" and each sings it with the same technical ability - hits all the right notes at the right times and with the right diction - and with the same amount of emotional investment (see previous blog entry on honesty), they will still all sound different. And someone is not going to like one of them for whatever reason, valid or not. It is hard to separate someone not liking your voice from someone not liking you. No wonder singers are neurotic.

If you as a singer invest yourself so fully in your craft and artistry to the detriment of your other interests, you are not a well-rounded person and you do not having something to "fall back on." Not in case singing doesn't work out for you. But in your life. Knowing what is going on in the world, participating in things that aren't necessarily about networking and auditioning, having fun, being interesting.

I'm guilty of this. My husband was really into Showtime's The Tudors while it was on, and we were talking about Catherine Howard's final words at her execution, and I quoted them to him. Now, he is very interested in all things Renaissance and has read many well-researched books on the subject and he looked at me and said, "How do you know that?" and I said, "It's the final page of Libby Larsen's song cycle, Try me, good King." He laughed and said "Everything you know is because of a piece of music."

Lots of things are hitting me lately, and that was one of them. My life is not balanced. I'm probably 90/10 about the music. I can't guarantee that I'll make the switch to 50/50 or even 60/40, but if I could get 65/35, I think I could live with that.

Honesty ... is such a lonely word....

Holy Serendipity, Batman.

I decided that these Billy Joel lyrics were going to be the title of today's blog - and it's been awhile since I wrote - and then I decided to lie by the pool and just let thoughts roll over me. Suddenly, I hear that very song as I lay in the sun. I haven't heard this song for years. So - this was meant to be.

I haven't written for awhile because my last blog entry - around Easter weekend - was negative, filled with vitriol, and it wasn't what I want this blog to be. I want to inspire people to sing, to facilitate their singing, and not to make them feel guilty for making me feel bad. If I feel bad, it's my own fault, not someone else's. So I deleted that post, because I was embarrassed that I even posted it. It wasn't honest.

A lot of the talk at the NATS Conference in Salt Lake City this past weekend had to do with singers being honest in their performances. Teachers being honest with their students. Students being honest with their teachers. This is what sets us apart as performers and as teachers - telling the truth in each and every communication we have, whether that is one-to-one in a lesson, one-to-two or more in an audition, or one to 100-10,000 in a performance setting.

The best example of a performer who tells the truth with her every gesture, with her every sound is Audra MacDonald. I had the privilege of seeing her perform in 110 in the Shade this past Friday at the Hale Center Theater in Orem, Utah.  It was a small theater (320 square foot stage) in an area that I can only describe as the Armpit of Utah. (Sorry to anyone who may be from Orem.) But she inhabited the role. She told the truth. She was present.  The same with Kelli O'Hara in her recital this past Saturday and in her masterclass on Sunday.

I want to be that kind of performer and teacher. I want my students to be those kinds of performers and students. And I want to do what it takes for us all to get there.

This message in the various sessions reminded me of a video I posted a few months ago on my studio FB account. Acting coach Patsy Rodenburg spoke at a TED conference on the subject of "Why I do theater." How appropriate in a blog called "Why I sing."

I will be honest with my students and with people for whom I sing, with whom I speak, and those who I love. A recent FB status of mine was "I have decided that I will no longer use my FB statuses for evil." This means I will not be passive-aggressive; I will not seek to shame people for wrongs (perceived correctly or not) they have done me; I will not write cryptic messages with veiled innuendo where the clear message is "You know who you are." I will be honest and I will be present with them in their lessons, on my Facebook pages, both personal and studio, and in this blog. If I have offended you with any of this negativity, I do apologize and I will try for it never to happen again. I may backslide, but hopefully I will catch myself.

I will be posting a lot more videos on the studio FB page. You may also check out my You Tube channel, Mezzoid01, in order to see what it is I like.

Have a great summer. I'll try to write more regularly.

"I'm here to inspire and facilitate"

There was a show that premiered on ABC last fall that I really, really liked but apparently no one else did. That show was Eastwick, rather loosely based on the book The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike. The show was cancelled rather abruptly at the beginning of the December, yanked from the schedule, and the final two episodes were relegated to the graveyard hours of the night. Somehow, I managed to record the last episode (although not the penultimate one, which resolved all of the stuff that happened on the final episode of November sweeps) and I finally watched it Monday morning.

The character of Darryl van Horne (Jack Nicholson in the movie, some extremely handsome actor I didn't recognize in the show) is kinda sorta the devil. The three "witches" are women who feel powerless in their lives and relationships and then suddenly find each other and their powers. Their lives are turned around and they are able to take control of the things that had been spiraling out of control. Suddenly Darryl shows up and their powers grow stronger, often much to their chagrin.

Anyway, a bunch of things happen and on the final episode, Darryl explains that he was drawn to them because of their strength and that he was not the cause of their powers, because they existed within them the whole time. And then he said a line that just took my breath away:

"I'm here to inspire and facilitate."

Now, if you Google this line, you will find that there are 575,000 occurrences of its use in various educational and self-improvement venues, from weight loss to business strategies to creativity. But it sounded new to me, even though I've probably heard it 575,000 times.

I hate it when a student's parents say, upon his or her successful performance, "Wow, thank you. You did this." I always smile and say, "No, he/she did it. I just provided the materials and he/she ran with it." I hate it because I grew up with parents who didn't believe I could do anything on my own, that if I did something outstanding, someone must have told me how to do it.

Yes, I love that my students do well, and perhaps I'm just really good at inspiring and facilitating, but when it comes right down to it, they're the ones who are doing it. Just like I was the one who "did it" all the times when I did something outstanding, they are the ones who are doing it now.

I wonder what lessons I will learn from the series finale of Ugly Betty. We'll find out in a few weeks.

Richard F. Weber

On Sunday, March 21, I decided to take myself on an "Artist's Date" (see Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way for info on that concept) and go see the Florentine Opera's Elmer Gantry at the Marcus Center. It was wonderful, although I did decide that the title character and the baritone portraying him bore a strong resemblance to Don Draper of Mad Men.

When I returned home, my husband told me that a private investigator had swung by to see if I have heard from Richard Weber. Richard is an organist and choral director who I have known for about 25 years now. I first met him at Calvary Presbyterian Church on 11th & Wisconsin, and when I returned to Milwaukee, at Bethlehem Lutheran Church. He has been a great source of wisdom (musical and political) and humor (ditto) for me for this time, as well as a source of some income for both me and my students who I have sent his way for Christmas and Easter gigs.

I spoke to Richard last on January 2 of this year, and he told me that he had left Beth Luth and was going to be working at St. Stanislaus on the South Side. He sounded very upbeat and eager about this new job. Apparently, that was one of the last conversations anyone has had with him. He has not been seen at his apartment nor at St. Stan's since January 4, which is when they gave him a check... which has not been cashed.

I'm very concerned about Richard. His 70th birthday is this Friday and I'm hoping that we hear from him soon; or at least hear something.

A Classical Celtic Concert

Yesterday afternoon, the MacDowell Club put on a concert called "Bits of Blarney," which I was asked to coordinate. (Had I known it was going to be called "Bits of Blarney," I might have balked... or at least requested a name change!) Because of the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday, we did an Irish theme.

I have always wanted to be Irish. Maybe because I'm Slovenian and Estonian and as a child, I was greeted with "You're a Sylvania light bulb? You're a stone?", I wanted to be an ethnicity that people had actually heard of. I wouldn't have minded being Italian. I would've loved to have been Jewish. (Boy, that would have thrilled my parents.) I didn't really want to be Polish or German - that was too common, especially where I grew up. I just wanted to be something that had traditions, had a strong sense of family (and extended family, not just the in-house unit), and had strong social and cultural ties to the community.

The Irish literary heritage was appealing to me. The importance of music in Irish culture and in Irish family life - goes without saying that I would've loved to have that be part of my life.

And then I met Bill O'Meally, and I became Irish by marriage. We spend every 3rd weekend of August at Irish Fest, rain or shine.

So it was perfect for me to coordinate an Irish-themed program and to be able to explore Celtic music that was not "die-dee-die-dee" music but to find music that was (excuse the term) "legitimate." Music that was written by Celtic composers, or based on Celtic poetry, or in some way explored Celtic culture.

We did a pretty good job with yesterday's concert, but I want to take this further. Milwaukee has the world's largest Irish music festival every summer - but only of trad music. Why can't we establish an annual concert of music by Irish composers (or Celtic composers - after all, I've heard a lot of stuff from Cape Breton or Nova Scotia that is much more French or Scottish than it is typically Irish)?

Next week, I'm going to touch base with the director of the Ward Irish Music Archives to see if we can find a way to work with them next year. Perhaps they can co-sponsor the program - perhaps we can do it AT the Irish Fest Center....

To be continued!

ANECDOTES & MEMORIES OF RENATE BOJIC

I'm writing up anecdotes about my father for his pending memorial service, and I looked at the ones I wrote for my mother. I realized that many of them were pretty darn funny. I think that sometimes I get a bit snarky about my mother in print but here are some warm and funny memories I have of her.

ANECDOTES & MEMORIES OF RENATE BOJIC (These were written to my sister so the "you" references are to her)

1. When we went to Europe and Aunt Maria had misread Mom's "24" as "27" so we had no one to pick us up in Luxembourg and take us to Holland, so we had to take a train, and we had a layover of - I seem to remember 12 hours, but that seems like an exaggeration - in Belgium. Mom was so exhausted that she fell asleep with her head hanging to the side in the aisle, and the conductor walked into her and she woke up with a loud SNORT! And we all laughed.

2. Of course there's the famous time you got her to drink dishwashing liquid at the health food store.

3. She had a deep and abiding love for sour cream and believed everything tasted better with sour cream on it. (I got that from her.) She used to make sour cream sandwiches on rye bread. I would take them to grade school but they didn't always taste as good after being in a paper bag all morning.

4. Mayonnaise was also a passion and you couldn't have too much. I remember her asking a waitress if the egg salad was good, and the waitress said, "Yes, it's very good - a really nice balance, and not too much mayonnaise," and Mom just looked at her in horror and said incredulously, "But I like mayonnaise!"

5. She was a fierce defender of us. If anyone was going to yell at us publicly, it would be HER! I remember when the priest at my first teaching job berated me in front of the school and I called her crying that I was so humiliated and embarrassed.  Later that day, she called me and told me, "You know what I did? I called Father Grohall." I was horrified! But then she reassured me that she didn't say she was my mother, she just identified herself as a mother whose daughter had told her that she was very upset about how he had treated the music teacher, and gave him a piece of her mind. The poor old coot was racking his brain trying to figure out just which student had a mother with a foreign accent, and kept asking her, "Are you Maria's mother? Jenny's?" and she told him, "I won't tell you because I don't want you to take it out on my daughter." (Nasty old fart deserved it.)

6. She and Daddy came to visit me in Baltimore. It was the first time they'd met Bill and he helped carry their very heavy suitcase into my apartment. When we opened it, we discovered that Mom had filled it with frozen solid chicken breasts that she had bought on sale before she left so that I would have enough to eat. I took it completely for granted - Bill was shocked!

7. I remember her making strudel. From scratch. Stretching the dough over the table so that it was paper thin (no prepackaged phyllo dough!) and then sprinkling it with flour and butter and filling it with raisins and apples and whatever else went in.

8. I also loved her potato salad. Mom wasn't the most creative cook, especially when it came to meat and veggies, but I remember she made great potato salad. And that strudel!

9. She loved The Dean Martin Show.

10. I still watch General Hospital and One Life to Live because I watched them with her - first, in the case of GH, when I'd come home from morning kindergarten and she'd be watching it while ironing. My job was to fold hankies and washcloths while she ironed. I would ask questions like, "Why is that lady having a baby when she's not even married?" and she would tell me, "She was secretly married." OLTL started a few years later and we started watching it together during my summer breaks.

11. She loved Bob Hope. We went to County Stadium once to see him. I remember it was raining and I don't know if we actually saw him, but I know that we stayed and waited.

12. When Mr. Maeste's son from his first marriage found him and came to the US to see him, it was a big deal - apparently Mr. Maeste had gotten one of the local news channels involved as a human interest story, and they came to the airport to cover the reunion. All Maeste's friends were invited, and Mom bought a new outfit (including a HAT) because she would be on TV. Daddy refused to wear anything new and Mom was really upset about the shirt he chose to wear. Guess who got on TV? Daddy, strolling through the airport while the voiceover said, "And Vello and his friends continue to wait...." Mom was SO mad!

13. I was taking a music history exam at Alverno. My teacher was Louise Kenngott, the Journal's then-music critic, and I found her both intimidating and someone I looked up to. All of sudden, during the exam, I hear a tap-tap-tap at the window and I see Mom. She's got some knit hat pulled over her head somewhat askew and she is gesturing for me to come to the door. I was horrified. I looked back at my paper. Tap-tap-tap again, I look up, and she makes this funny grimace that says, "Oh, Christine, help me!" I look at Louise and she says, "Go ahead." So I go to the door and out in the hall, and say, "What IS it? I'm taking an exam!" and she said, "I lost my keys in a pile of remnants at Minnesota Fabrics." I turned over the keys and said, "Well, how did you get here?" and she told me she had hitched a ride with a trucker. I was so nonplussed that when I went back in, I forgot to finish the question I had been answering when she knocked at the window. I think I got everything else right, but that one I didn't.

14. When you were a baby, you had a splinter or something, and I remember Mom getting out a magnifying glass to look at it, and you seeing her giant eyeball looking at you and screaming bloody murder. She felt so bad that she scared her baby!

15. She was a fan of WOKY radio when it was a top 40 station, and they had a prize with a "phrase that pays." You had to send in a postcard with your name and phone # and they would pick #s at random, and if you answered the phone with "I listen to fun-lovin' WOKY!" you won money. Well, they said, "We're making a call right now!" and her phone rang, and she blurted out, "I listen to fun-lovin W-Oak!" and there was a pause and then the DJ said, "Close enough! You get the money!"

16. She would sing along to songs that were just inappropriate for her! I remember her singing the end of Harry Chapin's Taxi: "Taking tips ... and getting stoned!" Cracked me up every time. But she didn't always get words right. She thought the words to "You're so vain" were, "I had some dreams, they were cows in my coffee." I said, "Mom, it's CLOUDS," and she said, "That's stupid, how do you get clouds in your coffee?" (I guess cows = cream)

17. She would design her own tops. They were all based on a square - a square body, a square neckline - but she was so proud of them.

18. When she told jokes, she'd always explain them at the end. Bill called it the "Renate Bojic Post-Joke Explanation." I don't know if it was because she was afraid she wasn't clear because English wasn't her first language but she did it with EVERY joke. Until I was over 30, I never realized that the joke should end with 
"he got a little closer and saw her on the grave ." I always told the joke the same way, adding the line, "I am cooling the grave." (I think I knew enough to leave out the NEXT explanation, "You see, she wanted to get married again, so she was trying to make the grave cooler faster!")

When I write my anecdotes about my father,  I will post them here.

Supportive Families and Performance Anxiety

I have dealt with performance anxiety for most of my performing life. How can something that you love doing so much terrify you so much?

I think the more supportive your family and friends are in your formative years, the less terrifying performing is. However, that's not always the case. I've had students with terrible anxiety who have wonderfully supportive parents. I've known people who have received no familial support throughout their lives who shine on stage and who create their own family unit from their theatrical peers.

I've mentioned Alfred Lubrano before, the author of Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams. For some people, the feeling of not fitting in impacts them both in the families they grew up in and the careers they choose to pursue. I think that is a major factor in my own performance anxiety issues. The feeling of being a fraud and that people will find out and kick me out of the lofty perch to which I've aspired - back to the old neighborhood where I was thought of as stuck-up.

My mother was not supportive. My father was, in his own way. He may have thought what I was doing was unrealistic, but he came to my performances - by himself. Mom came to the first Miss West Allis pageant I did, but it made her so nervous that she thought she was going to die of a heart attack. (She told my college advisor that she'd had to have a schnapps beforehand to calm her nerves, and Sister Ann asked me later, "Christine, does your mother have a drinking problem?" "No, Sister Ann, she has a drama problem.") The next year I did the pageant, I begged her to come and she wouldn't because she was afraid she'd die. (Hey, I was the one in the swimsuit!! ) Dad came. And I took 2nd runner-up that year. He also came to my first professional opera, Carmen (I was in the chorus - Florentine Opera, 1980!).

He came to many things until he had his stroke and could no longer drive. Once Mom was in the driver's seat, literally, she was also... in the driver's seat. If she didn't want to go, she didn't go. So he couldn't go either. She was in control! (Any wonder why she got so mad when the doctor said she couldn't drive any more? Or when she thought I'd sold her car while she was in the hospital? It was being repaired and detailed, but she was certain I'd sold it just to keep her from driving.)

Controlling mothers - there are pages and pages about them in textbooks and novels. Maybe if I'd gotten out from under her influence earlier, I could have had a better relationship with her later. It took me a long time to find my own voice in so many ways. It's too bad she really didn't want to hear it. I loved her very much and only wanted to please her. Once I decided I needed to please myself, she didn't like it.

There are also pages and pages about performance anxiety. Sometimes it's just a matter of getting up and doing it until you stop falling down. I'm going to try to remain upright for as long as I can.

VIVA TO THE DIVAS... great show!

A quick follow-up to my earlier rant. The show was just great, and without the extra person, it turned out to be just the right length.  The people who performed were cooperative and poised and confident. One of the girls sang with a sprained ankle on crutches. Now that is professional ... amazing that it was from a 7th grader. Someone else came even though her voice was not working this morning and she had to coax it out of her body. Why? Because she knows that there will be times in her professional career that she is engaged to sing and her voice might say, "Let's stay in tonight. I don't feel like it." So she did steam, mucinex, and she sang the crap out of both her pieces.

Seriously... unless your throat is truly on fire and singing might cause further damage or you have digestive issue that might cause a mess (a different and much more unpleasant way of "singing the crap" out of your pieces), you sing when you are committed to sing. Earlier I had included "or you've injured a limb," but then Grace showed up on crutches, so clearly, that's not a factor.

Next recital - June 6, hopefully at the same place - theme and personnel TBD!

VIVA TO THE DIVAS! (Minus one)

This afternoon I am hosting a studio recital called "VIVA TO THE DIVAS!" featuring 14 13 of my students, Ryan Cappleman and myself. I was really excited about it and I still am, except my best performer just dropped out, two hours before her call.

If this happened in the "real world" (meaning theater, if you can call that a real world), a person would be fired. I organized my whole program around who had committed to perform this afternoon... some of the people are very young and/or less advanced than others, and I organized the program carefully to showcase everyone and not have anyone feel inadequate, while still making the program interesting and entertaining for the audience. Also, having the best people on the show inspires the young ones to take their performances to the next level.

I had just printed the programs an hour before the call. I put on this recital to allow people to present material that they have performed or will be performing in an audition or performance setting, whether that be WSMA, college, or as the lead in an upcoming musical.

I went by a verbal commitment - perhaps I should only count financial commitment (i.e., paying the recital fee) as valid. Going forward, if you don't pay your recital fee by the Friday before the performance, you're not on it. I committed to paying Ryan to play for 14 singers - he has practiced the music for 14 singers, and I'm still paying him what I committed to paying him. Even if it has to be out of my own pocket.

Sorry to cast a pall on the day - I will get over it because the remaining singers are committed and wonderful and the performance will be phenomenal!

Resolutions, Sacrifices and Benchmarks

I don't know why we bother making new year's resolutions when Lent is so close by. Unless it's so we can use Lent as a benchmark to evaluate how we're doing so far and what changes we can make to achieve the goals we set nearly two months before. That seems logical to me. Perhaps there should be benchmarks set throughout the year, roughly 40 days apart. Little mini-Lents.

I didn't make any new resolutions on January 1. I had some vague ideas about being more productive, about trying new things (I started a bucket list! Does that mean I'm trendy or just getting old?), but I didn't really resolve to do anything specifically.

So I decided, after wasting numerous hours on the computer playing Bejeweled and the trial version of its even more seductive cousin, Bejeweled Twist (which downloaded itself after an update of the original version - uh, thank you?), that it was time to make a specific resolution, even if it was for 40 days. I'm not going to play either of them at least till Easter, and on Easter, I will decide if I'd like to extend that resolution for another mini-Lenten period. Perhaps till Memorial Day!

It's still on my computer but it's not in my Start menu. I could access it, but it's not right there. The first day was really hard - I realized how often I play it while waiting for a file to open, as a break while typing a lecture, when I can't sleep at night and don't want to involve myself in something that will keep me from going back to bed. I can rationalize that it's a great way to fine-tune my eye-hand coordination, to think quickly, that it's "only one more game," but honestly, it's a time suck. A bigger time suck than Facebook, than AIM, than the phone. And it's keeping me from things I should be doing.

Like practicing. Or working out. Or writing my lecture. Or taking the puppies for a walk (well, the latter will happen more often when it gets warmer). But if I resolve to "practice more" or "work out more," I'll find a way around it.

I resolve to schedule things that I need to do for specific times. If I have "practice" on my calendar for a specific daily time, there's a good chance I'll do it. If I just think, "I should practice now," the thought will be finished with, "Maybe later. After one more game."

It would be even better if I scheduled "practice Moore songs" rather than a generic "practice."

I'll set a benchmark. On Easter Sunday, I will evaluate how not playing Bejeweled (or its mobile counterpart, "Jewels," also on my Droid!) has caused me to be more productive. And how my scheduling is going.

And now my 3:45 student is here - so I resolve to teach!

Walking in the World

I haven't written lately. I feel as though I have been doing so much, and at the same time, nothing at all. I'm organizing a studio recital for next week, and singing on an Irish-themed program for the MacDowell Club on March 14 (which I am also coordinating.

The latter is giving me tsuris. (I always wanted to be Jewish.) Not because I can't do it but because I'm used to doing things on my own timetable - in other words, fabulously, but at the last minute. I'm also used to asking people to do things and having them say, "But of course!" I'm having the worst time finding participants from the club membership. I don't know if it's the Irish theme, or if it's a bad time of year, or if it's me, but the majority of the performers are guest artists because people are simply not returning my calls/emails. So I feel somewhat dejected and paranoid, which is absolutely ridiculous. It's that voice with the Estonian accent that still lives on, even after its owner has left this earth, that says, "Maybe people don't like you."

Anyway, to get myself out of this rut, I am re-doing Walking in the World, which is Julia Cameron's sequel to The Artist's Way. I've done The Artist's Way and felt that it helped me find a focus that I had misplaced when I moved back to Milwaukee. The added element to the sequel is the weekly walk. That I'm not getting done so much - it's cold out! But this week my artist date was going to a vintage shop and picking up 3 scarves for $10 (still trying to find my "signature look" that someone on the Today Show said was necessary to "establish my brand;" it's either scarves or jackets, can't decide which). And I'm writing my morning pages and filling out the questions in the book (or in my journal).

So far the universe has revealed that I am a frustrated Francophile who wants to live in an apartment, dance, and paint. Okay, so I get back on the Rosetta Stone train and keep doing Zumba (not moving, though!). But painting? Since I can barely wield a paintbrush to cover a WALL, let alone a canvas, I decided this meant that I need to include a trip to an art gallery or to the MAM in one of my artist dates.

Lo and behold, the very day that these discoveries made themselves known, I received a postcard labeled MUSIC AND ART! Milwaukee Choral Artists is doing a CD release party at an art gallery on Brady Street on Friday, 2/26. I think this means I have to go. The universe told me so.

I was one of the original members of MCA - I left after two years because I didn't feel comfortable singing second soprano in the 3 part music, but alto was often too low. I felt that I was not blending well and was not an asset to the group, and when I did try to blend to the conductor's satisfaction, I felt vocally constipated. I realized that the things that made me the happiest about singing with the group were the times I sang big solos - the Vaughan Williams Magnificat, the Debussy La Damoiselle Elue, the Britten That Yonge Child - and that wasn't what I was there for, really. So I left.

I stayed in Bel Canto Chorus for another year, simply because I didn't feel as though I stuck out so much. And then I left that because my studio was taking off and I was just vocally wiped by the time I got to rehearsal (which again, made me not an asset to the group). I felt as though Sharon felt that I chose BCC over MCA and it really wasn't that - I just didn't feel I was giving MCA what they needed.

So I'll go to the MCA party and hopefully mend some fences that I didn't mean to break. And meanwhile, I'll continue my navel-gazing and see what else I find out.

Some mixed feelings

I wanted to start out the new year with a really positive post. I had laser surgery on my eyes and was looking forward to writing about my clear vision, and my excitement over my students' upcoming college auditions. Then several things happened.

1.  My recovery from the operation was much more complicated than I expected. I had discomfort and blurry vision for a full week and a half, and just became functional as I began my teaching this week. So I got very little done in preparation for the new year. I have a syllabus to write for a class beginning the 19th (if it's not cancelled - only 3 people have registered) and a recital to organize for the MacDowell Club.

2. My father died on Thursday of this week. He was 86, he had a leg amputated 2 years ago, he had the beginnings of dementia, he was on dialysis 3x a week and he had a necrotic foot. His little toe literally fell off the day before my eye surgery. But still, he and I were closer than my mother and I ever were and losing him is hard to fathom. Especially the part about "I'm an orphan now."

3. My best student, who I was preparing for auditions, decided NOT to go into music. She wept about it but she decided that as much as she loves music and wants to perform, she doesn't want to be a music major. I accepted it well - I kind of expected it based on a FB status she'd posted recently - but I'm so disappointed, not in her, but because I really, really believe she could have a major career. But she still intends to study, she still intends to sing, and all the colleges to which she's applying have music departments in which she can participate, and who knows? She may change her mind. Then she can audition NEXT year.

On the positive side, my eyes feel MUCH better - I'd say today is the first day that I think my vision is at about 20/25 (I wake up with 20/20). And I got 4 new students this week and next, one of whom is cramming for auditions because she was working with someone who focused on technique to the exclusion of repertoire (something I can understand but NOT when someone is preparing for college auditions!).

So hopefully the next time I write, it will be from a position of clarity, visually, emotionally and personally. I will try to refrain from a title of "I can see clearly now," but I may not be able to resist.