Bloom where you're planted

I have a lot on my mind right now, but this was the thing that spoke to me in my morning meditation (which was on the subject of lobsters, of all things).

Singing Outside the Box (is that a good title?)

As a classically trained singer, I have been trained in the International Phonetic Alphabet so that I can sing in a myriad of other languages, some of which were required of me academically, others contractually, and some just because I wanted to. I have sung in

1. Italian - multiple operas, art songs, etc.
2. French - same
3. German - lieder, operas
4. Chinese - The Savage Land, Washington Opera (all I remember is a phrase that meant "go to hell through 18 layers of soil)
5. Russian (although NOT as a soloist) - operas, ballet chorus, choral music
6. Hebrew 
7. Latin
8. Ladino - kind of a Hebrew/Spanish
9. Estonian - mother's native language
10. Slovenian - father's native language

There may be other languages in which I've sung that I don't recall. But I've never sung solo repertoire in Spanish, Portuguese, or Russian. The latter is because of my parents' virulent anti-Communist bent, where I was discouraged from doing anything even remotely Russian. My father asked me if I was a Communist because I wanted a red plaid jumper. My response was that I was only 6.

My plan is that I am going to prepare a recital of repertoire in languages in which I have not sung. I'm thinking either Spanish or Portuguese, Russian, and ... Irish Gaelic. I have three poems in Irish Gaelic that I have had for years. I need to commission a composer to set them (currently working on getting pronunciation recorded by a native Irish speaker - surprisingly (or not) not an easy task). I thought I had someone lined up but she hasn't seen fit to respond to my emails, so I need to move on to someone who is actually interested in the project.

I'm not sure what to call this program - right now it's Outside the Box, but that's not resonating with me at this point.

The nobility of PERFORMING

Last year I went to the NATS Chicago conference and bemoaned the fact that I had taken an unintentional hiatus from performing for nearly 10 years. Specifically, I posted on Facebook:

Something that makes me a little sad is that, although my voice is still working just FINE, thankyouverymuch, I missed out on performance opportunities because I focused so much on my teaching. Which was in part because I wasn't getting a chance to perform. And while I love teaching and feel like I've made a difference to students (past, present, and future), what more could I have done as a performer??

It's interesting to see the comments that were made. They mainly run the gamut from "I know what you mean" to "It's never too late." But there was one comment that was made that took me aback a bit, because I think it reveals the perspective that people have about performing as being less noble than teaching. And that comment was:

As a performer, you touched the present. Teachers touch the future.

My immediate response to that was then as it is now.

I don't think it's just the present we [as performers] touch. I don't think of it as ephemeral. 

I have seen so many performances that touched me deeply, that made a difference in my life. Performances that were authentic, that told the truth, and that were noble. That doesn't mean they were serious, necessarily, They could have been just as easily musicals or comedies as they were dramas. If Gilligan's Island touched you back when you were a kid (and I bring this up because when Carmen was on the radio Saturday, my husband began singing "Never a borrower nor a lender be!" along with the Toreador Song, so clearly, there's an example of leaving an impression), does that mean it was pointless?

Perhaps that's not the best example, but it was the first one that popped into my head.

There is still more work to do, as a teacher, a director, and a performer, and as a person. I'm not just one or the other, and one is not better than another. And I want to touch the past, present, and the future. 

Some reflections ( a year late) on NATS 2016

I am having the best summer. The weather is perfect, I'm teaching at home, I closed a show in May (Little Women, as both Marmee and director, debut for both), wrote and put on a cabaret show in less than 4 weeks after that, and am getting into the best physical shape I've been in since I moved out here in 2013. I'm picking up church gigs and so far haven't had to tap into my summer fund, which is usually how I live through the summer.

And last year I had a good summer, as well, but I didn't write anything about it. I tweeted things that caught my fancy, particularly at the NATS2016 conference in Chicago, but I didn't really say anything about how this affected me.

So, from last year's FB posts/tweets, showing up in my On This Day on Facebook:

• "Share who you are. It's not enough to just stand and sing well." -Renée Fleming #NATSinChicago.
  This is all about vulnerability. It is not enough to sing pretty. Lots of people sing pretty. It's about being brave enough to share yourself with people, people who might not like you or what you have to say. The singer who goes to the next level is vulnerable. And vulnerability is not weakness (there's a previous entry on this).
  
  
• "We don't have an art form if we don't have new works. We don't have a relevant art form. We have a historical art form" @reneesmusings #NATSinChicago
  
  Opera - or ballet, or theater - is not stagnant. It is not enough to perform the same piece over and over as a museum piece. It must evolve. There must be new works. And when there are old works, they must be looked at with new eyes. That doesn't necessarily mean they should be updated or turned on their heads. I saw Midsummer Night's Dream last night at Baltimore Shakespeare Factory. Excellent production, relatively traditional - but it was done with such a fresh spin that I got things out of it that I haven't gotten before. Lines that I'd not noticed before were especially funny or touching.
  
  
• W. Stephen Smith on the importance of double consonants in Italian: "if you say 'quindici anni,' you're saying 15 years. If you say 'quindici ani,' you're saying 15 assholes." #VeryDifferent #NATSinChicago
  
  Pay attention!! Details matter!! (And I think we've all met at least quindici ani in our lives by this point, haven't we?)

Decluttering My Space and My Time

When I left Milwaukee 4 years ago, I got rid of a lot of stuff that I didn't feel I needed to take with me. I had thought I'd gotten rid of a lot of stuff the year before, when we started our major remodeling project for what we thought was going to be our "forever" - or at least for ten years - home. But then when we decided to move out east, we realized that we still had a lot of stuff that we didn't need.

And then we moved into what is now our "forever" - or as close to forever as anything really is - home, and discovered that we still had way too much stuff. And we keep accumulating things, despite our best efforts.

So I am taking advantage of this summer to try to keep what "sparks joy" (or at least not "provokes ennui") and get rid of the rest. (This concept is from Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.) Yesterday, I bought new workout clothes and I'm going to go through some of the 25+ year old t-shirts that I have prided myself on still being able to fit into - so what if you can see through them - and toss things out. No, they're not going to become rags. We have rags. If you have a t-shirt that you say is going to be a rag, sooner or later, it's going to wind up on your back when you're in a hurry. OUT.

Also going through costume jewelry. Some things I may designate as potential props for studio recitals, future shows, etc., and they will go upstairs, in our prop/costume/workout space.

Of course, this means that I need to organize my upstairs prop/costume/workout space and see what it is I don't need up there.

I suspect that this is going to be harder than I expected.

How does this affect me musically, since that's supposed to be the point of this blog?

I'm also trying to re-do my studio vocalise sheets and toss out the vocalises that I have never used, which just filled space on the page when I first created them for a workshop 10+ years ago.

I have a project in mind for a poster paper to present at NATS in June 2018, and I figure the less clutter I have at hand, the less clutter I have in mind. (The due date for that is December 1, 2017, so I have a bit of time to organize this.)

If I have less stuff taking up space in my place, I will have less stuff taking up space in my mind. And hopefully, that will spark joy.

And I didn't even have to buy the book to get this insight. Huh.

Why I Write.... Or Not

It's more likely why don't I write these days.....

When I was a little girl, I wrote all the time. Usually stories about people escaping from occupied countries in Europe. Sometimes I wrote song parodies, sitcom parodies, and I really loved writing book reports, reading and analyzing things and expressing my response to them.

And then I discovered music and was able to give voice to things in a completely different way. But I still did some writing. I published a few articles in Classical Singer magazine, under a nom de plume, which was Melinda O'Meally. You see, I never thought I'd remarry, and I figured since Melinda was my cat's middle name and O'Meally was my boyfriend's name, no one would be the wiser. And then I remarried, and I took his name. (And that's a whole 'nother blog.)

My first entry in this blog was 4/22/2009, in which I talked about writing and singing, and called that entry Why I Sing. I wrote a lot the first few years - 31 times in 2009, 27 in 2010, 13 in 2011, 16 in 2012, and 20 in 2013. And then I moved.....

And in 2014 I wrote twice, 2015 8x, 2016 5x, and this is my 2nd entry of 2017. What the hell happened?

I don't write, I rarely read (Real Simple, InStyle and The Costco Connection do not count).

A lot of the blame can be put on social media, especially in this political climate.

I am directing, I am teaching, I am performing, and I am creating (cabaret show a few weeks ago, to be reprised on November 17 at Germano's, and a reprise of my show with Ryan Cappleman, also at Germano's, on April 13, 2018). But something is missing. And that needs to change.

I still have another month and a half left of summer, and during that time, I think I'm going to have to force myself to write and to read.

I've never read many of the classics .... I forced myself to re-read Little Women when I was getting ready to direct it and it was a chore for the first 100 pages (then it flew). I've read some Bronté (Jane Eyre), but I've never read any Jane Austen.

There are many projects that I have yet to attack this summer, but one of them, as God is my witness, is that I'm going to become a reader again. And then, hopefully, a writer.

And in the meantime, I hope to start finding something to write about. 

What good is sitting alone in your room? Go do a cabaret!

This past Friday night, I performed my first solo cabaret since moving here in 2013. I have done three joint cabaret shows: LoveSICK, with Dyana Neal, Steven Lampredi and Jim Knost, for Valentine's Day 2016 and 2017, and an end of summer show in August 2014, but this was my first solo outing.

In 2006, I produced a cabaret show for 5 of my students, Ryan Cappleman, Maureen Smith, Elyse Wojciechowski, Nate Lewellyn, and Kyle Fowler. After picking out music, and finding that the songs were all about wanting to go somewhere and be not here, we decided to call the program the Not Here Cabaret.

When Fuzz Roark at Spotlighters Theatre asked me a year ago to do a solo cabaret, I decided to resurrect the title, if not the same repertoire, and do something with it. Initially, it was a travel-themed show - about wanting to go out and explore, and not be "here." But it evolved.

The show I wound up doing, with Michael Tan at the piano, was about our shared roots in the Midwest and how we found our homes here in Baltimore. We made a few stops along the way in other places, for entertainment purposes (neither of us have ever, in fact, done a tango with an Eskimo nor have we taken a ride on the Chattanooga Choo-Choo), but in the second half, we did make it a bit more personal. I explored how difficult it was to make the break from my first marriage to move up to Baltimore for grad school ("Leaving on a jet plane" - which sounds more romantic than "driving up 95N"), why going to Europe after grad school would have threatened my new relationship with Bill ("When in Rome"), and ultimately, realizing that "It's not where you start, it's where you finish."

I find the cabaret format to be the most authentic thing I've ever done - except, perhaps, directing a show, which I recently did for the first time and will write about another time.

I was also lucky enough to hit upon an open mic at Germano's this past Wednesday and try out a couple of pieces there, and have been offered the opportunity to reprise "Not Here" and/or one of the shows I did as part of MezzoPiano. Hopefully, this will give me some more opportunities. And perhaps I can pursue doing some things down towards DC?

Life begins at ... however the hell old I am at this moment.