Avocational Singer: Whatever the Limitation; Never Give Up

Here's another great blog you need to read.



Avocational Singer: Whatever the Limitation; Never Give Up

Happy Thanksgiving

On my other blog, I made a more general list, but thought it would be fun to do a music related "What I am thankful for" list here.

I am thankful for my iPhone. How did I ever live without it?
I am thankful for iTunes.
I am thankful for YouTube. All of these have made learning and loving my songs much easier.
I am thankful that my parents and grandparents thought that piano lessons should be a priority. We had a lot of financial difficulties as I was growing up, but somehow, someone always found a way to pay for the lessons. Thanks for all the sacrifices of time and resources that were made so that I could be the musician I am today.
I am thankful for wonderful teachers who encouraged me and challenged me to be the very best I could be.
I am thankful for mentors who took my under their wings and taught me the things I needed to know.
I am thankful that I went to a small private junior college where I had teaching and leadership opportunities that most don't get until graduate school.
I am thankful that Mr. Keenan, though a wonderful pianist himself, insisted on having a student accompanist at the piano every day. I learned so much from those 3 years of being a choir accompanist.
I am thankful for every opportunity I had to accompany church singing, a choir, soloists, operas, or musicals from before I was even 12 years old. I received thousands of hours of free instruction as I watched directors and teachers work.
I am thankful for my students, even the one that sometimes drive me nuts. Sometimes I am most thankful for them because they keep me on my toes. They challenge me to find new and better ways to share what I know. I also love the kids whose enthusiasm and energy brighten my day.
I am thankful for my blogs. Both of them have given me the chance to say things that are harder to say in person. They've given me the opportunity to claim my beliefs and my fears, and to move forward with integrity.

So, the list is not complete, but it is time to move on to the next portion of my Thanksgiving Celebration.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Networking= Caring about people

Another great blog post you need to read.
http://avocationalsinger.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-does-stay-at-home-mom-know-about.html#comment-form

I love what she has to say about how her husband really cares about the people he meets and cares about helping them as opposed to wondering what they can do for him.

Pep talk

I read this amazing Nanowrimo pep talk this morning and thought I would share it with you. It spoke to me on a lot different levels. Of course, it spoke to the writer in me, but also to the singer, and also to the regular everyday me just trying to get through life and make a difference.

I hope you enjoy it. I'll try to comment more about it later.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/3457857

Mary Wilson

Yesterday, Mary Wilson (opera singer) came and sang for our Concert Choir. She is in town to sing on a concert with her dad's choir this weekend. It's been fun to follow her career over the last 10 years. She's from Rosemount and I get to work with/see her parents frequently at music related things.

Here are just a few things that I loved about what she said to the kids and how she sang:

• When she was singing, she was an amazing artist. When she was talking to the kids, she wasn't afraid to be herself and let her personality come through. The kids got to see that opera singers are real people.
• She was so incredibly expressive with her tone, face, and body. I've been to many professional recitals, but few artists captivate my attention like she does. I loved that my kids got to hear amazing music that was not just beautifully sung, but sung in a way that drew them in and made them want more.
• She spoke to the kids about presence at contest and auditions. You can't enter with an apologetic posture and attitude and expect your judges or audience to be interested in you. This is all the same stuff I tell them, but I'm just their teacher. She's a cool, kind of famous person.
• She talked about coloring the voice depending on the emotions you are trying to convey.
• She sang softly, but with a sound that still had core and could be heard in the whole room. I'm going to be reminding students of this everytime they give me that wimpy, non-supported sound that barely hits the music stand and they tell me they sang that way because it was marked pp.
• Here's another thing I love about Mary--she is smart and really knows how to make a song work with her voice. She sang Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade." Personally, I think this is a song that works better with a bigger voice. Had I been choosing music for Mary, I would not have chosen this song. However, it was amazing! It was one of the most gripping performances I have heard of this. She knows her voice and the style of the music well enough to pull it off. I was reminded of some of the performances I've heard of Elly Ameling where she chose music that really should not have worked in her voice, but she found the way to make it beautiful. But just for the record, Mary and Elly are the only "smaller" voices I've ever heard pull this off. Most of the performances by smaller voices were just painful for all of us. And no, none of you high school students will be singing this one any time soon, no matter how much you love it.

Mary's probably never received a review quite like this one, and I hope that if she ever stumbles upon it that she will forgive my very casual approach here. If you ever get a chance to hear her, don't miss it. You will not be disappointed.

Learn more about Mary at www.marywilsonsoprano.com

Me and House

I love the TV show HOUSE for a lot of reasons. First, I'm a total science geek and a mystery lover, so what could be better than a show where they are trying to figure out the mystery illness. Second, I love Hugh Laurie. Even as the cantankerous, unshaved House, he's hot.

But, this is a voice blog so perhaps I should move on to why teaching voice is like being a doctor on HOUSE. Many years ago, someone told me that if I couldn't immediately identify and fix a student's vocal problem that I shouldn't be a teacher. I used to think the same thing about doctors--they should add up all the symptoms, immediately come to a diagnosis, and recommend the treatment that would fix it. Obviously, that isn't the case on HOUSE. If it was, the show would only take 5 minutes. The problems for both doctors and voice teachers are that
1. We don't always know all the symptoms. We try to ask the right questions and make the right observations, but sometimes a patient/student doesn't tell us something because they don't think it is important, but it's the one thing that might help us make a definitive diagnosis.
2. Often, similar symptoms can have very different causes. Even a grouping of 3 or 4 symptoms might still give us multiple options for diagnosis.
3. Since each body is different, we have to tailor the treatment for each individual. My mom and my dad react very differently to pain medications. My mom can usually only handle a half dose of the mild stuff. My dad needs the heavy duty drugs and quite a bit of them. As much as I hate it, and as bad as it is for my voice, sometimes the only thing that will help a student open enough is to tell them to imagine a grapefruit in their throat.

Today, we spent most of one lesson struggling with the same concept. As I teacher, there is part of me that gets frustrated with this and I start to doubt myself. Sometimes, ok most of the time, the kids also get frustrated. I'm so glad that my student tonight was so flexible that she didn't get frustrated. We just kept trying different things until we found something that worked. And she sounded great at the end of the lesson. I was able to diagnose and treat this "patient" within her half hour "episode". I wish it was always like that. Unfortunately in real life, things often take longer. I just need to remember to be patient with the process.

-- Posted from my iPhone

NATS

I love going to the NATS student auditions. I wasn't able to go on Friday this year, but spent all day Saturday there. It's fun to connect with colleagues that I don't get to see often. It's also nice to hear singers that are more advanced than my own who are mostly just beginner high school students. Each year, I'm also reminded of some very important things.

1. It is so important to choose the right rep for each voice. It can make or break an audition. A gorgeous voice singing something that is not right for him or her will not sound good.

2. We don't always sing our best every time we open our mouths. I was surprised that some of the singers in the finals had made it to finals. But, I also judged a semi-finals round and heard different things from those singers in the finals than I did in the the semi-finals round. The girl who won had had a good semi-finals round, but based on all her rep, I wouldn't have chosen her as the winner. But, in the finals round, she sang her best song and she owned it. It had been good at semi-finals, but was great at finals.

3. We all have different preferences for the tone we want to hear. I was a little surprised by some of the rankings in the finals, but it was not because I was wrong, as much as that there were other teachers who had a different preference.

4. Even when they are no longer studying with you, your students are always your students. I was so proud of one of my former students, now in her junior year of college, that won her division.

Overall it was a great day.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

Bonus points if you can correctly identify the source of today's title.

Today was mostly about being freaked out over all that I didn't get done over the weekend and all that has to happen soon. I also didn't feel well and had lots of pain and tension issues.

But then, I decided to do a little bit of singing, just to see what my voice was like. I found a new Brahms piece that I wanted to try out. I did a little warming up and then did some sight-reading of 2 Brahms songs. I think one will work well and might be a good back up piece if I'm still having tension and pain that cause high note issues. It sits nicely in my voice and moves well. The second song was pretty, but not a great fit at this point. Then I sang through a couple of the ones I'm currently working on and they sounded amazingly good, considering how I felt. Since that worked well, I pulled out a Brahms song I did several years ago. It's a little different in character from the ones I'm working now, and might be a good one to pull back for the recital. Today it was a completely different song that it was when I sang it several years ago. The spots that previously stressed me out were easy. I'll have to try this out with Ruth and see what she thinks.

Anyway, I love when there is at least one bright moment in a difficult day and today Brahms took care of that for me.

Practice Journal 11/2/09

My coaching with Ruth was cancelled today. I was disappointed, but a little relieved too, since I'm still not feeling well. So instead of getting dressed and going to St. Paul, I crawled back in bed with my iphone and my music binder and did a couple of hours of listening and score study.

Today I noticed how much my perception of performances is affected by how I feel physically and emotionally. Different performances were my favorites today as those singers connected with the place I was today.

Schwarzkopf's "wogenblauen" (the soft G in Morgen) is still the most gorgeous sound ever, except maybe Caballe's floaty high note in "Casta diva", but I didn't listen to that today so it doesn't count. Schwarzkopf has an interesting voice. The things I've listened to are not very consistent, but maybe I've been listening to the wrong things. However, when she is on, she is so on that you forgive every other little flaw.

This is a big oversimplification I am sure, but as I listened to the voices of the past, singers that are now dead or retired, I hear tone that is less consistent, but overall performances that I like more than some current performers. It's almost like the current generation has perfected the sound too much, losing the risk that must be involved to achieve true beauty. Of course there are exceptions, on both sides, but still I wonder. And it makes me wonder about my own singing. Yes, I need to really work the technique and the sound, but I can't forget that first and foremost it is about communicating and connecting with my audience, whoever it may be. A pretty sound can't make up for missing expressivity. Beauty is something much deeper than just the tonal concept. I think it involves vulnerability.

More on this later.

Theme songs

I just read a blog from a singer about what she learned about herself by looking at the songs she was drawn to. It made me think about my "theme songs".

To be honest, I can only think of two of them at the moment, but I want to share them with you. When I was in college, I discovered the musical The Secret Garden, and "Hold On" became my theme song. Sometimes I heard a dear friend sing it to me, and sometimes I was singing it to myself. Those were very dark years in my life. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that there was something better down the road. "Child, hold on, it's this day, not you, that's bound to go away."

The year 2000 was a major turning point in my life. "Hold On" was still my theme for a few more years, but soon it was replaced by "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. I felt energized and enthused and ready to take on the world. I was making my own choices, finding my own path and I no longer felt that I had to live up to the expectations of everyone else.
"Something has changed within me Something is not the same I'm through with playing by the rules Of someone else's game Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep It's time to trust my instincts Close my eyes: and leap!"

I'm still working on finding my own path, but "Defying Gravity" isn't really my theme song anymore. I'm not sure what is. I'm in a calmer place now, no longer fighting to survive, or fighting to live my own life.

I have some favorite songs, like Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen", but I'm not sure that I would really call it a theme song. And I love the Brahms, Strauss, and Puccini I'm working on now, but the despair and loss most of them present are also not where my life is now.

I'm not sure this is my theme song, but today it makes me happy. John Denver's "Sunshine on my Shoulders"
Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high.

I love the sun and hope more sunny days are on the way.

Pianists

As singers, we frequently discuss our favorite singers, past and present. Doing all the listening that I have been, I've once again been reminded how important the person sitting at the piano is. I don't care if you call them collaborative pianists or accompanists, as long as you realize how important they are and what they bring to a performance.

I've served in both roles, and yes, I do mean served. It's not about us. We're merely there as vehicles for the music. Last week I helped out a co-worker by playing for his audition DVD. I had forgotten the joy of being on that side of the piano. I still think he could have used someone whose technique was stronger, but I so appreciated the opportunity to be part of that wonderful music making.

And now to the point of the whole post--I love Gerald Moore! I think he and I could have worked beautifully together.

So, now is your chance to comment and let me know that someone really does read this.

I've often thought about which people from history I would most like to meet. Today the questions are about musicians.

What pianist from the past (must be dead or retired) would you most like to work with?

Is there a conductor from the past that you would like to work with?


-- Posted from my iPhone

Practice journal 10/31/09

After cleaning most of the house and doing the grocery shopping, I really felt too tired to practice, but I went to school to try anyway. The warm up took longer than usual since I was tight and tired, but I finally got things loosened up and had a fairly porductive practice.

The interesting thing was that An die Nachtigall and Die Mainacht worked pretty well, while the others that have been good were only OK. An die Nachtigall was better than it's been in a long time. It was more comfortable and much more fluid. I hope I can keep that for my session with Ruth on Monday.

On the other hand, I seem to have lost the magic of O kuhler Wald. It wasn't bad, but it didn't sound or feel like it had lately.

One of the things that is frustrating for me is that with my allergies and fibromyalgia, it seems like I have a different voice every day. It's hard to find any consistentcy. Since it's constantly in flux, I can't really go for the same sound or even the same physical sensations that I had in a previous session. The only thing I really can do is make sure that the vowels are placed high and everything stays loose. If I can achieve that, I usually like the sound, even if it feels and sound different than the last time I practiced.

I love writing. It really helps me to clarify and work out my issues. I was frustrated over the lack of consistency, but in writing, reminded myself of the solution. Love it when that happens!

-- Posted from my iPhone