Friday, November 30, 2012

December?

It's hard to believe tomorrow is December!  It feels like just yesterday I was getting ready to go to our family beach week or heading to the pool after work to make the most of the long summer evenings.  Wow.  Here we are.

I love this time of year in some ways.  I love Christmas.  I adore Thanksgiving.  I enjoy audition season and all the singer noise in New York City.  But for those of us in academia its also absolutely insane.  Recitals, performances, juries, everyone is spinning out of control with their own feelings of complete overwhelm-ness.  Not to mention that beyond working tirelessly to ensure the students are prepared for their events, we have many of our own.

I'll be singing some Bach in a concert on Sunday and I'm really looking forward to it.  I probably shouldn't tell you this, but its my first professional appearance as a BACH soloist.  This music is hard, people.  But I have learned a lot-- the main thing being how important it is to have a great relationship with my metronome.  Being perfectly in time gives so much freedom.  Knowing you have the structure of a steady beat takes some of the pressure off of the voice, somehow, because we are no longer the leader.  The beat is the leader.  The rhythm takes over and all we have to do is make sound.

Tomorrow, I'll be in New York for an audition and a lesson.  It will be fun to get my teacher's take on a few of the interesting things that have happened lately in my musical life.  She is excellent at introducing humor to otherwise rather devastating situations to help me see them in a new way.  In any case, she has always encouraged me to own both my great choices and my mistakes, and to take back my power when I've unwittingly given it away.  Everyday I get better at knowing, just knowing, exactly what is the right thing to sing, the right person to work with, and who I am as a singer.  I've learned this year that my instincts are ALWAYS right and only when I ignore them do I get myself into trouble.  That little funny feeling in the pit of my stomach is the best indicator of whether I'm doing the right thing or the wrong thing.  Everyday I realize that age is unimportant, and desperation is NEVER the right motivation.  Scrambling to reach a certain point is counterproductive if you aren't ready to be there yet.

I also found a bag!  TJ Maxx to the rescue once again!  Hopefully I'll run into some of you in New York this season.  I'll be the one in the royal blue audition dress with long brown hair who is nervously making jokes in the hallway, hoping my nose doesn't start running while I'm singing (as it always embarrassingly does) and being really nice to the poor person who has to check in all the singers.

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