Saturday, June 4
Today was the day of our first performance! However, we had nothing else to do ALL day. So we just slept until we were done sleeping. Cecilia, Taliah, and I slept until about 11:30. I never sleep that late! But it was so nice to relax and just chill because we were all just so tired.
My lesson with Suzanne was at 3:30. So I ate some lunch and headed over to the School of Music to warm up and un-freak myself out. I tried warming up...oh my gosh, the vocal cords were SO not happy with that.
I met up with Suzanne and we found a practice room and we started. She had me sing the Satie piece and then she did some vocalizing with me. She helped me out with some placement in my middle register. She helped me figure out the balance between a bright vowel and a dark sound. She also worked on some breath things with me--keeping my breath going and my tone spinning on every note, not just some of the notes. It was very good and so helpful. She was very nice and we talked about my voice a little bit and what direction it was headed. Bad news...she says I am heading toward Full Lyric Soprano land. Oh well, Mezzo Pants. I guess I can’t wear you forever. But I am still going to enjoy you while I can. We also talked about where I was planning on going to Grad school and what kinds of places I was looking into. She recommended that I also look into Kansas schools, Texas schools, one in California, and a school in Colorado. So now I have some more options. Too many choices, I’m tellin’ ya.
After my lesson, Dr. Diamond was kind of holding a vocal pedagogy workshop/master class for anyone that wanted to come. It was very interesting—-I learned a lot of interesting things. He talked about some things you should work on in the practice room—-legato, breath support, agility, onset, etc. I am excited to try to employ some of those practice techniques into my practice routine.
Then we had to get ready for the performance! Woohoo! I ran into a practice room and got dressed and then we all met for sound check. After sound check we had “circle.” We all stood in a circle and held hands and we said something that we were thankful for. Then Patrick told us what Professor Guttenberg has been telling us for years, “People don’t come to concerts to listen to music, they come to concerts to watch people make music together.” Then we all hugged and wished each other luck and had a few minutes before we started.
The performance was so great. It was fun to be able to sing the whole Requiem in the order that Brahms wrote it in. It was incredible. It was also great to just SING them without worrying about complete perfection. Prof. Guttenberg says it all of the time: “Perfect music is boring.” She’s right.
In celebration of a successful concert, Taliah and I went Chili's with Brett Bailey, Zaray Rodriguez, David Evans, and Cecilia. It was so fun. I love hanging out with them. We talked about geeky music things. Because we are all SUCH music nerds. Oh man, so bad.
But you know what, I admit it. I’m a proud music nerd. It’s the best kind of nerd to be. :]
Only one more real day. I’m so not okay with the fact that it’s almost over.
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