exit
i haven’t posted in an unacceptably long time, and for that i apologize. there’s a thing called life, and it got in the way. this week finds me moving to the close of yet another school year (how many school years have i had in my life now?), and the beginning of my opportunity to explore music and other activities that i’ve put on the backburner due to lack of time. this summer i am definitely learning all of bertarido’s bits (or at least all the major ones) from rodelinda (for those of you who are out of the baroque loop, rodelinda is an opera by handel, and i am absolutely obsessed with it). i also began a collaboration a month ago with a classical guitarist on some dowland lute songs; now that i don’t have school taking up my time, i can return to that. the biggest project, however, will be planning my SENIOR RECITAL! it is going to be a very eclectic show, as i like a little bit of everything. now i just have to lay out what i want to sing, and learn the songs that i haven’t already learned. i’m aiming for april 2010 for my recital. i have the feeling that it’s going to be absolutely smashing.
other big news: my boyfriend (if you’re new to my blog, i’m in a long distance relationship with a kansan boy) is moving out here in under a month! a couple of my friends from school just got an apartment, and he’s going to be moving in with them. only 15 minutes away from my school. needless to say, i’ll be visiting their apartment a lot. we have been waiting a long time for this (we’ve been a couple since november 2007), so it’s exciting that it’s finally approaching!
amber and i went out the other day to look for a table for the apartment. it is wicked fun to go furniture shopping. the furniture consignment shop was a big miss, so we went to world market, and absolutely geeked out over chairs and pillows and decorations and placemats, and … well, everything! it’s depressing to see how much money i could spend on interior decorating … and it get’s much worse when i go to IKEA! that store is interior decorating heaven. the only problem is that i start looking at things like kitchen cabinets and drooling over them, and then i realize that to have kitchen cabinets, i first have to have a kitchen. oops. and of course we can’t do anything with the kitchen cabinets at the apartment. we can’t even paint in there (i use we like i really have a say in the way the apartment looks). anyway, amber and i finally found an affordable table, but they didn’t have the chairs that we wanted. however, i checked the as-is section (per john’s suggestion via text message) and lo and behold, there were four fully assembled chairs that were the same ones that we wanted! great find … until we had to get everything into the car. after this shopping trip, i learned that i am the queen of squishing things into a tiny car. see, we were working with a dodge neon – not very much space. however, i got the unassembled table in the space where the backseat passengers place their feet, and two chairs on the back seat, one in the trunk (after lots of moving and adjusting), and the last one on my lap in the front passenger seat. it was brilliant! so now john, amber, and matt have a dining table with four chairs, complete with four seat cushions and four placemats. mission successful!
okay singing detour. on friday i participated in the LONGEST CONCERT EVER. okay, not really, but it was way too long. it was two and a half hours of various ensemble pieces, ranging from duets to full ensemble pieces. this was our final performance of the school year for camerata, our ensemble class that is made up of singers and instrumentalists. my contributions were third lady in the three ladies trio from mozart’s magic flute, IV from vivaldi’s nisi dominus, and pergolesi’s stabat mater. i have been looking forward to this pergolesi performance for months, because the work is just absolutely delicious, and i had a few solos and duets. we divvied up the work into a few group numbers, solos, and duets. the only disappointing part was that my voice was very worn out, slightly sore, and i was congested, so it was really hard to do the piece justice, but i am not going to dwell on that. i have spent enough time beating up on myself. distance award for the night goes to my nana and papa, who drove over 3 hours to get to my ridiculously long concert (i know you’re reading this nana hehehe). i really hope that i get to sing this stabat mater again in the future. i’ve been analyzing it as part of my form and analysis class, and i am fascinating by some of the thing pergolesi did in his composition. geek time!
the night before that, i sang a few group numbers in another student’s recital. 21st century musical theatre one night, baroque the next! we sang three songs from the musical spring awakening. it’s fun to bounce back and forth between classical and musical theatre, especially as an alto. i received many compliments on my belty voice, which is always a little surprising because i just started singing that sort of music a couple of years ago. apparently my musical theatre voice can be hot. i have to admit, us altos get some really yummy things to sing in musical theatre, songs that resonate like crazy in our chest voices.
the night before that, i had a choir concert! and the weekend before that, i had opera performances! our school put on poulenc’s dialogues of the carmelites. i wasn’t very excited about it at first, but i came to really love the experience. for those not familiar with the opera, it recounts the events of the french revolution, specifically those affecting 16 Carmelite nuns who were eventually martyred. i was the 12th to die (and may i say, i died very well). the women’s choruses are GORGEOUS! the rest of it is a little strange, but i got over that. if i were to do the opera again, i’d like to play either the old prioress or mother marie (the old prioress has an insanely hot part – it’s because she’s a contralto).
strides have been made this semester with my singing. my coloratura is very promising – i can navigate fast running passages with more ease than ever before. my voice continues to mature of course. my teacher thinks that i have a very good chance of developing into a contralto. am i the only mezzo in the world who would love to be a contralto? probably. but that just makes me strange and awesome.
vocal juries later today – singing handel’s “he was despised” and schubert’s “der liermann”. wish me luck!
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