Singing for my supper

 So here we are,  now in the THIRD academic year of pandemic adaptations.  And yet, despite all expectations, my studio is full and people are still singing.     Maybe the pandemic has done us a favor by reminding us that singing is what we need for so many more reasons beyond "the career".   I often think about how singing is part  of the human condition: we do it naturally as babies, we use song to teach children.  The oppressed sing for comfort, protesters sing to share their message.  We sing in times of upset and times of joy.  Every culture around the world has its own forms of vocal expression which explore rhythm, and SOUND.  It's what we do.  One question I get asked a lot as a teacher is "Why should my child take voice lessons?", often followed by, "Are they good enough to 'make it'?". I understand that parents and students considering college paths and futures want to think about "return on investment", but...

A wonderful new anthology has just been released (one that many of us have been hoping to see for some time)!   

A recent discussion among teachers dipped into the perennial question: should teens and developing singers be encouraged to sing core 18th and 19th century operatic repertoire before their technique is fully developed?  There is no one-size-fits-all answer - there are a handful of exceptional students who are ready to start building their operatic chops as teens, but  in general I personally come down on the side of "no".   I encourage these keen students to become familiar with the  dramatic stage works they love and  maybe even play around singing them for fun, but as performance and audition pieces?  "Not yet....".  They don't love me when I steer them away from O Mio Babbino Caro or Queen of the Night but, if they continue as serious singers, their 30-something selves will thank me for not letting them build youthful insufficiencies into what becomes their mature bread-and-butter repertoire!    Beyond Handel and the 24/26/28, this st...

For this post I'm delighted to pass the baton (keyboard?) to my dear friend and colleague Laura Woolbright Mashburn . Laura is a wonderful singer and teacher with seemingly bottomless knowledge about repertoire:  whenever I feel "stuck", I ping her for a quick Facebook chat and instantly have a dozen suggestions to consider (many of them "new to me" selections)!  So much repertoire out there to explore ... :)

In Part 1 , I shared some of the rationales that I use when selecting repertoire for students; this post explores some specific sources of repertoire for developing classical singers. ( "The Yellow Book" of course refers to the ubiquitous "24 Italian Songs & Arias of the 17th and 18th Centuries" that seems to be a rite of passage for every classical singer!)

As mentioned in yesterday's quick update , teaching now dominates my life, and the thoughts below have been percolating for a while (and, in fact, are why I resurrected the blog!).  I often hear new teachers asking questions about choosing repertoire for younger or developing singers, which prompted me to jot down a few notes that guide my own thinking as I choose pieces for my students at all ages and stages of development.    

Eight years since the last post.  EIGHT YEARS.  Not quite sure how that has happened, but here we are!   My old blog summary, which I've just updated:  "Musings on my life as a busy opera singer, voice teacher, photographer and mom - not necessarily in that order! I consider myself immensely fortunate to have carved out a way of doing all of these things which mean so much to me - it may sometimes get a little crazy, but it's always worth it. Welcome to the madhouse!" I'm still fortunate, and I'm still doing all these things in one way or another, but life has sure changed a lot since then. We've come out the other side of a major recession. The beautiful 12 year old in the  sidebar photo is graduating from college and moving on to grad school (note to self, update photo!).  Both of my parents passed away in 2019, after 5 complicated, traumatic years of steep decline.  I was appointed Voice Department Chair of a conservatory Preparatory division a...

Out of the blue. Coup de foudre. And with less than a week's notice ... I found myself on  a 10 day "tour de France". Normally, my last-minute travel is gig-related, but this particular trip required no singing on my part: I was invited to be a replacement-chaperone for my daughter's chorus tour.  Eighty adolescents, 6 of whom (none of them my own) were under my care for the duration. Despite some seriously cold feet before we left, it couldn't have turned out any better - the entire experience was absolutely wonderful at so many different levels.  I've enjoyed many trips to France before, but I can honestly say that this was among the best.  I can also say that it is unbelievably liberating not to have to worry about "the voice" while traveling!  For once, somebody else was doing the singing (all 80 of them :).  I didn't have to cast a single thought to allergy medications, air conditioning issues, what kind of water I was drinking, whether or...

Yes, another blog fail with a full 6-month gap. Ouch! This blog isn't abandoned, but living life sometimes take precedence to blogging it.... :) Sharing a recent post from my photo blog, which may explain some of what's been going on this very busy spring.  Enjoy! Divatography (photography for performing artists)

Disclaimer #1:  I have never shopped Black Friday and have no intention of joining the throngs (hate crowds and typically there are so few real bargains it's not worth it) Disclaimer #2: I don't think stores "need" to be open on a national holiday like Thanksgiving Disclaimer #3: Even as a committed  shopper, I'm finding the national devotion to the God of Retail disconcerting and would greatly prefer a real "day off" where it wasn't even *possible* to do stuff. Disclaimer #4:  If the stories of employer pressure to work on holidays are true, I deplore that behaviour lock, stock and barrel. OPTING to work on a holiday is one thing; being blackmailed into with the threat of losing your job if you don't is another. Those out of the way, I admit I'm bemused and baffled by the outrage in some quarters.  A program on NPR yesterday featured scores of distraught callers phoning in to discuss the subject (prompting this blog post).  A few respon...

I'm alarmed that I appear as the tallest thing on the stage (not true, and a trick of the perspective!), but still - what fun!  Truly a pleasure to sing with Maestro Walker and the team of talented musicians and singers on that stage! Concert Opera Rehearsal

To start at the end instead of the beginning... June 29, 2012 brought some pretty awful storms to the region. Our area was one of the worst-hit, with trees down pretty much on every block; we consider ourselves beyond lucky that neither of the two big elms in the front yard came down on our house and that we suffered no material damage.  Still, no power for 4 days and 16hrs - during a 3-digit heatwave - is a whole lot of not fun (and, at writing, some people are STILL waiting to be restored nearly a week after the event).  Short version: never underestimate a thunderstorm, and if your weather channel ever says the word " derecho ", check your insurance policy, hunker down, and make sure you have somewhere to go after the fact.  Every bit as bad - or worse - than a hurricane, and more like tornado damage. Earlier in the month, our daughter graduated middle school and moves on to high school in September. When did THAT happen?! Last time I looked she was a cute littl...

How wonderful to see these broadcasts from Glyndebourne! Highly recommended. And, as always, The Cunning Little Vixen (just broadcast as at writing) leaves me breathless, tearful, and smiling. http://glyndebourne.com/cinema-and-online-2012

It's another of those periods where I've had so many thoughts rattling around my head that I struggle to write them down in any coherent manner. This isn't helped by the fact that I almost always think of blog posts while I'm driving, and by the time I'm somewhere I could actually write it down, I've forgotten what it was. (No wonder businessmen love to dictate!).  In any case, this morning, a moment to try and pull these thoughts together.   The steaming race to the semester finish line has been a doozy.  Our scholarship auditions were earlier than usual to accommodate some staff schedules, which meant for the first time students had to be ready for this important performance before finals/juries/recital week, with necessary extra rehearsals and lessons; I had 5 in for that (and am delighted to say they all did very well indeed).  Immediately following that event, eleven students performed in our end-of term recital, by far the largest number of people I'...

I'm losing track of whether I'm living a double, triple, quadruple or other -ple life these days!  It's been pretty crazy - in a good way, I hasten to add, but crazy! Last weekend was singing what may be my favorite work in the entire world: the Verdi Requiem .  I'm a fan of most of what Mr Joe Green gave us, but the Requiem is extra special (and especially for the mezzo).  The schedule this time out was very compressed and singing a massive work like this (the equivalent of a full opera, and then some!) four times in three days definitely demanded every ounce of stamina I posess,  but so worth every single moment. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. This is the third time I've been privileged to sing this extraordinary piece, and each time I've discovered new things not only in the music, but in my own singing. I've found reserves of strength, stamina, colour and nuance I didn't know I had - could anything be more satisfying than that?  I only wish...

(Disclaimer: Mom, I adore you, and am grateful to you for everything you've ever done to educate me to this point, and for allowing me to continue to challenge things, to learn and to grow .... even when you vigorously disagree with my opinion!) It's been typically busy (seems like it's seldom anything else these days, with both the pros and cons which come with it!), but my parents somehow managed to find a date when we could all go and see a splendid production of Sondheim's Into the Woods together.  We all enjoyed it immensely - my husband and I have long been fans of Sondheim's work in general, and particularly this show - it was a treat to take our daughter to a top-notch performance of a work she hadn't seen before,  and even my Sondheim-resistant parents agreed that perhaps they had been hasty in describing him as "tuneless" and "not their thing" as they loved absolutely every minute of the performance as much as we did (kudos to the...

Hard at work  in rehearsals for my next show at the moment, but still found a few moments to pull out the little s95 point-and-shoot camera that I always have with me.  One of my cast-mates is also a photographer and has been doing a great job of documenting our rehearsal period more formally, but I couldn't resist taking a few quick snaps myself; it's a side of  the process that people don't always get to see even though to those of us who work in the theater it's simply a normal work environment. One of the best things about this rehearsal space is NATURAL LIGHT.  Many rehearsal rooms are in cinder-block basements and bunkers, so to see daylight every day is a real treat. There are a lot more people in the rehearsal room than you might think:  in addition to the cast, there's the director, conductor, assistant conductor, pianist, stage manager, two assistant stage managers and, in this shot, our artistic director had also stopped ...

This post has nothing to do with singing, parenting (2- or 4-foot), photography, or any other stated brief. It's about paint. You know, that stuff that people put on their walls because it's "cheap" and (as the magazines cheerfully say) "such an easy facelift!". I have friends who paint regularly. And by "regularly", I mean pretty much as often as the Pottery Barn catalog comes out, or a new colour-scheme suddenly takes their fancy. In theory, I think this is a great idea. But the reality of it is that we are not "paint to change your mood" people. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if we're even competent homeowners. Apparently, I completely and totally SUCK at choosing paint. When we did our renovation four years ago I went through about 15 sample pots before I found one I really liked (love, in fact). This time round, our weird variable light was complicated by a need to sometimes use the living room room for photoshoots, mean...

I am regularly reminded by my Dad that I have taken blogging Epic Failure to a whole new level. Five months without a post? Pathetic. I've thought long and hard about why I've found it so hard to write this year. I've half-started any number of posts (at last count, I think there are at least 6 in my "drafts" folder, and those are only the ones I actually got so far as to start writing down), but none of them seemed to gel. Part of the logjam has been diverted attention: 2011 was unquestionably our "Year of the Puppy", and that young, fluffy bundle of energy has taken up A LOT of time. Last puppy we raised was in 1994, and we lived in the middle of nowhere in the UK, with loads of footpaths and hills at our disposal; there's no denying that doing the same thing (with the same high-energy breed!) in a US suburb has been a very different - and time consuming - experience! It's been wonderful, though. For those who've only known me since univ...