hodge podge

I've kind of been laying low recently while waiting to hear back from the music schools I applied to. Well, the ones where the decision is not already apparent, anyway, hee hee.

The reason for this is that the process was a personal weed-out challenge as well. After many discussions with my mother (Curtis-trained, herself), we decided that it would be best to put some sort of time limit on pursuing music as a primary means of earning a living, i.e., neither of us really wanted me to be trying for like ages. So the idea was to apply to a lot of selective programs, not only to get the best instruction (theoretically) should I get in, but also to see if people thought I had the goods to "make it" in this field. So it's entirely possible that I could be searching for another field come April -- hence general reticence.

That's why in the meantime, I've been busying myself crocheting. Yes, crocheting! I evidently have inherited the "serial hobbyist" gene from my mother. In terms of crafts-type activities, I usually pick them up as a result of wanting things for myself: ("I want pumpkin pie...so I'll learn to make it!"). So I found this post about a moebius scarf and then another post about a certain crochet stitch. BINGO. New project. Currently, I've been at it for 3 days, and I've already passed 3 feet of scarf. Tomorrow, I should be able to stitch the seam together and make myself a moebius scarf. I'm excited!

Of course, during all of this, I'm still singing (though currently have a bear of a sore throat) and oddly enough, I think I have another breakthrough in the works. I've been very aware of how my larynx does funny things, and how I've gotten use to it. Lately, I've been trying to focus on it more and more, particularly in my speaking voice, which is "unnaturally" high for the range in which I sing. This discovery came about while I was fiddling with vowels while walking on the way to work. I had noticed that my high notes tended to come with...not spreading, per se, but the way my face felt as I went for notes, say high g and higher, was distinctly different from the approach there. So I thought, well, ok - so if I avoid the sensation of spreading (which is, indeed, quite close) but adopt the feeling of two horizontal points spaced the width of my face apart, what happens?

It turns out that the larynx tends to stay right put. Incidentally, the is the same feeling (in my face) when I smile. It feels much more horizontal to me than a vertical lift of the "fauces" or zygomatic arch. In any event, this has been an aid not only in purifying and raising the troublesome eee and oooo vowels, it's helped to clean up the ah vowel and give it some more resonance. I'm going to have to fiddle with this a little bit more, but I feel it's on a pretty good track.

Of course you didn't think I would abandon my scouring of teh internets, did you? Here are two lovely youtube playlists:

1) Rehearsal footage of Dawn Upshaw preparing the role of the Angel in Messiaen's St. Francois d'Assise.



2) Pilar Lorengar singing two of Donna Elvira's arias. (If any of you have been turned off by her prominent vibrato as recorded, give these a listen. In the house, she must have been something else. Also, my sense is that my high notes (when I finally straighten them out) will probably be harmonically structured similarly to her high notes -- which I am totally stoked about!)

lessons learned (at NEC)*

^{*all quotations are loose paraphrases of mine}

I'm still not sure what to make of my audition yesterday at NEC. In semi-defiance (and semi-for-Curtis-audition-preparation), I offered my full audition repertoire (minus 1, Il fervido desiderio, which is, more often than not, still a ridiculous tightrope walk) despite NEC's injunction: "no opera arias [and just 3 songs]."

This policy kind of makes no sense to me, since they were amenable to hearing oratorio arias, which are often just as hard if not harder to sing than operatic ones. With this being the case, I can't really figure out why it is that they would not want to hear opera arias? Whatever. Not the point.

I had gotten on a plane to Boston the day of my audition, which was late in the day at 5:20, essentially the last singer. I warmed up dutifully, noting that my voice was in stellar fettle. The accompanist and I worked through my big stack of music before being called into the audition room, which was fairly large and had its own stage. I walked up and took my place in the little cove of the piano.

"Would you mind taking off your glasses? So we can see your face."

Lesson #1. I should have seen that coming. I had eschewed my contacts because I was going to be spending the night in Boston and didn't want to deal with the airport security hassle of liquids on carry-ons. Nor did I want to tangle with checking luggage for what was essentially a daytrip.

I made some quip about not being able to see anything, and the faculty made a joke about not falling off the stage. My opening song went pretty well, a weird tempo thing at the beginning notwithstanding. I've realized that I just need to take a firm stand with tempo. My penchant for fitting myself to another's rhythm (learned as a pianist and often-times accompanist) needs to be rooted out because with an accompanist, it can devolve into mush if I adjust to his adjustment to my original adjustment. Lesson #2.

That finished, they asked for the Handel, a zippy, coloratura-laden piece from the oratorio Joshua (my knowledge of Joshua is limited to this aria and the gem, O had I Jubal's lyre). I was excited about it, for the singing of it itself as well as the chance to try it out in a more demanding setting than a lesson. Then the crazy stuff started to happen.

"Could you start at the B section and stop after you repeat the A section?"

I was confused. My accompanist was confused. "Where is the B section?" I asked the faculty, still blurry-eyed and blind without my spectables. "Where is the B section?" my accompanist echoed, flipping through the pages.

There is a section of the aria where the thematic material changes, but it's not a da capo aria and there is no change of tempo or mood. Throughout all of this, the faculty are stony silent. I couldn't read their expressions, so I was imagining the worst: "Does this kid not know his own repertoire very well?"

Finally, I decide that the closest thing to a B section would be at the words "The fatal day of wrath is come." We would start there, finish the aria and use the cadence at the end of the piece to transition back to the duplicate one which heralds the entrance of the vocal part at the beginning. I finish discussing this with the accompanist when the chair of the faculty calls out and asks that I just sing. They'll stop me.

So I'm still thinking that the plan the accompanist and I have discussed will be our game plan. Judge my shock when he gives me two bars before my entrance at the beginning of the piece. Rocky start. I miff the melodic figuration of my entrance, though the upward melodic minor scale emerges gracefully and the high note is spot on. But I've already unnerved myself. I'm no longer performing; I'm just surviving. Surviving and observing myself outside my consciousness, cataloguing what is going wrong yet also vaguely (and thankfully) registering what is going right at the same time. Further, I begin to doubt how well I know this piece, resulting in shaky entrances and another flub at the end, missing an entrance and having to make something up a half bar later.

I'm blushing with shame as I finish, somewhat grateful that I can't see the faces of the faculty without my glasses on. The perfunctory "Thank you" from the chair feels cutting as I take my leave.

Outside the hall, the accompanist, perhaps trying to be nice, said I sounded good. "A flub at the end -- who cares?" I pack up slowly, making chit chat about where else I am auditioning, etc. The voice chair walks out en route to the admissions office and quickly apologizes.

"Sorry about the confusion about the B section in an aria that doesn't have one!"

I tell him it really threw me, but he is already gone.

So I packed up and left. I had originally planned to stick around for the 6pm meeting on opera at NEC, but I think I would have exploded in shame. So I called up my mom and gave her the details. While thinking it over and talking it through, the part of my memory that recalled all of the good stuff (every single coloratura passage was pretty great; the tone quality pretty good as well) kicked in. She reminded me that this wasn't a competition, so maybe it wasn't as dire as I had imagined, especially if there were good points. It wasn't news to me that if I thought I had sung poorly, that would obviously complicate my reading of the faculty reaction.

Speaking of the faculty reaction, my mother had some choice words to share with me. First and foremost, she was kind of outraged that the faculty remained silent when I asked where the B section was (and even when I offered up a half-voiced singing of the thematic material I thought could be construed as a B section). At the very least, she contended, they might have piped up that they were mistaken or something, anything to alleviate some of the pressure that they had to have known they put upon me. Subsequent conversation with a close friend echoed her sentiments (Mom: "If the faculty are like that, you don't want to go there anyway, so who cares?") by going further: "If they thought you were stupid for not knowing, that's one thing -- but it seems pretty clear that they had no idea what you were singing. There's a really big problem when teachers think that the way to deal with their ignorance or mistakes is simply to do nothing and hope it doesn't matter."

I wish I had the presence of mind to say either: "I don't believe there is a B section," or "This is not a da capo aria." Lesson #3: I actually know what I'm singing and should be confident of this fact.

We'll see what happens. Onward to the Curtis audition! (will post thoughts on Onegin [and now, on Lohengrin as well] later).

ONE(c)GIN

I was going to write more thoughts on a central epiphany I had about the dramatic construction of Onegin, but I have run out of time. I gotta dress and catch an early flight to Boston for my NEC audition today. WOO!

Assuming the upper voice is doing well (it has been splendid these past couple days), I'm hoping to offer my complete audition repertoire list. It'll give me a chance, maybe, to sing Avant de quitter in a slightly less pressurized condition than at Curtis at the end of the week.

Alrighty - gotta ship out. I'm clearly not going to get dressed unless I do it myself. (oh how hard it is to get decent help these days...)

peabody!

woot! I thought my peabody audition yesterday went really well. since I haven't really done this, I have no idea what an average audition is like. And I have no idea what an average audition at Peabody is like either. But after I was finished (I sang only two: Amarilli, mia bella (solid and "there") -- and then they waffled between Bob's Bedroom and Bella siccome un angelo before settling on Bob (only minor DS on my part - my teacher's term for "dumb shit"), they just start chatting with me in this very positive-feeling way.

John Shirley-Quirk starts out by asking what kind of chemistry I did in school. And we start chatting about this. Then we chatted about why I wanted to do a non-degree program, including the possibility of switching to a B.M. program if I so choosed -- and then, the accompanist chimes in "You'd probably be in a B.M. for only 3 years anyway." In any case, I attempted a joke about it all being theoretical so far -- I needed to be accepted first! (they laughed.)

I don't know how well I read these situations, but I definitely got a very positive vibe from them (which, of course, is reinforced by feeling that I sang well). Letters are sent out April 1, so I have little over a month to second-, triple-, and quadruple-guess myself, heh.

In the end, the proof will be in the pudding when I get that letter. Now I gotta gear up for the next audition at New England! Woot!

edited to add: I totally ran into a classmate from college while I was there! (i think 3 years behind me -- he was at the school for a conducting audition. We chatted a bit. Surreal. And he told me that the vocal program here is really good. He got in for undergrad, and although he ultimately didn't come here, he still thought it was a good place.

Also, does Peabody not have a good string program? I sat in on a Peabody Chamber Orchestra rehearsal for Les contes d'Hoffman and some of the string sounds were reminiscent of my days playing with the local Symphony Orchestra as a kid.

Preparations (non-musicaux)

I spent a bit of time today organizing the musical materials for my auditions (the first of which is this coming Tuesday). This includes writing up various repertoire lists (full, no high, no low, no high or low), copying music from their bound incarnations, and flagging the appropriate places in the scores.

If it seems a little fussy, it is -- but some schools don't want auditionees to bring copied music (makes sense) but others don't say one way or the other. I'm prepared to offer the binder or the big stack (and it really is a stack) for the auditioners' preference.

Even looking over the repertoire list (which has been cut down), it seems a little nuts for the undergraduate level, but each one offers a different look at my singing, never mind the language requisites.

• Italian
1. Tu lo sai
2. Amarilli, mia bella
3. Bella siccome un angelo
4. Il fervido desiderio


• English
1. Bob's Bedroom Aria
2. See the raging flames arise
3. Silent Noon


• French
1. D'une prison
2. Avant de quitter


• German
1. Im Rhein
2. Ich grolle nicht
3. Rollen in schäumenden Wellen

It's a fun list. We'll see how it goes on Tuesday at Peabody. Then, there might need to be additional strategizing. I haven't really thought about what I would want to start with. Thoughts include Bob, Amarilli, and See the raging flames. Will have to think further.

I also have other thoughts about the Twyla Tharp book on the creative process that I'm reading, but that'll have to be another post. Mmm, tired.

i'm going to tell you a story...

Three-part story, actually.

So far, I have only sent out domestic applications to music schools/conservatories. I've heard back from them regarding auditions:

• The Juilliard School


• The Peabody Institute - February 20th


• The Curtis Institute - March 3 and provisionally, the finals on March 6


• The New England Conservatory - March 4

Applications that still need to go out:

• The Mozarteum


• Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia


• The Royal Conservatory of the Hague


• The Prague Conservatory

Whew! That's the first story. The second is related.

I must admit that I am apprehensive about the audition process, not least about the Curtis audition. Part of this is a mark of how new this is to me in contrast to analytical, academic work; it's not like the suggestion of vocal training was pushed on me from all sides because my talent was heavily evident (haha, quite the reverse!). Of course, this Curtis-anxiety is also more than a little related to the situation of having my mom as my mom, who attended Curtis as a voice student. Although she has been supportive about my decision to give music performance a good try (once we fought about it enough to realize I was serious), she's at least been honest and realistic. According to her, my voice is only so-so in quality, though she readily admits that I've made incredible progress since I started and is sometimes surprised by what can happen (cf. my first high C that was actually sung, not yelled). That being said, her prediction is that I won't be accepted either at Curtis or Juilliard, at least half of which is now true.

My original trepidation about Curtis is that since they do not pre-screen with recordings, I could be invited to audition for them and completely waste their time (though, to be honest, a 10 minute preliminary audition, even with all of the scheduling demands, would seem to be easily covered by application and audition fees, so I need to get over this odd feeling of fraudulence). With Juilliard (and Peabody), at least they could review the recording and decide if what they heard was sufficiently interesting enough to invite for a live audition. At least, that's what I hear in my head, which tends to help calm the nerves.

So, I present enough promise to be invited to audition at the Peabody but not Juilliard. Fulfillment of another prediction -- this time by Stanley Cornett of the Peabody faculty. When I first arrived in the area, it was with the intention of attempting to find a Peabody faculty member to give me private lessons, with an eye to apply and attend the conservatory. When I met with him for a consultation, I sang very poorly. At the time (about a year ago), I hadn't had vocal instruction for over 6 months, and I was trying to figure things out on my own, which was kind of a lottery approach. In any case, he had semi-compliments about my aggressive - I think that's the word he used - approach to singing, which is somewhat amusing since that's what my violin teacher said about my playing when I played my audition for her as a wee beteen (although I had studied with another teacher for some time and was auditioning for her as the last hoop I was going to jump through as a decision to see if I wanted to quit playing, I think of my last violin teacher as my main influence, herself a Curtis graduate). Stan asked if I was aware that going back to school would be pricey and that work in this field was far from easy. He also encouraged me to apply, saying that I would probably get in, though I would be considered in a lower tier of students -- students that didn't get into other top-tier schools such as Curtis and Juilliard (the exact names he threw out), but I sensed that he didn't think it worthwhile, judging from his demeanor, though that easily could have been a conflation of my overwhelming sense of shame that was washing over me for singing so poorly.

The good news is that even by the time I made my audition tape for Juilliard and Peabody, the voice had advanced an incredible amount. From that time until now, I think the voice's development has made another series of important breakthroughs. Although he's probably right that the voice, at least now, just isn't cut out for Juilliard or Curtis, I've got about a month to really grit my teeth and work right up until the last moment. This is the first series of finish lines in the short-term goal of getting into a program (attending and finishing the program will be a much bigger goal/challenge, but one step at a time), and I want to be able have fun and give everyone a run for their money.

Which leads me to the third story. I discovered further exactly what it means to sing without the throat being unnecessarily involved. The first lesson that I had since I returned from vocal bootcamp, my teacher was pleased and approved, but we focused a lot on vowel fidelity and non-manufacturing (which are problems of mine, but my mother, who has very specific ideas of what is a "valuable" voice and what isn't) since that was becoming fuzzy. Specifically, I had amalgamated the "O" vowel with the "Ah" vowel and that's not so good when that happens in every part of the range.

I was working on it yesterday, singing through the scale exercises based on "vien, diletto," but making sure that I was singing "ah" and not "o". I had to rework a lot of things -- but primarily, I had to re-jigger my approach to the "ah" vowel in the middle voice. Even at comparatively comfortable pitches, the "ah" vowel was lacking that open looseness I felt with the "o" vowel that allowed an easy cascade of rapid notes. And I realized that the reason why I kept mixing my vowels. "O" as a vowel, opened up relatively easily in my voice. Expanding its resonance was fairly easy, and it also felt and sounded beautiful to me as well as to an outside listener. I could feel my body vibrating and the sound rolling out from me. It's an addicting feeling, even though I'm sure I haven't even tapped into how far I can take it. So there's always the urge to go back to that. What I discovered when I finally sang on "ah" with the open looseness of "o" is that although the physical, sound-creation sensations were similar, the sensation of sound could not be more different. "Ah" felt coarse, like it had too much chest registration in it, and while I still need to play around with that aspect to it, the fact of the matter is that "Ah" is just not going to sound like "o" in my head and I should stress it. The little throat catch that I had been making until yesterday was a result of my trying to 'manufacture' a like sensation for the "ah" vowel. This discovery eventually freed up the scales, and I was cascading notes again with a greater freedom and a greater joyousness. Amusing to say the least, since Cornelius Reid writes about purity of intonation and vowel and freedom from throat constrictor tensions would allow flexibility in the voice; and I had worked a little bit of that out using flexibility as the key. Hee.

As thrilled as I was about that discovery, there was something even more. My teacher is either insane or thinks much more highly of me/my voice development than I had originally thought. She gave me no fewer that 7 new songs to work on, 2 arie antiche, 4 Ralph-Vaughan Williams songs, 'Non siate ritrosi,' and 'Avant de quitter ces lieux.' And this is on top of keeping my previously designated audition repertoire in shape. And on top of looking for some german repertoire.

When she threw out 'Avant' as something to look at, she then thought about it, and asked me if I thought that was too ambitious. I wasn't familiar with it at all, so I told her I had no idea. But, I figured, I'd look at it -- if it turned out unsuitable, we could just drop it. So that night, I fished out that G. Schirmer book of baritone (and other voice parts in other volumes) solos and took a quick look at it. Ok, F is the highest note and it happens only 3 times. The rest of it didn't look like it had a terribly high tessitura. It looked alright. So after going through and reading the text, puzzling out the french I didn't know (just a couple words), and sight-reading through a couple times, I figured I'd give it a listen to see what was going on.

I popped onto youtube and watched Troy Cook, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Leonard Warren, Alan Titus, an older Cappucilli, and Simon Keenlyside sing it; I think I heard Warren first. I don't actually like Warren's sound quality all that much, though clearly, he's able to do some amazing things with it -- it goes without saying that he sounded completely at ease with it. Alrighty, then. After listening to a couple others, I began to wonder. Huh...why do they sound kind of funny and why do they look like it's effortful. Couple F's?

I peered at some of the comments and realized something. Although the aria was composed separately in the key of D flat major, when it was inserted into the opera, it was transposed up a step to the key of E flat major; those Fs are now Gs.

So when it came time to look at the things I had been asked to look at on Saturday, I pulled out 'Avant de quitter' in this weird state of "err...can I do this?" I had decided that I might as well learn at it in the higher key. I could drop it down a step with more ease than raise it from the lower key. Warbling through, I was kind of amazed at how easy it was going. At the time, I attributed it mainly to the psychological effect of seeing D flats while singing E flats. Of course this helped, but it was only later when I figured something out. The first came and went without a hitch. In fact, I had to check to see if that was in fact a G that I had sung. Yup. Dead on. It wasn't without its problems -- the pitch is still not hooked completely up with the rest of the voice and there are still some issues with dismounting from high notes when switching from a vowel to a consonant -- but the actual ascent and sustaining of the pitch were much easier and more natural. The hell...?

E flats were dead on and had much more spin than I expected. G flat, though the poorest of all the high notes, didn't present nearly as much trouble as it normally does (since it sits on a really weird spot in my voice at the moment). Second and third G's were pretty much the same as the first. I was kind of stunned. Further, the voice felt completely fine and I still had notes down to the very lowest ones that I had sung when I started (this is a pretty good barometer of how much throat constriction is going on).

After a quick pause to let the voice calm down a bit, I went back to the G's since I wanted to work on going from the high G to the B flat to see if I couldn't improve the transition. Wouldn't you know it -- I had worked on it multiple times before checking pitches on the piano to learn that from its higher key, I had accidentally been practicing it up a half-step from that, so I was singing A flats.

At this point I was dumbfounded and absolutely certain that I was playing on a piano that had gone flat. Except...the low notes were exactly where I expected them to be, and if the entire piano was flat, it was still remarkably in tune with itself. Of course, as the practice wore on, the familiar difficulty with high notes returned. But at that point, I was so determined to figure it out, I start figuratively bashing my head against the wall to get it work out, which, of course, wasn't all that effective.

On a whim, I thought I'd practice my "ah" vowel lower in range to incorporate the open loose sensation into my muscle and sensory memory. On a further whim, I thought I'd check the high lying phrase from "Avant" right after.

G came sailing out without a hitch. Aha! The little throat grab had been responsible all along! Grrrrr! It seems like this issue should have been cleared out long ago -- but it's been a persistent problem, and although I'm sure my teacher knows that something is up, the exact nature of it isn't immediately apparent. More and more, I'm learning things from my own voice. It's a good feeling (it fits with my overall goals of self-sufficiency in all aspects of my life), and I think it means that I'm on a good path for now.

Let's see how much work I can get done in a month! Renji sez: You're gonna do WHAT?

abarai kenji - interrupted!

I'll have to delay the paen to Abarai Kenji (I know, I know, my Bleach obsession has really gotten out of control. It's all your fault, youtube!!!).

Anyhow, it's getting to be the school audition season, so I get back to talking about that. I'll have more updates regarding that as I receive notices. However, I need to keep a goal list during the home stretch about the technical things that I want to accomplish. So here goes.

• Solidify the range from low f to high f. I need to know that I can count on these notes. Iffy notes begin at low g and high e. No need to go berserk on the higher notes (since I won't be singing them at these auditions) unless it turns out to be psychologically bolstering to know that high c's come out of this voice (and they do -- they just won't be performed....yet).


• Increase the suppleness of scales. No tightening. Let the voice position itself -- it knows best. Just keep the voice as forward within its comfort zone as possible.


• Uniformity of sound, or at least uniformity of resonance, from low f to high e. High f would be great but generally unnecessary.


• Work on attacks, especially in the mid to high voice so that the quality of tone that I want begins immediately,


• Work on the releases as well -- this should facilitate phrases I must sing in the high range that have consonants that require closing the mouth.


• Speaking of consonants, work on increasing their placisity so that they help enable legato and voice-placement rather than hindering them.


• !!!!Vowel purity!!! within this range


• The Schwarzkopf responsibility^TM: I am responsible for how every note sounds. I must be confident that I can draw the maximum resonance for each tone every time the first time and that I can paint confidently with the colors of my voice by intention and not accident.

I think that's quite a handful. We'll see if I can get there in time.