The new school year has kicked off, and it's already crazy with all sorts of busy-ness. Suppose it's just as well to jump right in, right?
This'll be kind of short, but progress is coming along with vocal development. I feel much more mixed about it than I should because it's not developing in the specific order I'd like it to (but it's doing all kinds of nutty [good] things in many unplanned or unforeseen ways). More (or less) on this later.
However, this post is more about a trip I took to Durham, NC to visit a great friend of mine. During this trip we discovered that Foster's and the Q shack are incredibly tasty, for different reasons, and that the L word really is a good show with male eye candy (who would have thought?).
Though maybe it's just me...
Now, back to sleeping. And Haydn songs.
Monday, December 24, 2007
I am now home for the holidays (mmmmmm!) and my sister just "made" me (because really, I didn't protest very much at all) watch the first National Treasure in preparation for the National Treasure movie that just opened.
I now confess I have a mildly massive geek-crush on Justin Bartha, the guy who plays geeky Riley Poole. Here are some blue eyes (of which I am usually not such a fan) to keep dreaming about:
Alright, so it's no golden triumphal thong, but in some ways, it might be even better. OperaChic should be pleased (that is, if she isn't already familiar with this!)
I was looking through the magazine rack at the bookstore close to work and I saw the cover of NYMag with NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer on the front.
Whoah.
I had (and still don't) really have any idea of who he is.
So I opened it up and saw this:
...
whoah.
And then I saw this and realized the magic of a photo shoot and judicious cropping.
Which isn't to say that he's unattractive, but there be some photo magic happening in the first two.
There's something related here between judicious cropping and the the technologies of performance reproduction (speaking of, I'm curious what Adorno has to say about this. I'm still somewhat daunted by the size of his "Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction"), but I can't think of it right now without sounding tired and obvious.
Tuned in to the Met bcast of Simon Boccanegra and while Rebecca Paller (who talks in that stoned-sounding yet articulate way some do) is chatting with Margaret Juntwait, looking at pictures of Thomas Hampson.
Then it hits me -- I have, what they call in the vernacular, a daddy fetish. Salt and pepper hair, more mature build, facial scruffiness - it's all kind of there. Everything except the my being submissive part (ha).
Capsule review: Hearing Salome in live performance is so different from watching it on video or listening to recordings; this was my first live Salome (which is so weird, because I've seen many videos, my brain remembers these as Salome events even though they're not the same at all). The NSO played with a lugubrious sound, playing with nonchalance and with a curious emphasis on juxtaposing the breathtaking (a gossamer viola tremelo) with the vulgar (a flatulant rising bassoon figure) with unique effects. Also really "heard" for the first time are the beautiful contributions of the harp and celeste -- neither of which I ever noticed in any recording. Must revisit.
DV took a while to warm up to my ears (it took until after the Dance). The sound mixture is still something that I think I'll have to acquire a taste for (listening to her is like the world suddenly cranked up the treble and obliterated the bass equalizer settings), but I can definitely see what the hoopla is about. Everyone was fine, though they put the less principal singers way back in the choir rows, which is weird, since the distance from those singers to the podium is one half the distance from the podium to the first row of the lower balcony in the center. Hence not so audible.
Alan Held was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good look at him in action since I was sitting side balcony on the side he was assigned. Why they assigned virtually all of the soloists on this side I will never know, but I got uninterrupted view of DB (who wore a gorgeous, clingy red dress with very flattering ruching and a plunging neckline showing off a sparkly diamond (I'm guessing) necklace).
Leonard Slatkin was amazingly genial and humorous in the Q&A afterwards. The suspicion I had of DV's charm and wonderful personality was given further evidence. However she did mention one thing that got me thinking.
Someone had asked the singers to comment on any famous predecessors in their respective roles that had influenced him. Jane Henschel, the Herodias, related a story about sharing the role with Leonie Rysanek at La Scala (hearty agreement from the other singers). DV then mentioned that she tried to stay away from listening to recordings of other sopranos singing her repertoire, and she mentioned a lot about how human beings are mimics, etc.
This reminded me of a book I was reading a couple weeks ago, Animals in Translation. The book covers a fair bit of general information about cognition, including certain quirks of the how the human brain works (and interestingly, the author talks about humans having a three-tiered brain, one encompassing the other; at base, we have a reptilian brain which controls very basic functions like breathing, body regulation, etc.; then a mammalian brain, which would include other functions specific to mammals, such as temperature regulation; and finally, the primate brain -- incidentally, it would then follow that we would most likely share more things in common with reptiles than with birds or fish). One of the bigger quirks is something called inattentional blindness. So far as I understand it, the human brain is primed to "expect" certain things as part of a process. Anything not related to this is screened out from consciousness. It's like our conscious thought is acting like CEO of a company (I know, really tired analogy) and any information that reaches the CEO has to be pre-screened by a bunch of different underlings before finally making it there. The classic study involved a bunch of people asked to watch a basketball game. They were told they were going to have to answer questions about scoring or some such, hence putting their focus on the game. Afterwards, all of them were asked if they saw anything unusual -- the unusual incident being a woman dressed in a full gorilla suit walking into the foreground, batting her chest, and then walking out. Very few people mentioned anything. There are further studies that the author of Animals in Translation (Temple Grandin) mentions that suggest that although the consciousness might not have "seen" things, the body certainly did.
This, then, begs the question of just how much of human perceptual limitations are because of this inattentional blindness and how much of it is because we actually can't hear/smell/taste/feel something? Grandin's main theme is comparing brain functions of so-called normal humans (who exhibit a certain level of frontal lobe activity) with austistic humans (who exhibit lower levels and/or different kinds of frontal lobe activity) and then with mammals (who, having smaller frontal lobes, have much lower frontal lobe activity), drawing on her own experience as an autistic woman to tie it all together. It's not a clear-cut theme, and she doesn't pretend it is (it's a really subtle and interesting read -- recommended), but it does make one wonder about certain things about human brains placing limits that the body itself doesn't have.
How does this relate to DV's comment? Well, assuming that the brain is sticky and we are mimics -- unless we isolate ourselves into crazy iron lungs and never encounter anybody, there's no such thing as a "pure" me or a "pure" you. It's the same question of trying to hear a piece with "ears of the 18th century." It just can't be done. Things that you have heard cannot be unheard. One of my favorite analogies for irreversible thermodynamic processes applies here: "It's like baking bread. You can't exactly undo it." Speaking of, I just baked a transcendent-smelling loaf of whole wheat. mmmmm can't wait for tomorrow to taste it!
Wait, where was I? Oh yeah -- so then if it is impossible to keep oneself "pure?" What does trying to avoid listening to recordings or other singers of your repertoire really accomplish? Note, this is only partly rhetorical.
Obviously, from a mechanistic standpoint, one must find how one's own voice works and develop that. I would think that such stylistic self-knowledge would be somewhat self-evident. I think that once there is an established sense of being, one can "safely" listen to many different interpretations -- the more the better. I could never imagine a chef saying he would never again eat anything he didn't cook for fear it would screw up his cooking. Or that mathematicians/scientists would not bother learning about anything someone else was studying.
I mean, I get the Foucaldian implications of ascribing to a certain thought-pattern and thereby accepting its limitations as well as its benefits. But since that's going to be the case regardless of what you decide to do, the least one should do is expand the choices? I dunno. Perhaps an understanding of this listening-phobia will come to me later.
Jockish sensitivity is super hot. Combine that with tatts, a funky outfit, and way of talking that immediately draws attention to what the lips *must* be doing to pronounce in that way and you get....Abarai Renji. Fictitious character from the Bleach anime.
Renji, Renji. I could listen to you say "Baka!" (at 0:12) over and over again and never get tired. Actually, looping that single word over and over would probably cause sensation overload.
Ok, I'm going to drive high-school English teachers batty (like I haven't already with my contorted sentence construction? oh crap, there I go again) and write about things completely out of order with respect to the subject line. I dunno, it just seemed silly to put hawt men first in the series, like it'd make me shallow or something (hee hee), but it's such a pleasurable topic that I'm going to talk about it first anyway. Yeah, so see that guy on the left? Yeah. Him. I have no idea who he is aside from the main model featured at N2Bodywear, which, according to fleshbot (NESFW = "not exactly safe for work"), is becoming the gay man's destination for wear, or something. Of that I don't really know, since I hate shopping for clothing, but this guy is some serious dreaminess. At least according to all of the physical quirky characteristics that I seem drawn to (muscles don't really fall into this, though I really don't mind them, saint that I am). I won't list them here because, well, it would serve no real purpose -- I don't need to be reminded of them and I doubt you (all like one of you, not including me) would want to know anyway.
I used to play water polo with a great group of guys (and girls, but they were fewer when I was there) on the Upper East Side when I lived in the NYC area. And I wasn't a slouch in a swimsuit (although there was another player who was seriously a walking wet dream -- my voice completely died whenever he was within 5 feet. hehe, when I first met him out poolside and he shook my hand, giving me the single-most beautiful smile I've seen, I have to admit that although it had been some time since I was in high school, my inner monologue was hyperventilating and deliriously shrieking "he's smiling and touching my hand and saying hi and talking to me and omg omg omg omg omg SAY SOMETHING" like that one friend we all had in high school who would *not* shut up about being asked out by X), this guy is some serious hawtness going on. wow.
Ok, moving on (though I'd rather stay), vocal bootcamp has officially begun. After a morning kuchipudi warmup (if you follow the link, you'll see a great example of the distinctive head swivel movements and accompanying eye gestures that are really fun to practice:
pose your upper body as if you were doing a bodybuilding pose flexing your biceps
bring your hands down to grip your shoulders, right hand gripping right shoulder and left gripping left
extend the index finger of each hand toward your neck about an inch from touching on either side
without tilting the head, and keeping the rest of your body as motionless as possible, touch your neck to one index finger, hold, then touch your neck to the other finger -- you should feel the back of your neck working)
and then additional "breathing exercises" to wake-up the inter-costal muscles and practice their gentle suspension (this and ACB's post about unconditional gentleness as applied to singing have been big breakthroughs for me, technically, which have been lurking just below the surface for some time) before starting to vocalize.
I might have mentioned this yesterday (wow, so tired can't even remember and am too lazy to go look), but inter-costal suspension as described by my mother was finally clarified. Originally, when we first started working, me as a rank beginner singer (I take comfort in Franco Corelli's interview with Jerome Hines as transcribed in Great Singers on Great Singing wherein he states that he didn't even begin to sing until age 18. Good lord, I'm not Corelli, but it's always nice to know that it's not an automatic strike-out, starting that late. Just almost an automatic one, heh, esp. for us non-Corellis), my mom would try to get me to suspend the inter-costals by loosely tying a robe sash (or a scarf or what not) around the torso. It doesn't work perfectly, since it'll still slip because breathing requires compression of the torso to some extent or another -- so I always thought the idea was to keep this ring of suspension constant, which turns out to not be the case. New conception - the inter-costals just need to be kept out in the left and right directions. Forward and back can be distended and expanded per the needs of breathing.
Gentleness has definitely helped me go beyond the limited comprehension of resonance. Since pretty early on in my singing development, I've likened the process of creating the "unusual volume" necessary for classical singing not unlike maximizing the amount of sound from an empty glass bottle by blowing on it. Like all athletics, a certain degree of muscle strength and stamina is required, but there are pretty severe diminishing returns on additional such traits. More effective is the technique employed: blowing really hard on a bottleneck will create only a thin sound, if it creates any kind of tone at all. Rather, a steady stream of air applied just so will afford a room-filling radiance. So this I knew -- it just required the additional idea of unconditional gentleness in singing. High notes are not "relaxed" but they are gentle, a far cry from most beginning singers' approach to them: with a lot of constrictor tensions and useless stowaway force. So once having spent the time to go through multiple vowels on multiple pitches and figuring out which things are *necessary* to create a gentle sound and which things just come along for the ride just because has helped because I know have more variables to adjust in finding that perfect bottle resonance.
This whole thing about gentleness giving rise to great volume also brings up an interesting hurdle I'll have to deal with later: that of conveying forceful and tension-inducing sentiments/emotions in manners which don't produce tensions. Anger, for example. I imagine that most people, when angry, clench *something*: the jaw, the throat, fists, something (the jaw and throat seem pretty common, instinctual responses), some of which doesn't matter to sound production (fists), but others are pretty vital (jaw, throat) -- so how to feel anger, display anger in such a way that doesn't trigger these reactions. It's been an interesting experience in conditioning, this singing thing.
The results are pretty nice though - a much more uniform sound that is far more rich (it's missing some of the upper partials still, but I'm confident that I'll fill them in) and imposing than before. Verily, with gentleness, the upper voice is starting to come into line -- high Gs and high As were not only relaxed, but had noticeably more spin and body to them than previous (good signs) without showing signs that this is at all the limit of the voice (also good).
In any event, here is a short playlist from Bizet's Pecheurs de Perles with arias sung by Annick Massis (lovely! see if you agree that towards the end of her aria, Comme autrefois, she looks like Ana Gasteyer) and young and handsome Alfredo Kraus.
This leads fairly nicely into my last topic: buccal articulations! If you watch Massis in the final trill of the aria, there definitely are buccal articulations there as she warms up the trill. The most visible singer who uses these articulations constantly is, of course, Vivica Genaux. I had recently purchased the short dvd-special on VG from fanfaire (see the excerpt below linked from fanfaire) and she talks about them. It's true that she looks very free of tension in singing them. Indeed, a tight movement like that would make singing nigh impossible. The crazy thing is I think buccally articulated coloratura mightn't be difficult to practice, exactly. I had this thought whilst watching Mari Lyn on youtube (if you haven't seen her, do yourself a favor and go watch for a laugh) and obviously, her singing is not really to be taken as a paragon of technique or anything aside from delusions of grandeur. However, there might be something to thinking wa-wa-wa as the "text" for coloratura singing and then just muddy up the enunciation, so it just sounds like weirdly articulated coloratura. This may be a plausible explanation for what's going on with Genaux's singing.
Buccal articulations aside, Genaux seems a puzzling singer, to me, anyway. Everything is scrupulously prepared. The text is beautifully enunciated and very idiomatically accented (the dvd also shows Genaux rehearsing a pretty great rendition of Eliza Doolittle), the voice strong and vibrant, particularly in its low register. There's still something missing though, and I'm not really sure what it is. Perhaps I'll figure it out, but until then it's somewhat a puzzle to me still what exactly it is that is magnetic about certain performances. This realization itself isn't that surprising -- I just wish I understood well enough to describe it more specifically. Hehe, I think I'll stop here, but I need to remind myself to write about Varvara in Janacek's Katya at some point. And now, it is time to eat cookies!
Edited to add: Bah, I can't seem to get the WMP to stop auto-starting. And since I hate it when webpages autoplay crap like that, I'll just send you to the excerpt itself so you can decide if you want to see it or not! clicky!
O, Trent, your laconic pout has known so many incarnations. A draughtsman's pen, the bowlegged curl of a cowboy's hat, and an ersatz woman's coif have all rested so fetchingly on those treasured, beringèd ears. I would be jealous of their attention if only you paid them equal mind as you worked your daily magic, your butchers' knife whirring its flitting dance with bloody almost-steak, a melodic croakly croon seducing the steel larynx of your microphone. O, Trent, if you only knew of the adventures that await us.
You could to antique Vienna as Paganini, with me your wigmaker and tailor, to conquer audiences with il cannone del gesu feverishly singing at the behest of your rakish, knowing fingers; we might share a physical intimacy known only between a gentleman and the fitter of lace to your wrists, the measurer of your inseam.
The luxe hydra-headed shower of a wealthy patron may languish without our ministrations, we, the grunting contractors of a construction firm before-Ehrenreich. And I would wait on baited breath to show how close to heart I keep your comfort should you sustain injury or fatigue or should an errant brush against my toolbelt remove the vital button of your overalls.
But perhaps more earthy delights await us in a South Boston butcher shop, our rapport so subtle, we could hold conversations in the percussive echoes of cleavers meeting butcher blocks, untold stories contained in the act of stuffing a sausage together.
O, Trent, such feelings you engender in me. Such experiences we could share -- being clutched in the lee of your chest as you defend our lives with your whip, the tearful silent whispers of longing as you mime your mute but brimming love for me, a torrential summer soaking from your long, powerful hose.
Omg! The Teatro alla Scala and Roberto Alagna scandal is the opera story of the hour/week. Such drama! Is it bad that I'm almost more interested in that than the production itself? (almost -- Roberto Bolle dancing in a golden thong is kind of amazing, cutie patootie that he is). However, I do prefer the ruggedly delectable Marcelo Gomes of ABT myself (his pictures grace my blog) and you can see him dance in the youtube below (facial hair! WIN!). I am kicking myself for not snagging that Sunday NYT ad with a picture of him with the most sensuous expression and hunky facial hair. But yes, Roberto Bolle would never be kicked out of *my* bed for eating crackers...in it...oh crap, how does that expression go? Damn.
For more of the scandale (and more importantly, more Roberto Bolle!!!) go check out la donna in milanoOperaChic!
chasing a dream by joining the footrace to become a singer, only I'm still trying to crash the registration while everyone is already queuing up at the starting line
