Tech Talk and Other Things

I haven't written much here lately....I suppose I have been too busy with The Artists Way. Also I have had a conversation offline with Zachary.

One thing I began brooding over was this post by Dr. Brian Lee, particularly the sections on warmups and cooldowns. These are not things I do regularly nor did anyone ever tell me to.  Could this be the source of all my trouble with high notes?  I certainly do plenty to get the voice going and I know when things feel "off" (for me) and (usually) how to get things back on track, certainly in my comfortable range, which may simply be low A to high A for life (according to an article for Wikipedia, that is the range for a mezzo anyhow and anything else is "gravy").  I had asked my teacher about the lip trill, which I seemed to have trouble with, and he said it was not helpful for heavier voices (I wrote once to Dr. Lee about this and he didn't disagree).  My teacher said to roll an R instead.  But we don't do this at every lesson nor do I do it with every practice.  Mostly these things are for when I need a warmup if I have to sing and am too far away from my last practice at home session, or if my voice feels off track even after doing progressions on "oo" (what both my current teacher and The Mentor - who was a good voice teacher, her just brought too much nonsense, both sexualized and just plain "New Age silly" into the lessons - have had me do at the beginning of each practice session).   In any event, I emailed my teacher the link to Dr. Lee's article.  I haven't heard back from him, but he may think it's ok to discuss it at my lesson.  I can't imagine that he would be annoyed;  one of the many things I like about him is he seems to be receptive to any idea I want to discuss. If he disagrees, he will tell me why.

In other news, yesterday was the last choir practice of the year (if we sing in the summer we just show up on Sunday morning early) so I gave the choir director some of my aria books to look through.  I might do an aria from Handel's Theodora called "Lord to Thee Each Night and Day."  Going with the words alone it is very generic and seasonless, but I looked on You Tube and found a version sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson which is very sad. Perhaps in context the aria is sad? We also looked at some arias by Raff, a composer I had never heard of but the choir director had, from an oratorio called The World's End. The choir director said Raff was a friend of Brahms'. Last, we looked at "Panus Angelicus". Neither version I have is in an ideal key, one has the highest note (which is repeated a great deal) as only a D, and the other has it as an F sharp. Probably the higher key is better, as long as I sing my supported pianissimo, which I can do. (I have sung the Faure "Pie Jesu" several times at the church.) I also may audition for some Christmas concerts. I have no idea if there is money involved, but it doesn't matter, as long as I am cast as a soloist. Other than my church choir, I would not sing in a chorus for no money. These concerts are being managed by the woman in whose living room I sang the "Judgment Scene" from Aida several years ago (with a bass colleague).  I thought it was some of my best singing but I did not make the cut for a recital she was giving.  However she seemed genuinely happy to hear from me (we had become reacquainted on Facebook) and said she would tell me when the callbacks were (I didn't need to come to the first round of auditions because she had already heard me.)  So as one of my "Artists Way" artist dates I looked through my book of Christmas solos and reviewed a variety of them.