I feel it behooves me to write when things are going well as much as when they are not.
I now have a very busy Good Friday, with several featured spots. I will be singing the Rossini "Agnus Dei" in the noon service, which I had agreed to do before I knew what was going to be going on with the evening service. Now I see that I will also be part of three of the solo quartets in the Dvorak Requiem at night. I am thrilled. There is nothing vocally demanding there (the most vocally demanding thing is one line in the soprano chorus part, which I am still singing, and which I know what to do with technically as I can sing it full voice). It is musically demanding, especially for me as someone who does not have a music theory background. But to date my ear has not failed me (I was able to nail my solo line in all the Verdi Requiem ensembles) so it will not fail me now. A friend gave me an iPad, so I can put it on my dining table with my electronic keyboard and sing against various Youtube videos of the sections I need to learn. Of course I can read music. A very respected voice teacher gave a lecture about how instrumentalists laugh at singers who can't read music (I assume she was talking about nonclassical singers who don't read music at all.). What I can't do is sight sing because I don't know anything about chord structure. But I will master this. There are four measures that are very difficult, but I can feel myself on top of them already. The rest should be simple. I mean there have been times when we were singing a choral piece and I ended up being the only second soprano and I never had a problem.
What's also nice is that the solos are in the form of a quartet so everyone who wants a solo can have one. In one of the quartets I will be switched out for the other mezzo who wants a solo, which makes me very happy. When I was unhappy, it was never that I wanted all the good stuff for myself, it was that I wanted the good stuff distributed equitably.
What's sort of bittersweet is that (apparently) it seems that this meltdown that I had did some good. Afterwards I was embarrassed, because it looked like I got upset over a very small thing, but it was not over that one thing it was over something that had been brewing for a long time. Maybe the squeaky wheel truism is really, well, true?
Anyhow, it's now a new day, and I am praying now to be worthy of all the opportunities I have been blessed with.
Last night I sang Schubert's "Abendlied" in an evening church service, and it was well received. Someone may have made a video. I am not sure. And I had a nice conversation with the two choir directors about Schubert. I said I would be happy for more suggestions of lieder to sing. We discussed "Du Bist die Ruh" which I have in several keys. That would be nice for a church service because the "du" could be taken to mean "God".
That's really all I had been asking for. To have people believe that I have a future. If I am singing better at 64 than I ever did, there is an object lesson there somewhere.
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