Well, a powerhouse high G at any event. (Or maybe this could mean the C sharp that I have been singing consistently for the first time in my life.)
My Sunday solo "O Magnum Mysterium" went really well. It was the first time in years that I have sung a "big" piece in church. This new Director of Music has much more eclectic tastes in singing and in fact when we rehearsed the piece I made a joke to the effect that the choir director (who is still the choir director but who no longer schedules solos) would have shot me through the head if he had heard me blast the windows out with the climactic top G, and the new Director said that no, he considered that sort of sound appropriate for a solo if it was marked forte. (He also said once that even in choral singing, if the note is above the staff, sopranos have a "free pass" to sing as loud as we need to to make the note sound good.)
Best of all was that when I sang that piece yesterday I got a lot of compliments including someone telling me it was "awesome".
Maybe I will try "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth" again near Easter? I hadn't planned to sing at all in April because that's when I will be rehearsing Carmen, but I might be able to squeeze it in right after Easter if that is not a choir Sunday. Or I may get to sing another solo bit on Good Friday. And if not I can sing at the noon service the way I did last year. With all the freedom I've been given maybe I can try "Liber Scriptus".
So now it's back to the "Seguidilla". My upper register didn't sound all that great in today's practice, on the other hand I did a lot of singing Christmas Eve (just choral singing and caroling), and then this solo yesterday.
Wednesday I have a lesson.
This year I have not made New Year's resolutions. It seems that usually at some point in the year (usually between July - my birthday month - and September, which feels like the New Year to me) something big happens that leads me to reevaluate where I'm going and what I need to do differently. This year it was the upset over my birthday. Two years ago it was upset over all the snark in the blogosphere over my singing the "Habanera" in the bookstore.
Overall this has been a good year for me. I have been singing better and better, achieving a level of technical proficiency that has surprised me. I have discovered I like helping children with their homework. I was mentioned in an article in Classical Singer. Actually in two articles if you include the anonymous mention of my singing in the bookstore, which wasn't a putdown, really. And hey! It was enough of a "thing" to keep being mentioned over and over. So chutzpah pays. Howevermuch talent, ability, or credentials you do or don't have.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Aria da Capo?
A few days ago, I ran into a man who used to sing in the choir at my old UU church. The minister with whom I had so much discord has been gone for some time I had run into this man before, and he had invited me to come back and "see what was going on" but I declined. Theologically I still consider myself a Unitarian, but they don't know how to "do" theater the way the high church Protestants do. That's it in a nutshell. And when it comes to social justice organizing, the Lutheran church does as much, if not more, than my old UU church, so all bases are covered. So, OK, I hear things I know are not "true", but hey! myths and fairy tales are lovely, and I am careful what I say and do. I will sing anything, I will wear anything. I don't take communion and don't speak prayers that begin with the words "I believe" because hey! that's not "generic mezzo-soprano church soloist" singing, that's me Babydramatic with her Jewish maternal relatives behind her saying, "I believe". So I pass on that. But all in all, the Lutheran church offers a better package.
This time, however, when I ran into my friend, he said that the church had gotten rid of the choir (who was singing Beatle songs when last heard from) and used "paid guest soloists". He said they even had classical music from time to time. So, well, yes!!! I would love to sing there as a guest if I got paid. I certainly sound as good as a lot of paid soloists, I just have given up trying to become a paid section leader somewhere because I don't sightread and can't seem to be bothered learning.
So I sent in a resume.
We will see.
I have no idea if The Mentor is still going there. I think he spends most of his time traveling teaching dance, now mostly to (female) burlesque dancers. I have totally gotten over my lust for him and my fear of him. I am grateful that he got me to sing. If I hadn't been spellbound by singing Dalila leaning against his powerful wiry body, staring into his eyes as if we were about to float off somewhere for a tryst, I wouldn't be doing all the things I am doing today. So every single tear, even the afternoon he frightened and humiliated me so much that I wanted to jump out his window, was worth it.
I know I won't be thrown if he is there. The last time our paths crossed was in 2010 when I sang an aria from Gounod's Sappho and we had a nice "workmanlike" conversation about vocal technique.
I still would love to figure him out, though. He is not like any gay (or straight) man I have ever met. He is obsessed with women (all his gigs seem to involve him in a gaggle of them and all the pictures he posts show him with one or more females ranging in age from 4 to 94, but never show him with a man) but does not sleep with them. He just gets his jollies from making us think he wants to. Here's his latest Facebook "wall" page. I in fact did post some full length pictures of him a while back (he's enough of a public figure that I don't feel I owe him anonymity) but here's the latest one. I can see that it was cropped from something full length, that shows people's faces. But what can one make of the fact that at the very center of the cropped wall picture is - his crotch!!
This time, however, when I ran into my friend, he said that the church had gotten rid of the choir (who was singing Beatle songs when last heard from) and used "paid guest soloists". He said they even had classical music from time to time. So, well, yes!!! I would love to sing there as a guest if I got paid. I certainly sound as good as a lot of paid soloists, I just have given up trying to become a paid section leader somewhere because I don't sightread and can't seem to be bothered learning.
So I sent in a resume.
We will see.
I have no idea if The Mentor is still going there. I think he spends most of his time traveling teaching dance, now mostly to (female) burlesque dancers. I have totally gotten over my lust for him and my fear of him. I am grateful that he got me to sing. If I hadn't been spellbound by singing Dalila leaning against his powerful wiry body, staring into his eyes as if we were about to float off somewhere for a tryst, I wouldn't be doing all the things I am doing today. So every single tear, even the afternoon he frightened and humiliated me so much that I wanted to jump out his window, was worth it.
I know I won't be thrown if he is there. The last time our paths crossed was in 2010 when I sang an aria from Gounod's Sappho and we had a nice "workmanlike" conversation about vocal technique.
I still would love to figure him out, though. He is not like any gay (or straight) man I have ever met. He is obsessed with women (all his gigs seem to involve him in a gaggle of them and all the pictures he posts show him with one or more females ranging in age from 4 to 94, but never show him with a man) but does not sleep with them. He just gets his jollies from making us think he wants to. Here's his latest Facebook "wall" page. I in fact did post some full length pictures of him a while back (he's enough of a public figure that I don't feel I owe him anonymity) but here's the latest one. I can see that it was cropped from something full length, that shows people's faces. But what can one make of the fact that at the very center of the cropped wall picture is - his crotch!!
In other news, when I was tutoring one of the little girls on Monday, she said she wanted me to sing "Silent Night" (she has heard me sing at the Spanish service), so I sang it a capella without warming up, and she recorded it on her phone!! She said she wants to "copy" my voice. I told her if she likes to sing she should join the Spanish choir, that they are always looking for people. So that's nice.
Next up is "O Magnum Mysterium".
Sunday, December 6, 2015
By the Seat of My Pants
Although I was wearing this lovely skirt.
To start off, when I got to the recording session, it turned out I was going to have to sing the piece once full voice, and a second time "like a lullaby". I was a bit thrown, because I had not practiced singing the piece like a lullaby. Miraculously, I was able to carry it off by singing pianissimo, something I would never have been able to do in that range even a year ago.
The other problem was that the engineer decided it would work better if he recorded the piano accompaniment separately, and then had me sing using it as a soundtrack. This was challenging also, as I had not rehearsed that way, and had relied on the accompanist to cover for me if I came in late or early.
There is one spot that I have trouble with over and over (I wouldn't if I could drill it at home with an accompaniment) and so of course the fourth time I sang the A section with the prerecorded accompaniment (I had already recorded it twice for the regular version and once for the pianissimo version) I got off at that spot, and because the prerecorded accompaniment just galloped ahead without me, I asked to stop, just assuming that the engineer could either erase it and let me start again (at the beginning of the A section) or just splice in the first pianissimo version of the A section (because in Bach you don't ornament the reprise, so it would have been perfectly usable). Anyhow, I am not sure what the problem was, but he said he was not sure he could erase and splice (I was reassured that was his problem not mine; the accompanist said he had never recorded a 6 minute aria without splicing somewhere). So we left it that he would try to do this at his computer and if he couldn't, I could come to his studio some time after New Year and sing against the prerecorded accompaniment (and I would have it at home to rehearse with also).
I am rather surprised I have not heard from him (he thought the filmmaker would call or email him to discuss how things went), but maybe no news is good news.
I did write to the filmmaker the next day to thank her for asking me to sing. Apparently she is going to enter the film in the Cannes festival in March, so this is quite an ambitious project. I am not regretful that I didn't ask to be paid, though, because she is putting it together on a shoestring. She will pay the accompanist, and that will suffice.
She wrote back to me and said that she had had a few screenings of parts of the film in Paris with live music (a choir is singing something in the film as well). So I told her if she shows the film here, anywhere between DC, New York, and Boston, that I can get to on Amtrak, I will be happy to sing (with the prerecorded accompaniment, obviously). I suppose in that case I will ask her to pay for my transportation out of the film budget. It will mean an opportunity to go somewhere which I have so few of (really none).
So now what's up next is "O Magnum Mysterium". I will be singing that in church on December 27. I am quite amazed at how well I can sing all those high climaxes. I can keep my mouth small and sort of drink them in backwards, without a lot of tension and push, which is a whole new experience for me. I got my first taste of it when I worked on the Amneris/Radames duet and was able to easily wail out those B flats if I imagined myself going backwards on a roller coaster.
Of course there is always an underlying sadness that all this is too little too late. I so want to cut and run with this and do nothing else and be young enough that it matters to the world out there, and that I can throw myself into the world out there because I don't have to take care of other people. Really just one other person. But I could never ever live with myself if I walked away from loving her and caring for her. It just would be nice to have a peer relationship with someone like all those singers who are married to each other or to other musicians or, even better, to "mentor" figures like conductors and producers, and who have a "team" in a flurry around them fussing with every aspect of their lives.
The other problem was that the engineer decided it would work better if he recorded the piano accompaniment separately, and then had me sing using it as a soundtrack. This was challenging also, as I had not rehearsed that way, and had relied on the accompanist to cover for me if I came in late or early.
There is one spot that I have trouble with over and over (I wouldn't if I could drill it at home with an accompaniment) and so of course the fourth time I sang the A section with the prerecorded accompaniment (I had already recorded it twice for the regular version and once for the pianissimo version) I got off at that spot, and because the prerecorded accompaniment just galloped ahead without me, I asked to stop, just assuming that the engineer could either erase it and let me start again (at the beginning of the A section) or just splice in the first pianissimo version of the A section (because in Bach you don't ornament the reprise, so it would have been perfectly usable). Anyhow, I am not sure what the problem was, but he said he was not sure he could erase and splice (I was reassured that was his problem not mine; the accompanist said he had never recorded a 6 minute aria without splicing somewhere). So we left it that he would try to do this at his computer and if he couldn't, I could come to his studio some time after New Year and sing against the prerecorded accompaniment (and I would have it at home to rehearse with also).
I am rather surprised I have not heard from him (he thought the filmmaker would call or email him to discuss how things went), but maybe no news is good news.
I did write to the filmmaker the next day to thank her for asking me to sing. Apparently she is going to enter the film in the Cannes festival in March, so this is quite an ambitious project. I am not regretful that I didn't ask to be paid, though, because she is putting it together on a shoestring. She will pay the accompanist, and that will suffice.
She wrote back to me and said that she had had a few screenings of parts of the film in Paris with live music (a choir is singing something in the film as well). So I told her if she shows the film here, anywhere between DC, New York, and Boston, that I can get to on Amtrak, I will be happy to sing (with the prerecorded accompaniment, obviously). I suppose in that case I will ask her to pay for my transportation out of the film budget. It will mean an opportunity to go somewhere which I have so few of (really none).
So now what's up next is "O Magnum Mysterium". I will be singing that in church on December 27. I am quite amazed at how well I can sing all those high climaxes. I can keep my mouth small and sort of drink them in backwards, without a lot of tension and push, which is a whole new experience for me. I got my first taste of it when I worked on the Amneris/Radames duet and was able to easily wail out those B flats if I imagined myself going backwards on a roller coaster.
Of course there is always an underlying sadness that all this is too little too late. I so want to cut and run with this and do nothing else and be young enough that it matters to the world out there, and that I can throw myself into the world out there because I don't have to take care of other people. Really just one other person. But I could never ever live with myself if I walked away from loving her and caring for her. It just would be nice to have a peer relationship with someone like all those singers who are married to each other or to other musicians or, even better, to "mentor" figures like conductors and producers, and who have a "team" in a flurry around them fussing with every aspect of their lives.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
The Show (or the Rehearsal) Must Go On, and It Did
I had one of the most grueling 24 hour periods from Sunday at 5 pm to the following Monday. I had to take my partner to an urgent care facility because she was semi-comatose from not having eaten, and had a rapid heartbeat and a lot of mental confusion. I took her there because she wouldn't go to the ER. Of course the doctor at the urgent care facility called an ambulance and she went to the ER. Because she had no real diagnosis (all test results were normal other than her rapid heartbeat, which she often has because she has a-fib) she didn't get admitted until 3 am, and even then was admitted to the observation floor. I finally went home (it has probably been over 40 years since I have been out that late trying to get a cab - fortunately one of the nurses went out and got one for me as she is used to being out at that hour) but only slept for four hours.
Then it was up, go to her house, feed her cat, and back to the hospital. I stayed there all day and then went home with her and saw that she had dinner. After several meals, she seemed to be better. Then I went home and slept for 10 hours. The good news is that because she was an inpatient, Medicare will pay for her to get home care for several weeks, certainly more often than the once a week she is getting it now.
Yesterday morning I had my rehearsal for the recording and I sang well, which amazed me because when I warmed up at home I could feel how tired I was. Not the voice itself, but my diaphragm and the whole infrastructure. But singing made me feel better and really the only problems I had were with entrances, not anything vocal. And the accompanist helped me with those.
Some bittersweet news was I heard from him that Little Miss (he knows her from the conservatory where he works) has landed a leading role in another one of the no-pay opera groups that rejected me. So she is on the way to being launched. Of course I am happy for her. I want her to succeed, as so few do. On the other hand I would be being disingenuous if I didn't admit that I am much happier now that she is off my turf. There is really only one other trained singer in the soprano section who is there regularly and she does not have the level of confidence or (apparent) charisma that Little Miss has; for example she was genuinely happy that I was going to be singing the top soprano part in the Handel and that she wouldn't be singing it alone. And she is also busy, so for example at the last rehearsal I was, in essence, the only person singing the soprano part in the Mendelssohn, which I am pretty secure with now, although it is still hard for me to sing as softly as required up in that range (and "choir softly" entails much much less volume than "aria pianissimo"!!)
Lastly, I regrettably will not be able to attend any funeral services for my neighbor. They are all in Queens today and tomorrow. I am sure she will forgive me. When the Tenants Association Secretary sent an email about her passing, she gave her a lovely tribute, referring to what an honor it was to hear this woman "practicing her craft". Lani (the singer who died) used to say things like that to me, although very few of my other neighbors have. I wonder if that's the sort of tribute I will get when I die? (I can't believe I am worrying about this!!)
Then it was up, go to her house, feed her cat, and back to the hospital. I stayed there all day and then went home with her and saw that she had dinner. After several meals, she seemed to be better. Then I went home and slept for 10 hours. The good news is that because she was an inpatient, Medicare will pay for her to get home care for several weeks, certainly more often than the once a week she is getting it now.
Yesterday morning I had my rehearsal for the recording and I sang well, which amazed me because when I warmed up at home I could feel how tired I was. Not the voice itself, but my diaphragm and the whole infrastructure. But singing made me feel better and really the only problems I had were with entrances, not anything vocal. And the accompanist helped me with those.
Some bittersweet news was I heard from him that Little Miss (he knows her from the conservatory where he works) has landed a leading role in another one of the no-pay opera groups that rejected me. So she is on the way to being launched. Of course I am happy for her. I want her to succeed, as so few do. On the other hand I would be being disingenuous if I didn't admit that I am much happier now that she is off my turf. There is really only one other trained singer in the soprano section who is there regularly and she does not have the level of confidence or (apparent) charisma that Little Miss has; for example she was genuinely happy that I was going to be singing the top soprano part in the Handel and that she wouldn't be singing it alone. And she is also busy, so for example at the last rehearsal I was, in essence, the only person singing the soprano part in the Mendelssohn, which I am pretty secure with now, although it is still hard for me to sing as softly as required up in that range (and "choir softly" entails much much less volume than "aria pianissimo"!!)
Lastly, I regrettably will not be able to attend any funeral services for my neighbor. They are all in Queens today and tomorrow. I am sure she will forgive me. When the Tenants Association Secretary sent an email about her passing, she gave her a lovely tribute, referring to what an honor it was to hear this woman "practicing her craft". Lani (the singer who died) used to say things like that to me, although very few of my other neighbors have. I wonder if that's the sort of tribute I will get when I die? (I can't believe I am worrying about this!!)
Friday, November 27, 2015
On Thanksgiving, and a Requiem for a Nightingale
I had thought of making this two posts, but there's no reason why they can't be one.
Thanksgiving is very important to me. It was on Thanksgiving 1976 that I got together with my partner, so yesterday was our 40th Thanksgiving. There was only one that we didn't spend together: 2006, after we broke up and before I began taking care of her again. As I posted on Facebook, I walked into her apartment that Thanksgiving (the kitchen and the front of the house looked better than they do now, because she had a roommate), one of three guests, but invited earlier than the others, to the sound of Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't She Lovely". Of course it was on an old fashioned record player, because that's where music in the home came from in those days. I was smitten, and the rest is history. I laughingly say that if I had done my Jane Austen style due diligence, the way, apparently, young women do today before they get "hitched" (also, I know of almost no middle class professional woman who ended up with the person she dated at 25), I would have run like hell. Here was someone who had been on public assistance for quite some time (you actually used to be able to live on it if you took the odd babysitting or dog walking gig), who was in trouble with the City Marshall for having defaulted on a credit card, and whose bedroom looked like a war zone, but she nailed me with her charm, wit, and flair for romance. And so she has kept me. Even now, when all we have are fragments of a relationship, she brought tears to my eyes by, when we were walking home from the bus stop, pointing out some ginko leaves that had fallen and saying "see, these are shaped like hearts, just for us!" Priceless.
As for Thanksgiving, I was realizing that the last time I sat at a table in someone's home where the people were related by blood, I was in my 20s, my grandparents were still alive, and my mother and her sister were still on speaking terms. After that I spent Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my partner and some of my mother's neighbors, or at an AA party (sometimes my mother's boss would invite her for the Thanksgiving weekend to her house in the country, knowing that I actually had somewhere else I would rather be). In later years, when my partner no longer could climb the stairs to my mother's apartment, we all ate in a restaurant. And now that my mother is gone, my partner and I continue that tradition.
I know that AA says "don't project", but I worry a lot about what will happen when I am left behind (if I am not killed by a terrorist or run over by a bus). I will have noplace to go on a holiday that is so synonymous with family. Which is why I don't damn, across the board, stores that are open on Thanksgiving. Whereas I think no one needs to buy a flat screen tv on Thanksgiving, maybe some of the store's employees are lonely and would like to forget that it's a holiday and have something else to do. (I definitely think that no stores should make anyone work on a holiday. They should ask for volunteers. I'm sure there will always be some, particularly if there is extra pay - or a free tv! - dangled as a carrot.
It also makes me sad that my Thanksgiving is so simple and bare boned, rather than a rich tapestry of the good, the bad, and the ugly that I can talk about afterwards. Not much to say, really, about a meal at El Quijote. We were probably in and out of there in 45 minutes. Then we had some pumpkin pie at home, from La Delice, a pastry shop on the corner near where my partner lives, which I think is the best pastry shop in the city.
When I was a teenager, I hated Thanksgiving, because I saw it as a time when my obese maternal relatives all got together to stuff their faces, and I, with a BMI teetering around 25, average for an adult, but huge for a 14 year old, struggled to try to say no to all the rich desserts. In retrospect, though, what I remember was all the jollity as well as the food, and how lucky I was to live amidst all that abundance, that I wasn't medically obese, and that I could have had a different life if I had had different values.
Now I am even a tad heavier than I was then (although not when compared with my age peers) and have no family and little jollity. Just a lot of hard work caring for someone I love, and trying to ferret out a few treat crumbs.
When I came home, I got some very sad news, via Facebook. My upstairs neighbor, a coloratura soprano with a Juilliard pedigree, apparently died the day before, while waiting for a kidney. I know that she had been on dialysis for a very long time. She was five years younger than me. She was one of the loveliest people I have ever met, certainly among professional singers, most of whom are snooty and snarky, at least in my experience. When I first moved into the building in 1986, I would hear her warbling the Queen of the Night aria and other coloratura standards, or she would be playing the piano for students (I think she was also a coach). A few years after I started singing she stopped me once and said that she admired how hard I worked and how much I practiced, and that she could hear that I was sounding better and better as the months went by. She even came to my DIY performance of Samson et Dalila. And I saw that she had "liked" my little DIY Facebook fan page. My heart is heavy. All this reminds me that life is short and that I am of an age when people die and that it's sad, but it's not a freak accident. How ironic that her life ended at the age when my life, at least as a singer, was just beginning.
I feel now, even, as a senior citizen, that I am only just beginning. Obviously I am not a "beginner" in terms of studying voice, but I feel it's only now, in the past year or so, that I have a solid technique, that I don't get as tired (do the extra pounds, which may partly be muscle, help, I wonder?) and no longer panic or at the least strategize every time I see a note above an F sharp. I just sing.
My Christmas solo will be "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen. The other day I sang through it and all the high climaxes on G (and there are a lot of them) were just business as usual. So when I step into the church to sing this I have to remember that this new voice is now me. (It also will help that the accompanist will be the Director of Music Ministries, not the original choir director who simply does not like big voices and makes me feel inhibited.)
And I have been singing up to a high C sharp every day now. If Lani were there now, she would be proud of me.
Thanksgiving is very important to me. It was on Thanksgiving 1976 that I got together with my partner, so yesterday was our 40th Thanksgiving. There was only one that we didn't spend together: 2006, after we broke up and before I began taking care of her again. As I posted on Facebook, I walked into her apartment that Thanksgiving (the kitchen and the front of the house looked better than they do now, because she had a roommate), one of three guests, but invited earlier than the others, to the sound of Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't She Lovely". Of course it was on an old fashioned record player, because that's where music in the home came from in those days. I was smitten, and the rest is history. I laughingly say that if I had done my Jane Austen style due diligence, the way, apparently, young women do today before they get "hitched" (also, I know of almost no middle class professional woman who ended up with the person she dated at 25), I would have run like hell. Here was someone who had been on public assistance for quite some time (you actually used to be able to live on it if you took the odd babysitting or dog walking gig), who was in trouble with the City Marshall for having defaulted on a credit card, and whose bedroom looked like a war zone, but she nailed me with her charm, wit, and flair for romance. And so she has kept me. Even now, when all we have are fragments of a relationship, she brought tears to my eyes by, when we were walking home from the bus stop, pointing out some ginko leaves that had fallen and saying "see, these are shaped like hearts, just for us!" Priceless.
As for Thanksgiving, I was realizing that the last time I sat at a table in someone's home where the people were related by blood, I was in my 20s, my grandparents were still alive, and my mother and her sister were still on speaking terms. After that I spent Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my partner and some of my mother's neighbors, or at an AA party (sometimes my mother's boss would invite her for the Thanksgiving weekend to her house in the country, knowing that I actually had somewhere else I would rather be). In later years, when my partner no longer could climb the stairs to my mother's apartment, we all ate in a restaurant. And now that my mother is gone, my partner and I continue that tradition.
I know that AA says "don't project", but I worry a lot about what will happen when I am left behind (if I am not killed by a terrorist or run over by a bus). I will have noplace to go on a holiday that is so synonymous with family. Which is why I don't damn, across the board, stores that are open on Thanksgiving. Whereas I think no one needs to buy a flat screen tv on Thanksgiving, maybe some of the store's employees are lonely and would like to forget that it's a holiday and have something else to do. (I definitely think that no stores should make anyone work on a holiday. They should ask for volunteers. I'm sure there will always be some, particularly if there is extra pay - or a free tv! - dangled as a carrot.
It also makes me sad that my Thanksgiving is so simple and bare boned, rather than a rich tapestry of the good, the bad, and the ugly that I can talk about afterwards. Not much to say, really, about a meal at El Quijote. We were probably in and out of there in 45 minutes. Then we had some pumpkin pie at home, from La Delice, a pastry shop on the corner near where my partner lives, which I think is the best pastry shop in the city.
When I was a teenager, I hated Thanksgiving, because I saw it as a time when my obese maternal relatives all got together to stuff their faces, and I, with a BMI teetering around 25, average for an adult, but huge for a 14 year old, struggled to try to say no to all the rich desserts. In retrospect, though, what I remember was all the jollity as well as the food, and how lucky I was to live amidst all that abundance, that I wasn't medically obese, and that I could have had a different life if I had had different values.
Now I am even a tad heavier than I was then (although not when compared with my age peers) and have no family and little jollity. Just a lot of hard work caring for someone I love, and trying to ferret out a few treat crumbs.
When I came home, I got some very sad news, via Facebook. My upstairs neighbor, a coloratura soprano with a Juilliard pedigree, apparently died the day before, while waiting for a kidney. I know that she had been on dialysis for a very long time. She was five years younger than me. She was one of the loveliest people I have ever met, certainly among professional singers, most of whom are snooty and snarky, at least in my experience. When I first moved into the building in 1986, I would hear her warbling the Queen of the Night aria and other coloratura standards, or she would be playing the piano for students (I think she was also a coach). A few years after I started singing she stopped me once and said that she admired how hard I worked and how much I practiced, and that she could hear that I was sounding better and better as the months went by. She even came to my DIY performance of Samson et Dalila. And I saw that she had "liked" my little DIY Facebook fan page. My heart is heavy. All this reminds me that life is short and that I am of an age when people die and that it's sad, but it's not a freak accident. How ironic that her life ended at the age when my life, at least as a singer, was just beginning.
I feel now, even, as a senior citizen, that I am only just beginning. Obviously I am not a "beginner" in terms of studying voice, but I feel it's only now, in the past year or so, that I have a solid technique, that I don't get as tired (do the extra pounds, which may partly be muscle, help, I wonder?) and no longer panic or at the least strategize every time I see a note above an F sharp. I just sing.
My Christmas solo will be "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen. The other day I sang through it and all the high climaxes on G (and there are a lot of them) were just business as usual. So when I step into the church to sing this I have to remember that this new voice is now me. (It also will help that the accompanist will be the Director of Music Ministries, not the original choir director who simply does not like big voices and makes me feel inhibited.)
And I have been singing up to a high C sharp every day now. If Lani were there now, she would be proud of me.
RIP Lani Misenas 1955-2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
I Will Be Recording!
At long last, I have a date to record the Bach aria "Hochster mache deine Gute" for my friend's short film. It will be December 4.
It's been almost two years since we began discussing this, and it has worked out for the best, because now I am much more technically secure singing something in that kind of high tessitura, so I will sound good and won't strain.
Once it's recorded, I will be really excited about tracking the progress of the film, and who knows? I may get to go somewhere! The filmmaker lives part time in Nova Scotia and part time in Paris.
I had a bit of egg on my face last night at rehearsal when the choir director handed out a four-part Mendelssohn piece with a high-ish soprano part (meaning a lot of Gs) and because I don't really sightread, and had not only never practiced this, but had never even heard it, I was fumbling for notes, which is not conducive to good singing technique, which is all about having a physiologically based plan for what to do with each phrase.
Well, so now I have my work cut out for me. Both the Bach solo and the choral piece would use the same type of high light approach (not the same thing as singing "off the voice" to whiten the sound), so my technique will stay consistent and I won't be switching back and forth. It will represent a nice break from Carmen. Venus will have to wait, now, although I have been listening to that scene and getting it into my ear.
I also spoke with the Director of Music Ministries about a Christmas solo. It will either be December 27 or January 3. I suggested the Lauridsen "O Magnum Mysterium", "Rejoice Greatly", and "Et Exsultavit". He is supposed to get back to me in the middle of next month.
It's been almost two years since we began discussing this, and it has worked out for the best, because now I am much more technically secure singing something in that kind of high tessitura, so I will sound good and won't strain.
Once it's recorded, I will be really excited about tracking the progress of the film, and who knows? I may get to go somewhere! The filmmaker lives part time in Nova Scotia and part time in Paris.
I had a bit of egg on my face last night at rehearsal when the choir director handed out a four-part Mendelssohn piece with a high-ish soprano part (meaning a lot of Gs) and because I don't really sightread, and had not only never practiced this, but had never even heard it, I was fumbling for notes, which is not conducive to good singing technique, which is all about having a physiologically based plan for what to do with each phrase.
Well, so now I have my work cut out for me. Both the Bach solo and the choral piece would use the same type of high light approach (not the same thing as singing "off the voice" to whiten the sound), so my technique will stay consistent and I won't be switching back and forth. It will represent a nice break from Carmen. Venus will have to wait, now, although I have been listening to that scene and getting it into my ear.
I also spoke with the Director of Music Ministries about a Christmas solo. It will either be December 27 or January 3. I suggested the Lauridsen "O Magnum Mysterium", "Rejoice Greatly", and "Et Exsultavit". He is supposed to get back to me in the middle of next month.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Manifest Me a Grounded Groundling
These days I (we) are very blessed by all the help we are getting. My partner has a regular caseworker whom I also see once a month, and she now has "help" once a week: a cleaner comes on alternate Wednesdays and a home attendant comes on alternate Tuesdays on the opposite weeks. She only has to pay for one visit by the home attendant. Also, an agency that helps "the elderly who hoard" is sending an intern to try to shovel the place out, on alternate Wednesdays. No one has ever succeeded with this in the almost 40 years I've known my partner, but hope springs eternal. She also now has a "medical navigator", that is, a nursing student who takes her to doctors' appointments if they are not serious enough for her to need me there.
But the most recent blessing is a caregiver group that is just getting started, that meets once a month. I had gone to a weekly group at the LGBT senior services center but it was full of unmotivated depressives of both sexes, and bi-phobic "angry dykes" whom I am just so done with. I felt like the mentally healthiest person in the room (with one exception), which led me to conclude that I was in the wrong place. This new group is a mixed group, and the woman who runs it is a former opera singer, who was married to a famous opera singer, and is now an interfaith minister.
Yesterday, no one showed up, so it was just me and her. We talked a lot about singing, first. She told me about herself (because I had asked) and I told her my singing story, in chronological order, something I really have never done except in these "pages".
I also told her about what had been going on lately, most notably (I have not written about this here) an episode two weeks ago when I thought my partner was dying, because she made no sense when she spoke and kept going to sleep. I said that this, as a more serious manifestation of the gut-wrenching upset over my non-birthday, underscored that I (we) simply do not have close friends. Anyone I am close to emotionally doesn't live here any more, or is always somewhere else, and other people are, well, to be blunt, acquaintances. Not the sort of people you'd call in an emergency. I had called her cardiologist, but he told me to take her to an emergency room, which she refused. So, yes, it would have been so comforting to have a "family member" (don't have those) or equivalent to use as a sounding board, even someone who might come over and make an assessment. Finally I did call a professional home health aide from the church (who did things for my partner prior to her getting all this free help) and asked if she would take a look at my partner. She said she could do it Sunday after church (this was a Friday) so that was where we left things (my partner didn't look like she had had a stroke, and upon closer inspection didn't look like she was dying, so worse come to worse I would sit with her until then, or if she got really bad I could call 911). As it turned out, by the following morning, after having slept for 24 hours, my partner was back to her normal self. We figured either she had accidentally taken an extra allergy pill (she takes two at night that make her sleepy) or that the new generic the pharmacy had given her didn't agree with her (she is now back on the old generic). But again, this just underscored my need for close friends, and I haven't a clue where to find them. (I meet tons of people all the time, but as I have stressed, they are always busybusybusybusybusy either with family, work, or their endless time in the air galivanting hither and yon.)
When I mentioned this to the minister/counselor, she said "why don't you pray for a friend to manifest?" Then she added "be sure it's not someone needy who wants you to take care of her!" I wouldn't have thought of that, but what I did think of is that I need, first and foremost, someone who has time for me, and that's what no one has. (I don't mean "me" in the personal sense; these people don't have any time for anyone who is not a family member - some are now awash in four generations of these - or someone to "network" with.) So, we see each other when we see each other and exchange pleasantries, and even some sympathy where it's needed - and I get a lot of the latter on Facebook - but then everyone scurries home, or to another job, or a concert, or a meeting.
So I think the friend whom I want to manifest is a "grounded groundling". Not a loser (I have met quite a few of these at various groups), but someone who is looking to fill their life, rather than pare it down. Another groundling. Someone who doesn't have children or grandchildren, or money to travel (except maybe once a year for a vacation). Someone who is here. Who will be here tomorrow, here next week, here for lunch, here if I call and need help because well, they don't have anything all that important to do most of the time, certainly not after work hours. I think this health aide fits the bill. Of course if she takes care of my partner I will pay her (I have my partner's power of attorney so I can do that with her money, whether she "wants" the help or not.) But she said that I can call her any time.
But the most recent blessing is a caregiver group that is just getting started, that meets once a month. I had gone to a weekly group at the LGBT senior services center but it was full of unmotivated depressives of both sexes, and bi-phobic "angry dykes" whom I am just so done with. I felt like the mentally healthiest person in the room (with one exception), which led me to conclude that I was in the wrong place. This new group is a mixed group, and the woman who runs it is a former opera singer, who was married to a famous opera singer, and is now an interfaith minister.
Yesterday, no one showed up, so it was just me and her. We talked a lot about singing, first. She told me about herself (because I had asked) and I told her my singing story, in chronological order, something I really have never done except in these "pages".
I also told her about what had been going on lately, most notably (I have not written about this here) an episode two weeks ago when I thought my partner was dying, because she made no sense when she spoke and kept going to sleep. I said that this, as a more serious manifestation of the gut-wrenching upset over my non-birthday, underscored that I (we) simply do not have close friends. Anyone I am close to emotionally doesn't live here any more, or is always somewhere else, and other people are, well, to be blunt, acquaintances. Not the sort of people you'd call in an emergency. I had called her cardiologist, but he told me to take her to an emergency room, which she refused. So, yes, it would have been so comforting to have a "family member" (don't have those) or equivalent to use as a sounding board, even someone who might come over and make an assessment. Finally I did call a professional home health aide from the church (who did things for my partner prior to her getting all this free help) and asked if she would take a look at my partner. She said she could do it Sunday after church (this was a Friday) so that was where we left things (my partner didn't look like she had had a stroke, and upon closer inspection didn't look like she was dying, so worse come to worse I would sit with her until then, or if she got really bad I could call 911). As it turned out, by the following morning, after having slept for 24 hours, my partner was back to her normal self. We figured either she had accidentally taken an extra allergy pill (she takes two at night that make her sleepy) or that the new generic the pharmacy had given her didn't agree with her (she is now back on the old generic). But again, this just underscored my need for close friends, and I haven't a clue where to find them. (I meet tons of people all the time, but as I have stressed, they are always busybusybusybusybusy either with family, work, or their endless time in the air galivanting hither and yon.)
When I mentioned this to the minister/counselor, she said "why don't you pray for a friend to manifest?" Then she added "be sure it's not someone needy who wants you to take care of her!" I wouldn't have thought of that, but what I did think of is that I need, first and foremost, someone who has time for me, and that's what no one has. (I don't mean "me" in the personal sense; these people don't have any time for anyone who is not a family member - some are now awash in four generations of these - or someone to "network" with.) So, we see each other when we see each other and exchange pleasantries, and even some sympathy where it's needed - and I get a lot of the latter on Facebook - but then everyone scurries home, or to another job, or a concert, or a meeting.
So I think the friend whom I want to manifest is a "grounded groundling". Not a loser (I have met quite a few of these at various groups), but someone who is looking to fill their life, rather than pare it down. Another groundling. Someone who doesn't have children or grandchildren, or money to travel (except maybe once a year for a vacation). Someone who is here. Who will be here tomorrow, here next week, here for lunch, here if I call and need help because well, they don't have anything all that important to do most of the time, certainly not after work hours. I think this health aide fits the bill. Of course if she takes care of my partner I will pay her (I have my partner's power of attorney so I can do that with her money, whether she "wants" the help or not.) But she said that I can call her any time.
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