Days Two and Three

I have some extra time this morning to catch up on blogging and whatnot, so here goes. The last few days have been pretty intense, with lessons, music rehearsals and four hours of staging in the afternoon. Let's start off with lessons:

Professor Rock is such a wonderful lady. She's very clear and to-the-point, and has given me some really good advice on how to handle problems I've been facing over the last few years. We've been elaborating a lot on breath support and flow (my nemesis) and on maintaining a constant stream of sound, rather than an explosion at the start of a phrase or at a high note (in one of my pieces in particular there are a lot of 6th and octave leaps, which have been difficult to balance out with the rest of the phrase). Luckily with all of this I haven't felt too much of a change in tone, just in the...I guess type? of sound that's coming out, and I told her that I've been personally struggling with the concept of sound being louder out in the space than it is in my head. She's also been working with me to help make it to the ends of phrases without feeling out of breath (Sauguet and Ravel have INCREDIBLY long phrases, what were they thinking). It's taking a lot of mental work to distract myself from counting out the beats of the measure and allowing control to come from a natural release. She also gave me a great suggestion for working on the onset of phrases, to use the consonants as a leaping point for the sound instead of forcing it out and pushing the breath along with it. I'm really glad that we're working well together - I've been hearing a lot of stories about people not having great experiences with the teachers they've been assigned to, or rather just not being used to direct feedback from voice teachers in general, and I'm thankful for Drs. Marra and Blaisdell not sugar-coating my progress (or lack thereof, in some cases).

Musical rehearsals have taken a frustrating turn. They've divided chorus voices into sections, and I am now singing alto. Most people are unhappy with where they've been placed. I'm not unhappy that I'm singing alto (honestly I don't care, and if it brings more balance to the voices then that's awesome, because there ARE a lot of sopranos), but what I AM unhappy about is that they waited so long to make the divisions in the voices. Even though they only had our audition recordings to go off of, they still had some idea of our voices and could have at least made divisions based on that, and then maybe make some tweaks here and there depending on what happens when we start. I feel especially bad for one person, the Iza in my cast, who is completely memorized and learned in her part and now has to relearn everything because she was assigned to the tenor line. This will definitely be an exercise in music-learning for me, and I just wish that it could have been assigned sooner to save myself the embarrassment of not being learned in my "new" part when staging time comes around.

Staging has also been a very long process. Thankfully it's being more streamlined to avoid four hours of people standing around in the same spot while principals learn their blocking. Some of us are in three choruses which does equate into a full four hours of staging, and while it's good to learn it that much quicker, I feel it has been taking away from time that could be used to perfect music, especially since most of the free time for coachings has been in the afternoons during staging and yet we are all called to be at staging rehearsals.

In good news, I've been scheduled to sing in FAVA's first Castle Concert of the season, so I get to sing "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" in a gorgeous castle IN FRANCE and I'm super excited. I can't remember the name of the castle, but I'll talk more about it tonight or tomorrow. EEEEEEE!!