I’m a gossip and a catty soprano.
10:57 p.m.
Yesterday consisted of blueberry pancakes for breakfast, a long, hot bubble bath, a marathon choir practice with the orchestra, a delicious supper of brown rice, black beans and sautéed vegetables seasoned with dill, caraway and parsley which reminded our Serbian violist of home, and then some really very delightful conjugal time for Hubby and me now that I’m not feeling ill anymore.
I had warned the violist that our choir was sub par, but she was rather favourably impressed. Mind you, after the previous night’s bad musical experience, anything would be impressive. The problem with the big choir that sang with the orchestra is that it has 120 members, most of whom belong to the blue-haired set and should not be allowed to sing in public anymore, or at least not to a paying public. Our choir’s youthfulness makes up for what it lacks in musical training.
Today I shopped for groceries and taught my private tenor, a drama student who wants to improve his technique for musical theatre. I had a revelation the other day as I was thinking about him and decided to try a different tack than before. We had started working on a Gershwin tune, and he simply could not approach it as it was written on the page, but kept putting in affectations one expects in that genre, whether they are appropriate or not. So I gave him the opening tenor aria from Handel’s Messiah. It’s way too hard for him, but it will force him to learn to sing as a tenor with good technique (at least when I’m teaching) and with the skills gained, he can then approach other repertoire in an honest fashion.
Speaking of teaching singing, I mentioned my observation to the violist of how the students of my colleague didn’t have any technique when they sang in the Friday noon recital. She told me that this teacher is losing students at another institution where she instructs because people are becoming aware of exactly that. It is only here, at miniscule Bushop’s, that her “glamour” masks the fact that she isn’t really helping these kids exploit their potential. I suppose it’s really not my problem, but I hate to see anything wasted, if you know what I mean.
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