Starry, starry night
8:38 p.m.
There was a paucity of dancers at class tonight: Patsy is ill with a bad cold, and several others were missing, which made it difficult for Lise to continue with the choreography for our show in June. One of our number, the elder of a mother-daughter team, has the most calloused feet I have ever seen. I first noticed them when she walked barefoot on the faux hardwood floor, I heard a tap tap, as though she had hard-soled shoes on. Tonight I got a better look at them. The bottoms and slightly up the sides are completely hard, even a different colour than the rest of her foot. Weird.
My soprano today had a breakthrough. This is the girl who is a good musician but up till now hasn’t been a great vocalist. Today I tried something different with her, having her sing a five-note downward demi-scale from the dominant on “yo”, imagining a paper-towel tube lodged firmly in her mouth, one end right up against the back, the other somewhere in the air in front of her. This necessitated the production of a rounded space inside and nice “kissy” lips up front, and suddenly she was making the most beautiful sound, rich, full bodied, focused and totally natural sounding. At first she didn’t like it, and I conjecture that it was because she wasn’t hearing herself as she had before. In other words, all the auditory information was coming from outside her now, she was no longer holding the sound back inside her mouth. By the end of the lesson, she was actually okay with it and agreed that it sounded better and that it made many things much easier. I am such a good singing teacher!
In other gossip, I found out that our heretofore staff accompanist, who will continue to play for the choir, has resigned her position and students preparing for juries, recitals and studio classes will have to find another pianist. I asked her why she had quit this post, and she answered that the chair of the department had been inexcusably rude to her in an email, had accused her of undermining a student-organized showcase, something for which she was not being paid extra and the night of which she had already set aside to go see a concert in Montreal, which ended in the cancellation of the recital, and an admonishment that she wasn’t taking her position as accompanist seriously. She was incensed. As accompanist she gets paid very little, it makes enormous demands on her time, and students don’t get their music to her early enough or show up for rehearsals, or if they do they are totally unprepared. She doesn’t need abuse from the chair on top of the thanklessness of the job. So she quit.
And now she is on the other side of the schism which divides our department, standing with those of us who are already non-entities to this person who has somehow pulled the wool over people’s eyes. I found out that he was granted tenure, two years earlier than he should have been because the Duke somehow finagled a deal for him, getting the two years he spent as a sessional instructor to count towards the six required for tenure. This means he never had a three-year preliminary review. So I guess we’re stuck with him. Bah!
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