Kling! Meine Seele gibt reinen Ton!

My Master of Music recital was December 1st. It represented about a year and a half worth of lessons, practicing, memorizing, and research. The program was near and dear to my heart. I selected all the pieces except the oratorio which was performed in last year's Chamber Choir concert and the arias which my teacher selected for me. I loved all the Ives pieces I listened to and had a hard time narrowing my selections down to these seven. And I don't know why I never sang Strauss before. His pieces are so moving. The program started with selections from Handel's oratorio Belshazzar.

O Sacred Oracles of Truth

Rejoice, My Countrymen

For Long Ago

Thus Saith the Lord

Then, the Ives selections-

In the Mornin'

Rock of Ages

Abide With Me

My Native Land

Watchman!

There is a Certain Garden

Memories

After the intermission I sang an aria from Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Stella del marinar

Then, the Strauss set-

Allerseelen

Traum durch die Dammerung (please excuse lack of umlaut)

Schlechtes Wetter

Morgen!

and Kling!

For an encore I sang Santuzza's aria from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana

My teacher told me that she could listen to me sing In the Mornin' all day. I love this piece and it's my favorite too. I sing it every time I'm in the car and it's always running through my head. Kacey Link, a collaborative pianist grad student, played harpsichord for me in the first set and piano for the remainder of the program. My cousin Caroline made my beautiful recital poster. I had given her a couple profile pictures of mine. She was creative and went through my facebook tour albums and included in the poster a picture of the garden of the Medici palace in Florence and Mozart's piano in Salzburg.

I had a lot of fun and really appreciated all the support. My mom held a reception afterwards. There was quite a good turn out for a Wednesday evening in December.

Quire of Voyces 2010 Italy Tour: Ave Maria by Eglin at Basilica San Pietro

Summer and Smoke, Hoiby

Musica

This quarter has been a long journey. The Chamber Choir concert came on week 7 instead of 8 or 9. The choir returned to my favorite Santa Barbara venue, St. Anthony's Seminary. Since the choir is preparing for a European tour our year's concerts will feature American composers. Our Fall concert, titled Americana, kicked off the series. We revisited a few of my choral favorites including two Whitacre pieces, Her Sacred Spirit Soars and Lux Arumque, and Joshua Shank's Musica animam tangens.

The next afternoon the UCSB voice students presented the opera scenes we had prepared all quarter. My scene can be seen above. The scene is from Lee Hoiby's Summer and Smoke, adapted from the Tennessee Williams play. This was a very difficult scene. We had no help form the piano as far as musical cues or the other singers. But it came together nicely and was a lot of fun. The other scenes can be seen at www.youtube.com/user/UCSBVoiceDept .

Here Comes the Leit Motif

I did a little research for Rob's wedding. I thought I'd share it in my blog.

The Bridal March or Here Comes the Bride is from Wagner's opera Lohengrin.

The Wedding March (usually heard as the newly wed couple leave the church) is from Mendelssohn's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I observed at my sister, Janee's wedding reception that older generations tend not to dance to the "new" (read 90's) songs that we all know and love. They will however dance to familiar classics, Unchained Melody, I'm a Believer, etc. While the young folk will dance to everything. So to get the older generations to dance (without the use of alcohol) play songs everyone agrees on.

Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears

Bam! The quarter has begun and we have hit the ground running- er, singing. It's only the second week but it feels like we've been back longer.
The opera scene I'm cast in is from Hoiby's Summer and Smoke adapted from the play by Tennessee Williams. I am Mrs. Bassett. It is a lot of fun though still in the rough stages. We're supposed to be off book (memorized) by next Thursday.
It was announced last Spring that the UCSB Chamber Choir will be touring France this summer! 18 days! Starting in Paris and singing in the choral school that Professor Gervais established in the Notre Dame cathedral! Then we're working in Tours for three days in a conducting academy. We are the choir in residence and student conductors will practice on us. This will be a nice reward for making it through the year.

We had opera auditions last week. The opera production for this year will be Aaron Copland's opera, The Tender Land. I was nervous because there aren't a lot of women's roles. There is the mother, a contralto. So I picked another contralto aria to audition with from another American composer. I was cast in and will be singing the role of Ma Moss. Having a fuller low range I tend to play the mother roles. (see above and Riders to the Sea 2008.) I don't mind playing the older women. They usually have a deeper outlook and their music is more soulful. Sorry sopranos.
This morning (October 7) I had my recital permission audition. I sang a couple songs of their choosing from my entire program and they decide whether I can give my recital. My teacher was on the panel and told me afterwards that that was the best she had heard me sing. And that the head of the department agreed. So, now I can give my recital. Yes!
With my practice time and rehearsals I'm singing, on average, 6 hours a day. It's a little nuts but the more prepared I can be and feel the better. It's a lot easier to think about technique if I'm not trying to remember words at the same time.

Left at Albuquerque

In July my parents and I made the long drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit my sister and her family. Who'd have thought there would be some much great music to be found.
First of all my little nephew, Robby just sings all the time. He's the singin-ist kid that ever there was. It was so fun to get to see this musical expression of his joy.
While in Albuquerque we noticed there was a broadcast of the MET's Tosca production. My sister, mom and I went. Amazing! The crowd scene in act II, on the MET stage was incredible. The amount of people and the scale of the sets knocked our collective socks off. The music, Puccini, was beautiful and we were all sniffly by the end. It was so moving and I'm reminded again that there is quite an enormous difference between movies that try to make you cry and dramatic opera. No contest. All I can think in movies trying to make me cry is, "really? That's all you got?" But opera, hello! It is so moving. There's a reason Puccini was a master composer.

Who can visit Albuquerque and not make the quick drive to Santa Fe for the Santa Fe Opera? Especially when they are performing Madame Butterfly. (Puccini.) Luckily Santa Fe's opera season extends over the summer. Most companies take the summer off. The open theater is so simplistic that the sparse sets really fit and played well with the beautiful desert sunset seen in the distance. The singing was beautiful and once again there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Cio-Cio San's fantastic aria Un bel di vedremo can be heard on my play list. This aria is opera perfection. From a scholastic viewpoint, Madame Butterfly is noticeable in western music history as Puccini has taken Japanese melodies and incorporated those into his Italian style of writing. He didn't just copy their style of music but to blend it with his style. There are moments more Italian and moments where the Japanese melodies come through. He even uses familiar American tunes at times throughout the opera.

O Sole Mio- The Italian Tour

This summer the Santa Barbara Quire of Voyces toured Italy. There are about 32 singers and we ended up taking over 80 people! Beginning in Rome we sang at the Pantheon and High Mass at the Vatican!

Then on to beautiful Maiori on the Amalfi coast. I never thought I could be impressed by another beach town but... breathtaking!

We performed in Amalfi and on to Naples for another concert.
As co-founder of the Tower Climbing Club, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't find one tower to climb. We definitely weren't in Tuscany anymore. I did hike to the fort above Maiori.
Before leaving for the trip I knew I wanted to see the Roman catacombs. I had toured Rome the previous summer and didn't want to do the same tourist destinations everyone else was doing. This meant I had to find my own way to the catacomb's. Our first hotel, in Rome, was within walking distance of 3 catacombs! It was meant to be. And I was not disappointed.

Keep Singing!

Another musically packed quarter marks the completion of my first year working on my masters. Here are the musical highlights.

UCSB Opera Production Cosi fan tutte. Hilarious! And I was so proud of all the voice students. What a great job they did. It was a little unclear why the double cast was needed. I saw both casts and the students did just as well as the professionals in my mind.

UCSB ECM (Ensemble for Contemporary Music) performed the piece I'd been working on for two quarters at the Primavera concert series. On Questions of Travel by Leslie Hogan is a song cycle setting of the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. You can read the Independent's review at http://independent.com/events/2010/apr/28/15183/

The Quire of Voyces were invited once again to sing in the Santa Barbara Art Museum as part of the First Thursday series. We sang selections that we will sing in Italy.

The Spring quarter holds the most student recitals and this held true for the voice department. I was able to attend Savannah Greene and Claire Danielson's Junior recitals and Rebecca Monroe's senior recital.

The UCSB Chamber Choir was invited to Pepperdine (in Malibu) to participate in the Ascending Voice choral Festival. The conductor for the festival was the established Robert Page. The festival also hosted workshops and a concert by Chantaclier. After our concert Robert page told Prof. Gervais he would love to work with such a talented choir.

UCSB Chamber Choir concert was titled Amazing Grace after one of the pieces we learned for the festival. It was a nice arrangement though a piece I would have never thought Prof. Gervais would select for us.

The Quire of Voyces concert was very exciting as it marked the beginning of our tour. We sang Michael Eglin's Mass. (We nicknamed it Missa Mikey.) There were some other works mixed in including Angele Dei by Giuseppe di Bianco. He's one of the composers we'll be meeting on our tour.

For the UCSB voice convocation I sang my biggest piece ever. Santuzza's Aria from Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni. It's not me, but here's an example of the aria. http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJIZGthwWLc

For voice juries I sang Charles Ives' My Native Land. I love the simple melody that Ives exhibits in this piece.

UCSB University Singers concert. The University Singers (men's and women's choruses) were combining to sing Mozart's Missa Brevis. I was asked to sing the alto solo. This work highlights the soprano part but it was fun to sing and an honor to be asked.

My gift is my song and this one's for you

This has been a very hard quarter. It's been difficult and long, but thankfully, working in the music department guarantees that through it all there will be music. If I try to pick a piece that has been my focus this quarter, besides the mega-hard, mega-modern Hogan piece, it would be In the Mornin'. Charles Ives' setting of the American spiritual. I sing it every time I'm in the car. It just pours out of my soul and is the perfect range. I love it! I love all my Ives' selections and had a hard time narrowing down the rep I wanted to look at to 7 pieces. Perhaps this is too many for a recital set. I might end up cutting one.

On a less personal note, here are the musical highlights for the Winter 2010 quarter:

No masterclasses this quarter and it wasn't until February 11 that we had our first vocal event. The voice Convocation was in Geiringer Hall again. It is the perfect venue for this scale performance. All voice students are required to sing in at least two convocations- one being held each quarter. My selection for this convocation was Charles Ives' There is a Certain Garden. I am falling in love with his art songs and this one is no exception. For a long time most of my rep just happened to be about death. But, this setting, of a beautiful poem describing a garden dear to my heart is introducing me to the world of songs about birds, spring, flowers, and love- but I'm a mezzo.

The March 5 UCSB Chamber Choir concert was titled Ecce! After the Victoria motets in the first half of our program. The second half was Martin's Mass. This is probably the most difficult mass I've ever learned and I had to learn it twice. The first time last year with the Quire of Voyces as a first alto. This time I had to learn the second alto. I already knew the progressions and was familiar with the work overall so it was easier than sight-reading a piece from scratch.
We performed the same program in the Santa Ynez Mission two days later. The woman at the mission that publicizes our performances in Santa Ynez has been ill so our turnout was a bit disappointing. But the performance went well and it's always nice to be able to perform a work, that you spent all quarter on, more than once.

The week of our choir concert Prof. Gervais told us that he had 10 comp tickets for the Sofie Anne von Otter performance at the Granada on the 9th. It turned out to be a performance of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with the mezzo-soprano soloing in Sheherazade. The entire program, directed by Myung-Whun Chung, featured works by Ravel. His ballets are beautiful and moving. Moments reminding me os Stravinsky. I was a little disappointed when, after the concert, I got in line for a signature by the diva. I was excited to be first in line and I bought one of the cds they had. It's more than I like to spend on a cd when I can buy it cheaper on itunes. Then, 10 minutes later we're told she has already left for the evening. Grr. I would not have bought the cd for her to sign and I even had my camera. Maybe next time. You can watch a video of the performance at http://www.camasb.org/. Click on the 2009/2010 series then scroll down to the appropriate performance.

The end of every quarter is always marked by the Quire of Voyces concert weekend. March 13 and 14 we performed our Rachmaninoff program. This isn't my favorite of his but the audience just raved about this concert. Many loyal qv patrons proclaiming this as their favorite concert ever! And, riding the success wave, we have great momentum as we prepare to leave for Italy in a little over 10 weeks.

For all QV tour updates you can go to the choir's blog at qov-incantatotour.blogspot.com