Finishing

Greetings from my new Chicago home... so many things to wrap up on (and to complete and publish a bunch of private, unfinished blog posts on this site), but wanted to post a final sign of my having finished the MMus at RAM.

After a rather hectic, crazy time putting my final concert project for the academic component of my course, I am happy to report that I submitted the written component of my degree last week. Thus, I am officially done with the course. Don't yet have any idea what mark I'll get, but the dissertation and everything else is really completely finished. And, just to finish things up, made a wordle for the dissertation on my concert project: 'Concordance of Sound: A Listening Party'. Enjoy.

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Spring!

So, there are actually quite a few unfinished posts between the last one and this one. But unpublished and in rather sketchy form... mostly written during the times when internet wasn't working in the house. I'll get them up eventually.

Two big updates, though:

1. I successfully sang my final MMus

recital at RAM last Friday. Still waiting to hear back on my mark (awful singing to a room with

three people scribbling at a table at the back of it), but on the whole felt good about my performance. Got to sing some music that I really love to some people who I care a lot about (my parents even flew out from NJ!), and my teacher and coach were happy. Thus, I count it as a success even if my mark doesn't end up reflecting it. Never could have sang most of this stuff when I first arrived here two years ago, and so to do ALL of it in one programme, successfully, feels pretty good. Just for the music geeks amongst you, this was the programme:

• Handel 'Non disperar chi sa' from Giulio Cesare
• Berg Sieben Fruhe Lieder
• Bizet 'Me voila seule ... Comme autrefois' from Les pecheurs de perles
• Previn Three Dickinson Songs
• Barber Op. 10 James Joyce songs

Took a minute and a half break after the Berg, otherwise straight through for just under 45 minutes. And even after months of prep on this stuff, I still love the repertoire. Good sign I'm doing the right thing with my life.

For the other big news...

2. I'm moving to Chicago at the beginning of September! Happy to announce that after my crazy weeks of US auditions back in February (I'll post that as-yet-unpublished blog post at some point), I've accepted a place at the Bienen School of Music, Northwestern University, to study opera performance for the next two y

ears. Very, very excited to join their programme and to get to know the music scene and general creative life of the city of Chicago. Of course, get extremely teary every time I think about what and who I'm leaving in London, but thankfully there are planes that let me come back as often as I can afford (assuming lack of volcanic activity...)

So, those are the major updates. I could also write about an amazing two-week-long exchange with students from RAM and the Blair School of Music in Nashville (another unfinished post), the frustrations of London's inability to deal with snow in January, my last opera scene, and my debut as a soloist with the All Souls Orchestra... but those things will wait for now. Getting nostalgic and reflective these days as I near ends of things and look forward to next steps, so I'm sure those thoughts will get on here before too much longer.

For now, I'll leave you with a pair of photos from this past weekend. To celebrate the successful recital and my parents' trip to the UK (the only time I've had both of them here at the same time since I moved!), we went on a road trip. These pictures are from Sunday, with two of the stops in the trip: Canterbury Cathedral and the white cliffs of Dover. Enjoy.

Ceiling above Altar, Canterbury Cathedral

Break in the clouds, Dover cliffs

Opening the Composer's Workshop

Ok. Time to forgive me for a rather geeked-out muso post. I composed this response after an amazing two-week exchange programme. It's perhaps a bit more serious/philosophical/job-specific than my usual descriptive posts, but gives a good sense of some of what I'm doing over here, and the things I'm thinking about and learning.

From 1 – 11 March 2010, I was privileged to be a part of the bi-annual RAM-Blair School of Music exchange programme, this year focused on ‘opening the composers’ workshop’. During the first week, four students and two composition professors from Blair travelled to RAM to participate in afternoon workshops and other artistic and cultural activities with the RAM team, after which four students (including myself) and two professors from RAM flew to Nashville to spend a second week continuing the work begun in London. Because it was an extremely busy period of time for me with important auditions and other concerts, I was worried about whether or not I’d be able to join effectively; however, I am now very grateful to Peter Sheppard-Skærved for convincing me and twisting the schedule a bit for me to be able to attend. The programme ended up being beyond formative and thought-provoking, to say the least.

At the start of the Blair-RAM workshop weeks, I was excited about the opportunity, but still had many reservations in the back of my mind. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, what we would be doing, who else would be there, or if I really had the time or energy to participate as I wanted in the midst of a particularly busy time for me. Thankfully, I jumped in headfirst anyway, and the rewards were massive.

Even though the first week in London was a bit of a blur for me, jetlagged and travelwearied after two weeks of auditions and flights all over the US, the time I did get to spend in workshops in the piano gallery provided a breath of fresh air. Having the physical and mental time and space to discuss and think through issues ranging from extended technique piano playing to expanding a student composer’s beautiful musical sketch, I started being reminded of why I decided to be a musician in the first place. Escaping from the hectic rat race of lessons, coachings and singing classes in the buildings on Marylebone Road, I got to sit and breathe the music in. Talk over musical philosophies with mindful musos. Laugh. Try things – some of which worked, and some of which didn’t. And laugh again when they didn’t. Or when they did.

Perhaps that was the most useful part of the two-week journey: learning to let go of my fearfulness of not doing things ‘right’, whatever that means. Giving myself the grace to try things that might fail… or that might just lead to something really interesting. And being surrounded by people who were supportive in allowing that process to occur.

There were two main ways in which this ‘letting go’ process took place. The first was in a four-hour-long mega session with Peter Sheppard-Skærved, reading through some of Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments. Not having been able to learn notes ahead of time, and not possessing perfect pitch, I was terrified at trying to sightread pieces that would have been difficult to get together even with a lot of prepwork. But having an encouraging partner in the process who urged me to aim for rhythm, shape, and character without worrying about the notes made me less frantic (particularly after a midpoint coffee break), and in the end led to far more interesting music making than if I had worked it all out ahead of time. And, according to Peter, I even started singing (most) of the right notes. Because as a singer I would normally have sat down and learned all of the notes first, before rehearsing with a violinist, this forced me to run my usual rehearsing process almost completely backwards… and it led to a new sort of freedom in the rehearsal for me.

This was the second major liberator of the exchange: being the only singer in the group. Because singers tend to have a very pre-determined, specific way of learning, coaching, and talking about music, I tend to forget that there is any other way of addressing what it is we’re trying to do (even though I started my musical life as an instrumentalist). Having two weeks of musical discussions in compositional and instrumental language was fantastic. I already like to think of the voice as another equal instrument rather than as some sort of ‘Other’, and the workshops opened that up in myself and my singing more than I had been able to before. In everything from the Kurtag, to workshopping composers’ new pieces, to a particularly engaging and helpful one-on-one session with Dr. Rose on some Andre Previn songs, I stopped thinking so much like a ‘singer’, and more like a complete musician. How I should be singing and thinking all the time.

Feeling thus inspired, now I simply endeavour to keep these influences a more constant part of my daily practice and performance.

That is, of course, the struggle!

in the 'workshop'

the 'Geode Collective' - the RAM student representatives