To summarize: I have had now about six months of preparation for three pieces of music. Granted, in those six months, I had a role in an opera and sang in nine concerts (not counting oodles of church and synagogue services), so it’s not like I’ve been spending every waking minute practicing my recital pieces. But I have spent a great deal of time with the music, especially considering the fact that these are not easy pieces to learn!

Anyway, I had a recital preview last weekend at the house of one of the composers, which went very well, and a friend recorded it for me. It’s not all professional and stuff (although the little recorder did a great job!), so here’s a little sneak peak:

(beginning of “A L’Aurore” from Boyle’s Le passage des rêves – for those of you viewing this in Facebook, click on this link to hear it)

And tonight is the big night! So if you’re in the Philly area and want to hear some kick-ass new music, come on down to St. Mark’s (Locust between 16th & 17th) at 8:00! Wish me luck!

Learning Robert Schumann’s Spanische Liebeslieder was fairly straightforward for me. The idea to put parts of this song cycle into my recital program was actually Benjamin’s, mostly because we thought it might be nice to have a set that involved all three of us (me, Benjamin, and Jeremy), since each composer was going to be accompanying me for his own works. Spanische Liebeslieder was written for four hands and voice; in point of fact, the entire song cycle was written for soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone, with some movements as duets and quartets.

I chose three songs within the cycle to perform, only one of which was actually written for alto. Luckily, the entire work is available on this WONDERFUL website called IMLSP, which is a free online library for public domain sheet music. I downloaded what I needed and got to work.

Different singers learn music differently. Personally, I prefer to first read through the music by myself at a piano. If the piano part is too complicated or the harmonies too difficult for me to hear, then I will try to find several different recordings of a piece and listen so I can get an idea of how the piece in its entirety sounds. It is very important for me to try to find more than one recording, because I hate it when singers fall into the trap of imitating recordings. No matter how good the person on the recording is, I prefer to find my own interpretation of the music in the learning process.

However, vocal coaches and accompanists can get expensive, so practicing with a recording is sometimes the best thing I can do to learn music quickly. If the accompaniment is fairly simple and straightforward, I will create my own accompaniment track using Finale and my electronic keyboard. The music input process can be pretty time-consuming, though, so I don’t usually do it unless I know I have time to play on the computer.

Here’s one of my accompaniment tracks for the first Schumann piece: “Tief im Herzen.”

Once the music is firmly in my head, I don’t need an accompaniment track as much; the tape loop in my brain will do most of the accompanying. That’s when I start the memorization process. I try to do my memorization at odd hours of the day, such as before bed or in the shower: any time I have a little down time.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a really good amount of time to devote to memorization daily, and the recital is 4 days away! I knew I wasn’t going to be able to have the Boyle and Gill pieces memorized, but I thought surely I could have the Schumann songs well-cemented in my head. The music is there, for sure, but for some reason, the words are getting jumbled around in my head. My friend Amy wrote about a memorization technique on her blog, and I’ve been trying it with this Schumann. Wish me luck.

I will be performing excerpts from Schumann’s Spanische Liebeslieder on my recital, “Heroes, Lovers, and Dreamers,” on Saturday, March 20, at 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia.

Even though the timing may not be ideal, I still think some of you might be interested in how exactly singers like me learn our music for concerts. As one might expect, there is a great deal of practice involved, especially when an unfamiliar piece is programmed on the concert. In fact, in many times it seems like there is an unproportionate amount of rehearsal when there you spend dozens of hours preparing for only one performance of the piece.

Choral rehearsals for new music can alternately be tedious and frustrating. Not everybody learns at the same pace, and while one person might be weak at counting but strong in hearing unusual intervals, there might be another person in the same choir with the exact opposite strengths and weaknesses. It’s enough to drive a girl to drink!

When I told one of my singer friends all the stuff I was planning on doing in the next month or so, she remarked, “Your voice will be on perma-warm all month long!” It’s true. Between rehearsals, lessons, and my own personal practice sessions, the only time my voice truly gets a rest is when I’m sleeping. And even then, I might be using my voice, as I have a tendency to talk — even sing! — in my sleep. Just ask Ray.

Coming tomorrow: how I prepare for solo stuff…most specifically for my recital this week.

This is the music I have to perform within the next 6 weeks:
(N.B. – I am not including any of the music I perform on a weekly basis at St. Mark’s Church, because it would just make the list too long and complicated, but if you would like to see it, you can go to the St. Mark’s website and see for yourself)

• Philip Glass, Persephone (premiere performance) – March 6 at 8pm
• Gavin Bryars, Lauda #22 & #23 from Lauda Cortonese – March 6 at 8pm
• Steve Reich, You Are (Variations) – March 6 at 8pm
• Franz Joseph Haydn, Theresienmesse (Alto Solo)* – March 14 at 3pm
• Ernest Bloch, Sacred Service* – March 19 at 8pm
• Jeremy Gill, Helian (world premiere) – March 20 at 8pm
• Robert Schumann, Spanische Liebeslieder (excerpts) – March 20 at 8pm
• Benjamin C.S. Boyle, Le passage des rêves – March 20 at 8pm
• Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Stabat Mater* – March 26 at 6:30pm
• Dietrich Buxtehude, Membra Jesu Nostri – April 9 & 10 at 8pm

*I am familiar with the pieces marked with an asterisk.

Quite a list, isn’t it? Some of the pieces are easier to learn than others, and many of the choral pieces are difficult to practice on one’s own, because of the need to hear other parts. As you scroll through the list, I’ll bet there are only a few pieces on there that you recognize, if any! It’s the same for me, too, which means I have to start from scratch on almost every piece I perform.

So in the next few days, I’ll be sending you updates on how the music-learning process has been going for me: its highs as well as its lows. Hopefully it will give you some insight into the singer’s brain. (It’s scary in there!)

That night turned out to be lots of fun. The concert was well-attended for blizzard conditions, and after the show a group of us singers went back to the hotel for some dinner and drinks. The next morning ApatheticAlto and I had breakfast at Little Pete’s diner before church.

Two weeks ago, warnings of another winter storm were blanketing the airwaves, and because we were involved in performances over the weekend when the storm was supposed to hit the hardest, ApatheticAlto and I decided to share another hotel room, this time for two nights.

Friday night was fun; going to the hotel bar after our performance and knowing we didn’t have to drive anywhere led to a little overindulgence, the effects of which ApatheticAlto acutely felt the next morning. Nevertheless, we had been invited to a waffle breakfast by some friends only 6 blocks away, so we bundled up and ventured forth into what looked Philadelphia if it had been transported onto the planet Hoth.

Most of the streets had not yet been plowed, and the snow fell quietly as we made our way through the drifts, sometimes walking on a well-salted, shoveled sidewalk, sometimes walking in a plowed street, and then finally giving up and tromping through the knee-deep snow. Once we arrived at our friends’ house, we decided we didn’t want to leave until much later in the day, because the snow was falling steadily, about an inch per hour. Later that afternoon, we found out that the orchestra canceled that night’s concert because the weather was so bad that SEPTA was closed and there was no way for even the orchestra members to get to the concert.

Though we were disappointed by the turn of events (cancellation because of force majeure means we didn’t get paid for the concert, and we still had to pay for two nights at the hotel), we made the best of our situation, and we all went out to dinner at an Italian bistro. I offered to sub for the other alto at ApatheticAlto’s church on Sunday, so I did make at least a little money while I was in town.

Since that storm two weeks ago, Philadelphia hasn’t really been able to dig itself out. Another blizzard found its way to our doorstep Feb. 9-10 (Tuesday and Wednesday), destroying my plans to go down to Baltimore and sing songs from my recital for composition majors at Peabody (I know, that sounds totally boring to you, but it was a big deal for me). It started snowing again last night, and as of the time I’m publishing this post, it hasn’t stopped. The weather people say it’ll be another 4-8 inches, which isn’t very good news in a town that is used to only a couple inches of snow a year. Luckily, my dinky little NJ township suburb has been doing a better job plowing its streets than Philadelphia, but operations seem to have ground to a halt because of the snow.

I don’t remember being as concerned about the snow when I went to school in Boston. Maybe it’s because the winters were always very snow-heavy, and people had learned to adapt. Perhaps I didn’t notice it as much because I didn’t have to drive in the stuff. But I have to say, I’m not much of a snow bunny, and these past two weeks have had both me and Ray pining for Hawaii in a big way.

But I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday season, whatever you’re celebrating, and all the best for a happy new year.

In other news, because Christmas also seems to be the season of spammers, and I’ve been getting comment overload from bots wanting to sell me Viagra and/or Cialis, I’ve installed a CAPTCHA application to the comment forms.  Please feel free to continue to comment on my posts (obviously, those of you reading this on Facebook can continue commenting as per usual), but this extra step saves me having to wade through the spam.

It’s been an hour or so since I did the exhaustion test, and already my muscles are complaining.  I think it’s a good idea to do these exercises every other day, as recommended on the site, to give my body a chance to recover.

HOWEVER, we are now in the midst of the heavy eating and drinking portion of the year. Between Thanksgiving, various holiday parties, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, I’m afraid the temptation to be bad has been overwhelming, and I’m not eating with as much discretion as I was while I was in the middle of the challenge.

Also, I have not reached my goal weight of 160 yet, and I think I may need another challenge to motivate me. My friend Ellen has been participating in a weight-loss motivation program called Lose It or Lose It, a website where you make a monetary investment in your weight loss, and if you don’t lose the weight, you lose your money. It’s a pretty clever idea, actually, and I’m considering joining the program (once New Year’s Eve has come and gone and I’ve stopped eating so many darned Christmas cookies).

In the meantime, Ellen and I have been talking about the Two Hundred Situps challenge, which, like the Couch to 5K program, trains you to gradually be able to do 200 situps in one day. Talk about six-pack abs! There are related challenges, like Hundred Push-Ups and Hundred Squats.

So we’re going to go triple-threat and participate in the 100 squats/200 situps/100 push-ups challenge and get our bodies nice and strong! The great thing about these programs is that they have an log book that is connected with Facebook, so Ellen and I can keep track of our progress and stay accountable to each other. Right, Ellen? And I invite any of you to come along for the ride and post comments letting me know what you think and how you’re doing.

Luckily, Facebook uploaded all my posts onto its site, so I have at least something to work with.  I might be able to recreate at least the posts that I liked.

In the meantime, onward and upward.  I have to rebuild this blog, my singing website, and my caroling website.  It’ll be slow going, but it’ll get done.

So I uninstalled Wordpress as per the instructions here.  I thought as long as I backed everything up to my hard drive, all will be well.  But I forgot to back up the database.

Why, oh, why did I delete my SQL database for my blog?  I thought I had backed up my entire blog before I wiped it (someone had hacked in here), but apparently I didn’t.  Argh.  Really, double argh.

Anyway, I don’t have time right now to fix up my blog with all its extra stuff, so stay tuned and you’ll see something soon enough.