Stories and musings as I bumble around life
Coincidentally, the recording of Arjuna’s Dilemma by Doug Cuomo that I did back in 2005 has finally been released by Innova onto CD (and available through iTunes and eMusic). It REALLY turned out well. I urge you all to buy a copy, not because I’m on it (okay, well, partially because I’m on it), but because it’s fracking good. I’m so honored that I’ve been able to be a part of such artistry.
So for the last month I’ve been working on a project with The Crossing: the first recording for this fledgling group, and hopefully a sign of things to come.
The piece is Kile Smith’s Vespers, written for The Crossing (a new music choir) and Piffaro (a Renaissance wind band), and I can’t wait until the CD is out in stores.
And, of course, because I seem to be one of those people who takes on WAAAY too much at once, I was not simply learning my music (including a newly rewritten movement Kile threw at us at the last minute!!), I was helping to organize flights from folks coming in from out of town, making sure everyone had the music, and even making available transposed versions for those of us with perfect or even good relative pitch.
(Piffaro’s instruments are all tuned to A=463 rather than the standard 440, which means that all the notes on the page really sound a half step higher than they look on the page, which can drive folks like me nuts. As Adrian Monk says, “It’s a blessing and a curse.”)
At the same time, I was trying to fulfill my AGMA duties, which have seemed to multiply, Hydra-like, exponentially (and more viciously) the more tasks I complete (since the stress level for this volunteer job had started to affect me physically, I said enough was enough, and I stepped down as delegate). Oh yeah, and never mind the fact that I had my day job, too, working at the transcription place, which I’m leaving at the end of the month (more on that later).
Since all work and no play make Maren very grumpy, Ray bought Grand Theft Auto IV for me to release some of my frustrations on. Yeah, I know. I don’t seem like the GTA4 type, but I’m really liking it.
Anyway, the recording was intense, but I think it went well. And I really think the final product will be fantastic. I posted a story that David Patrick Stearns did for WRTI on the piece. I think it definitely sums up what the process was about…oh yeah, and you get to see me in my pigtails, which I sported every day that week because it was so hot and muggy.
Last night I sang the role of Alice in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. No, it wasn’t at any opera house you might have heard of; it was a performance of the opera in its entirety at a little Italian restaurant in South Philly called the High Note Cafe.
I’d never done anything like this in my life, which is odd, because I have done a lot of bizarre stuff to further my career, including singing sea shanties on a tall ship, unknowingly impersonating a Sephardic Jew, and unwittingly auditioning for a “gentleman’s club” revue. This opera gig ranks up there in the top ten adventures for sure.
Not that the gig itself was bizarre. It was incredibly straightforward: a read-through, with piano, of the opera in its entirety (okay, with a few of the chorus bits cut) for the audience who had come for an evening of Italian food and opera. What a great combination!
And for a singer, this is a wonderful no-pressure opportunity to learn a role and sing it all the way through, knowing that you’ll get accolades from an appreciative audience, even if you didn’t sound like you just won the Met competition. And you get paid, so it really is a win-win situation.
I had been asked to sing this role last week, and I was told that it really was an easy role and incredibly low pressure. I didn’t even have to show up to the rehearsal, I was told (which was good, because I was out of town the weekend of the rehearsal). And because I’m very confident in my sight-reading skills (and Alice is not a large part at all) I don’t think I really spent a whole lot of time learning the part, even though I had a week to prepare. Oh, I listened to a recording and looked through the music, but that’s about it…I didn’t really learn any of it at all.
So when I arrived backstage at the “green room” (the apartment above the restaurant), I was not surprised that everybody was relaxing. Then someone mentioned cuts in the score that they had gone over in the rehearsal that I missed, and I started to panic a bit. I tried to write down all the cuts that the pianist had in his score, but while he was doing that (and going over tempi with me), the guy who hired me was going over staging (well, okay, entrances and exits; it’s a teeny tiny space). And I’m not too good with multi-tasking, so I know I missed a few cuts and a few staging bits, but I figured I’d just wing it.
And wing it I did. No, it was not my best performance, but it was certainly fun, and if I got a chance to do it again, I would (although I would be more comfortable with the music next time). I think I messed up some of the “staging,” and I sang one of Lucia’s lines in the recitative accidentally, but nobody cared. There was even a woman in the audience that wanted everyone’s autograph afterwards. All in all, a pretty nice night.