akintsucrooner

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Last rehearsal for the year, an ordination and 2 masses left for the season. What a year. Here’s to a mask free, covid controlled season for 2021-2022.

Covid Year Choir Commentary:

1. Once I got used to the singers mask, I didn’t mind it so much.
2. I am very grateful that I didn’t get the virus 🤞 but this year was definitely difficult. So much unknown and unpredictable definitely took its toll. I’m emotionality/physically fatigued and ready for summer.
3. Making music with students and peers continues to be a lifeline.
4. Decent perks about the virtual world: door dash, amazon fresh, FaceTime voice lessons, online concerts, metallic pens, adhesive jewels, the mute button, virtual snow days, Amazon returns at kohl’s, movies/streaming series from home…..

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What suits your musical fancy?

1. Rich and smooth R&B gives you the feels.

2. The dulcet tones of a youngster’s pure singing sends you to a happy place.

3. Your fave singer dwells in low places like Johnny Cash.

4. Bright and earthy world music gets your toe tapping.

5. Tosca delivering her heroic and commanding high C’s brings about your musical ambrosia.

Singers train and occasionally their voice fits the genre they prefer. In my case, I love the music I sing and my zaftig “hourglass” fits the armor.

No matter how many times I practice my high or low la la las, my cords vibrate the best in the thick fat lady tunes. However, most of singers on the gig trail don’t always sing what comes the most easily.

A professional choir rehearsal would give most historians whiplash. It is not unusual for a 90 minute choral rehearsal to include music across a 500 year span.

Today the cathedral choir sang a piece by a composer who was born in 1594. My, er, womanly tone, would have been no bueno when this piece was first performed. Now that my gender no longer makes me a 2nd class singer, I have had to learn how to render this style accurately with my verismo vocal cords.

The good news is I sing with a group with a dedicated repertoire. We are able to refine and polish various pieces across the liturgical year. When I first started singing some of these exposed and delicate pieces, my vibrato like to play a spirited game of jack in the box. This was especially noticeable to my director’s chagrin at the end of phrases.

I will admit. I haven’t always been so aware of my choral vibrato challenges. I can only say that I come from a family of choral directors who encouraged full throated singing; the more passionate the better.

This past Tuesday at rehearsal it hit me like a pile of Brunhilde bricks. Maybe it was the mask. Maybe it was maybelline. You still reading? Or maybe it was the fact that we are singing in a smaller group and socially distanced. Whatever the reason, on this trip through the 16th century motet, my freebird phonation made it’s cameo. With the help of core, breath flow, and my forehead, this time around I found my high, round, and clear 16th century singing soul. And I liked it.

A perk of this terrible pandemic is there’s a lot more recordings to review; musical bikini bites if you will. My wife had a revelation recently when she listened to an audio. She didn’t realize that she occasionally scoops. I confessed my own guilt of tone over seasoning. We laughed. We feel better now.

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Definition of simmer down
intransitive verb
1 : to become calm or peaceful
2 : to become reduced by or as if by simmering
First Known Use of simmer down
1842, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Yep. I have been known to exhibit extreme joy from time to time. It can be a little intense. Performing in an opera, making music and putting on shows with the youngsters, and a really good dollar store can put me over the edge of excitement…..

Magic Flute’s Pamina is an operatic role not really my singing fach (category) but one I can sing well if one is willing to give a fortified soprano a chance.

My voice student is singing this role in May. She is doing a wonderful job. It’s been a blast to help her prepare.

There are sand trap sections of this role where a soprano really needs to know how to sing in the upper passagio (bridge/passage).

The music shared in this post is one of those parts.

I may have gotten a bit excited today. I was showing the wunderkind Ruth Systma how to use her magical oval embouchure and tongue independent of her jaw to access the most vocal spin and overall ease. A quick study she is. She got it.

My peers and I used to joke about our 8am music history teacher in undergrad. He got very excited at random times even with a very sleepy crew of 20 year old collegiates.

Yep, I also wear certain shirts on similar days and I get very excited about high and hard vocal passages.

I’ve become what I used to mock. 😉

#akintsucrooner

My softball coach used to tell me in her British accent “Elizabeth, watch your pop ups.” My hitting game was often guilty of vertical direction. In my running game, my slow twitch muscles made my speed turtle-esque but my tank build gave me power. I had time to run the bases if I hit it well enough.

I had a pop up today but not from a ballgame gaffe. One of my influential voice teachers popped up in a voice lesson I was teaching.

My student Ruth is singing Pamina in the Magic Flute at Wagner College this spring. Today, we were working on the exquisite aria, Ach Ich Fuhls. When we reached the G5 to Bb5 ascent on the last page, Paul Kreider made a cameo in our lesson.

Every time I have to sing high in the tessitura with challenging consonants on notes above the passaggio , I often use what Paul taught me at UNLV. He showed me how to use my articulators independent of the jaw so the voice retains the space and the sound moves forward.

By showing the quick and talented Ruth how to isolate the tongue and ascend to the Bb by singing the L on liebe with the tongue independent of the jaw, her voice released and blossoming.

So many teachers along the way have added to my pop up vocal pedagogy tool box. In my experiences, no teacher has had it all but everyone has had their own special insights to share.

The study of voice has taken a village indeed. And as a big voice soprano who takes longer to bake, I am very grateful.

Great seeing you, Paul! You’d love Ruth!

#akintsucrooner

Mom wasn’t too fond of my messy pile of clothes. As a kid, I would throw my clothes in the corner of my room near my pink canopy bed. Hey….at least I made a dedicated pile out of the clothes that I didn’t feel like hanging up.

Whoa. It actually just dawned on me that my childhood room was pink. Really pink. I loved my room. But pink, I don’t love so much. Now I ADORE metallic pink but this was more of a pepto bismol pink. I never really thought about the gendered decor in my bedroom. Huh.

So before you Judge Judy my mound of clothes too harshly, don’t be misled. My clothes were in nice and neat heap. I thought it fairly decent of me not to strewn my Sassoon jeans randomly about the shag carpet. At least my messes were contained, right?

That’s just it. I am a container. You know, like I approve certain messes as long as they are in a controlled setting. I love Mozart for a reason. Everything fits within aesthetic economy.

These days, I may not have piles but I have my ways. I delegate the untidy via closets and drawers. Under the bed and furniture that stores…..these are my 21st century solutions to achieve dis-order relief.

Truth time: it doesn’t matter how well I minimize and maximize. I’m still containing (hiding) my messes 40 years later. It goes deeper than wrinkling my disco approved satin jacket.

These piles are my loose ends, complicated feelings, tabled inadequacies, eclipsed anxieties, and armored frenzy.

Right now, it’s Maundy Thursday. Tomorrow, Good Friday….not gonna end well. At least temporarily, imo. It won’t be pretty, tidy, or organized. I am culpable. I won’t be able to hide my debt under my bed.

Yeah. I can be a bozo. I mess up, react poorly, burn bridges, blah blah blah, you get the picture.

I guess I’m “lucky” to be able to hide my messes well enough to live a functional and fulfilling life.

And just when I think I’ve found a great way to triage and manage, the untidy finds new sources to keep me humble and continue the life lessons.

So, do you have a pile? How do you keep your space? Random messiness? Specific areas of mess? Different at home verses work?

TV Shows like hoarders make me think. Some people’s messes are more painfully obvious. But I’m not sure that we are all that different. Degrees, yes, but at the core, we’re similar. I am not able to hide my relationship with food so I get it. I eat my feelings. Every day I have to face the conspicuous result of this inner battle. No choice. No hiding place exists.

So there you have it. Life is messy. We may be walking each other home in this crazy life but this journey is not for the weary. It reminds of me and my brother in the back seat of the red Buick on one of our 1970’s family vacations. Neal and I wanted and needed very different things. We spoke in different emotions. Our mutual messiness didn’t play well in the sandbox. Not surprisingly, the invisible line we drew on the upholstery was little help.

That reminds me, I need to clean up my pile of coloring books, markers, and jewels.

Happy Spring Break, y’all! 😉

#akintsucrooner

(My childhood room in 2021. It has evolved:-D)

Ooooo, we got to pull out some tasteful vibrato tonight as prepare for Sunday’s music. I love getting to make beautiful Lenten music with my fellow cathedral singers culminating with Easter Sunday.