When I mentioned to my voice teacher at my lesson yesterday that I'd decided not to audition for Company, along with the reasons, she commented that it was very "self-aware" of me to make such a decision, "And I mean that in a good way, of course." :) And since I'm not prepping audition pieces, we were able to spend the whole lesson working on my music for A's Summer Sing in NJ just 11 days from now.
I'm really starting to get excited about the Summer Sing. The other day I pulled out all the vocal scores I'll need to take with me. Although we're doing the complete music from only 4 G&S shows, we're also doing selections from 7 others. I had thought I'd just xerox the excerpts and put them into a single binder, but when I realized how much that would end up costing and how long it would take (the Iolanthe Act I finale alone runs 55 pages!), I decided lugging the scores around wouldn't be so bad after all. We'll be singing from late morning until evening, after which many of us will descend on a local eatery and likely subject the unsuspecting staff and customers to a bit more singing. Boy, will we be warmed up by then!
This will be only the third one of these I've ever attended; the last was 5 or 6 years ago. It will also be my first solo outing at such an event. I tried singing Pitti-Sing (IIRC) at the first one I attended, 8 years ago, but not being much of a sightreader, that didn't really work too well. This time will be better: I've now worked "my" music in 3 lessons, and have several years of voice lessons under my belt, so I'm in much better vocal shape now.
In such informal settings, it's perfectly OK for the women to sing along w/ the men's chorus and vice versa, to make all the punny, silly or smart-alecky comments you could never get away with in a performance situation, to mug and make melodramatic gestures; in short, to have a grand time in a room full of people of a similar bent. This is gonna be so much fun!
I'll be traveling with a fellow mezzo & her husband and won't be the least bit surprised if she and I end up singing all the way up, reviewing our respective solo turns and reminding each other of the alto lines in the choruses. Good thing her husband likes to sing along; that'll make it easier for him to put up with the two of us. TW, on the other hand, is completely and utterly not interested in any of these proceedings, so he'll be spending that weekend at the cabin, or working on the shed, or perhaps drooling over his woodworking books and magazines, designing and redesigning the workshop of his dreams.
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