That felt good...

My voice teacher's studio recital was this afternoon, at the church where she's the music director. When I warmed up at home, I was loosening a buncha crud and couldn't seem to clear my throat, so I just focused on singing past/through it. NA warmed us all up (5 of her students, plus her daughter - the two of them sang a couple of Brahms duets) and I felt pretty solid, so I wasn't nervous about going first. Had a bit of a comic moment when, just as I was breathing for my first entrance, the church's bells started to chime the hour! NA mouthed at me to "stop!" while she went to an instrument panel and did something to silence the chimes. We then started over, with no further interruptions.

I still felt that I was singing through crud, but I pumped up the energy, let myself enjoy the music ("Hear my cry, O God" by Cesar Franck and "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion" from The Messiah) and got through it with no glitches. That must have worked, because NA was very pleased with how well I'd done. The Chief also thought I'd done well. He rarely gets to hear me sing - last time was the cabaret workshop I did last summer - so he was able to hear that I'd made progress.

One of my fellow students had also sung in the last recital, two years ago. This time he sang a very ambitious program (2 Samuel Barber songs, an aria from The Student Prince and "La donna e mobile" from Rigoletto). While he forgot the words in one place in the Italian piece, when he got back on, he not only acted as if nothing had happened, but nailed the rest of the aria. I enjoyed seeing how much his voice and self-confidence have grown in 2 years.

Turns out his mother is quite the musician - big soprano voice, used to be a recitalist, has taught for years, plays violin and so on. He had been told once that he couldn't sing (!) and hadn't told his mother he was taking voice until he'd been at it for a few years. She was a bit put out, I think, that he waited so long to tell her, but was justifiably proud of how well he did.

One thing I've come to realize - the more progress I make with this singing stuff, the harder I'm working physically. It's work to keep the energy up and maintain the spin in the tone, not to mention keeping the runs in the fast parts in tempo and on pitch. But if I can keep this up, I may have a better chance of getting called back when I start auditioning for things next season.