Free Mozart!

The headline says it all - Mozart's entire musical works now free on Net.

Also, in a follow-up to the previous post about Alagna, he has now mounted his own production of Aida. Details here. He's also threatening to sue La Scala if they don't take him back? How do those two things jive? He's also blaming "low blood sugar" for his behavior? Riiiiight.

In the news

Alagna storms off the stage of La Scala!

Not only stormed off stage, but stormed off stage in the middle of a duet, leaving his poor partner, Violeta Urmana, stuck on stage without him. His understudy rushed on, a few minutes later, wearing jeans, and with no time to warm up carried on with the show. Of such things are careers made.

Ah, opera.

Concerts, concerts, everywhere

I'm happy to report that the Boston Cecilia concerts this weekend went extremely well - the choir sang beautifully, and there were no major management mishaps. (The volunteer service we used sent the ushers to the wrong place on Saturday, so we had no Saturday ushers, but so it goes.)

Although one audience member said to me on the way out, "You know, there was a lot of modern music on that concert. Not everybody likes that. I think it should be more 50-50 with the old and the new. And you know, not everyone in your audience speaks Latin. (Well, yes, that's why we included a full translation of all texts in the program.) You should have more English tunes." And I want it on record that I, being the extraordinarily tactful Operations Manager that I am, refrained from rolling my eyes and saying, "Whatever, lady." I think I just sort of hemmed and hummed in a thoughtful and non-committal way at her.

Luckily, most of the audience was happy to hear a carefully thought out and exquisitely rendered program of Messaien, Britten, Poulenc, Tavener, and Bach. Have I mentioned how relieved and proud and lucky I feel to have landed a job with such an extremely good chorus? This weekend strengthened my inital resolve to sit in on some rehearsals and figure out how they put that wonderful sound together.

And THEN, tonight, the day after this three-day weekend run of Cecilia concerts, was the Winchester High School first ever Winter Choral Concert! It was an hour of all-singing, and it went extremely well, and I am quite proud and relieved! My kids all did great, and on several occasions they surprised me with how well they sounded - sometimes things really blossom in performance! When I walked off stage after the last song I conducted, I completely understood how people end up staying teaching in a high school for twenty or thirty years. I'm also excited to pick out new repertoire for the spring.

For weeks, my goal has simply been to get past these four days. Now that they're over, I'm not really sure what to do with myself. Perhaps clean my apartment. Or correct all those theory packets that are waiting for me. Or buy Christmas presents.

Boston Cecilia concert - ushers needed!

I'm happy to report that my laryngitis healed in time for me to sing the Cappella Clausura concerts, and they went very well! We also had a recording session just last night of the concert music, which was interesting, because things felt much better in my voice when it was healed and healthy last night from when it was barely over laryngitis several weeks ago! Interestingly the thing I really lost when I had laryngitis was my low range. Who would have guessed? If nothing else, getting laryngitis was very educational. Among other things, I'm now more enthusiastic about using hand sanitizer, in an effort to prevent a repeat occurence.

I also have another concert announcement! Half of my 9-5 job time is spent being the Operations Manager for The Boston Cecilia, a really excellent choir in Brookline. We have three concerts coming up this week, on Dec. 8 at 8 pm, Dec. 9 at 8 pm, and Dec. 10 at 3 pm. The Friday concert is downtown at Church of the Advent (in the Back Bay) and the Saturday and Sunday concerts are at All Saints Parish in Brookline. More information can be found here.

As Operations Manager, I'm in charge of finding ushers. We're all set for Friday and Saturday (although if you really want to come, we could always use one more) but I need several more ushers for Sunday. You show up at 1:45, hand out programs, and then you get to listen to the concert for free! It's going to be a really splendid concert, with Poulenc and Messiaen and Tavener and Britten (oh, my!) Please let me know if you'd be interested in ushering. Also feel free to point musically-minded friends towards this post, especially if they're free on Sunday!

Cappella Clausura - first concert of the year!

I still have laryngitis. It's getting better, but extremely slowly. I'm trying to take every precaution, since...

I have a concert this weekend! Two, in fact - please come to one of them!

Cappella Clausura is one of the choirs I joined in September. I am really excited about being part of this group, because my fellow singers have some great voices, and the conductor really knows her stuff. It's an all-women's ensemble in Boston (Newton, actually) that specializes in music written by women, and specifically by women who were in cloisters, or "clausurae". However, this concert will not only feature music by Vizzana and Aleotti, two nuns from the sixteenth century, but also some music by Patricia Van Ness, a contemporary composer from our area. (One of the pieces we will perform was written for Peter Sykes and the First Church in Cambridge, MA.)

Whenever one hears that a concert will specialize in music by a minority, in this case women, one tends to wonder, "Am I going to hear really good music that I haven't heard before because women faced such prejudice? Or am I going to hear not particularly good music that people are trying to perform in an effort to be politically correct?" I can assure you that this concert falls squarely in the former category. I knew none of the composers on our concert before we started rehearsals (except for Van Ness) and that's a crying shame, because this music is just as good as the music written by men from the Renaissance and early Baroque that I've performed all my life. And one set of madrigals we're performing was written by a sixteen-year-old! Mozart was far more boring at sixteen than Aleotti (and set far less passionate texts!) So come and hear some new music that's centuries old.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18th at 8:00 PM
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 19th at 4: 00 PM

Tickets $15/$12
SATURDAY at Episcopal Parish of the Messiah
EMAIL: info@clausura.org for reservations or call 617-964-6609,

SUNDAY at Forsyth Chapel - reservations recommended!
call 617-524-3354 for tickets

Directions to both places can be found here.

I hope to see you there!

Sore throat

Don't forget, there's a Seraphim concert today at 3 pm at St. Paul's Church in Harvard Square! Sadly, I won't be there.

On Monday night I came down with a fever and severe sore throat, and I have been struggling to get well ever since. I missed 3 days of school, which is extremely frustrating, especially in a 4-day week (thanks to Veteran's Day) and spent 4 days in bed. On Saturday I returned to the world of the busy, and don't feel as sick anymore, but unfortunately I now have a big old case of laryngitis. My voice sounds quite odd, and I'm not sure how I'm going to control a classroom tomorrow. One trick I'm going to try is writing common phrases, such as "Turn to page (list of numbers)" and "Be quiet NOW!" on the board, and pointing to them when appropriate.

I'm doing my best to get better as fast as possible, especially since I have an important set of concerts coming up next weekend. Here is all the advice I've gotten so far, much of it from singing friends. Got anything to add?


If you have pharyngitis (the part of your throat at the back of your mouth) use a numbing throat spray, gargle warm salt water, or try a Neti Pot, which helps take care of the post-nasal drip problem. Most of the suggestions below will also help.

If you have laryngitis (the sign of laryngitis is a low, scratchy, breathy voice, sometimes a complete loss of voice) then do any and all of the following:

• Vocal rest, vocal rest, vocal rest. No speaking, no singing, and definitely no whispering. Humming or speaking gently is permissible, but silence is better.
• Suck on lozenges. Don't use lozenges with menthol, as these will dry out your throat. Chewing gum also has the same positive effect, since, as my mother informs me, "Saliva has the proper ph to kill viruses and bacteria (and also acts as an antacid in the stomach.)"
• Don't take blood-thinning medications like ibuprofin or aspirin--stick to tylenol. It is good to take tylenol, however, as this will make swallowing less painful and make you more likely to...
• Drink lots of fluids. Juice, water, etc.
  
• Drink slippery elm-bark tea.
• Drink tea with honey.
• Eat soup! Chicken noodle soup is always good.
  
• Fill a sink with hot water, put your face down next to it, and put a towel over your head. Stay like that for as long as you can stand - breathing in the steam will help your throat.
• Use a humidifier.
• Finally, my mother recommends gargling with H2O2 (2 parts to 1 part water) but since you can't swallow this, it makes me nervous, as I lack proper gargling skills.

What did I miss? What do you do when you lose your voice?

Seraphim concerts

I have more concerts to announce! At the beginning of September I joined a group called the Seraphim Singers. Then, about three weeks later, I got a job with The Boston Cecilia. Unfortunately, both groups rehearse on the same night, so I had to go with the one that had hired me. I was able to finagle singing with Seraphim through their first fall concert, but trying to juggle being in two places at the same time just isn't tenable for more than a month. So, sadly, this will be my first and last set of concerts with the Seraphim Singers.

Which is all the more reason for you to come and see it! I especially recommend this concert to people interested in new music, since we will be premiering a piece by Elliott Gyger (which is, frankly, a bear) and also singing a piece by Julian Wachner. The program is filled out with Duruflé's Requiem. There is one concert this Sunday, in West Roxbury (and please let me know if you decide to come to that one, since I need a ride back to the land of the MBTA afterwards) and one concert next Sunday, in Harvard Square. And, if you need additional motivation, I'll be part of a solo sextet in the Gyger piece. Here are the details!

First Concert
Sunday, November 5, 2006 at 3:00pm at Holy Name Parish, 1689 Centre Street, West Roxbury, MA

Second Concert
Sunday, November 12, 2006 at 3:30pm at Saint Paul Church, Corner of Bow and Arrow Streets, Harvard Square, Cambridge

JENNIFER LESTER, conductor
HEINRICH CHRISTENSEN, organ
MARTIN NEAR, countertenor
TIM MACRI, flute

DURUFLE Requiem (with instrumentalists)
GYGER Temptation in the Desert
WACHNER At the Lighting of the Lamps

Suggested Donation $15 adults/$10 students & seniors

Honda Civic ad, part II

Some of you may remember this post about the Honda Civic ad. Well, now you can watch the rehearsal, too! Go to this link, and either watch the ad or wait until it's done, and then click "Watch Civic" and then "See the rehearsal."

Thanks to Christianne at Singin' in the Lane for the link!

Learning names

Learning names has been a big challenge lately. There's a lot of new people I'm interacting with in various environments. So for my high school classes, I concocted a game that will force me to learn my students' names.

Once every day, if everyone in the whole class raises their hand, I have to stop what I'm doing and go through the names of one of the rows or sections of the choir. If I get someone's first or last name wrong, or mispronounce it, I have to give them a piece of candy. This means I have been going around all day with a bunch of Werther's Originals in my pocket. I am giving away less and less candy as time passes, but I still have visions of the town dentist storming into my classroom, yelling, "What are you doing to my patients?" At least I'll be able to respond, "But they're sugar-free Werther's!" (They are. It was the only kind I could find in the grocery store, and then it occurred to me that this was a good thing.)

In other news, I biked to the high school for the first time yesterday. It felt good to be a bike commuter again, and it's only a 25-minute ride, meaning it's one of the fastest ways to get to work. Of course, I forgot that it was Friday, and Friday is the day I collect my students' music theory packets to take home and grade...meaning I had a stack of paper about 2/3 of a foot high that I had to figure out how to fit into my bike bag. Speaking of which, I should probably go do some grading.

Students playing tricks

So, today the Concert Choir (my meets-every-day, teaching-them-the-basics choir) played a joke on me.

A girl that I didn't know came into class, and a couple of the students told me she was a French exchange student and was going to sit in on class. The beginning of class tends to be total pandemonium, so I was like, "Fine, whatever, can someone make sure we have a chair?" And then I didn't think about it. So 20 minutes into class, she raises her hand and says, "Je mange?" And I said, "Um, you didn't have lunch yet? Who's she partnered with? Who's her host?" And someone raised their hand, but said they hadn't eaten lunch together, and the French exchange students just basically did whatever they wanted and went wherever they wanted. Which seemed strange, but I said, "Well, OK, this is second lunch, so I suppose you'd better go. Bye." And she left.

I proceeded to try and get on with rehearsal, but the whole class (it's 42 kids) was cracking up, and it was little pockets all over the class, not localized, and I was starting to wonder what I'd missed, and so I said, "OK, guys, what's so funny?" And it turned out that she wasn't an exchange student at all, but just someone's friend who wanted to sit in on chorus before she went to lunch. They told me she was an exchange student as a joke, and didn't expect me to believe it. One girl said, "Don't tell me you actually believed that awful French accent!" I have a feeling they are not going to let me live this down. I did tell them the story of two friends (twins) who swapped places in their college classes on April 1st and fooled their professors.

When I told my boss, the full-time choral director at the high school, she said, "Oh, they're playing tricks on you? That means they're starting to like you!" I'm not sure this makes an entirely huge amount of sense from where I'm sitting but I can hope!

the law of blog procrastinating

It's been over a month since my last post. One problem with not updating regularly is that the more time goes by, the more I have to blog about. I have been putting off updating for weeks, partly by saying to myself, "Well, but if I update, I can't possibly not talk about this, or that, or the other thing" but the longer I wait, the longer the list of "this, that, and the other thing" gets. So I will try to re-enter into blogging in moderation, and not feel compelled to talk about everything all at once.

I have two part-time jobs now, one at Winchester High School as a part-time chorus teacher, and the other at the Boston Cecilia as their operations manager. Last week was the first week that I juggled both, and it was very busy! I'm also doing a good deal of singing. I'm most excited about Cappella Clausura and Schola Cantorum. (I could not find a webpage for the Schola Cantorum, but information about the group's director, Fred Jodry, is here.)

Schola Cantorum is a group I feel very lucky to be singing with. For those of you who heard the Westminster Kantorei, the group is very similar to that one, in size and repertoire and performance level. I highly, highly recommend coming to all concerts, and the first set is this weekend! Because I had committed to a recording gig for another choir before joining the group, I will not be at the first concert on Friday (ouch) but here is the information for all three concerts this weekend.

Friday, October 20

8:00 pm

Schola Cantorum (Jodry, dir):
Schütz Cantiones Sacrae, Schein,
Buxtehude, ancestors of JS Bach.
St Peter's Church,
320 Boston Post Rd, Weston MA.
401-274-5073 $20/15/8

Saturday, October 21

8:00 pm

Schola Cantorum (Jodry, dir):
Schütz Cantiones Sacrae, Schein,
Buxtehude, ancrestors of JS Bach.
St Paul's Church, Pawtucket RI.
401-274-5073 $20/15/8

Sunday, October 22

3:00 pm

Schola Cantorum (Jodry, dir):
Schütz Cantiones Sacrae, Schein,
Buxtehude, ancestors of JS Bach.
Lindsey Chapel, Emmanuel Church,
15 Newbury St, Boston.
401-274-5073 $20/15/8

The year really starts in September

Well, I nearly managed to do daily updates for a week last month...I only fell down on the last day!

Since then, I have gotten an apartment - not the slightly-too-expensive one I was worrying about, but a very reasonably-priced and spacious place in Cambridge, MA with three other people. Unpacking is proceeding slowly and fitfully.

I'll be substitute-teaching music at a private middle school in September, and school starts tomorrow with a day of teacher meetings. Then all the kids show up on Thursday! I don't actually start teaching classes until next Tuesday, however - everything until then is various sorts of orientation.

And today I just found out that one of the jobs I was really crossing my fingers for - the general manager of the Cantata Singers - was taken. (I say they need to take down the job announcement on their website since it's no longer open.) I found out in a rather abrupt way - I was interested in auditioning for them as well as working for them, but I didn't want to hurt my chances of getting the job by trying out if they didn't want their manager to sing. So I called the office, and was starting into my lengthy explanation of my predicament, but I didn't get beyond, "So, you have an opening for a general manager position -" before the woman on the other end said, "Oh, yes, that's been filled." So. Right. At any rate, I can now audition for them in an uncomplicated manner. I really hope I get in - I hear good things, and they have some overlap with Emmanuel Music, which is the best choral group in the city.

So, currently I'm trying out for Cappella Clausura and the Oriana Singers tomorrow evening, the Cantata Singers on Sunday, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus on Sept. 20. If I get my act together, I'll make a recording and send it to the Handel & Haydn Society as well, but luckily that's not due until mid-October. I'm also debating whether or not to audition for Boston Cecilia, but I'm thinking now that I don't need to. And I also have an interview for an arts management position I'd really love this coming Thursday, so keep your fingers crossed for me on that one!

If anyone is wondering where I'm getting all my information on Boston choral groups, the Boston Choral Consortium (www.bostonsings.org) is an invaluable resource. It's not quite comprehensive, but it's pretty damn close. They're having odd trouble with their website this week (a bad week to have trouble for a choral website!) but hopefully they'll be back up soon.

Daily updates, Day 6

Most of my mind today has been taken up with trying to decide whether or not to take an apartment slightly out of my budget range. It's beautiful, and perfect, and just barely too expensive. It's got a charming roommate with a darling cat. It looks like a home, not an apartment. And I keep telling myself I will take the plunge and do it, and then I remember that I really need to be taking voice lessons, and maybe organ lessons, and ideally Alexander Technique lessons, and that I'm still in a place where music is likely to cost more than it pays, and then I feel that I can't go forward with it.

This is all made harder by the fact that I feel that I got this degree, and now I somehow am not managing to do anything with it. It's very hard not to feel that the only explanation is that I haven't tried hard enough. I have classmates with music jobs (in fact, I can't think of someone in the program with me that doesn't have a music job) but here I am wondering if I should go back into tech support to pay off student loans. This feeling of "failing to be a musician" is common, I know - I've talked with friends about it - but that doesn't make it particularly easier to handle.

Daily updates, Day 5

Personally, I have nothing of musical interest to report today. I visited apartments, and ate with friends and family. However, that doesn't mean there's nothing of musical interest going on in the wider world, so I will use this daily update for some signal-boosting.

London's Proms are in full swing! You can listen to the concerts online, if you wish.

Outside London's Royal Festival Hall, a "virtual orchestra" has been put together.

Farinelli's body is exhumed. Yuck. (Farinelli was one of the most famous castratos in the history of the world.)

Wynton Marsalis is going to write an opera for the New York Met.

The Tehran Symphony Orchestra goes on tour in Germany.

It's not news, but if you missed the articles about U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, a Xhosa version of Carmen, the film won rave reviews and quite a lot of press last year. (I was trying and mostly failing to find news that was not in the US or Europe.)

And finally (and sadly) Elisabeth Schwarzkopf passed away on August 3.

Daily updates, Day 4

Today I went shopping. Again. (I went shopping just a week ago with my friend AN.) I now have a complete wardrobe for teaching, (at least in the fall) and feel quite comfortable and professional in what I have.

One of the things that I faced up to at Westminster was how important image is. I think singers have to deal with the importance of presentation and body image more than any other type of musician, so as a school, it was a very clothing-conscious place. (I've never seen so many high-heeled shoes in my life. Did you know they make high-heeled flip-flops now? I'm not kidding!) And the importance of image is especially relevant for conductors - after all, people are staring at you for hours during a rehearsal. Your entire job is visual - while the music is going, it's the only available method of communication. It may seem obvious that therefore one's appearance plays a huge role in how musicians respond to you, but it is an idea that I've only grudgingly accepted. However, when faced with the prospect of a roomful of middle-schoolers, I am going to take every advantage I can get, and looking like I mean business will definitely help!

Daily updates, Day 3

Dear Diary,

Today, my friend JL taught me to play the organ. It was fun! I learned that I have no business doing anything with the pedals anytime soon. Also, my feet are much larger than I thought. Then I had a more-than-four hour meeting with the teacher I'm substituting for at the private school in September. She is wicked helpful and super-organized, with lesson plans for every day. Whew! Then I cooked some pasta primavera. It was yummy! It was the best day ever!

Tomorrow I go shopping, so I look all cool for school! Yay!

Daily updates, Day 2

I almost forgot to update today! I have no interesting musical tidbits to report, so I will simply provide a musical joke for the day.

What's the definition of an alto?

A soprano who can sightread.

Hey, it's funny because it's true! (There was no other reason for me to end up in the alto section in 3rd grade.)

Daily updates, Day 1

My friend Christianne (over at Singin' in the Lane) and I met for a good-bye dinner of sushi before I left Princeton, and we agreed that we both wished we updated our blogs more regularly. So we made an agreement that starting today, we would post something every day for a week.

Luckily, I have something to report! I got offered a job today, and I took it. It's a temporary substitute-teaching job at a private school in Cambridge, and I'll be teaching middle-school music for the month of September. The school has a good reputation, the classes are small, there's tons of administrative support, there are complete syllabi for me to follow, and the compensation is generous. It's a great gig. This doesn't mean I'm not still somewhat terrified of jumping in and teaching middle-school full-time for a month, but I think I'll survive. What happens after that is still unknown, but at least I'll have income for one month, and you know I'm going to learn something.

Car on fire!

I haven't posted for a while, mostly because there hasn't been much going on in my life. I've been applying for jobs, I've gotten a few scant interviews, and nobody has seen fit to offer me employment yet. It's been a pretty quiet summer, which is good for me after two intense years of graduate school, but maybe not so good for the excitement levels of my blog.

However, at last I have something to report! Last night, I was in a car that caught on fire!

Yesterday I went to a recording session in Philadelphia with fellow singers AN and LLJ. Dr. Jordan is recording some pieces for the publishing company he's associated with. I believe this is so they can provide recordings to prospective music-buyers, but I'm not entirely sure - all I know is, I learn my part, I show up, I sing, I get money. Pretty sweet. The group is called Anam Cara, and was formed for this recording session, but Dr. Jordan's so pleased with the sound that he wants to try and do other gigs in the future.

We took LLJ's car, which is actually her roommate's Aunt Betty's car. Her roommate is in Turkey. She was given the car by her Aunt Betty two years ago, who promised it was in perfect condition, but neglected to mention the bullet holes in the passenger-side door. I merely provide all this as background, and to prove that this is a car that appears to attract excitement.

The air-conditioning in the car was broken, so I spent one and a half hours yesterday in that heat in a non-air-conditioned car. Which wasn't fun. The drivers (AN and LLJ took turns) noticed that the transmission was acting funny, but we didn't worry about it. We did the recording session, went out for food afterwards, and headed home at probably around 11:30 pm.

When we got back into Princeton, LLJ noticed that she smelled smoke. I did too, but AN didn't, and we both (being rather blase persons) told LLJ not to worry about it. However, about a mile away from my house, LLJ saw smoke as well as smelled it, and pulled the car over. At this point, I think AN and I both a little annoyed, because hey, we were only a mile away from my house, right? How bad could it really be? However, I opened my door to get out, and that's when I saw flickering orange light coming out from under the bottom of the car. This rather changed my attitude. "Flames! Flames! Get out, guys, now!" I said. We all scrambled out, and stood about 10 feet away, and watched as the flames (which were coming from under the chassis, right under the driver's foot-well) died out over the course of about 5 minutes. LLJ during this time was placing a call to 911, with the pithy message, "Hello, my car's on fire." It must have been a slow night in Princeton, because we ranked 3 police cars and a fire truck.

The firemen all clustered around and helpful advice and various possible explanations were provided mainly by one fireman in flip-flops, boxers, a tank-top, and a big fire-hat. Everyone else was in full fire-gear. We tried to come up with hypotheses for this variation in dress code on the way home, and concluded that the car-fire-expert must have been asleep at the time of the call. They sprayed water on it to cool it down, and told LLJ to leave it there, call the police station in the morning to make sure she wouldn't get ticketed, and have it towed in the morning as well. Then all three of us walked the mile home to my house. AN had already planned to stay over, and LLJ stayed as well because she had no way to get home.

The moral of this story is that if you smell something burning, maybe there's something really wrong with your car, and if you smell something burning and see smoke, then you should probably get out of your car in fairly short order.

The last thing we did before bed was leave a message on the CarTalk voicemail system. If those producers don't choose LLJ to be on the next CarTalk show, they're crazy.

Ukelele player

If you're like me, you probably have some stereotypes connected with ukeleles. You probably don't think of them as particularly impressive instruments, or something that you'd go out of your way to see. That is, if you're like me and don't know anything about ukeleles. If you do know something about them, you may not be particularly astonished at the following link.

But whether you know something about ukeleles and the depth of musicianship of the people who play them or not, I suggest you watch this video. I've certainly never seen anything like it before.

A little poking around the comments on the video reveals that the guy's name is Jake Shimabukuro, and his website is here.