I can't say much exciting happened today: it's nasty, cold, and wet outside, and my plan to take a long walk to the music shops was very unappealing. I stayed in and practiced this morning before my coaching, kind of wishing I had a pianist who could just follow me around and play whenever I needed. Sometimes practicing with a roll-up electric piano on your futon isn't particularly inspiring! Mostly, it's that if it's not on a hard surface, when you press one key, two notes often sound. I wanted to get more feedback on a number of arias, so I chose a few and focused on those. The coaching was good and aimed at fleshing out the rest of my audition package of 5 or 6 arias. Funny how just when you think you have a good list (if you'd asked me a month ago, I would have felt pretty confident about mine), somebody points out the flaws. The ideal is that every aria you offer at an audition should sound fantastic in your voice, have some personal interpretation, and that among the group you should be able to show contrasting qualities, styles, and languages. For a young singer (and I think some older ones) this is damnably hard. One ought not sing things that are too big, or in a language one's not so familiar with, but all the applications and websites demand it... not to go into a diatribe about this. On my list, I had three arias that were all kind of sad and slow. One of them I love, but is now feeling too low for me - the tessitura isn't quite right. So my coach advised to replace it with something that was more perfectly "me." Another reason I've been wanting to go the sheet music store is that he's recommended several things for me to look at. I've already entered a few competitions with arias that I now might want to change...sometimes you just have to stick with what you've got if you can't learn and perfect something new in time, or withdraw from a competition. I'll have to make those decisions down the line, but I'd love to have another aria that feels like a better fit.
After the coaching, it was really raining, and the walk to the stores definitely wasn't happening. All of sudden, trying to go see Twilight was a much more appealing option. And that's what I did. Can't say it was a good movie, but it was fabulous in it's own way. So many aching looks and tortured gestures. Funny that I wanted the books to be longer, but the movie to be shorter. Towards the end, the ridiculous "original" music got to be just too much.
Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, I WILL get out and about more.
