First Coaching

Today I had my first vocal coaching session. It was with Tom Enman from the Longy School of Music. 'What is a voice coach?' you might ask. Well in Tom's words: a voice coach is a bastard. They're the ones who say 'that was beautiful tone, but the consonants sucked... nice, but... etc.' They knit-pick every detail in a performance and help you perfect it. They help singers come out of mediocrity. I love it!!!
We were going to work on the Verdi, but instead spent the entire hour working on vowels and En Svane. It feels like a whole new piece. I love it and it is so much easier to sing than before. I'm hoping they'll ask me to sing it at the recital auditions this Saturday. That was the other thing, Prof. Enman helped me pick out what to sing for the auditions. I'm not sure if I want to sing the Rossini or the the Bernstein. My character seems very clear with the Bernstein, but the Rossini can show off a bit more.
One funny thing, while in the middle of the session, he randomly said 'wow you look a lot like Kirsten Flagstad'. I had no idea who that was. Aparently she was a famous Norwegian Wagnerian soprano in the 30's. Anyway, I can kind of see a resemblance, but not that much.
There was a masterclass today. It was really good, and I loved how Professor Ragsdale ended it. He said that we need to adopt the Austrian mentality of we instead of me. And that if we ever are just singing for ourselves, our egos, we need to sit down, because that performance will be in vain. All the performances were great. I especially liked the performance of Willow's Song after Ragsdale had worked with her on making it more reflective and private.
After the masterclass, I went to the mall and found a shawl for my brown dress at one of the department stores. I now no longer need to be in search of anything from the stores, except souvenirs.
I also found out today that my friend, Angelina, was on "Clash of the Choirs" the reality American-Idol-like show that all of my music education major friends watched to make fun of. Haha! I love it. She was in the choir from OK City.