New Summer

Well... it's a new summer. 2009 is here. I've never known how to appreciate summer vacation until now. After teaching middle school choir for 6 months, my brain, body, voice, was ready for the summer. I learned a lot from my experience at Parrish M.S.: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now is not the time for me to continue teaching in a classroom. While I have the chance to pursue a singing career I need to take it.
The summer started with one of my best friends getting married. Stephanie and Keith tied the knot on June 20th with a beautiful mass at St. Vincent's, the church where we all met through youth ministry. I was a bridesmaid and sang throughout the wedding. Though I had been looking forward to it for over a year, it was a relief to be over. I felt like a zombie by the time we cleaned up the hall. I never thought wearing heels all day, singing, and smiling could be so exhausting.
This summer I've been teaching music for the musical at CET. It's a great show written by the director, Greg Bowers. He's been composing it for the last two years. This will be a world premiere. The show is called Lewis and Alice and it goes back and forth between Victorian England where Lewis Carrol is telling his story and Wonderland. You really should come and see it: Thursday and Friday, July 23rd and 24th, 7:00 PM at South Salem High School auditorium.
My position at CET is very part-time and I only need to be there for two hours each day. I've had lots of extra time to practice voice lately and get some exercise in. It's my goal to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year. I love the Group Groove class at the Courthouse. It's an aerobics class with a lot of fun dance stuff. The other class that I like is called Group Centergy and it's a lot of yoga and pilates strength training and balance. I need to head back to a spin class as well.
I used to exercise in the evenings, but now I have a conflict. Every night but fridays and saturdays, I have rehearsals for My Fair Lady with the Pentacle Theatre, our community theatre. It's fun being in the chorus, they let me sing soprano and I'm so excited to start dancing.
I had a wonderful voice lesson yesterday, though today I'm frustrated with my voice. We picked out new literature and surprisingly a fair amount of it is coloratura stuff. Not at all what I thought I might audition for grad school with. But it works. I have much more agility than I thought. I don't know if I'm ready to tackled the big stuff, but I can handle cadenza stuff and trills. This week she had me look at "Villanelle" by Dell'aqcua "Ach, Ich Ful" from Die Zauberflote, an American art song by a new composer, an aria from Die Fledermaus and one from Ballad of Baby Doe. She's trying to pick out stuff that will show my high notes as well as the strength in my lower range.

Things I liked from today:
riding the scooter around town, learning some dance steps for the play, pear soda, successful shaving of the legs in the locker room, group groove, seeing my cousin, singing

Things I didn't like today:
Saigon Vietnamese restaurant, going to TJ Maxx three times, getting pelted by bugs when driving the scooter, getting frustrated with certain phrases in songs, cramps, my room is still a disaster area and it's spreading to the living room

Song of the Day:
"I'm Getting Married in the Morning" from My Fair Lady