So I woke up this morning with a horrible sore throat. I am BEYOND frustrated! I just finished my medicine that the doctor gave me and I was feeling fantastic. I'm hoping it is just a result of me not getting as much sleep as I should be. I'm hoping that medicine and a really good night's sleep will get me back into tip-top shape. We leave on tour tomorrow and a sore throat is the last thing that I need. Adrian said he woke up this morning with a sore throat too. I'm hoping we aren't harvesting disease in our house.
Dr. Gesteland is also sick so she cancelled my lesson this morning. So now I need to make-up two lessons. This doesn't bother me so much because I want to use the make-up lessons closer to my recital date. The closer my recital gets, the more I just want it to be over. I have days where I'm really excited and then I have days where I just want May 6th to come. My recital isn't even the the top of my priority list yet. NATS is just around the corner and I need to get all my music prepared for that. I would really love to win this year and I've put a lot of thought and work into my music. The competition is in Aberdeen. I see this as a little bit of a downfall. I transferred to USD from NSU in Aberdeen and my relationship with the faculty there suffered greatly as a result. I was disappointed by this because my teachers there were not even close to the reason why I left. I loved Dr. Bultema very much. She is a fantastic teacher and that has been reflected in the successes of her students. The biggest reason why I left was the opportunities. I was made a lot of promises when I was being recruited that were never kept. And that wasn't Dr. Bultema's fault. She wasn't even there yet when I was a freshman. I was told that by the time I graduated, there would be a performance program and the opera program would be developed and strong. By the end of my junior year, none of these things had happened. The opera program was in development in the capable hands of Dr. Bultema, but it was far from strong and we were only doing a scenes program in the spring. They had just gotten a Musical Theater degree started and it didn't seem like a performance program was anywhere in the near future. My other problem was that everyone was constantly encouraging me to switch to an education degree that I didn't want. I had to make tough choices. I wanted to stay in the state because I'm a mama's girl and wasn't ready to leave her just yet. But I knew I needed to get away. After having such a great teacher in Dr. Bultema, I was really nervous about meeting and working with Dr. Gesteland. She had new ideas and directions for my voice to go in and I was scared. My first semester at USD they cast me as the Queen in a children's opera called The Princess and the Pea. It would be the first full roll I learned. Even though it wasn't a very long or very familiar opera, it felt good to put that experience under my belt. The following fall I did another children's opera called The Velveteen Rabbit. I then played Hänsel in a scene from Hänsel und Gretel. The following semester I played the 2nd Lady in an abridged version of The Magic Flute and now I'm finishing up playing the 2nd Witch in Dido and Aeneas. It isn't that extensive of a list of roles but it is more than I would have gotten where I was. I've also gotten other amazing performing opportunities at USD. I performed in scenes from The Princess and the Pea at the National Opera Association Convention in San Antonio. While I was there, I heard Hugh Murphy talk about a program called Si parla, si canta. I applied to the summer program and was accepted. I then spent part of the summer in Urbania, Italy, learning Italian and singing and having a ridiculously amazing experience. My Choir has toured to some really cool places and I've made a lot of very useful connections. I have not once regretted my decision to leave my hometown. I've been blessed with another fantastic teacher in Dr. Gesteland. She has helped me really understand my instrument and refine it in to something marketable. I still have a long way to go but she has given me all of the tools to continue my studies confidently. The moral of my extraordinarily long tangent is that I'm nervous to go back to NSU for competitions because there's still weird feelings there. *cough cough* That all made sense right? *face-palm*
So yeah...that's pretty much the rest of my year. Tour, NATS, Recital, Opera, and Graduation. All in the next two months. It will be a whirlwind of fun and stress and possibly some blood and tears, but I'm ready. I've been waiting for these two months for a very long time and I'm ready to dive in, head first, and see what happens. Oh yeah, I'm ready! :)
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