Singing Again

I took private voice lessons for about six years, starting in high school and then continuing on in fits and starts in college.  And on my mission, while I was riding a bike all over northern Japan, I would often sing (mostly out of boredom).  It turns out that singing and bicycling at the same time is an excellent way to build up your lung capacity, and by the time I came home from my mission I could really belt it out if I wanted to.

Since leaving college (and my Mom's willingness to pay for voice lessons), I've been incredibly lucky to get to sing in the ward choir under the direction of my friend Sarah, who was a vocal performance major at BYU.  Her choir practices were often mini-voice lessons, as she would explain using your breath properly and shaping your mouth and other important things for producing a full and resonant sound.  I remember once chatting with Craig about voice lessons and realizing that he thought they consisted of learning to read music-- when I laughed and explained that that was NOTHING like what they were about.  I told him that I spent my first few lessons lying on the floor of my teacher's studio just learning how to breathe correctly.  Raising your soft palate, engaging your diaphragm, getting your jaw out of the way...  these are the kinds of things you learn in singing lessons.  Like every act that requires precision-- swinging a golf club, or writing calligraphy-- there are a hundred things that must be done exactly right, and they're all racing through a singer's head as she performs.  It's too much to ever master it all, but the best sure make it look easy!

Anyway, I've always enjoyed singing, and I've always had opportunities to do so.  Not that I'm some star, but I have a nice voice and a decent range, and I can hold my own amongst other sopranos.

But when we moved to Charlottesville, I found out that our ward is not particularly musical.  I don't mean this to sound as negative as it's going to, but our ward choir is kind of...  sad  Our choir director (as a southern gal, I should probably throw in a "bless his heart" right here) is busy with three other callings, and he really doesn't know any more than I do about how to lead a choir (which is to say, not much).  He tries, and I appreciate his efforts, but choir hardly ever meets, and even when it does, I usually don't know about it until it's too late to make it work for our family.  (You really can't be spontaneous with five kids after three hours of church!)

So that's been a little disappointing.

So when Craig heard about a choral group here in Charlottesville called the Oratorio Society of Virginia, I was intrigued.  They practiced Monday nights from 7:30-9:30, and, thanks to a new cut-through road that just opened, were located really close to our home (which is rare-- most things tend to be about 20 minutes away).  That was about as perfect as you could get-- Monday nights are the ONLY nights when there aren't any church activities, and having it close by shaves off a lot of travel time.  Auditions were in January, and I decided I had nothing to lose by trying.

That's kind of my attitude about a lot of things in life-- can't hurt to try!  And it's usually worked pretty well for me.  (The huge glaring exception is the time I auditioned for The Young Ambassadors, a singing and dancing group at BYU.  I'm a pretty good dancer, but when I showed up and the routine they wanted us to learn in 15 minutes had several triple-pirouettes, I knew I was WAY out of my depth.  That was embarrassing!)

Anyway, since I'd lost my voice Christmas Day, it had been a bit scratchy and just "off" ever since.  Some days I could sing just fine, but other days my voice would be small and thin sounding.  I thought about going to see a doctor, but that would have required me to actually have a doctor that I go to, so I finally decided to just be as zen as I could be and not worry about it.  Things would just have to work out however they were supposed to.  I did try really hard to rest my voice and not yell at the kids but this is harder than you might think-- even if I'm not angry with them, it usually takes a pretty loud shout to get everyone's attention over all the other noise going on.  And every few nights I'd sing through my Italian arias a bit.

The audition was on Martin Luther King Day, and Craig came up with the brilliant idea to go to his parents' house to work on Bentley's pinewood derby car.  This was perfect because it meant Craig could enjoy using all Dad's tools and I could hang out with his Mom and not sit around worrying.  Because as soon as we were home again, that's all I did!  It's funny how something can seem like no big deal until the day you have to actually do it-- I think I feel the same way about giving talks in church and having babies, actually...

I'd never been to the Municipal Arts Center before, so I left super early in case I got lost.  I also had forgotten to print out the audition form, so I was hoping they'd have some there that I could fill out (which they did).  There was one woman ahead of me, and I could hear her audition and she had a wonderful voice.  I'd sort of been hoping she'd be terrible and I could feel good about myself in comparison.

And then it was my turn!  The choir director, Michael Slon, chatted with me for a few minutes, asking where I'd sung recently and I had to admit that I'd mostly just been singing in church choirs (I did mention singing Before Tonight) and since he asked what congregation, I told him I was Mormon.  He said that he knew Mack Wilberg, and because I'm super awkward, I told him that I didn't know who that was (he's the director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir).  Oops.  Then he had me warm up and down the piano so he could get a sense for my range, and then he had me sight-read.

Now, if you know anything about singers, then you know that sopranos are the least musical of them all.  Because all we ever sing is the melody, we pretty much tend to suck at actually reading music.  And I am completely typical of every soprano in this way.  (I'd like to think that I'm atypical by not being a total diva, but I guess I might be wrong about that.)  I can barely read music, and I can't sight-read at all.  So this part of the audition was humiliating.  I would do it wrong, he would sing it with me to help me figure it out, and then I'd do it wrong again.  I wanted to hide under the piano.  He finally gave up on that, and asked me what I'd brought to sing.  I got all set up, he played the opening bars and I was off!

Except it was way too slow.  So when he paused to turn the page,  I murmured, "You can speed it up a bit, too," and hoped I wasn't being super rude.  I kept singing and realized that my throat had completely dried out and I couldn't swallow.  Awesome.  But all you can do is keep going and hope your throat doesn't close up or stick.  I finished, and the director said, "Well, I don't usually do this, but we have rehearsals from 7:30 to 9:30 Mondays.  I know it's short notice, but do you think you can make it tonight?"  And me, keeping it awkward, said, "Um, does this mean I got in?"

And it did mean that!  I was in the choir!  I checked back at the audition sign-ups, and there were about 13 people who tried out, and only five were accepted.  And the only women who joined were me and the woman who auditioned ahead of me (so I was right-- she was good!).  I still don't know if I was asked to rehearse that night because I was so good he didn't need to think about whether or not to accept me, or if it was because my sight-reading was so bad that he figured I needed all the extra practicing I could get.  Maybe a little of both.

But I do know that I'm super excited to be singing again.  The music we're learning is beautiful and challenging and I love it.  It's so nice to be surrounded by beauty, whether it's music or art or nature.  Everyone needs that in their life.