Back in the Saddle Again January 7, 2009

This break has been long. I haven’t really been bored… I’ve had plenty to keep me busy (cleaning/organizing my apartment, planning for my 15 voice students, planning for the music appreciation class that I’ll be teaching, getting started on learning the hour-and-a-half worth of music I have to sing this semester, etc.), but I was still very glad when campus opened back up on Monday. It’s still a ghost town, but the buildings are open, the library is back up and running, and I don’t have to spend my days holed up in my apartment. I’m a bit worried about what this next comment might say about me… I realized recently that my office at school feels more like my “home” than my apartment does. So far today I’ve spent almost four hours in my office, most of that time getting work done on the above mentioned projects, and I plan to spend another couple hours. My only annoyance at the moment is that the practice rooms are locked for some stupid reason and I don’t have a key.

Next week I will start teaching lessons again. I have 15 students this semester. Yikes! That has made it difficult to find music enough for all of them (without doubling them up on literature). I am excited, though… I convinced the department head to move their “master class” to Tuesdays, so I can be there. The idea is that  will be able to (at least partially) take over the master classes and hopefully have time to start teaching them some IPA. It makes sense, since I teach two thirds of the voice majors. I’m also hoping to do an opera scenes class with them in the fall.

I was planning a recital for this semester at COS (where I teach lessons), but it has had to be cancelled. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I was really looking forward to it, but on the other hand, it’s a relief that I don’t have to worry about it. I still have to learn a ton of music. I just have a little bit longer until I have to have it all performance ready.

Oh, well… I am happy to be back at school, even if classes haven’t started yet. I know I’ll be incredibly stressed out once they do. For now it’s nice to be here and be able to get work done without feeling like a crazy person because of looming due dates.

Stuff July 18, 2008

Candide has a seriously wacky story line, but it also has some wonderful music in it. This semester I am assigning It Must Be So to one of my students. I love how haunting and sad it is. Gorgeous.

The last couple days I’ve been working on figuring out how many students I will have this semester and doing as much planning as I can ahead of time, including updating my students’ pages on my website. I won’t have much time for it once classes begin, so I’ve got to get what I can done now. So much music to wade through, considering each student’s individual strengths and what they need to work on, making sure they each have a good balance of languages, styles, time periods, composers… It’s a pain in the butt, but fun at the same time, because it means time spent listening to and reading through lots of great music.

Some of my other favorites that I’m assigning this semester: Last Rose of Summer by Flotow, Monks and Raisins – a nonsense song by Barber, the Papageno/Papagena duet from Die Zauberflote, Cielo e mar by Ponchielli, I am a Pirate King by Gilbert & Sullivan, and Clair de lune by Faure. Oh, and I must not forget Christopher Robin is Saying His Prayers by Fraser-Simson. Very fun song. Of course, I like everything that I assign to my students. I’m too selfish to suffer through a semester of listening to songs that I just don’t like. And I find that when I’m excited about the music my students are singing, it helps them be excited about it too.