Date Confirmed

OK, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here, but Paul just wrote to say that our preferred date for the performance of his work "Endurance" has been confirmed. So, if it happens, it'll be on 24 March 2007. However, the financial bit has yet to be submitted to the sponsors so I suppose there could be some hang-up, but I don't foresee that happening. So, Yea!!!! If you can make it to Fort William, Scotland on March 24th then I'll see you there!

The Answer is Yes

So, the answer to the question I posed in my last post, "Do people in the music biz actually end up working together, meeting each other in real life, or is this [MySpace] purely virtual?" is YES! I now have my first official gig in the UK and all thanks to MySpace! As of yet there is no confirmed date, but it will likely be toward the end of March. I will be performing the premier of Paul Moxon's work entitled "Endurance". The piece is 5, 10 minute episodes for orchestra and soprano. The subject, which is programmatic in nature, since I'll have no text to sing, is Shackelton's ill-fated expedition in 1914 to Antartica.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Expedition
The occasion is the exhibition of photography, by Frank Hurley, salvaged from that expedition which will be on display at the Lime Tree Gallery in Fort William, Scotland from February 16 - March 24, 2007. I'm really excited about this project!!! I'll keep you posted...

In the meantime, check out my MySpace:

www.myspace.com/divadianesoprano

MySpace

Ok, I know this is old news, but not so much for me! I heard about MySpace in mid-September on a train to Paris, where Magnus and I met to musicians (popular music). We had an interesting conversation and Angèle told me about MySpace. I signed up shortly after we got home. They were right, it's very addicting. You can spend a lot of time, especially browsing other people's Spaces. But that is the way to network. I've "met" several interesting people, mostly composers (because that's all I've had time to search), and there's a possibility of a collaboration with one of them early next year! If it works out, I will be very excited! At this point I'm not sure how virtual all of this is. Do people in the music biz actually end up working together, meeting each other in real life, or is this purely virtual? I guess I'll find out. I've only been active on it for about 2 months. We'll see

Sad Hotel #6

Just got back from Germany where I performed "Sad Hotel" again with Barbara Wachendorff and Jens Peter. In case you don't remember, Sad Hotel is the program on poetry by Anne Sexton. Jens plays the piano and composed the songs I sing, and Barbara recites other poems with Jens quasi-improvising accompaniment. It's a very powerful program and we always get good feed-back. Thursdays performance wasn't any different. The audience was made up mostly of psycho-therapists, I think, since the concert was sponsored by the IGST-Forum and part of their seminar on Fear. They appreciated the choice of poems and the program itself. It was recorded this time by the technician on the premises. I hope it turns out good. However, a terrible thing happened on my first note: The technician had forgotten to turn the volume down and at the last minute I had decided to stand directly behind the microphone, albeit a good distance back, because he said the recording was only through those microphones. No ambient mics. Anyway, the first note is good and solid and scared me half to death! So much so that my voice cracked and I jumped away from the mic. I wish I had stopped and started again, but oh well. I'm quite satisfied with the rest and am glad to have made a recording if only for posterity's sake. We agreed that I would try to sell the program in England, which would mean Barbara reciting everything in English. She'll do a wonderful job, I'm sure.

Ten days in the States

I'm just about to end my tour of the US.  Just kidding, I was only in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City. I had a concert with the Voices Found Singers (formerly known as the Lady Chapel Singers) at Bryn Mawr college in Pennsylvania yesterday.  It went extremely well, especially given that it was a completely new program.  But it's a wonderful program, full of fun music from all over the Americas - Cuba, Mexico, Canada, the US (folk songs, spirituals and modern compositions). I had a great time.

Last Tuesday Lisa Thomas and I gave a presentation on Voices Found and a bit about Hildegard von Bingen at Rowan College. Another member of VFS, Lourin Plant, teaches voice there and is co-teaching a class entitled "Songs of Protest, Songs of Praise", for which we gave the presentation.

From there I went to New York City for lessons with Cornelius Reid.  He looked well, but complained a bit about disintegrating - he turns 96 later this month!!!! My lessons were great and restored my confidence greatly.  I also went to Patelson's Music Store and bought the last remaining book of Cornelius', his Dictionary of Vocal Terminology. Now my collection is complete!

While in NYC I spent a lot of time with Anna Levenstein, a member of Elysium. We had some stuff to do to prepare for our concert in Salem, OR in March.  It was lovely to spend time with her. I also took advantage of Tower Records' closing sale and bought several DVDs ("Good Night and Good Luck", "The Big Sleep" and Peter Sellars' opera production "Cosi fan tutte") and CDs ("The Magic Flute", Mozart; "Don Pasquale", Donizetti and "The Cries of London").

So, that was that.

 

World Nuclear Association Gala Dinner

OK, this is pretty old news now, for me at least! But since I haven't posted it here, it's possible no ones heard anything about it!

Magnus and I left the next day (Sept. 9) on our honeymoon and continued to travel nearly non-stop for the next few weeks, so no time to blog, even though I made a resolution to blog on a weekly basis!

Anyway, on September 8, 2006 I performed a program of English songs about London (in the greater sense) for the World Nuclear Association. It was at the Grosvenor Hotel where the WNA held their Gala Dinner at the end of their yearly symposium. It was the weirdest thing, the idea of singing for a bunch of "nuclear nerds" as the General Director John Ritch put it, was strangely daunting. I wanted to impress John, since he had hired me to entertain them without ever hearing me sing!

I found an excellent accompanist, Nigel Foster, who was recommended to me by Paul Martyn-West. We worked very well together. We performed:

If Music Be the Food of Love, Henry Purcell arr. Benjamin Britten
On the Brow of Richmond Hill, Henry Purcell
Bedlam, Traditional arr. Cecil P. Sharp
Sweet Polly Oliver, Traditional arr. Benjamin Britten
The Bells of the Cheap, Charles Ancliffe
No. 6 Rhyme, from "A Song for my Lord Mayor's Table", William Walton

The program was 15 minutes long and I spoke a few words about each piece to give a bit of context. Since the theme of the evening was London (according to the administrator the people who come to this symposium don't have much time to explore London, so he wanted to give them a bit at the Dinner), I chose songs which each mention London or a part of London. Except for the first one, of course, which I thought was a good opener the audience having just finished dinner!

It was a great success! Just the right length and I didn't make a fool out of myself speaking between songs! In fact, people said they really appreciated the guidance. Also, the person I wanted to impress, John Ritch, was duly pleased! I'm very happy with the way the performance went, and would welcome such performing opportunities in the future!

Greetings from Vienna - the wedding saga continues

It's almost all completely behind me! In a couple of days I'll be flying back to London to "resume" my "normal" life... We are in Vienna this week - Magnus is at a conference here.

Hmmm. Where did I leave off? Ah yes, my mother arrived in London on Wednesday. We spent about 2 days at home, she rested and Magnus and continued getting ready for the wedding. Namely, we had the program to make. Mom helped me get ready for the WNA gala dinner performance by accompanying me on my piano. I wanted to memorize the songs, but memorizing text has never been my forte!

My brother, Tom and his wife, Barbara arrived on Friday. I let them fend for themselves getting to the Tooting train station on their own. They made it! They settled in a bit and then we all went out to have a drink and dinner at a pub in town. Magnus met us there. Tom, Barb and my mom loved it. I'd forgotten it was Friday and so it was VERY lively at the pub, with the clientel spilling out onto the street of course.

Saturday Tom and Barb went sight-seeing and were out carousing for a very long time! They met some real characters in their pub trawlings - a lesbian bachlorette (hen) party and a local man at a pub near Tooting Broadway Tube station named Bill. Magnus and I managed to finish the programs and started printing them. We ordered Indian and ate in - yum!

Sunday we managed to get our act together and get downtown to St. Paul's Cathedral and to the Eucharist. It's the 2nd time I've been there and the Cathedral Choir hasn't sung either time. The music was great though! We had lunch in a local pub and Tom and Barb went off again on their own. We had a steak and potato dinner which T & B had conceived.

They left at about 4am to catch their plane to Pisa. I couldn't fall back asleep of course, because we had to get up only an hour or so later to catch our own plane to Brescia with Mom.

To be continued...