surreal

I have a paper due tomorrow. It's almost 11:30pm and I'm still not done.

Surprise, surprise - I'm blogging!

It just strikes me as so surreal that I'm finished the first year of my doctorate. While I'm just finished the first of four years, the coursework only lasts two years, and the work I'll do on my thesis will hopefully be like what I'll be doing after graduating, so really, I'm pretty much halfway through the university part of it...

Ok, wishful thinking aside, time is going by so quickly!

Anyway, the front yard is filled with tulips and greenery, I see more and more people wearing shorts every day - summer seems to be upon Vancouver!

This should be a fun one!

Official Apology

I should be more careful to not offend my readers..

I apologize for any comments I may have made that might imply anything untoward about any singers who occasionally read my blog. You know I love you all - heck, you make up 60% of my readership!

When speaking of effervescence, I surely was not thinking of pet wolves, more along the lines of large birds... In a sea of singers of all types, I miss the level-headedness, cool nature, laugh, humour, wisdom, and of course great voice of you, pet wolfe. Ain't no one howls better than you at Karaoke!

Can I be forgiven?

Pleeeeease...

Self-Review

So, as I mentioned, today I made my premiere as a baritone, haha!

Generally, the performance went quite well. One case of the giggles caused a small pause in the performance, but we regained our footing and got to the end relatively unscathed.

The piece itself was a success; the story was clear and people found it quite entertaining. I had been worried because the audience only hears half of the text. Everyone who has looked at the piece (myself, the bassoonist, and profs) have had the benefit of reading the full text, so I'm glad that I did a good enough job of doubling/implying the underlying text.

As a singer, I think I pulled it off. I'll be interested to hear the recording... I've never actually heard a recording of me singing, so it will be very... um... ya...

Hopefully there will be some salvageable bits that I can post on here and/or my website. I know that I wrote the piece, but that was way back in October; one week wasn't really enough to learn it. However, there's always the magic of character voices! I'm not a trained singer, so character voices gave me an excuse to not obsess about tone quality, etc.

As a baritone, some of those A's were awful low-feeling. I'll be interested to hear how those sound on the recording.

Long story short, this was phenomenally fun! I love performing, I love laughing, and I love making people laugh; this had all of those things in perfect harmony!

yearning for a simpler time

You may be surprised to hear this, but I'm not exactly a manly man...

One of the few vestiges of manliness I can boast is the fact that from the end of high school through my university years in Winnipeg, I went to a barber.

It was right next to the pharmacy where I worked. It had a traditional spinning barber thingy, and kitschy signage indicating the name - "Nick the Fiddling Barber's". Nick was long since retired; the barber's name was Phil and he helped me through some of the worst hair disasters of my life: 2 drunken haircut escapades where I let friends play with scissors, as well as the day I let some co-workers dye my hair blond with the expired "Blondissimo" we had pulled off the shelves.

Phil was a master at barbering. I never doubted his skill, never was disappointed with his work, and was never uncomfortable in his chair. If I needed to be chatty, he had stories and friends in all walks of life and professions. If I was pensive, he has philosophical queries and ideas to ponder - all of which could be resolved with a witty one-liner before standing up out of the chair. If I wasn't particularly sociable, he could shoot the shit about the weather like the best of them, or he could make a silence completely comfortable.

Since leaving Winnipeg, I've never really been satisfied with my hair-shortening experiences. Most stylists are baffled by the concept of tapering the back; 'why on earth would he want that?', 'how the heck are you supposed to do that?!?'

I could continue complaining, but that take too much effort. Long story short, I've been yearning for that simpler time... so when I realized that there is a barbershop called John and Nick's Barber Shop less than a 5 minute walk from my house, I needed to give it a try.

I sat at Nick's chair. He looked almost exactly like the young barber in that Seinfeld episode. I appreciated the efficiency of the cut, the sterile coldness of the barbershop, the olde-style chair. The cut was classic and good, but the experience wasn't like home.

In the end, no complaints, but I'll continue my search for the hair-shortening method that is right for me. I might go back to that Future Hair Training Centre I went to last time around; it's hard to beat a 7 dollar haircut...

My début as a chanteur...

I've always sung in choirs, taken some singing lessons, and in undergrad I spent most of my time with the singers. Their quirky ways, the high drama, the loudness, and the effervescent airheadedness make me feel at home.

(you know I love you all)

But other than choirs, I've never really sang on my own for a recital or something. Well, that will be changing on Wednesday.

Gramps Ain't No Namby-Pamby is a duet I wrote for Bassoon and Baritone earlier this year. It's been finished since first term and I've had a bunch of baritones willing and interested in singing it, but the actual performance date has taken far too long to materialized. It wasn't until last week that the April 21'st performance date was confirmed.

On a week and a bit's notice, I got a mezzo soprano to agree...

[the two roles in the piece are grandfather and grandson, so this was kind of a gender-bending version]

long story short, a week and a bit was not enough time, so as of last night I will be performing the piece. I ran it through with my bassoonist and we're confident it will be pretty spectacular!

With any luck, Wednesday will be recorded and I can put up a recording. This is going to be a gong show, but in the best way imaginable!

The animals that punctuate our lives and blogs

I just heard a noise in the living room...

who or what could it be?

OSCAR!

My long-time blog readers may remember Oscar from Christmas of 2006 when I housesat for my friend, Binky. Oscar is her cat and he is pretty awesome. As you can tell from the picture, he doesn't like the camera flash.

Growing up, there was always a pet in the house, be it a dog, cat, or budgie. Living on my own, I haven't had the time or money to take care of a pet; I've survived, but I was happy to have the chance to cat-sit for a few weeks. My roommate and I have been enjoying his antics since he arrived earlier this morning and he seems to be adjusting well to his temporary home.

As I looked up 'Oscar' and 'cat' on my blog history, I was reminded of the different stages of my life that Oscar has been involved... [dream sequence]...

December 2006 - January 2007

I housesat for Binky. This was my first time actually living away from my parents' home, other than a summer camp type experience. Wow, it wasn't until 23 that I flew the coop... Anyway - this was a nice opportunity to experience independence. Oscar kept me on my toes, barely letting me get any knitting done without attacking!

Summer 2007, or was it 2006, ya, let's go with 2006...

Binky and I went on a road trip, drove from Winnipeg to Vancouver (how apt that he should be visiting me in Vancouver this time around). We dropped him off in Saskatchewan because he didn't like the car very much... It was during his stay in Saskatchewan that he developed his habit of spitefully shitting on beds. He only did it twice, but it was done with such malice!

Today

I suppose that's not all that many times he's appeared on my blog, but he's my favorite cat nonetheless. I took that picture about an hour ago - he was lounging atop my piano. I'm glad I had the foresight to press in the silent piano pedal.... he just plopped himself down on the entire middle register of the piano!

Surviving and flourishing

So, I survived a rather full week of practicing and performing.

Not just survived, it was actually pretty successful.

A mixture of brutal honesty and high standards for myself mean that I feel like I could have played better, but I'm happy with my level of performance and so were others.

The whole experience taught me a lot and gave me a bunch of constructive experience. It was wonderful experience working with some highly skilled musicians. Few rehearsals meant that we had to get the most out of each time we met. As a performer, I experienced the full gamut of composer interactions - from the composer I only met on the night of the concert after we had played, to the composer that attended multiple rehearsals and wanted to be involved at every step of the learning.

As I played in my own piece, I was happy with the balance we struck within rehearsals. Not that there was any real chance, but I wasn't a control freak; I was open to critique and interpretations, and the other players were happy to join in that creative collaboration that is music making.

With all that said, I look forward to doing this again in the future. I love playing new music and I really enjoyed the process of premiering some new works. While it was great to play my own piece, in the future, I will prefer for my works to be played by other performers; the more people who play it, the wider the spread of that music. I don't think I'll ever want to premiere my own piece, but this had been performed before, so it was nice to have stepped into that other role this time around.

Today's the day of the big concert. My dress rehearsals went quite well and I'm feeling prepared for tonight. Since they started so early and I went to bed quite late, I came home and napped. I'm going to practice a little bit more to secure up some sections.

I still haven't decided if I'm really one of those performers that practices right up to the last minute, or if I need to leave things a bit to breath before the performance. It all depends on how prepared I am to begin with. Part of me wants to relax for the rest of the afternoon, but I shan't allow it!

Tomorrow I only have one piece to preform in a concert, same thing on Saturday; I feel like the year is starting to wind down.

Almost feels like autopilot

This weekend was almost thoughtless in terms of dedicated practicing. I had a couple hundred pages of ballet music to review/learn for the workshop I played today, as well as rehearsals and a creative meeting with an artistic collaborator of mine. I plugged away at the work I needed to do and I got it done.

Today was the ballet workshop. It went well, though it ran overtime through my breaks. My arms and brain are tired, so I won't be practicing tonight.

At the same time, I need to start doing some reading and research for a final paper.

Oh ya - I never updated, because nothing happened...

That string of bad luck my quartet was having.... well, it ended before it got to me. I suppose bad things do come in threes, so I'm lucky to be the fourth member of that ensemble!

Wow, I'm really scatterbrained right now - probably shouldn't be trying to blog, but oh well!

Good night!