Wow David, that's quite impressive, in my humble opinion anyway. I'm
probably the baby of the group, I don't post much because I have the least
amount of knowledge and experience since I'm only 22. I find it very
interesting though, to read about what everyone else has to say.
As far as what I'm doing, I'm a senior vocal performance major at the
University of Northern Iowa, and I will hopefully be going to Indiana, CCM,
or USC this fall for grad school. On 1/12 we had district Met auditions,
and I had a lesson with my voice teacher the day before, in which she
advised me to withdraw since I have a small problem with my middle range,
and it would be unwise to waste one of my chances. I disregarded her advice
though, because I had a heck of a time getting into the auditions to begin
with. I opened with "Martern aller Arten", and closed with "Ah fors' é
lui...Sempre libera". I felt that I did a good job, but I was up against
some tough competition. I didn't advance to regionals, but I won a $1000
career-development grant, which was a huge surprise since that prize is
almost always given to a winner. I also got to talk to Tom Muraco of the
Manhattan School, who was one of my judges, and he was very enthusiastic
about me. He said that there was a lot of debate amongst the judges about
whether or not to send me on, because they were all very impressed, but they
all noticed my middle voice problem. Mr. Muraco gave me his phone number
and said that he would be very interested in working with me. I will have a
coaching/masterclass with him this September.
Besides that, I have my senior recital this April, in which I will open and
close with the arias I mentioned earlier, respectively, as well as the
finale from Thaïs with a baritone friend of mine and a violinist. Probably
the thing I'm most excited about is that the director of our School of Music
approached me last summer and asked if I would like to sing in Costa Rica
this May! For some reason our school has a connection to something called
the Centro Cultural Costariccense Norteamericano, which puts on a concert
series called "Promising Artists of the 21st Century". Last year we sent
two jazz musicians, and this year our dept. head wanted to send opera
singers, so he's sending me and a baritone. It's an all-expense paid trip
and we'll be there for a week in May. We'll be giving several recitals, and
it sounds like we may be giving a masterclass to local high school or
college kids.
Sorry that this was such a long post! If you want you can check out my
website at http://www.geocities.com/msopran
Molly
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