As I reflect on the blessing that this adventure has been in my life I looked back to when I first came up with this crazy idea.  Below is an excerpt from my journal.  It starts during a mid-dregree crisis at UW and completes the summer after I graduated and I was having a difficult time getting a job and started looking at other options.  And here I am, three and a half years later. Wow.

10 February 2005

Today in ethno we had a special guest- Lee Higgins a samba specialist from Liverpool, England.  He spent two days doing Brazilian Samba music with us and it was the most fun I’ve had in my life.  Not only was his British accent so much fun to listen to but the drumming was so much fun that I want to learn more and to teach it to kids.  [That summer I joined a Samba Band with the UW experimental college.  It was great fun.]

12 February 2005

Our friend Lee Higgins inspired me to start looking into schools in the UK.  It was all part of a bigger mid degree crisis that had me online all weekend researching grad schools. I just feel like I’m not getting to study what I want to.  I value everything that I’m learning and I know it’s important but there’s so much more I want to do.  The Manhattan School of Music has really captured my imagination.  It has a great looking jazz voice masters program.  There are a thousand reasons why it would never work but I sure like to think about it.  I’ve created a whole new set of bookmarks on my favorites.

30 July 2006

I also researched more online about grad schools. I looked again at other schools and confirmed what I already knew, that Long Beach has the program that will work for me. I also indulged in looking at schools in England again.  The Leeds College of Music offers a Masters of jazz that you can do in a year that would actually be cheaper than two years in California- tuition wise. So as usual, as you have noticed- these things have just taken over my mind and everything I think about but I think that I’ve had a break through…

So this morning we had presidency meeting and then visiting teaching.  During Sacrament meeting I was of course continuing to mull over plans and what I should do.  Not knowing what to do or where to go has kind of let the air out of my sails.  I don’t know where I’m headed so I don’t know how to prepare. Anyway during the musical number I was thinking about the possibility of actually in reality going to school in England.  I thought of all the things that I would want to know and who I should contact. What I need, I thought, is someone who I could talk to and ask all my questions to.  Well, just then the speaker got up.   Well since he’s only been in the ward for a few weeks he thought he’d introduce himself.  He served guess where, can you imagine?  In the England Leeds mission!  Not only that but he just graduated from UW and got back from a year study abroad in England.  He said he loves the UK.  I couldn’t believe it.  You could have knocked me over!  Is that a sign or what?  I had a difficult time paying attention after that but I managed.  

So then I headed down the hall to Sunday School.  The class was full and so I ended up standing in the back for a little while.  The first phrase that I heard the teacher say was, “so if the Lord prompts you to do something in your life- you need to just do it no matter how scary it is and trust that it will work out.”  

  On the way home I was thinking more about the experiences of the day and what it all meant.  I thought back to the June before I turned 21 when I was supposed to be turning in my papers.  I knew it was time to start getting ready and that the Lord wanted me to go but I just felt panicked inside and not ready.  It didn’t feel right.  It was shortly afterwards that I received the answer that I was to wait.  That year wait was so important in my preparation.  

 I came home and talked with the parents and then took a little nap.  When I’m feeling good it’s easy for everything to sound like a good idea but then I was semi awake from my nap and felt really tired and I thought how on earth could I do something like move to England? But, I was able to tell myself- well sure I’ll be tired there, I’ll be tired anywhere, I’ll just take a nap.  This was a big moment because usually if I have a plan that frightening fatigue will scare it away.

And so here are things as they stand. I feel more excited about this than anything in a long time.  I feel that kind of excitement like “We’re going to Disneyland!”  It’s lit a fire in me and given direction and purpose to everything I do.  I keep wondering at myself when I realize that there’s a part of me that says, “Who do you think you are to be so self indulgent as to go and get a masters in jazz studies?  And live in England for a year?” But the more I think about it the more I really want it.  It’s really exciting to me as I learn about it and get closer to picturing parts of it happening. Another thing that feels liberating about it is freedom from what other people want me to do or think I should do.  I remember Daisy telling me that when she graduated from Central that everyone had an opinion as to what she should do.  I’ve kind of found that true but I’ve found more that since I didn’t know what I wanted that I would run around to get everyone else’s opinion.   When what really matters is what I want to do, and what I’m supposed to be doing.

So here’s the deal.  Tomorrow I begin a full out research blitz to learn everything I can to see if this is really a possibility.  If it’s not then something will happen to cause a course direction and send me in a new direction but for now at least I have a direction.  I started making lists of things to investigate. I have three UK books: one about universities, one about London and one about living and working in Britain.

There are some shady areas and downsides.  I understand that the English style of teaching is much more individually motivated with less class time.  I don’t really know what that means but it’s on my list of things to investigate.  I have a long list of questions about the program itself that I’m going to look into.   This may all just blow over like other obsessions in the past, but I really hope it doesn’t.  I think that it has the potential to really open up my life in wonderful and unexpected ways.

Just after graduating from high school I remember watching the Pioneer Celebration Broadcast and seeing all of those people involved in all that pageantry and I wanted to be a part of it. I wasn’t going to BYU so the likelihood of me being a part of some great LDS experience like that was pretty slim.  The following January I was recommended to  be the new pianist for the Seattle Institute Choir. I played for three years before the mission and three years after.  We did Sacrament meetings, firesides, mutual nights, Christmas shows and a touring spring show. It was an incredible group to be a part of and had a huge impact on me. I learned so much about the gospel. You Tute Choir Alums know what I'm talking about.

When I planned to move to Leeds, knowing no one, I knew that it would all work out because I understood the power of an Institute.  I found it right away and got signed up for classes and attend FHE on Monday nights.  I also heard that they had a choir on Thursday nights.  I showed up all willing and ready to help out however I could.  It was a shock to me that I had such a difficult time adjusting to being an alto as opposed to the pianist or the director. Perhaps it’s the decade of choral study that’s made me a bit critical and opinionated on all subjects musical.

We did two Christmas concerts in December for which I sang alto, one duet, played a little piano and directed one tune.  Then the director had to move and they called me!  There was a time, as recently as six months ago, that this would have freaked me out but now was the time.  I was so keyed up and excited- bring it on!

So starting in January I had a choir again.  Hooray!  They’re enthusiastic, they love singing, they sing loud and want to learn.  And since I’m in charge I got to pick all my favorite songs and narrate the Easter Concert with all of my favorite Atonement quotes.  I really look forward to Thursday nights.  It’s reminded me once again how much teaching is a part of me.   I can’t not be teaching.  Trouble is we currently don’t have a pianist and I can’t do both.  Trust me, I’ve tried and it’s not for the best. Attendance has been really good until this last week but we’ll pull through.  The concerts are the 21st and 28th which is just around the corner.  Then what?  I’m trying to introduce them to the idea of the choir singing at Institute Graduation and doing something like Summer Choir so I can squeeze in more music before I leave.  I’ll have to hand it off to someone else for the Christmas concert. It’s been a fantastic way for me to be able to meet more people and for them to be able to see me in my natural habitat as it were.

I’ve been sending quotes that I’ve chosen for the concert out on the facebook group which gave me and idea.  I’ve started a new blog just of inspirational quotes (mostly from general authorities.) Check it out.

I don’t cook.  I'm a grown person living on her own and I really should have more skills in this arena.  And yet some how I’ve managed to feed myself thus far so I must be doing okay.  While some kids grow up cooking with their mom that wasn’t so much the case in our house.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about baking, that’s whole different matter. In our house baking was an evening ritual.  I have plenty of training there.  But my mom, to this day, sees making dinner as a great daily ordeal.  It’s okay, I told her I was going to say it and she’ll confirm it.  Of course the three of us reacted to this differently.

Suzie’s purist extremist nature expresses itself in her cooking.  She must follow the recipe exactly which usually involves multiple trips to various grocery stores to get the exact, name brand, ingredients.  She specializes is an alfredo sauce that will stop your heart, New Mexican green chile chicken enchiladas and Puerto Rican rice and beans.  [Ask her about the dried onions- hee hee] And don't you dare try and sample while she's working. Or maybe that's just the face she makes at me when I try and steal batter from whatever she's mixing up. 

In the last 10 years Nicole has been on culinary magical mystery tour ranging from vegetarian to vegan to raw and back again. She subsists primarily on green drinks and salads but can whip up a mean multi course veggie smorgasbord experience.

On my mission I companions that cooked and I was rather disappointed when I got home that couldn’t just pass  a dinner calendar around Relief Society and get fed.  

When I first moved out I lived mostly on Lean Cuisines.  They were cheap, hot, fast, easy and portion controlled.  I think Heidi was pretty scandalized.   She would come home and chop and saute and mix herself these great dinners.  It’s not that I’m incapable, I mean I whipped up a mean chicken parmesan for Missi’s birthday and if love of the Food Network would some how transfer into skills I’d be set. But it doesn’t.  

Frozen dinners here are a big fail, horrible.  I’ve bought a few that I haven’t finished and tossed out. They do have more prepared but not preserved options.  They’re fresh and ready to go.  My favorite has been roasted potatoes.  I’ve eaten a lot of roasted potatoes.  

When I arrived in September I was feeling good.  We walked A LOT in our travels and I was very proud of the energy that I had to climb all the steps to the top of St. Paul’s.  So I got set up and didn’t buy a scale.  When things started going south I folded and got one to find that I had been steadily gaining.  So I started counting calories again for the month of January and I just gained weight.  I was in pain daily and it was getting worse.  So instead of just thinking about how much I was eating I started thinking more about what I was eat.  I talked to some experts- ie Mom and Nicole and spent last Sunday evening reading about what to eat and looking at healthy recipes.  So my next plan of attack is to eat lots and lots of veggies and less processed prepared food. Ie switching from Special K back to scotch oats.  In looking at recipes I found a great pizza recipe.  Ironic I know that my first ‘healthy’ meal should be pizza but here we go.

I headed to Tesco’s and bought lots of veggies [green beans, sweet potatoes, parsnips, broccoli, cucumbers] and whole grains etc.  I was very proud of my whole grain pizza dough- with yeast and everything. This was quite the feat as my ‘kitchen’ measures about 25 square feet.  I was chatting with my parents the other day while I was making sweet potato fries and dad said, “Did you just wash a dish right where you were chopping potatoes?”  Yes.  I lay my chopping board across the sink to create counter space. Gotta love it.

I probably could have used half the recipe because the result was more like cheese on whole wheat bread than pizza.  Oh well.  I’ll try again.  I must say that I am rather proud of myself.  The fun thing about learning something new is that you're going to get it wrong to give you the opportunity to learn things, figure stuff out and become good at it.

I even went so far as to try and make whole grain puffy pancakes. So funny, right?  It was a little nutty but really good.

So this week I’ve been eating more veggies.  I even bought a blender and started making Nicole’s famed green drink to go with my scotch oats.  The main problem I’ve had so far is that I could eat my weight in veggies and still be hungry.

Any great recipe’s to share?

While I could devote a whole blog to issues of weight I’ll try to summarize the latest into one post. 18 months ago I got fed up and started to eat better and exercise regularly. For 9 months I lost weight, 27 pounds. I felt fantastic. I dropped a size and a half, got lots of new clothes, started riding a bike etc etc etc. It was awesome. I felt for the first time that my efforts rewarded.

Then for the last nine months I’ve gained about 16 pounds back and I’m miserable. Now that I know what it feels like to be lighter and feel better and have energy, this is a cruel joke. My fibro pain is back worse than ever. I’m in pain all the time. I keep exercising. I walk 30-60 minutes a day plus some yoga and pilates and I don’t eat crazy, well I try not to. I’m starting to grow out of the small wardrobe that I brought with me and I wouldn’t feel much like clothes shopping even if I had the money.

At home I almost never dry my clothes I usually hang dry them. That doesn’t work here so I’ve been drying things on low and half of my jeans have shrunk. And I know it’s not just me because I have to pairs that are the same brand and size and one has shrunk and the other hasn’t. And now the dryer died so we'll be getting a new one and who knows what that will be like.

Is it stress, hormones, winter, fibro? I need to feel comfortable in my own skin. Life is challenging enough as it is without this on top. Help!

Hmm....maybe I should paint my toe nails and then they would at least look nicer on the scale.

In my whole life I’ve only had one job that wasn’t music related, the six months that I spent working at Motherhood Maternity. And while it did provide for some humorous anecdotes I am in no way made for retail. [Modeling with the fake belly, 2000]

According to my visa in the UK I can work 19 hours a week but I can’t be self employed or be employed as an entertainer. So that means I can’t teach private lessons or get paid for gigging. Excuse me, what I am I here to learn? Oh that’s right, how to be a professional performer! Ha! But the good news is that I do have a little job and it’s legal. [Apparently no other American’s here are bothered by this stipulation of the visa].

Private teachers are often free lance and work at several places. My teacher Louise used to teach some private students at the University of York but she’s now full time at Leeds and managing the post grad program so when the called looking for a teacher she recommended me. Woo hoo! So on Wednesday’s I take the train up to York, about 20 miles, and teach 5 students. I had anticipated that they would be mostly classical cross over students with not style whose vibrato would need ironing out but for the most part they’re good. Two of them want to do jazz recitals in June so I’m excited to help them prep for that. Since they’re good it’s really keeping me on my toes and I’m doing my best to really help them. I love teaching, it makes me so happy. [Sometimes when I get frustrated with my performing skills I need to remember that while I have natural teaching talent it has taken years of study, practice and experience to settle in and find my feet, persona and confidence as a teacher. I imagine the same will be true of performing.]

York is a rather singular and interesting place. It’s a charming town, one of the oldest in England and has a great wall running around and through the city.

The University runs on a totally different system from all the other schools in the UK. The have about 5-6 weeks of lectures and seminars followed by 4 weeks of time to prep a paper, presentation or performance. Then you start again. I don’t quite understand it. I just hope the communicate well enough with me that I know which days not to show up. The other thing that is interesting is that each student gets a private lesson allowance/allotment to spend and if they want to take more lessons then they have to pay extra. So my students are either deciding to take fewer lessons from their main teacher or paying extra to do jazz too.

With the amount of new situations that’s I’ve been thrown into in the last 5 months I’ve gotten pretty good at laughing at myself. Here’s a break down of this past Wednesday. Let’s count how many times I was cold. I’m so done with being cold. I think it’s because I’m a pedestrian and every time I go anywhere I have to go outside. That being said I’m happier being cold when it’s sunny and dry.

Wednesday 10 February 2010 5.32 miles, 60 minutes aerobic walking

7:50 a.m. Wake up after rather strange dream encompassing random bits of my past and present life put through a blender. Remember where I am and what day it is.

8 a.m. Eat breakfast while checking facebook and reading blogs, panic because I can’t find a pair of black socks to wear with my teacher-pants-that-are-not-jeans. Never mind that I live in a room and they can’t have gone very far.

9 a.m. Wait for and catch the bus to the city centre. Cold. I like to listen to podcasts of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me while I travel. I’ve nearly listened to every show from 2007 until the present. Transfer to the free city bus to get to the rail station.

9:40 buy a bus ticket to York, make sure to specify that I’m traveling after 10 so I can get the off-peak price. Even though I’m getting travel reimbursement I’m still that cheap. Then I realized that I didn’t have cash for the bus in York which meant that even though I had actually planned ahead and packed a lunch I bought a salad at M&S to get some cash. Wait 15 minutes for the train. Cold. I love trains, honestly I do. I could take a bus to York, but another hour bus ride each way is not something I need in my life.

10:05 Train to York. I had entered the melody to Minor Yours into finale before leaving this morning and so I spent the train ride entering in the chords.

10:30 Exit York train station to heavy snow fall. Seriously the biggest flakes I’ve ever seen. It was as though two or three flakes had already stuck together in anticipation of landing. But there was no accumulation. Wait for and catch bus to campus. Cold. Ended up having to pay an extra 50p for the bus because I’m not specifically a UYork student. Whatever.

10:50 Arrive to see that I finally have a regularly booked room to teach in. The hall way to the practice rooms is combo locked. I know the combination but made a fool of myself several times doing it wrong. The old me would then hover like a vulture until someone else opened it and then sneak in with them. The newly emerging me turns to a passerby and says, “What am I doing wrong?”

11:00 Teach three lessons, each one rather fulfilling in that I was able to identify issues and supply remedies. Sounds simple but when you actually get it right, it’s so great. I really want their time with me to be worth it because I know what it’s like to have a teacher who doesn’t listen to you or talks around the issue instead of getting to the point. It’s all about changing how they sound for the better. My last student didn’t show so I worked on transcribing an Art Pepper chart to turn into a vocal chart later. I got all my paperwork in order to turn into get paid but the key person wasn’t in. Maybe next week.

2:00 I headed out to wait at the bus stop. Sometimes I walk the two miles back to the train station but it was so cold I thought I’d ride. So after some waiting the bus pulls up. The driver made eye contact with me as if to say, “Are you waiting for me?” I nodded and he kept driving. What? Note to self: next time flag down the bus so there’s no mistaking. Because I was so cold I decided to start walking and ended up walking all the way back to the station. Good thing it’s such a lovely walk.

2:45 Back on the train it took me a little while to defrost. I was so tired that I fell asleep and it’s a good thing I woke up in time or I’d have ended up at the Manchester airport.

3:15 Back in Leeds I decided to splurge on a hot chocolate to try and warm up but that mean that I would have to walk back to school instead of taking the bus. Whatever. So I start walking and I’m walking along this restaurant and man walks up to the window parallel to me and I stumble and spill hot chocolate all over my coat and gloves that I just washed two days ago. No kleenex handy in my pocket I keep walking and try to blot and wipe nonchalantly. [Not to mention that I’ve now discovered holes in the pockets of my coat which suck their contents into the lining; including but not limited to USB sticks and bus passes.] Two blocks further down I notice that I’ve managed to spill more on myself. What’s going on here? I stopped in the restroom at the Leeds City Markets to assess the damage. I stepped into a stall to grab some TP. Still wearing my giant North Face backpack I manage to pinball myself in the doorway. At which point I just laugh at what a hopeless spaz I am and start planning this post so I can share my crazy day with you in some hopes that there’s a point to the little silliness of one’s life.

4:00 Back at school I’m lucky to get a practice room and I get to work.

5:00 Great voice lesson. We reviewed my marks and worked a lot on energy, breathing with out making noise, opening my mouth more etc.

7:00 Pick up a few groceries. Sit on some cold stone steps waiting for a bus. Again.

8:00 Dinner and brain break

9:00 finish transcribing Minor Yours, listen to some great Stevie Wonder youtube videos,

10:30 video chat with the parents

11:00 read scriptures and go to bed

Sometimes when I think back on what I’ve done I think I must be a bit crazy and yet with the Lord in charge it all works out. I mean, I found this program online 5 years ago and then kind of put it on the back burner. Then all of the sudden a year ago I signed up and headed over here never having met anyone here, or visited or really had a clear idea of the English system. But it’s worked out.

While I was enamored of the idea of attending a music school/music conservatory and being a performance major I didn’t really know what the relation was of the different schools here. Leeds hasn’t been a college for very long but it’s known for it’s jazz program. But jazz has a little bit of a different flavor here I’m finding. It’s the largest conservatory in the UK which doesn’t necessarily make it the best. But it does do classical, pop, jazz and production which means that it really covers a lot of things. My teacher who has taught in London and in Manchester says that there’s really a lot of music here, more than there was around the Royal Northern in Manchester.

From talking to other students at school I’ve tried to hobble together a picture of what life is like for an undergrad. University here is only three years and so it’s a little more focused on what we would call a major, instead of loads of liberal arts general ed classes. And at a music school even more so, it’s just music all the time. They don’t really have a whole lot of choices, everything is pretty scripted and they’re not in class a whole lot. They cover most of the things you would expect jazz language, theory and aural skills, history, industry, pedagogy etc. As grad students we’re allowed to sit in on undergrad classes but last term we could never get a list from our course leader to know what was offered. There’s no master course catalog as such. Mind boggling.

As part of their curriculum they’re assigned to ensembles, what we would call combos. (Combos for jazz, cover bands for pop and chamber ensembles for classical.) Other proper ensembles like choir, orchestra, jazz band etc are extra curricular. There’s much more of a focus on putting together your own band and going out and getting gigs than in some slavish loyalty to a school ensemble. It also means the pop choir that I’ve been drafted into is seen as optional and therefore there isn’t a lot of expectation and consistency. This is VERY different from what I’ve experienced in the past. But it’s just not their focus. I can kind of see their point because putting together your own group is more realistic and applicable than being in an ensemble like a jazz choir which doesn’t exist outside of an academic setting.

That being said I saw two one act operas at the college Saturday night and they were very well done. Small in scale but the singing was great. They performed Von Suppe’s Ten Brides without a Groom which was great and should be performed more. It was rather Gilbert and Sullivan reminiscent.

And last month I saw three pop Master's recitals which were excellent. One of them by a pop singer who was focusing on arranging and included this group. It was great.

The academic calendar is also a bit different. We have ‘study weeks’ mid term where we don’t have classes. Then the whole month of January was a rather odd mix of some classes, exams, projects and presentations and you never quite knew what was going on. Basically from Dec 11-Feb 8 we didn’t have a normal week.

The college is located in one large building just east of the city centre behind BBC Yorkshire, the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Yorkshire Dance, and they’re building a new dance school just behind us. The first floor has a few classrooms and band rehearsal rooms. There’s also facilities where you can check out mics, leads, amps, instruments etc. The second floor has a small recital/lecture hall [pictured], a rehearsal space that reminds me of the choir room at Meadowdale, practice rooms and a ‘bar’ which is really a little restaurant and hang out place.

The third floor is computer labs and practice rooms, fourth administration, teacher offices and practice rooms and 5th floor library. The main performance venue, called The Venue is a large recital hall located in the BBC building next door.

Also there's a great restaurant/bar across the alley had has a basement venue that a lot of the pop and jazz students use. The Venue isn't the best of jazz singers with a band.

The collage also has a tower of accommodations attached. And emails like the following confirm the fact that living on my own was a wise idea.

I have been asked to email students who live in ---. As you are all aware by now there have been a number of instances recently of things been thrown out of windows. This has been brought to colleges attention- hence why you had the meeting with college prior to study week. Unfortunately things have continued to experiment with gravity between the rooms of Joseph Stones and the floor below. Now I sympathise that music is a hard career and the budding scientists amongst us may wish to test Newton's laws but this is reflecting really badly on us now.

One event that was held recently was for some of the people who donate the most to college. It was noted by some of these, several who give tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds that they saw objects come flying out of the windows, possibly even directed at them. When we ask for new equipment and facilities these are the people who are funding it, so throwing things at them or throwing things out of windows full stop really doesn't endear us.

I am not going to keep on preaching about what's going to happen if they find out who is throwing these things- you know as well as I do. So you are aware they have a pretty good idea and are monitoring the situation. Please think about this and, where applicable, stop making us look like total idiots- its quite boring to have meetings about aside from anything!

One of the things that drove me crazy when I first got here was the lack of practice rooms. I mean at UW it would get busy around lunch time but you could usually find one. Here the teachers teach in practice rooms and share offices which means that there’s a giant matrix that come out every morning that has certain slots already marked off for being used for teaching. It you get down to facilities before 9 you can book some time for later in the day, but that means getting to school in the morning in hopes of getting an hour or two later. As a Masters performance student? I don’t think so. Fortunately I used my powers of persuasion to convince my voice teacher that she wanted to loan me an electronic piano that had been sitting in her studio at home for me to use at home while I’m here. And she actually agreed. Woo hoo! So I have a piano at home and can practice almost whenever I want. It also means when I don’t have class I don’t have to go to school and that’s fine with me.

So my program or perhaps I should say programme. There are about 12 of us in the MA Performance/Composition track and about another dozen on the production track, who we never see. For the performers there’s a jazz pianist, jazz guitarist, two classical singers, a pianist and accompanist. Then 6 composers. We meet together once a week for a seminar which covers a variety of topics. Some of us are on the part time track and some on the full time. Basically the program consists of 12 hours of lesson in your primary study (jazz voice) and 6 hours on your secondary study (jazz piano). You can switch your secondary study for the second term it you want. Then we have the seminar. At the end of the term we have a performance which is 80% of our grade. 10% is a 2000 word log of reflection on our work and 10% is a research presentation on a topic of our choosing. So basically I take lessons and practice and repeat. I did my presentation on singer pianists and how it’s really hard to do both well and play for yourself. It’s something that I’m interested in because I’d love to play for myself but playing jazz piano is like starting all over again. Our January performance is 15-20 minutes and we have another one in June that's about 30 minutes. Then we have the summer to keep taking lessons and prepare for a 45 minute recital in October and 4000 word commentary and what we've done.

Some of the things that are missing and or different from a US program are TA/teaching opportunities and really great ensembles. But I’m not missing any research classes, etc that might be required. What should really take place of the missing ensemble piece ought to be me going out and getting my own real life gigs. All in good time I imagine...

We just had our first term performances at the end of January. Mine went fairly well. It was a bit stressful coordinating a rhythm section to play for me. It’s hard to be dependent upon other people to play for you. I had mixed feelings about some of the songs that I chose but it was okay and my marks were okay. That being said I’m ready to move forward and be better.

Even though I’ve been a musician my whole life I’ve never felt proficient. I never took private lessons for any extended period so I could sight read and play several instruments and perform excellently in ensembles and teach well but as a soloist on a given instrument I’ve always been lacking. So it’s been quite the mental wrestle to believe I’m a performer and everything that that implies- that I’m worth listening to and a whole new approach to really practicing. I’ve never been a very good practicer and practicing singing is for the birds because it’s hard when you’re learning a new technique to really know if you’re doing it right. And if you’re not sure what do you do? Avoid it and feel guilty. And when they whole of my life is focused on practicing and I’m trying to avoid it, that’s a lot of guilt.

Fortunately for me I have a fantastic teacher. And when you’re studying performance that’s the most important thing. We had emailed back and forth some but the first day I arrived to meet her for lunch Louise greeted me with a big hug as though we had known each other for years. She does a great job of reading me and shoving me right past my self imposed limitation towards the real issues that I need to work on. I’ve found that when I’m insecure I can be rather stubborn. Bother. She started teaching an undergrad pedagogy class last week and we were talking about how we all started learning and I said that I had taught myself. It was funny because then she used me as an example of an autodidact, self taught. She pointed out that they make great students but can also be stubborn because they think they know how to do things. That’s pretty much me. Some lessons I’m more prideful than others then I have to humble myself and come back the next week willing to try things and listen differently. But lessons are always fantastic and freeing and exciting, and they usually last over an hour and a half which is so great.

Right now we’re really working on my voice. I need to sing bigger, open my mouth and let it out. Turns out my shy side like to keep everything small. It’s amazing how nearly all the obstacles are in my head and not in my throat. I really love Motown music and so I’m working on a few tunes now that hopefully will get me belting out there. It’s so funny because it’s rather foreign to me but if I could actually pull it off it would be so exciting.

Piano lessons have been pretty good too although not as thorough. Basically he just gives me a few things to work on and send me on my way. His mantra is transcribe and you will know. So I’m transcribing. Something that I’ve never really done before. After spending my whole life reading music now I’m working at everything from the opposite direction.

Well back to the piano...