Einspringen or Jumping In

Each morning, I have a routine that I follow pretty religiously. After I wake up, I reach for my journal, write my morning pages and then turn on my computer and check my email. Every day, there are four emails that I can count on to be waiting for me in my inbox in the morning: the headlines from the New York Times and the Washington Post, a daily account summary from my bank with my balance, and my horoscope. Yesterday, not having slept well the night before, I wrote in my morning pages how good it was that I didn't have to sing anything important since I was so tired. I turned on my computer and looked at my horoscope, which read:

"Don't be too controlling right now. The events of the day could proceed at a rapid pace, and you might not be able to exert much influence over them…Even if you want to accomplish a dozen tasks, try to adopt a more flexible attitude about the day."

I sort of thought to myself that it was kind of a boring horoscope and proceeded to get ready for the day. All I had planned was a short rehearsal down at Carnegie Hall with a conductor friend, Scott, for an upcoming St. John Passion that we are doing next month with his choir in Boston, burgers and beer with my voice teacher, and then a play-date with my good friend Jen and her baby, Sophie. Hopping in the shower, I found myself wishing that I could just crawl back into bed and take a nap instead of going to meet Scott, who was in town this week to participate in the Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop and sing in the chorus of Haydn's The Creation with Helmuth Rilling and the Orchestra of St. Luke's yesterday at Carnegie. As I was stepping out the door to go to Carnegie, my manager called.

"Nicholas, sweetie darling – well, first of all, how are you?" She said.

"I'm doing ok, how are you?"

"I'm fine – now more importantly, where are you?"

"I'm in my apartment, why? What's going on?"

"Well, the tenor who is to sing tonight's performance of The Creation is apparently not feeling well and is at the doctor now – I've been asked if you have performed the piece and might be willing to step in, in the event that he needs to cancel?"

My day had suddenly begun to move at a "rapid pace".

On the phone with my manager, I was paralyzed for about a minute, unsure of how to proceed. I wanted to help out – the piece is one of the greatest pieces of music written, and to be able to do it in Carnegie Hall with such a great conductor and colleagues would be a dream come true. The catch was I had only performed the piece in English – and they were doing it in German. Did I think that I could stand on the stage of Carnegie Hall and perform this bear of a piece (for the first time auf Deutsch) with such outstanding colleagues and with no rehearsal? As calmly as I could, I asked my manager to tell the people at Carnegie that I would think about it, but that I needed to look at a score to see if it would be possible.

I headed down to Carnegie and met Scott at the stage door and asked to peek at his score for yesterday's performance – instead of looking at the St. John that we were supposed to be rehearsing, we ended up trying to assess if it would be possible for me to sing The Creation, if I had to. After a lot of encouragement from Scott and going through the score with him, I thought to myself, I could, if it came to it. From there – the day turned into a bit of a blur. Unfortunately, the tenor did end up cancelling because he didn't feel well. I ended up singing the entire piece for Maestro Rilling in his dressing room with Scott at the piano, and he then gave his approval for me to go on. Before I knew it, I was running home to grab a bite to eat, study my score, cram as much German into my mouth as possible, and put on my tuxedo.

Once it was established that I was going to perform yesterday, my focus took over and kept me relatively calm until I walked out onstage, bowed with my colleagues, and sat down. As the orchestra started to play the first, sustained c natural that begins the piece, my mind started to wander just a bit. I thought, exactly how long has it been since I have sung this piece? I quickly did the math and realized that it had been seven years. By the sixth measure of the introduction, the insanity of what I had volunteered to do dawned on me. Looking at the audience, I thought, what am I doing? How am I going to do this? It was then that I realized that it was too late for that train of thought, and that I simply had to buckle down, focus, and give this everything that I had. The chorus sang their first entrance, the orchestra played a very loud C major chord behind me, I stood up, a chill went down my back, and I began to sing as if my life depended on it. Once the first note was out of my mouth, I noticed something else – I was actually having fun.

Under so much pressure, I would have thought the concert would have passed by in a complete blur, but it was quite the opposite. My focus was so intense that each moment of the performance is burned into my memory vividly. It was an incredible experience to make music so spontaneously with such phenomenal musical colleagues in a performance. The most incredible moment for me was standing during my favorite part of the piece – Haydn's musical depiction of the very first sunrise. As the orchestra slowly and majestically let their musical sun rise behind me, I felt my skin tingle as I looked out into the Hall, my eyes watering just a little. As I wove my phrases of recitative in between their orchestral interludes, I marveled that I was singing some of the most beautiful music ever written with some of my musical heroes in one of the most exquisite halls in the world. I was acutely aware that I was experiencing a dream come true.

The Drawing Board

Last Friday, Myra and I traipsed out on stage, and our program (minus the few little moments of unanticipated excitement that are the "magic" of live performance) flowed easily and naturally – our music-making pliable, in the moment, and fun. Having a couple of performances under our belts at that point, our knowledge and command of the program was such that we were able to bend and shape things according to each nuance of storytelling that wanted to express in the moment, making us feel like we were doing our best to serve the muses of music and drama. After the concert, we headed back over to the Upper West Side to celebrate with drinks and food, and then I took the rest of the weekend to relax and enjoy what felt like a successful month of recitals.

Tuesday arrived, and I looked at the calendar and noticed all of my upcoming projects that had been sitting on the backburner these past two months as I focused to try to get through the chaotic hell of the holidays, the turning of the new leaf that was my 30^th birthday, and the intense period of preparation for these recitals. I headed off to a voice lesson Tuesday evening, and started to work on some Stravinsky and some Britten. The phrases felt uncoordinated and unrefined, the words felt clumsy in my mouth, and I found that I was often unsure of where I wanted things to go. There was a fair amount of stopping and starting as we woodshed, and the progress we made was slow and arduous. It felt like I was a toddler taking my very first steps all over again. I looked back on all the hard work I had done for the past two and a half months on the recital program, and realized that I took it for granted. I saw that I was expecting the same artistic command to just be there with this newer music that I was only starting to tackle. Walking to dinner afterward, I tried to let go of my impatience and frustration and sought the grace to be a beginner again with each step through the snowy streets of Manhattan.

The Final Sigh

"Time past can never come again."

- Olinda in the Shades Unseen, Anonymous

"Let not youth fly away without contenting, Age will come time enough for your repenting."

- How blest are Shepherds, from King Arthur, John Dryden

Winter Words ends with the anguished cries of "E'er nescience shall be reaffirmed, How long?" – how long until we return to that blissful, pure ignorant oblivion of innocence? How long until we die?

How to answer that question?

Musically speaking, the obvious choice of an answer was to return to a musical nescience of some sort. I wondered for awhile about programming some folksongs – music in one of it's most pure, unadulterated forms. Instead, though, I chose to look at Purcell – the inspiration and musical nescience for a lot of Britten's vocal writing. In the three songs of Purcell that I chose, I found not only a musical response to the experience of Winter Words, but also an answer to Hardy's tortured and impatient question, how long? It turns out, all too soon.

We traverse our paths through life, stumbling, taking seemingly wrong turns, and feeling lost along the way. Yet, as Olinda discovers in her shades unseen, time past can never come again, and we, as the shepherd from King Arthur implores us, must not let our precious time on this beautiful planet pass without enjoying every moment of it.

Someone told me last night that I think too much, and they are right. After a recent performance of the Evening Hymn, the presenter asked me if I felt like it was a bit of an autobiographical performance. I wasn't sure what to say then, but now I can see that it is, in a way. What is so special and personal to me about this program is that I do think a lot on my life and loves, my stumbles and my mistakes, my joys and my pains – at times, too much so. I look at people who seem to know how to be happy, without cares, and with seeming innocence with a touch of envy in my heart that wonders, "what is their secret?" As I've discovered lately, it's enjoying the moment at hand and gratitude.

The Evening Hymn comes as the final sigh of the program. It's a look at all that is great and beautiful, all the blessings in our lives - those things that are the overwhelming evidence that we are constantly surrounded by some sort of higher power - and gives profound thanks. No matter the circumstance, there are always silver linings to the every cloud, and all that we really need, we already have – if not in surplus. No matter how imperfect we are, we are deserving of that bounty, and that is a truly humbling and deeply happy thought.

The Bite of Experience

When I set about programming these recitals, the only thing that I was sure of was that I wanted to explore Winter Words again. The question then became where to go from there? The answer came in the final song of Britten's cycle, Thomas Hardy asks, " 'Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed – how long?" That idea of the cycle of life really struck me – we begin our lives in a state of innocent, naïve, vulnerable, and blissful ignorance only to have that clean slate marred by the grit, pain, and emotional chaos of experience. Life continues on, each experience carrying us forward to the next step on our circuitous paths, much like a never ending spiral. When it seemingly ends, the cycle begins completely anew – or so we assume, as none of us living really know what lies beyond that final step that is death.

In each of the songs in the cycle, in one way or another, that dichotomy of innocence versus experience is explored, with increasing intensity as the cycle progresses. There is a keen awareness in each of the songs of the transitory nature of uncorrupted innocence, oftentimes with the narrator focusing on the children or a child that is blissfully unaware of the growing pains that are to come. Somehow, I hear a sense of envy – sometimes slight, other times overt – in these observations that feel like one is looking back at times. It is a kind of coveting of happiness and bliss lost through mistakes and discoveries made, that becomes most present in the last, anguished cries of "How long? How long?" in the final song.

Views

The view from my apartment window in Chicago last week. It was so cold that the lake was steaming.

On our way to the recital, merely blocks away from the hall, we were stopped at a traffic light, when Myra looked to the right and pointed out that I had apparently opened up a new restaurant on the South Side of Chicago.

Chicago

Yesterday evening, Myra and I walked out onto the stage of Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago, and performed our first performance of this program that we have been working so hard on since Thanksgiving. It was the first time we had a public to formally witness the flow of the program, and it was quite the fun adventure. From the moment we blasted off with our first Handel aria until the Hallelujahs of Purcell's Evening Hymn, we explored the experiences of life – it's ups and downs, some of the joys and some of the pain. It was a real challenge to put all of this raw emotion out in front of an audience and have the courage to be vulnerable, but I think we both succeeded. The audience seemed to really enjoy themselves, many smiles in the hall after we were done. The recital flew by, and before we knew it, we were having fun singing a couple of encores and then on our way to celebrate at a restaurant nearby. Many, many thanks to the wonderful people at the University of Chicago Presents, who were the most gracious hosts, and who were so generous to grant us this all-too-rare and treasured opportunity to perform a recital on their prestigious series.

The Heart Breaks

Someone was talking to me about breaking up the other day, and discussing how it is a loss that must be grieved when a relationship ends. They went on to discuss the five stages of grief that we experience, sometimes all at once: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. Working on Liederkreis Op. 24 lately, I have been able to see exactly how the heartbroken protagonist of the cycle experiences each stage painfully and traumatically. In the context of our recital program, it is as if the love who had captured his heart in the Fauré songs has spurned him, leaving him to grapple with that rejection and loss. In the first song, he hopes against hope for a glimpse of his love, endlessly frustrated that she won't see him. In the second, he excitedly awaits the meeting with his love that he has been longing for, although it apparently does not go well, as in the third song, he is destroyed by everything he sees around him, as it reminds him of what he has lost. He begs for death in the fourth song to end his pain, and resolves to leave his home, where he first met his love, in the fifth. In six, as he flags down the sailor to take him away, his anger consumes him and he blames his love for his burning pain. In the seventh, as he sails away, he tries to take in the beauty of his surroundings, but still the bitterness and hurt inside his heart remains. In the eighth and ninth songs, he finally accepts what has happened, and attempts to put it all behind him, hopeful for a kind of reconciliation one day.

A friend pointed out to me the other day that pain and hurt are inevitably part of what comes with the experience of falling in love, and that we must know that going in. Somehow, that knowledge never prepares us for the blinding anguish that we suffer when our heart is broken, and something that we innocently hoped would continue to bring us joy and happiness forever suddenly disappears, leaving us bereft.

Love’s Youth

Here is one of the gems that have popped out at me while rehearsing the Fauré set these past couple of weeks :

"Le jour qui luit est le meilleur;" – Lydia, Leconte de Lisle

The day that dawns is the best one.

If only we could think that way all the time, right? How happy we would always be…

We all have many experiences that lead us away from our innocence – it seemed to make sense to begin an exploration of experience in the recital program with the experience of love, that experience that has proven to be a seemingly endless source for the inspiration of all kinds of artistic forms of expression. The beginnings of love are so amazing and mind-blowing. The person who has become the apple of our eye is like a drug that we can't seem to get enough of – it is impossible for that initial desire to be sated. Everything about the other person is enjoyable, and our heart seems determined to open itself to experiencing them regardless of circumstance or reciprocal desire. Such unabashed enthusiasm always feels fresh and new each time I have experienced it, and, in a way, it is different each time. Each time I have fallen in love, it is as if the innocence in my heart cannot help but release itself from the chains of my experienced inhibitions.

I first heard Le plus doux chemin on a recital of French music that I performed at Wolf Trap with Steve Blier. Steve had chosen the song to start off the program and had given it to my dear friend Aaron Judisch. I've been intrigued by the song ever since. It seemed to lead perfectly into Chanson d'amour both in terms of key and text – both songs refer to a "rebellious one", in this case, seemingly an attractive quality. In Le plus doux chemin, the sweetest path is the one that leads to love's doorstep, despite love's rebelliousness. Chanson d'amour is an outpouring of a lover's heart – a list of all the qualities that he cherishes and enjoys in his rebellious lover. Lydia was the very first French song that I ever studied – Fauré quickly became one of my favorite composers after discovering that song. Both Nell and Lydia are passionate dedications of love – the unrestrained pledges of the heart that we innocently and daringly put forth in order to experience one of the greatest joys life's journey has to offer.

Turn

As 2008 turns into 2009, I take a pause from my party preparations to reflect on the moment.

This past year has been one of many moments both trying and rewarding, exciting and tough. As I have gone about my New Year's Eve preparations today, trying to get some work done before the festivities begin, I have traipsed around Manhattan with a lightness in my step and a smile on my face. I look forward to the 2009 with a sense of hope and optimism. On top of all the seemingly positive changes happening in the world-at-large, the knowledge that many changes are to come as I leave my twenties on Saturday and begin a new decade of my life fills me with excitement.

Here's to a wonderful, happy, healthy, fulfilling and fruitful 2009 for all of us.

Happy Holidays

All the best for an joyous and peaceful holiday! Or, as a friend in Houston always says, "Merry Ho Ho!" (yes, that's you, Bonnie Sue!).

The Innocence of Handel

About ten days ago, I sat down after beginning a performance of Messiah, and watched the audience. I had comforted the people and exalted the valleys, so I had a long stretch to enjoy the music and watch the faces in the crowd as they took in their yearly tradition of Hallelujahs. Some people obviously had experienced the piece numerous times, mouthing the words to their favorite choruses and swaying along with the music of their favorite arias, looks of happy expectation and excitement on their faces. There were also those clearly experiencing the piece for the first time – the most notable of which was an 8 or 9 year old, red-headed boy in the front row, looking at times interested in what was going on, and at other times, seeing exactly how far he could stick his tongue out or picking his nose.

Much like I assume it was for that little boy, my first experience with the music of Handel was his famously popular (and sometimes too taken for granted) work, Messiah. My parents took me to the yearly concert at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, which was packed to the brim with families taking in the beginnings of their yearly holiday season traditions. So began my love affair with Handel, who remains my stranded-on-a-desert-island composer to this day. My CD collection has had more works by Handel than any other composer since I began buying CDs, and my iPod's most frequently played playlist is a collection of my favorite Handel arias.

When I began to study singing, one of the very first pieces I was assigned by Rosie was "Where'er you walk" from Semele. It was with this aria that I learned the musical structure of most of the arias Handel wrote, and where I began to learn the improvisational freedom of embellishment. Rosie gave me some ideas with which to start, and I took those and ran – inventing slightly new variations each time I sang the piece. The piece actually won me my very first vocal competition, which named me the best high school age singer in the State of Michigan in 1996 and afforded me my very first chance to sing with an orchestra.

I first became acquainted with "Enjoy the Sweet Elysian Grove" when I was studying at Manhattan School of Music. A friend of mine who put on interesting concerts from time to time asked me to sing the one short tenor aria in Handel's The Choice of Hercules. While the complete aria had been written as part of the incidental music for a production of what was to be Tobias Smollett's Alceste at Covent Garden, the play was cancelled and never performed. Handel took the never-performed A section of "Enjoy the Sweet Elysian Grove" and used it again in The Choice of Hercules, where I encountered it for the first time.

The Alceste aria, which invites the listener to enjoy the utopian splendor of Elysium (the place where all souls went to dwell in the afterlife of the Greek and Roman Mythology), is almost a hedonist's anthem. There is nothing to do but enjoy and experience – all is pleasure, and all is blissful, innocent happiness. In the B section, the tenor refers to his listener as an "unpolluted shade" – where else can any journey or story begin but from an unpolluted, clean place? In life, we all start in this place – in a way, many times over – in which we are in a state of blissful ignorance, only to experience something and to learn more about ourselves and the world. This is the part before a layer of the onion is pulled away, inducing the tears that we experience as part of discovering ourselves and our lives.

Removed from its context, "Where'er you walk" seems like a simple prayer for protection from the hurts and growing pains of life and for constant happiness and delight. Even in its context, in which Jupiter seeks to distract Semele from her desire to see him in his true form, a lightning bolt (something that would kill her and which eventually does), these sentiments are layered in – removing it from its context just allows one to focus on the core of what is there. Jupiter seeks to protect her from experience and knowledge that will cause her hurt – a similar sentiment to one that parents feel for their children. As I enter that age in which my circle of friends are beginning to have children, I find myself thinking like thoughts to Jupiter's – may the world bend to your wishes, only show you it's beauty, may it protect you and may happiness always find you. May it not be too painful as you leave the paradise of innocence and gain experience. Thoughts I imagine that red-headed boy's grandparents wish for him on his own life's journey.

The Program or A Life’s Journey

Context is a powerful thing. In opera or even oratorio, the context is clear – one is part of a storyline, character is fairly well defined. In art song, context can be ambiguous. That is what makes it so challenging and, yet, potentially so impactful. The possibilities are seemingly endless, and, as a result, the individuality of a performer's personal emotional stamp on a song can be all the more extraordinary. Also, sometimes pieces in a recital have been removed from their original context, imbuing them with new poignancy not imagined before. Not long ago, I went to a good friend's cabaret show in Midtown Manhattan and heard every single song on his program in a new context – each song had seemed to have new meaning and brought me new perspective as an audience member. It seemed that, in a way, I was hearing each song again for the first time. That night, I felt like our worlds and our goals were not all that different.

Here is the recital tour program:

THE PARADISE OF INNOCENCE – GEORGE F. HANDEL

Enjoy the sweet Elysian Grove from Alceste

Where'er you walk from Semele

LOVE'S YOUTH – GABRIEL FAURÉ

Le plus doux chemin

Chanson d'amour

Lydia

Nell

THE HEART BREAKS – ROBERT SCHUMANN

Liederkreis, Op. 24

Morgens steh' ich auf und frage

Es treibt mich hin

Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen

Lieb' Liebchen

Schöne Wiege

Warte, warte wilder Schiffman

Berg und Burgen schau'n herunter

Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen

Mit Myrten und Rosen

– INTERMISSION –

THE BITE OF EXPERIENCE – BENJAMIN BRITTEN

Winter Words, Op. 52

At Day-close in November

Midnight on the Great Western (or the Journeying Boy)

Wagtail and Baby (a Satire)

The little old Table

The Choirmaster's Burial (or The Tenor Man's Story)

Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches, and Nightingales)

At the Railway Station, Upway (or the Convict and Boy with the Violin)

Before Life and After

THE FINAL SIGH – HENRY PURCELL

How Blest are Shepherds from King Arthur

Olinda in the Shades Unseen

Evening Hymn

The Recital Adventure

On the 16^th of January, I will commence my very first recital tour in Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago. After my recital in Chicago, I will appear at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and then finish the tour in Oberlin under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation.

When I began to study singing and started to shift my musical focus away from the violin, opera was largely not what captured my attention musically. At first, I had a brief brush with Musical Theater, but soon after that, it was the early Italian songs that many young voice students are assigned to sing and a lot of art songs. Opera was not much on my mind, and while I knew that I wanted to sing classical music for a living – I really had no idea of what that entailed. All that was important to me was that I had found a way to make music a central part of my life.

Once I settled on my first teacher, Rosemary Russell (who was a professor at the University of Michigan at the time), I applied myself to studying voice with the intensity that I had studied the violin previously. I still played in my youth orchestras and took violin lessons, but I added my solo voice work and a couple of choirs to the mix. In finding Rosie, I had stumbled onto perhaps the biggest blessing in my musical development. I found a voice teacher who saw the innate passion that I had for music and exploited that fire in me to spur me onwards to faster and faster growth. Having started out as an organist herself, she understood my instrumental background and showed me music that met my interests where they were and piqued my curiosity to discover more. As a violinist, my musical upbringing had been Bach and Vivaldi concertos, the symphonies of Mahler, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky, the string quartets of Haydn and Mozart. I didn't have a clue as to who Verdi was. My very first experience with Rossini was playing the second violin in "Una voce poco fà" – I kept getting lost, because it was just not music that made sense to me – it just seemed like an endless series of boom-chick-chicks. Rosie somehow understood this about me and started me off on the songs of Fauré, lieder by Schumann and Schubert, folksongs of Britten, songs by Purcell, Vaughan Williams and Finzi, and Handel arias. She would tell me to buy certain books of songs, and I would bring them to my lessons, where she would meticulously circle all the songs that she thought I should look at as a place to start. I would rush home after each lesson, devour the music as fast as my brain and throat could consume it, and come back the next week with more than we could get through in an hour. Each new song she guided me towards was like a new, shiny gem that entranced me – it was like there was an infinite amount of musical beauty in the world to discover, and I couldn't become familiar with it all fast enough.

The upcoming recitals feel like a bit of a trip to the past for me – preparing for them, I am constantly reminded of the passion for music that she nurtured in me and all the things I learned in those first six years of study with Rosie, who passed away in 2005. I'm also reminded of my many other mentors along the way, as well – but it is Rosie who has been popping up the most these past two weeks as Myra and I have started to dig into this material.

Having picked out the program myself (as with most recitals), I feel a stronger personal connection with this venue of performance and this music than other musical adventures I get to go on. So for the next month and half or so, the blog will mostly be devoted to my thoughts on the recital, the anecdotes that come up, and discussing the program itself. It's mostly what is consuming my thoughts these days, and it will be fun to ramble on about it as I prepare and swim through all of this music in the coming weeks.

Were the World Mine

Run - do not walk - to see this movie. It is charming beyond belief, and made me smile from the my inner core.
I'm not sure how much longer it's running here in New York City, but hopefully long enough for you to go see it.

Transitions

A number of the blogs I follow seem to have gone through some sort of transition over the past months. Posts became less frequent or never appeared at all, burnout seemed to be prevalent, and now these writers seem to have found themselves heading in a new direction or writing with a renewed resolve.

Looking at the course of my own blog over the past months, I've noticed that since my time in San Francisco at the beginning of the summer, the frequency of my entries has dwindled in frequency, sometimes with as much as a month in between posts. Even pictures have been completely absent from my entries lately. To be completely honest, much like those other writers whom I admire and avidly read, I just haven't felt connected to my own blog in the same way as when I started it.

When I started this blog, I had been out on my own, freelancing as a singer for a little less than a year. It was the first time in my life that I was outside of any structured existence, away from any sort of formal training program or apprenticeship. I was working in Europe for the first time in my career and learning how to grapple with the challenges of a musical life on the road. In some ways, I started this literary journey in an attempt to find some answers to the questions I had in life, to find a way to process my experiences, to attempt to feel a little less alone and a little more connected to the world.

Over the past two and half years, I have found many of those answers that I was searching for, and I have processed much of the huge transition that these past three years have been since I finished my formal studies. I've grown comfortable with myself and my nomadic, musical lifestyle, I am beginning to enjoy it, and I have felt myself spiral forward on the coils of both personal and musical progress. And yet, life, like time, has a fluid quality to it – it just incessantly flows forward, and with each answer acquired, more questions arise; with each step forward on the path, more forks in the road appear, and so the journey, the adventure, the discovery continue on.

My friend, Philip, and I were out for drinks one evening at the end of August, discussing various things musical, when he said to me, "Well, what do you want?" I paused, mid-sip, looked at him blankly across the table and found myself not knowing what to say. What I found so challenging about the question was that I suddenly saw that so many of the goals I had worked so hard towards these past couple of years, I had accomplished. Find a manager – check. Get my career going – check. Figure out how to manage life on the road – an ongoing process, but check. Move back North – check. Marry Jeremy – check. Having accomplished so many of my goals, having made the transition from apprentice to artist, having achieved a new rung on the stepladder of maturity, I didn't where to go from there. While I had been thinking that I was settling, I had actually been aimlessly drifting, and I had no idea what was next.

So, inspired, I pondered what I wanted to be next, and I quickly saw that I still have dreams that I want to fulfill and goals that I have yet to achieve. In a couple cases, the goals that I did achieve are not how I imagined they would be, and I need to figure out how to adjust. In order to get to where I am now, I needed to let go of some of my grander fantasies for a while – I needed to put the cart before the horse. But perhaps it's time to think big again and see just how much closer I am to those larger-than-life dreams, and try to find some new intermediary goals to try to accomplish in between.

While I have often wondered why I keep this blog, I always come back to this answer – it brings me happiness. I feel good and virtuous after I've written an entry, and it is rewarding to feel like I have created something. At another point, Philip (my inspirational muse as of late) pointed out to me how charmed the lives that we lead are. "We should enjoy all of this," he said. I am beginning to see that part of the point of this blog is just that. To enjoy my life and the adventurous journey it takes me on.

Prince Charming

This week marks the end of perhaps one of the longest musical gestations of my career.

When I was in high school, just discovering opera and just how cool it can be, the very second opera that I fell in love with was Rossini's telling of Cinderella. It was hearing Cinderella's final aria, Non piú mesta, on an aria disc that I had pilfered from my father's extensive collection that drew me in. I was entranced with the vocal acrobatics and the fun, champagne-like music that radiates joy with every note. I searched harder through my father's recording collection and discovered that he owned the complete opera, and I devoured it as fast as I could. I tried to learn the Prince's aria as best as I could from listening to the cd, not even thinking to look for a score, and sang along as best I could with the recording for days.

My fascination with La Cenerentola fell by the wayside as I started to study voice formally, and I became engrossed in the assignments given to me by my teacher – Handel airs, lieder by Schubert, art songs by Fauré, Finzi, and Vaughan Williams. I didn't think about La Cenerentola until I arrived to begin my interrupted Master's studies at Manhattan School of Music, where Tom Muraco immediately instructed me to learn the Prince's aria after our first coaching together. For my first months in New York, I worked diligently at getting the piece into my voice and used it at my audition for the Houston Grand Opera Studio. Shortly after arriving in Houston, I was offered the opportunity to cover the Prince at the Lyric Opera of Chicago – an opportunity that I would have a little over two years to prepare for. For the next two years, I slowly learned the rest of the score in my spare moments between my assignments at HGO, nervously preparing for a chance that seemed like a dream come true.

My first days at the Lyric, I walked around in a nervous, overwhelmed fog. My colleague who I was understudying fell ill for the first days of rehearsal, and I had the chance to rehearse for those first few days. He recovered, and I enjoyed the rest of my time in Chicago stress-free. A year later, I was offered my first actual performances here in Atlanta. Since then, I have periodically pulled out the aria and sections of the duet to keep it somewhere in my voice, knowing these performances were approaching. My preparation intensified over the summer as I gradually shifted more and more of my focus back to the Prince, and then for last six weeks before rehearsals began, I focused solely on the piece again.

Having studied, practiced, listened to, and thought about this opera for over ten years, Rossini's Prince Charming feels like an old friend even though I am only getting to take him out in front of an audience for the first time this week. The highest compliment my colleagues have given me throughout the rehearsal process is asking me at different times if I've performed this role a lot before. After so much time living with this music, it seems hard to believe that this is a role debut for me. The best part of it is, I've never been able to enjoy taking something so challenging out into public for the first time so much.

Can we, really?

History was made last night. Here in Atlanta, the cars were honking their horns, people were screaming in the streets, waving Obama signs until almost 2:30 in the morning. It was unbelievable, and I have never seen anything like it. Watching tear-stained faced chant, "Yes, we can!" as President-elect Obama gave his victory speech last night was a moving sight to behold, and yet, I found that in my elation, worry was still nagging at me. In my eyes, the election wasn't over – I was still very concerned about the results for Proposition 8 in California.

This morning, with 91% of precincts reporting, the proposition is passing, 52%-48%. The exact wording on the ballot was as follows:

"ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact on state and local governments."

So far, it looks as if a majority of people voted in California today to ELIMINATE civil rights. They looked at their ballot, read what was above, and voted "Yes".

So, it looks as if, no, I can't.

I know that there are larger issues at stake here, and I know that there are so, so many reasons to rejoice.

The fact remains that it looks like I am losing civil rights in the state of California (a state where Jeremy will be almost half the year this season) due to a measure that was well-supported supported financially nationwide in an election with record-breaking voter turnout (82% of registered voters voted in Los Angeles County – a county in which Prop 8 passed quite comfortably and also the county where we got married a month ago). Seeing that anti-gay marriage proposals also passed in Florida and Arizona is, while unsurprising, adding insult to the injury. I try hold out hope that as the final votes are counted in California that the tides will turn, but in the face of these numbers, it is hard to maintain that glimmer.

So, to my eye, not much has changed. Sure, there is some progress. We have elected a President into the White House who is partially black and who is opposed to my marriage, and instead supports a separate-but-equal policy towards my civil rights. While I can appreciate that it is a step forward from where we were, the irony of the situation is not lost on me, and I am left feeling skeptical of his promise of "yes, we can".

As a citizen, I can rejoice for a great many things today, but a second-class citizen I remain, nonetheless.

Blue Weekend

Last Thursday, I had the good fortune to be able to attend the final dress rehearsal of Dr. Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera. For the first twenty minutes of the piece, my eyes were glued to where a spotlight was shining up in the top center of a wall of cubicles that housed a colleague and friend from my days at the University of Michigan, waiting for him to sing his opening phrases that would be his Met debut a couple of nights later. He sounded beautiful and was wonderful to watch – it was exciting to watch him be on that stage that we all dream of singing on, and it got me thinking of our times at Michigan, where we cut our musical and vocal teeth together, learned the basics of our craft, laughed about our educational missteps along the way and congratulated each other on our successes. I was proud to see him up there, an important part of such a moving and powerful event at the Met, living his dream.

After an adventurous Friday, I actually ventured back to Michigan for a quick trip to attend another college friend's wedding. Leaving the airport, I was surprised to see just how colorful the trees were – after so many years of missing Fall in Michigan, I had forgotten just how breathtaking a Michigan Autumn can be. A couple other UM friends and colleagues were there, and we provided some music as we watched our friend tie the knot. Seeing her come down the aisle in her wedding dress, I couldn't help but remember that it was the end of one my relationships in college that cemented our friendship as she held my hand through that terrible time and helped me move on. After all those deep, intense discussions about the nature of love and relationships, my heart swelled to see her pledge herself to the man that she loved.

To see how far we have all come was overwhelming – I was filled with nostalgia and memories, happiness, giddiness, and pride. I was also anxious to see how much farther we will all grow.

An American Musical Challenge

While I have to devote much time right now to getting my Rossini chops back into shape for my sojourn next month in Atlanta, I also have a set of Ives songs that I have to prepare for a small, private Salon concert next month with a very special and interesting organization that presents innovative and fascinating themed chamber music programs in New York. A year ago, the challenge I faced was fastiduously attempting to get my Rossini chops in some sort of order. Now, in many ways, the Rossini feels almost easy and like greeting an old friend, and these mysterious, eccentric, and intricate songs by Ives are proving to be the challenge this I face fall. In all honesty, I haven't even thought about Ives since my freshman music history class at U of M – odd, considering that I am an American musician. What is amazing about them is that they seem so accessible and familiar on one level and so challenging and strangely alien on others. Deciphering his musical landscape is proving to be a slightly slower process than I am used to or expected. Unexpectedly, I find myself being pushed into new musical territory that I, much to my surprise, never really explored.

Nuptials

I escaped to LA this weekend to visit Jeremy, and to do something that was to both of us extraordinary. We got legally married. To be able to do it was something beyond our wildest dreams, and the most overwhelming part of the whole experience was the amount of love and support we received and felt from around the world. For a variety of reasons, we decided upon doing this in California and because of both the time period that Jeremy was going to be working out there and the impending threat of Proposition 8, we ended up having a small ceremony on short notice. Even though only my brother and Jeremy's sister were able to be there, our small ceremony turned into something beautiful. A friend suggested another friend's mom who is a judge to marry us, and we ended up pledging our lives to each other in her beautiful backyard rather than in some courthouse with some officiator who was a stranger. People everywhere from Beijing to Kentucky called and emailed with their love and support, and our phones were constantly buzzing for the entirety of the day with messages congratulating us. When I thought about weddings, I always imagined that they were only about the love and union of the two people involved. I never realized that they are as much about the love and support of our communities around us, as well. Never have I felt so loved and adored, and never have I been so full of love – not just for Jeremy but for everyone who I am blessed to call a friend or a family member.

In case you are interested in supporting the movement against Proposition 8 in California go here.