Greetings!
This post is a bit delayed–the past few days have been quite busy. This past weekend was amazing and I’m excited to give you the full version of my experience at the Classical Singer Convention and Competition! I gave you a few snippets during the weekend, but they were only glimpses.
Saturday:
The brilliant thing about the competition is that Classical Singer holds it during the same weekend as their convention, so there are classes about marketing, management, vocal masterclasses, etc. which are wildly beneficial to singers–it’s always good to get career advice from people who are fully immersed in the business of singing. I didn’t compete until 5 pm, so I was able to attend Mark Stoddard’s class about never singing for “free” and Robert Mirshak’s class on management. No one in undergrad or graduate school gives you advice on how to actually make a living, navigate a career, and make smart financial decisions as a freelance singer. Until we have a team of people doing this for us, we are our own marketing team, PR group, spokesperson, web designer, and accountant (unless you can afford one) in addition to having to be a diligent student and work on musicianship & technique. We take endless classes on diction, music theory, music history, voice lessons – and never end up with a roadmap of how this is really supposed to happen for us. When I was 22 and fresh out of undergrad, so many of my non-musician friends got jobs in Corporate America – and their 401k was set, health insurance was set, and promotions every year were set (if they didn’t screw up, that is). My friends at that time didn’t necessarily know how to make smart financial decisions about their future either, but their employer took care of some of these things so they didn’t have to. These classes at the convention are great for that extra piece of advice on HOW to really make this singing thing work in a creative way – how to market yourself wisely and approach singing with a business mindset. Very important. Major key alert.
Those classes took up my Saturday morning/early afternoon, and then it was time to warm-up my voice and compete. I put my signature pearls on to sing – as always. I received an 80” strand of pearls as a gift a few years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since.
The competition itself, only takes up about 10 minutes of your time on Saturday. There are a bunch of meeting rooms in the hotel that are reserved for the competition. You walk in, say hello to the three judges, give your music to the accompanist, and begin your first piece. I began with Addio del passato from La Traviata, and once that was completed, took a few moments and continued on to O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi. Both classic pieces, both beautiful, and both are arias that I love to sing.
Overall, I felt very good about the performances of the two arias. As I stated in a previous post: always think of any audition or competition as a performance, and any competition as really a competition with yourself.
Now, by this time I had spent ALL of Saturday in the hotel, and I was starting to go stir crazy. When I was finished, I raced back to my hotel room, told my friend Beth (my consigliere for the weekend) to get ready, and we were going to go OUTSIDE and enjoy the rest of the sunlight. Luckily, my cousin and his fiancé live in Boston so we were able to meet them at a restaurant along the boardwalk for dinner. I had never been to that section of Boston before and it was gorgeous – sitting outside and sipping on wine while watching the boats come in and out of the harbor was absolute perfection. Yes, I sang that and now let’s enjoy the view. I was raised as a beach bum, so when there’s beautiful weather I get extremely antsy if I’m not outside enjoying it.
The results of the second round weren’t posted until after I went to sleep – as you could tell from my post on Saturday night. I kept refreshing the results page over and over until I went to sleep, but had to go to bed at a decent hour regardless of advancement or not since I knew I would have to sing on Sunday again due to the fact that I was participating in the masterclass with the one and only Deborah Voigt.
Will tell you all about that next post!
Christina
By JACOPERA. Follow their regular blog at www.jacopera.com.
