Alice’s Adventures in an Arts Career

Hmmmm…. it seems I’ve slipped into another one of my blogging dry spells.  I know usually when this happens I say it’s not because I don’t have anything to write about.  But this time it’s closer to the truth.  Since being accepted at Memorial for my masters program, most of my “artsy” activities have taken a backseat to all the packing and organizing as I prepare to leave London at the end of the month.

I’m moving back to Toronto for the summer to spend some time with my family and the many friends whom I haven’t been able to see every much of for the past 5 years.  So now I’m sifting through five years of accumulated stuff trying to sort out what I’m bringing back and what I’m getting rid of.  When I moved in to my townhouse 4 years ago (I spent 1st year in residence), it took two car loads to bring all my stuff.  Moving out, there is only going to be one car, so you see I have my work cut out for me.  I’ve already reduced my clothing collection by at least half and much of my furniture I’m leaving behind for my roommates.  However, I have never been so aware of the number of books I have collected after 4 years of university education, never mind those I’ve collected just for my owe sake.  I have a lot of books and books are one thing I will never get rid of.  I’m rather proud of my little library, no matter how irritating it is to move. Oh, and besides packing, I’m also wrapping up my various responsibilities in London and saying good-bye to the many friends here.

So, I guess I am busy, but these recent activities clearly have nothing to do with anything remotely artsy. So, what’s the point of this post then?  Well, you know I’ve been thinking.  I’m leaving London.  And I’m really excited about it.  I love Toronto.  I miss my family and my friends back home.  I can’t wait to spend the summer camping and seeing old friends.  My Nana turns 90 in August and we’re having another epic family reunion to celebrate.  I’m looking forward to temporarily dropping my worldly responsibilities and just relaxing.  And above all, I’m really looking forward to moving out to St. John’s and starting my masters program. But… to do all that means I leave London.

I’ve lived here for 5 years.  In that time, I have had many of the most significant experiences of my life.  I got my undergraduate degree in music here.  I discovered my passion for conducting here.  I rediscovered my passion for theatre here.  I was published here.  I met the friends, teachers and colleagues here who have had profound effects on my artistic development.  I have a network of friends and fellow artists here to draw upon for support.  I am a part of a community and it will be sad to leave it all.

It has been hard to watch that community continue on without me.  It’s hard to see the audition notices for summer productions by the same crews who produced The Gondoliers or UWO Shakespeare shows.  It makes me nostalgic, sad and slightly envious to hear which roles my friends just landed or read giddy rehearsal updates on Facebook and not be able to be a part of it all.  I wish I could join them. A part of me wants to stay just so I can do another wild whirl on the stage again.

But 5 years is enough.  It is time for me to move on and try something new and St. John’s will certainly be something new.  I still can’t believe I’m actually going.  And, I suppose I’ll have the same opportunity to become a member of a new community.  Or rather, I’ll be adding another branch to this already existent network of artists.

Still… it’s sad to be saying good-bye and there are just so many people to say it too.

I just received an offer of admissions from the School of Music at Memorial University for their graduate program in choral conducting.  I’m not sure I really have the right words to describe how I feel right now.  All I can say is that I legitimately cried when I read the letter.  I feel so happy and relieved and validated and excited and scared and proud and shocked and a whole bunch of other emotions that I’m still trying to sifted apart.  But above all else I am happy.

Truth be told, this whole application and audition process which started last October and took me to both ends of the country has been a nightmare.  I truly would never wish the amount of stress, anxiety, fear and self doubt that I experienced on anyone and I never want to have to do this again (though something tells me I will one way or another).

But it’s all over for now and after months of rejection and failure I finally have what I set out to get.  I am so proud and astonished with myself that I actually went and achieved something that I’ve been talking about for several years now.  I realize the work has only just begun.  I haven’t even started school and this process will not truly be complete until I finish the maters degree.  But this is the first big step and it was the goal of the entire past year. It makes me feel so good to know that I accomplished it.

I’m right now in the warm fuzzy stage were I can bask in the glow of this wonderful achievement.  I don’t yet have to start worrying about how I’m going to move out to St. John’s or where I’m going to live or any of those details.  I am just going to enjoy this feeling for a little while before those inevitable stresses and anxieties take over.

This is what I wanted. Memorial is where I want to be and now I get to do it. I am so happy.

What a concert. Vox Humana’s performance yesterday was more than I could have ever asked for.  I was so happy with they were able to produce.  I was on such a blissful choral high all afternoon.  It still amazes me how, despite the myriad troubles and anxieties leading up to any performance things always seem to come together in the end.  And that’s exactly what happened yesterday.

It seems this choir is forever to be pressed for rehearsal time.  What with sickness, school work, conferences and family obligations, it’s a marvel that we can meet even once a week, and even then our rehearsal numbers often don’t reflect the full membership numbers.  The last two weeks before the concert were mayhem.  I was in and out of London doing my grad school audition, then we had the Easter weekend on top of a slew of illnesses and graduate conferences.  All this left us scrambling to reschedule extra rehearsals.  Our final rehearsal was the day before the concert and even after that two hour session there were ragged ends in our program.

But on Sunday afternoon, we all dressed up in bright colours, put on our nice shoes  and showed up early at the beautiful Windermere on the Mount Chapel.  With refreshed voices and the potent mix of preshow excitement and anxiety we threw everything we had into our dress rehearsal.

I wasn’t exactly worried.  I had my game plan ready.  I knew exactly what I wanted to fix and how I was going to fix it.  However, it wasn’t until they sang “Rauha” and I heard what they made of the piece that I knew we would be okay and were ready to give a performance.  And it was a stunning performance.  It was the best I’ve ever heard them sing and I felt so proud.

We performed “If Thou Wilt, Remember” with Josh on the alto saxophone as our closer.  It was the highlight of the concert.  It felt so good to be conducting that piece and to feel it in my hands.  Nearly a year ago I was submitting it for publication and now here I was conducting it with my own choir.  It felt good.

And now I have some serious post show blues.  Choir is over for the summer and I feel as if I have nothing left to do.  This of course is not really true since I’m always finding myself something new to contribute my talents to.  However, it is possible I will never conduct Vox again.  I may be in another city in the fall and while studying at Memorial is the dream I do desperately want to come true, leaving Vox will be difficult.

I was nervous taking over Vox.  I was not sure I would be able to fill Tim’s shoes.  I wasn’t sure I knew how to keep the group together, or that I would know how to run rehearsals or organize concerts or all the endless little details and jobs that being director required of me.  And it has been trying.  Every now and then the anxiety that I wasn’t doing it right would overwhelm me and I was sure it would all fall apart.  But it didn’t, and we got through and I am so relieved and proud and happy and exhausted.  And I want to it again.

It was a wonderful concert and I’m so proud of what we did.  I’m so happy for the choir and I hope they enjoyed themselves as much as I did.

This Sunday is The Vox Humana Chamber Choir Concert.  It’s been a long road preparing for this event, but things are really coming together now and I’m looking forward to the performance.

Most notably, we will be performing my published work “If Thou Wilt, Remember”.  This won’t be the world premier of the piece since the Toronto Waldorf School high school choir sang it back in February.  However, this will be the London (Ontario) Premiere and it will be the first time I will have conducted it in performance.  We had our first rehearsal with the instrumental solo this evening.  The part will be played by Josh Morrison on the alto sax.  Josh was the one whole initially helped me way back when I was first writing the piece by giving me advice about wind instrument writing.  He was instrumental (pun intended) in the eventually end product of a good, playable and satisfying instrumental part.  I originally wrote it for soprano sax but later switch it to oboe…a decision that Josh is still trying to convince me was a mistake and is on something of a campaign to win me over to the alto sax.  I won’t lie, this evening he made a very good case.

Anyway, there will be plenty of other great piece on the program including Healey Willan’s “Rise up my Love”, several saucy madrigals, some Elgar and some Palestrina.  It should be a wonderful afternoon.

Date: Sunday, April 11th

Time: 3 pm

Location: Windermere on the Mount Chapel, 1486 Richmond Street

Tickets: Adult- $10, Student/Senior- $8.

If you have the time come on out and support us.  It will be a delightful afternoon concert.

I am cautiously hopeful.  The audition went very well and I received some very encouraging and positive feedback that lead me to believe I have a good chance.  But I’m trying not to build my hopes up too much.  I’ve had the rug pulled out from underneath me too many times these past few months for me to set myself up for another tumble.

The choir was stunning.  Just stunning.  I was amazed at how responsive they were, though I suppose I should have expected it from such a fine and high caliber group.  Their responsivness and dynamic sensitivity was so precise that it took me a few moments to adjust.  It was like getting the feel for a new clutch.  I had to figure out how much exaggeration or subtly in my gesture effected the choir.  It was such a pleasure to conduct them.

The written exams went much better than my previous attempts, though I would like to go back simply because I felt I could have done more.

The agonizing part now is the waiting.  I was supposed to hear by the end of this week, however the announcement has been pushed until the beginning of next week.  I’m getting rather antsy.  I keep checking my e-mail obsessively and running the events of that day over and over in my head wondering if I did enough.

So, keep your fingers crossed for me.  I really want this one.  I loved every second being out there and I’d love to live there.  And I feel so close… tangibly close and yet not quite.  It’s driving me nuts.

Oh,  I do have one piece of positive news.  My second choral piece “Sweet Child” has been officially released over at Lighthouse Music Publications.  Go and check it out.

I have been turned down by two more schools.  The list of rejections now consists of UofA,  UofT and Western.  Everything now rests on my Memorial audition next Monday.  I am feeling pretty down.  I might debrief on the UofT audition later since it was pretty cool.  But not now.  Right now all I want to do is crawl into a hole and go away. That is all.

I’ll be auditioning for UofT tomorrow.  I’m am extremely nervous and anxious and scared and worried.  I want it to go well so badly.  I wish I could feel excited and happy since I’m going to be conducting and I love to conduct, but I’m more nervous than anything.  I’ll be conducting the MacMillan Singers.  The standards are very high and I’m hoping I can perform up to their expectations, or at least not make a fool of myself.  I want to feel good about this but I am just scared and feeling a lot of pressure to do well especially since I’ve already received a rejection from Alberta and haven’t heard anything from either Western or Memorial.  As of right now, this is the last bit of control I have in this process unless I get an audition invitation from Memorial. So, I’m feeling a little bit like my graduate school hopes are resting on tomorrow.

I know this is a terrible feeling to go into an audition with.  I should feel completely confident and go in like I’m going to rock it.  I wish I could feel like that now, but I don’t so I’ll have to fake the confidence tomorrow I guess.  It’s not like I haven’t done that before.

I’ll be conducting the  ‘Credo’ from the Bach B Minor Mass and Movement 1 of  ‘Suite de Lorca’ by Rautavaara.

Anyway, wish me luck.  Hopefully everything will go swimmingly.

It’s the waiting that is killing me.  Of all the things in this whole graduate school application and audition process it is the waiting that upsets and frustrates me the most.  Waiting to hear your fate as your vision of your entire future hangs in the balance.

I’m waiting to hear back from Memorial University about whether or not I will be invited for an audition in March.  I’m nearly going bonkers waiting.  I should be hearing the results any day now and the longer it takes the more anxious and nervous I get.  This isn’t even the acceptance stage, this is only to see whether I make it to live auditions or not.  Even if I’m invited I still have to fly out there and perform and I could still flunk it just like Alberta.  But of course the first bridge to cross it getting to that audition and so I’m waiting.

I really want to audition for Memorial.  The more I learn about the program and the more I listen to people talk about the school and how wonderful St. John’s is and how wonderful the student environment is and how wonderful the music culture is in Newfoundland the more I want to go. But I can’t go yet because I’m waiting.

I really worry that I won’t get an invitation.  If I don’t that effectively reduces my chances of getting into grad school this year down to two schools: Western and U of T.  I don’t like those odds.  Oh, that reminds me, I’m also waiting to hear from Western on the fate of that application.

I keep telling myself I got an audition invitation from UofT based on the DVD I sent in and I sent in the same DVD to Memorial, so there shouldn’t really be any reason that I get an invitation from UofT but not Memorial.  If I was good enough for UofT I should be good enough for Memorial, right?! UofT is supposed to be the really hard school with extremely high standards; their audition process asks for much more than any other school. But then I think maybe Memorial doesn’t care about UofT standards and they just won’t give me an audition regardless of what UofT thinks of my DVD.

You see what happens in all this waiting! I have no control, I have to idea what’s going to happen and all I have is time to spend waiting and worrying myself sick with all the “what if’s” that I can’t possibly answer until I get a letter in my mail box. GAAAAHH!  It’s driving me nuts!  I just want to go to grad school.  That’s all I want.  Is that really so much to ask?  I would also just like someone to let me know where I stand and what is happening with my applications.  Someone, please just tell me.

Even if it’s bad news, I’ll be terribly upset and sad and I’ll mope around for a good long while, but at least I’ll know and I can stop this incessant worrying.  Granted, I’ll start worrying about something else, namely another year of being out of school and living a directionless life.

God, I hate grad applications.

The first ever performance of “If Thou Wilt, Remember” happened last Thursday night at the Toronto Waldorf School.  It was a stunning performance.  I’m so happy to have been there.

I can’t even describe the feeling I had when I heard those first two bars of piano intro.  I began to tear up in that moment it was so overwhelming and wonderful.  I was hearing my piece for the first time.  That was the first time I’d head that opening played in a formal performance by someone other than myself.  The choir sang with such sensitivity and attention to the text.  I felt they really had put thought into the meaning of the words and had contemplated the depth of the poem.  I am so honoured that they performed my piece and even more honoured that they enjoyed it so much.  After the performance I was nearly instantaneously surrounded by members of the choir wanting to talk to me about the piece.  I was gratified and rather surprised.  I had not expected such an out pouring of positive feedback.

I can not wait for the next performance of the work which I think will be when Vox Humana performs it in April.  It will be a different experience I’m sure working and rehearsing the piece myself rather than simply listening to a performance by another group.  I’m also even more excited about the up coming release of my newest work “Sweet Child” and am wondering who will be the first to perform that one.  It’s all very exciting and gratifying stuff.