Alice’s Adventures in an Arts Career

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.

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.

My University of Alberta Audition was a couple weeks ago.  The trip was certainly an experience. Before then I’d never flown anywhere by myself before.  I learned quickly that flying is pretty much idiot proof.  You just show up really early and follow the signs with pictures.  You don’t even have to read anything. I think I would have had to try to screw it up.

I stayed with the family of a family friend and that was fun.  They were really nice and so incredibly generous to open their doors to a virtual stranger for two days and drive her around Edmonton.

The audition itself was okay.  It was not my best conducting performance, but it wasn’t my worst either.  The choral history and term definition test through some curve balls that I hadn’t anticipated.  Also, I had been expecting the score except identification test to be aural, but it wasn’t.  Instead of listening to excerpts from choral works and identifying them, a process I’ve been used to and rather good at since first year, I was given copies of scores to identify.  I am not used to simply looking at a part of a score and being able to identify the work.  As it was there were several pieces that I could easily identify, however there were a couple excerpts that were clearly from a mass or requiem, but I wasn’t sure which one and I knew if I could only hear them I would be able to tell.  It was completely frustrating.

Anyway, as I said, it was not my best performance, but it wasn’t bad either, so I have hope but I also will not be surprised if I am not accepted into the program.  However, what that audition did do was give me a really good idea of what the next auditions will be like and what I need to focus more on and better prepare.  My hope is that by the time I get to my final audition in St. John’s I’ll be a pro!

Next up is my University of Toronto audition on February 25th.

I have my first Masters in conducting audition on Saturday.  I’m flying out to Edmonton Alberta on Friday, will spend all day Saturday writing exams, doing interviews and conducting auditions at the University of Alberta.  I’ll then hop back on the plane Sunday bright and early and head back to London so I can go to work Monday morning.  It’s going to be exhausting and I’m so nervous.  I have so much still to prepare.  I’ve never been to Edmonton, nor have I flown alone before.  It’s going to be three days of new experiences with the potential for disaster at every corner (I could lose my baggage, miss my plane, get lost downtown, get lost on campus, flunk my audition) But I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll be conducting two pieces: “Stimmt an die Saiten” from Haydn’s Creation Mass and “O Magnum Mysterium” by Thomas Luis de Victoria.  The former is the required selection and the latter I choose from a list of choral audition selections.  I chose the Victoria mostly because I had easy access to the score (God bless CPDL) and I’ve conducted it before so it would be slightly less work to prepare.  Thankfully Alberta provided the Haydn score, though I’m sure I could have found a good edition of it on CPDL.

I’ve also been invited to an audition at The University of Toronto at the end of February.  My Memorial Audition will be in mid March and I was contacted by UWO about booking an audition with them sometime in February.  It’s exciting.  I sometimes still marvel that I’m actually doing this.  I’ve talked about applying to a masters program in conducting for a couple years now, but it feels so strange to actually be doing it now.  But I’m looking forward to it.

I’m hoping for good luck, a smooth trip and a good performance this weekend.

The Vox Humana Chamber Choir concert was a huge success.  We had an audience, the chapel was gorgeous and the choir has never sounded better.  I was really blown away by their sound and the huge change from the rehearsal the night before to the performance.  It’s amazing what a wonderful, live and resonant acoustic can do to bring a group together and help take care of those rough edges.  Their blend, resonance and phrase shaping was the best it’s ever been, and I suspect much of that had to do with the fact that they were finally in a space that really welcomed their sound.

I am so proud of what we have been able to achieve in this past term.  I’m equally proud of myself for what I’ve been able to achieve.  I went into this not really having run a choir of this level or size.  Every step has been a huge learning step for me and I am so lucky to have so many people round me supporting me, including my accompanist Cheryl Wiseman and my assistant director Anna Chen.

Though, we did have one slight hiccup in the concert.  It really was kind of funny.  Our final piece was “and the glory of the lord” from Messiah by G.F. Handel.  It started out seemingly fine, but then things started to sounds really weird.  Something was really off.  There were crunching, chromatic and atonal harmonies starting to creep in that I’d never heard in Handel before and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.  I was looking and listening to the choir thinking “Are you off? Are you lost? What’s wrong?”. Things were getting worse and worse, and the looks of confusion and fear where spreading across the faces of the choir as they looked to me with that look that says “FIX IT!”   And then our accompanist said “I think I need to start this over.” Turns out, the piece had been started in the wrong key and we were singing “And the Glory of the Lord” in A Flat; our accompanist had been frantically trying to transpose the whole thing down a step as she went.   Well, I laughed, she laughed, the choir laughed, I turned to the audience and said “take two!”…they laughed and we started over and ran the piece without a hitch.  Thinking back on it, it reminds me of the now infamous “Organist on Crack” . That is almost what it sounded like (well, maybe that’s a bit on an exaggeration…okay, more than a bit).  But we shook it off and continued. Really, in those situations, there’s nothing one can do but go on.  My thoughts are “these things happen so you might as well laugh about it.”

On a more academic note, over the course of the last few rehearsals and the performance I was also able to record really good material for my graduate school applications with examples of my rehearsals and performances.  I decided not to include that particular performance of the Handel.

I can hardly wait for next term.  But before then, I have the long task of preparing the repertoire packages again.  I’ve got about half the program ready, but am still searching for a few more pieces and tracking down enough legal copies.  I remember doing this in the summer and it’s time to do it all over again.  But I love it.  I really do love it and I hope it’s what I get to do for the rest of my life.