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.

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.

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.

I received an official response from the University of Alberta today.  I have not been accepted into the program.  I know I said I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened, but it still hurts and I’m feeling a little down right now.  It’s also made me even more  nervous  about my up coming University of Toronto audition next week.

I’m extremely anxious to get into a program for next fall.  I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to do another year of being out of school and sort of aimlessly drifting through my life.  I just want to get back into school and do this masters.

Well, I guess I have to put this rejection behind me and move on to the next audition. And it’s not like I’ve never experienced rejection before.  It’s something of a constant in an artistic career, but it doesn’t mean it feels any less awful each time it happens.

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.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I last posted.  It’s really silly and ridiculous of me because it’s not like there hasn’t been anything to write about.  But today’s little bit of news has spurred me on to post.

Today I received my very first royalty cheque for sold copies of my published work “If Thou Wilt, Remember”.  It isn’t a very much, but at this stage in the game that’s hardly the point.  The point is I have officially been paid for my music.

How awesome is that?  I mean, really?  I could try and be all stoic and modest about this, but all I really want to do is jump up and down and scream for joy.  And then I want to pinch myself because it still doesn’t feel real and I still don’t understand how I became a composer.  I still feel like I’m merely masquerading as one.  It’s odd, but it feels good so I’m just going to go with that.

I have plenty more to update about, specifically details concerning my grad school applications and auditions.  Have I mentioned I’m going to Alberta at the end of the week?  No?  Oh, and then I’m off to St. John’s in March. Well, I’ll write more about that later.

I have just started my first grad school application.  Boy, this feels surreal.  I know I’ve talked about doing grad school for nearly three years now.  But, now that I’m actually starting the process, it feels so daunting and it suddenly makes the idea more real than ever.

I still can’t believe I’m actually doing it.  There is so much to do in such a short period of time.  Once again, I have to pull together the sum of my musical and academic experiences and convince people that I am the best candidate for the job. And yet again, the little voices of self-doubt remind me that there must be thousands of others out there who do what I do, only better.  I look at my grades; they are good, but they could be better.  I look at my conducting technique: it’s good, but it could be better.  When they ask what my career aspirations are, what feats of glory do I hope to achieve that would make me worth their investment, I flounder and the only words on my lips are “I want to be a conductor.”

Sigh.  This is exactly how ungrad applications felt over four years go, only much, much worse. But, I’ll keep at them.  In reality, what is the worst that can happen?  They could say no and then I would be in the exact position I am in today, and I’m pretty happy today.  So, I’ll breathe deep, take the plunge and hope for the best.

I still detest applications.

Well, it’s all over and done.  I finally have a shiny piece of paper that declares me a graduate of The University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Music: Honors Education degree.  I feel good.  I feel accomplished.

I started graduate school research today.  I am now offically scared and have a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time.  Time to buckle down and write application after application.

Tomorrow is the final day of my Stratford Shakespeare and Acting course, and the past three weeks have been amazing, but tough.  I’ve been working my butt off the entire time and certainly have seen some great progress, but I don’t want to stop just yet.

I present my final monologue tomorrow afternoon.  I was given a speech by Goneril from King Lear. I’ve absolutely loved this piece.  It was entirely satisfying, however I do not feel prepared to present tomorrow.  I wish I had more time.  I feel just on the cusp of really getting the nice to skin into me and I could use another week with it before a performance.  But that can’t be helped, so I guess I’ll just give it my all tomorrow and what happens happens.

This course has given me so many tools to use in my acting that I never had before and I am so grateful.  I want to keep this learning process going.  I’ll probably do more acting course and workshops later down the road.

In short, even though I was always tired and busy and running back and forth between cities, I would not trade this experience for anything.