I hate Mondays. The start of a new work week does not bring me any pleasure--I admire those who can face the week with gusto. For me it is usually a struggle to get out of bed, to get to the lab at a decent hour and to try not to be to crabby towards labmates. And the seemingly endless tasks that I have to complete. Ugh!

Diva Complex

I witnessed a rather interesting phenomenon at the Tosca rehearsal last night. The group was comprised of many different singers from different groups. Some have had extensive opera experience, others are like me with none. For the most part it was an interesting, eclectic ensemble.

In the middle of Tosca there is a cantata that is 3 part in the women. As is usually the case with 3 part music, they always need more people in the middle part. I have been a middle part singer for quite a few years now, and I have no problem with it, despite the fact that my sight reading skills leave much to be desired. Most other altos felt the same way, as a good number of us volunteered for the middle (SII) part. At one point MLB decided that she needed more soprano IIs, and was asking the sopranos for volunteers. The interesting thing that happened was--NO ONE VOLUNTEERED! She had to ask quite a few times, then finally a couple volunteered, but she said that she knew those people and they should be SI. At one point she even went as far as to suggest people who she KNEW did not have an operatic high B, and the person involved was still rather reluctant to switch, citing bad sight reading skills. I find this incredibly amusing as I had never been in this situation before in any of my choirs. And just earlier that day I met a woman who said that she has ruined her voice by singing too much SI and is now hoping that she will recover for this performance. Isn't that a sign for you to switch to a more manageable part?

Sure there is always the glory of being a SI. You get the melody and the attention, and if you are a contralto you have the benefit of being part of a rare voice group. But most people fall into that dreaded middle range, sort of like a middle child that is always neglected by the parents. I sense the frustration too. However, I also realise that when you are part of any group, sometimes you have to do what the group needs. And rather then being typecast as a particular voice type, why not just work on being the best singer you can be and then go from there. And just because you can sing a note doesn't mean that's where the color of your voice is.

Funny, this thing called ego is.

There's this show on TV now that features has-been music stars performing for charity, with the audience voting on who they like best. Today Vanilla Ice was on the show. It was funny, I never thought that I would ever hear Ice Ice Baby performed again.

Now that Paola is off on maternity leave, I am left with her lab job--organizing the lab meetings. So I am stuck with having to present this week, as it would be impossible to get someone else to do it at such short notice. Crap! I hate these frigging things, but oh well, guess I won't have to do it for a while then. This put a dent in my plans for the week, which included watching Falstaff and Der Rosenkavalier at the LA Opera. They have this great $20 student rush tickets. I have seen quite a few this year already. Hopefully I can get a head start on the lab meeting so I can inject a shitload of sea urchin eggs before getting my butt over to the LA music center tomorrrow.

On a different note, EHD is going to pay me $600 to check some references for his new book. I sure could use that extra money. It'll probably end up going to clothes, though I have this urge to take music lessons (like piano or some stringed instrument, not voice) to beef up my musicianship skills.

Tosca!

The Redlands Bowl has a music festival every summer where people can go to an outdoor venue in a relaxed setting to enjoy music. This year, they are putting on Puccini's opera Tosca, and the orgranizers were looking for singers at my choir. Having nothing to do this summer (work doesn't count), I decided to sign up. My friend Kat is also doing it, so I won't be all alone.

So yes, I will be in the chorus of an opera! Rehearsals start next monday. I've never done an opera before, but I believe it will be slightly different from our usual thing. There will probably be dressing in costumes and some acting involved, though I've been to operas and thankfully, the focus is still on the singing.

Strawberry ice cream from my latest kitchen gadget, the ice cream maker. 

Verdi Requiem 6/11/05 

It's all over!

The concert and the committee meeting, that is.

The committee meeting went well, as far as committee meetings can go I suppose. I still have to learn not to put my foot into my mouth, but the committee did agree that I am making good progress towards my degree. Amazingly enought, everyone was in agreement with what I need to do to finish up. So yeah, it went okay, and I hope that the next time I see everyone again it will be at my thesis defense.

After the committee meeting I turned my attentions to my big Verdi concert. There was rehearsal friday night, yesterday morning and the show was last evening. It was awesome! I think we were a little shaky at the beginning of the sanctus for whatever strange reason, probably partly to do with us being in the wrong positions thanks to the mistake of the leader of my row, but we were able to pull it together. I guess I'll hear it when I get the recording later in the summer. But the loud Dies Irae sections were really really good! We really pulled it off! For a while I was a little worried that we won't be able to carry over the orchestra, but it was all just fine at the concert! Doing these concerts really make me realise how much I really enjoy music and singing and I'd want to do this as long as I am able to. It just makes my life so much more exciting and rewarding, to be part of groups that are able to inspire through music. Now it's all a bit of a downer as I once again have to go back to my normal life. Starting tomorrow, its back to microinjections and planning the next experiments. And musically it would be a break, but even if I were to do anything it would be all back to learning new stuff again.

So yeah, it's been a crazy couple of days.

The Final Push

Towards the inevitable committee meeting, which is only about 12 hours away. I think that I am pretty much as prepared as I will ever be at this moment. Have gone through my slides once again, fixed the text and worked on the figures per EHD's suggestion and try to brush up on all the things that I think the committee (particularly DJA) will ask me. EHD tells me to not throw them a bone, and I would think I am doing that, but I would leave in a figure that is less than perfect. So it was in general good to have talked to him before the meeting. He made a remark "that I shouldn't be like some of my labmates and say that I want to graduate even if the project isn't completed." Now obviously he was refering to T (and C?) in this case. T has become increasingly bitter over not being able to graduate over the past few months. I am not entirely sure of what happened between him and EHD, but EHD and I seem in agreement with what I need to do to finish. But perhaps if I had been in grad school for 8 years like T (though not all spent in the lab) I might think the same way too.

On a much lighter note, I have been scoping out singing options in the summer when the choir is on hiatus. Some people in the choir are thinking about starting a chamber group that sings mostly 20th century secular music, which sounds really interesting. But since it will start off as an informal group I'm not sure if there will be performances this year. Another group is recruiting singers for Puccini's Tosca, which seems like an interesting project. I'm still looking around, but at least we've got the Beethoven 9th gig with the Korean American Symphony in July and a Mahler 2nd gig with the American Youth Symphony in September.

Having listened to way too much Verdi Requiem (and at too high a volume) for the past couple of weeks I have decided that it is my favorite of the requiems. Verdi's idea of death is certainly not like Brahms, whose Ein Deutsches Requiem envisioned death as a more peaceful event. In Verdi's Requiem eternal damnation (judged by the very long Dies Irae and Libera Me sections) is a very real possibility. Perhaps it's not quite a beautiful as Mozart's Requiem, but there is just so much passion in Verdi's version! In the Libera Me where the soprano goes up to the high C singing "Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die ila tremenda", meaning "Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death on that dreadful day" was absolutely amazing! Now people who know me well know that I am not even remotely religious (or spiritual for that matter), but at that moment there was no doubt in my mind as to the sincerity of her pleas.

Preparing for the committee meeting has not been as crazy as I thought it might be. I managed to get my experiments completed about a week ago, so I was spared from the ususal stress of trying to finish up the very last experiment to include in my presentation in a last minute feeble attempt to try and impress the professors. Perhaps I don't care as much anymore, for what can they really do? Certainly I'm past the point where they can kick me out of school--that's an advantage of graduate school, once you pass your candidacy exams it would be very very difficult to get rid of a student. I am slightly nervous at the prospect of facing DJA during the meeting. He's a really great professor, smart guy who makes us think, but he is relentless with his questions. Rumour has it that he made a graduate student cry; but any student who would cry during a committee meeting must have been incredibly sensitive.

Regardless, I have been devoting my days to catching on reading that I probably should have done a while back and preparing the powerpoint presentation. Still need to decide what to include and to complete some figures, but the skeleton is there and I doubt there would be many great changes. Certainly looking forward to being done with this so I can spent the rest of my week not doing anything before returning to experiments again next week.

My upcoming concert, which takes place 2 days after the committee meeting. 

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