Fortissimezzo - Sarah’s Weblog

Rule #1 - Remember singers who have worked for you in the past

One would think this is an easy thing to do. It is the job of the general and/or artistic director of an opera company to hire singers. Once a singer is hired, there is often much interaction with said director. This normally translates into them remembering you - or so you would think. But, as I found out not long ago, this is not always the case. Let me share.

First of all, I shall change the name of the person and the opera company so as not to incriminate anyone. One never knows who will read the blog.

Let’s call the company Big Voice Opera and let’s call the artistic director Bob. I have sung small roles for Big Voice Opera and taken part in some of their young artist performances. Bob has directed both shows I was in, I have auditioned for Bob on several occasions and I have carried on conversations albeit awkward with Bob a couple of times. Now, Bob is odd. He’s not very social and it’s always like pulling teeth to carry on a conversation with him. He’s also rather rude. In fact, he’s so rude and socially awkward and good at making you feel inadequate, I began to make a sport of talking to him and seeing how uncomfortable I could make him.

Well, I recently ran into Bob at another company where I was doing a show. And the old desire to make him feel uncomfortable overcame me and I could not resist. So I walked up to him and said, “Hi, Bob! How are you? Good to see you.” My greeting was returned with a blank stare and wimpy handshake. Trying to quell the awkwardness of the situation (I’m at least humane in my endeavors to make someone feel weird) I continued, “Do you remember me?” Again, blank stare and cursory check of my name tag. A little light comes on, but still nothing. I continue, “I sang a couple of small roles for you, I took part in your young artist concerts and was a guest artist on a recent concert.” I kind of felt like rubbing it in. (The charming thing never worked with him, so I figured why bother. Let’s have fun). Again, a blank look and then he sort of gave the polite, “Oh, good to see you again.” Awkward silence. Now, normally in this situation, someone like Bob would ask what you have been up to, but not Bob. He looked at me oddly some more then said, after looking at my name tag one more time, “Oh, Sarah Kennedy. Of course! I’ve been to your website.” I must give him credit for his valiant effort.

I smiled politely but didn’t have the heart to tell him my website’s not up yet.

Princeton is a small, quaint, gorgeous Northeast town. Because it is a college town, it’s actually pretty happening for such a small population. Being a college town, you’d expect bar after bar and club after club. But that is not the case. Instead of bars, this place has had an explosion of ice cream shops. It’s like the ice cream mob showed up and decided this would be where they would run their operations. While in most towns there is a Starbucks on every corner, in Princeton, there is an ice cream shop. On the main drag alone, which is about half a mile, you will find Ricky’s, Thomas Sweet, the Bent Spoon and some other place that I don’t know the name of, all I know is that the ice cream is good.

Now, I’ve always been an ice cream lover. Even though we were dirt poor, somehow we always had ice cream in the house for dessert. This Summer, though, ice cream is bringing me much more joy than any other time in my life. Why? Well, I think it may have something to do with the fact that most days I start rehearsals at 10am and end at 10pm with a couple hours break squeezed in. I think it also has something to do with the fact that I am constantly walking in 90 degree weather or that I’m practicing in a room that claims to have air conditioning, but let’s face it…it’s the Northeast. They haven’t quite figured out the whole air conditioning thing yet. And perhaps it also has something to do with the fact that the combination of heat, excessive physical activity and tons of singing makes my throat feel swollen by the end of the day. Nothing like a little ice cream to bring soothing relief!

So what’s my favorite ice cream in Princeton? Due to the unfortunate fact that I have a sugar allergy, I am limited in my selections, but I have scoped all the joints and have found that Thomas Sweet Sugar Free Vanilla is the best in town. My sugar eating friends say the Bent Spoon is the best, so if you are not prohibited by dietary restrictions, I’d give them a shot, too. Either way, you will not be disappointed by the ice cream mob of Princeton.

So many of you have wanted to see us dance. Here ya go! This was at Lindy Focus where we taught this past New Year’s!

And no I’m not referring to being an environmentalist.  Please! You should know me better than that

I’m referring to the greenery of God’s creation.  The greenery that for most of my life I took for granted.  The greenery that greeted me on the farm I grew up on.  The greenery of the land we had in the Ozark Mountains.   Heck, the greenery of grass in the freakin’ lawn.  You see, I took this for granted because it was always there.

And then I moved to New York City.

In the city I get excited when I see a patch of weeds valiantly growing between the cracks of the sidewalk.  Though I haven’t seen it, a friend of mine who has long lived in New York told me rumors of people who buy a little piece of sod grass and put it on their window sill and care for it.  There’s something really wrong with that.  This is how starved this city is for green.

And I didn’t realize how starved I was until I went home a few weeks ago and drove with Tim from Charleston, SC to Nashville.  The landscape in that area is breath taking and as we passed a pasture with an evening mist rising from the ground with the rays of a beautiful sunset cutting through it, I almost cried.

So while New York has some pretty amazing buildings, lights, dazzling things, etc… nothing man makes ever comes close the beauty of what God creates.

Yes. I’ve been AWOL for much too long.  I was scared that the Blog Reaper would come and reap my blog.  Life has been very hectic the past 3 weeks and little time with consistent internet.

Right after Cenerentola, I got sick…of course.  That happens often with me. I spent several days in bed and couldn’t even really sit up. I finally got well enough to sit up and I was on a plane to go home to Nashville!!!!

When I arrived, I had a house to pack up and move into the new house that Tim and I bought a month or so ago.  Tim had done quite a bit of work, but the rest was up to me since he actually has a real job that allows me to gallivant around the country.  In addition to moving, we decided to go ahead and paint.  I have never painted so much in my life. The first 2 days of painting I found it rather relaxing and fun.  Day 3 - not so much.  I kind of wanted to throw all the paint materials out the window.  Day 4, I got mad and decided I couldn’t do it anymore.  Day 5, I was able to pull myself together and do some more, but Day 6, my mom arrived and I made her paint.  I was done.  No more for me.

But I love our new house.  It’s really big, so we are kind of rattling around in it, but we’ll grow into it slowly. Anyone getting rid of any decent furniture, let us know:).  I’ll get some pics posted.

As for now, I’m in New Jersey with Opera New Jersey. Just arrived yesterday, and I’ll be sharing stories and pics as I go along.

Sorry for the hiatus, but now that I have consistent internet access, I shall be back with more wonderful stories of my life!

Well, this past weekend we did La Cenerentola, and it went really well.  I managed to run the 400 meter hurdles and conquer!:)  We had two great audiences who left very happy.  I had an absolute blast singing the role.  I really felt that I got into it, and it actually was pretty easy for me. There were only a couple of spots that felt hard and I tried to cover those with a great big, ditsy smile.  It fooled all but those who know me best:).  The final aria which is also the finale to the entire opera is sitting easily in my voice, and it will now be on my list of audition pieces.  It is the mezzo’s firework piece. It’s nice to have fireworks now!

My next stop is New Jersey, where I will be understudying Cenerentola, only this time in Italian, so I have a few weeks to get that under my belt.  I came down sick right after the show, so learning has been slowed. I was able to actually sit up this afternoon, so hopefully tomorrow I will have enough of a brain to go over the Italian mentally.

This was such an incredible challenge, one I would’ve never put on myself willingly. Yet again, I have learned that sometimes ignorance is bliss - but only sometimes.

Tomorrow, La Cenerentola (Cinderella) opens.  Tonight we have the dress rehearsal, which will be quite the challenge since it is the only dress rehearsal, and we don’t get a day break before doing the first show.  But, it should go well (especially because Rebecca is doing hair and make up and she rocks!). My vocal stamina has really been built up over the last few weeks.  Training for this has been quite amazing. Many of my friends have been training for the half/full marathon and have been sharing their training stories, so I figured I’d share a little of my training story:).

I said before that singing Rossini is like running a half marathon. I was wrong. It’s more like running the 400 hurdles.  You gotta be able to go fast, but keep the endurance for the whole lap AND jump over stuff.  I got the assignment about 2 months ago, which in the opera world is not a long time to learn a big role, let alone a role that requires a type of singing you have never done before in your life.  So I worked daily on the music, killing myself to learn these impossible (to me at the time) runs (for my non-singing friends, runs are long passages of lots of notes going really, really fast) .  In fact, one day, I got so mad, I threw my score across the room!  The torn cover and mishapen binding is evidence of that episode. Another day, my innocent wallet happen to be laying out and it received the brunt of my frustration.  But I got a pretty new wallet as a result!:)  This frustration occurred while I was in Nashville, away from my teacher - the King of this type of singing.

So I returned to NYC with 2 weeks before rehearsals began still unable to sing most of the runs in the dang show.  After 30 minutes in a lesson, half the runs were working well. I told you, he was the king. By no means close to even rehearsal ready, but hey, they were at least leaving my mouth.  So I was doing 2 lessons a week to get this stuff on my voice. I thought that was enough, but apparently it wasn’t.  After studio class on Saturday (my orange moment) I received a text from my teacher saying, “I want you in a lesson before your next scheduled, whether you can pay or not.” I responded with,”Wow, I suck that much!” And he replied, “No. You sound amazing when you’re out of your own way. You need SUPERVISED repitition!”  So, humbled yet again, I went in for a lesson that lasted well over an hour. Then Monday, I had 3 hours of rehearsal, Tuesday I coached it with a pianist for an hour and a half (again, supervised repitition:)), rehearsed for 3 hours, Wednesday had another nearly 2 hour lesson and had another 3 hours of rehearsal that night.  And you know what? I’m not dead. Tired, yes, but not dead. My voice is still working, and is actually in better shape than it was last week at this time.  I’m pretty much perpetually warmed up!  I have a dress rehearsal tonight and then sing again tomorrow morning at 11:30 (ugh), but I suppose I will still be warmed up from tonight:)!

This truly has been an amazing training process. I’ve never had to sing anything so hard in my life and was worried that my body and voice would revolt and poop out on me, but it has done just the opposite.  It has responded wonderfully, I’m having a blast and my voice is working better than it ever has.  And it’s in shape for rehearsal tonight, show tomorrow, master class tomorrow and then another show Saturday, which is the singer’s equivalent to a three day track meet.  I’ve got more Rossini to learn, but now that I’m used to it, it should go better and faster.

My tangerine is evolving!

I’ll keep you posted on the shows.

My friend Rudy sent me a card a couple weeks ago that said, “Are tangerines really just oranges that didn’t want it enough?”

I died laughing when I read that. I thought, “I sure as heck want to be an orange! I don’t want to be satisfied with just being a tangerine!”

Well, today, I took a major step towards being an orange.  See, my entire life I’ve been pretty good at most things I do, aside from basketball and volleyball, or heck any sport that required hand/eye coordination.  I ran really well and played soccer really well without giving much effort. I suppose I gave a little more than the average Joe, but there was no need to give more.  When it required that I give more (like to play at the collegiate level) I realized I didn’t want it badly enough. I liked singing more, and I was still able to give more than average and excel.

Well, today was a big wake up call to me.  I sang in studio class today (that’s when everyone who studies with my teacher gets together and sings for one another).  I sang the aria that is the big one in Cenerentola, which I am singing this Friday and Saturday.  It’s the equivalent of running a half marathon (not quite a marathon. That’s when you have to sing Wagner). But this is like a half marathon with hurdles.  It is, by far, the hardest music I have EVER had to sing.  It requires so much of me, but for some reason, I do it well.   So, I was singing away and things were going well until I got to the end of the piece where a little passage runs all the way up the scale to a B above the staff. For those of you not familiar with that note, scream at the highest pitch you possibly can, and then imagine making it sound pretty.  That’s what a B is for me.  Normally, B’s aren’t that bad for me, but in this one spot, they are.  So, I ran up the scale and pooped out.  Totally didn’t sing it.  But I had one more chance as the same passage was coming up again.  I ran up the scale, and fell flat on my face again.  So my teacher got up and yelled, “DO IT AGAIN!” and I was like, “HOW?” So he gave me a couple pointers.  And then kept making me do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over.  And finally I said, “I can’t do it anymore. It’s starting to hurt.” And he turned, looked me in the eye and said, ‘You’re out of shape. Do it again.” So I did.  And guess what, I did it.  And it didn’t hurt me. Was I tired? Yes. But hurt, no.

In all honesty, for the first time in my singing career, I felt like I actually had to go farther than I thought I could actually go.  I felt like, for, if not the first time, one of the few times, I gave it every bit that my little body could give it.

I didn’t just give a little more than the average Joe. That doesn’t cut it in this league. It’s all or nothing.  You hear professional athletes say that kind of stuff all the time, and most of the time, it just went in one ear and out the other, because I didn’t know what it meant to give it everything I had.  But I know now.  And now that I know, I can’t do any less.  I have found that level, and I can’t go back.

This career is hard. It takes an emotional and physical toll, not to mention the sacrifices that are made on a daily basis.  But I have that orange dangling in front of me, so you won’t be seeing this one giving up anytime soon!

Good-bye tangerine, hello orange!

This was a sign seen by my friend Sarah on the back of the bathroom door at a Duane Reede Pharmacy on the Upper East Side.  An explanation is not needed.

TO ALL FEMALES:
WE ALL GROWN PLEASE
FLUSH TOILET WHEN FINISH
IF U HAVE UR PERIOD
THE OTHER FEMALE THAT
COME BEHIND DON’T NEED
TO KNOW PLEASE LET
BE A LITTLE MORE CLEANER
THIS IS NOT UR
HOUSE!!!!!!!!

So last week, I felt like I had made the final leap into feeling like a true New Yorker.  There have been several steps in my initiation process…

…being shoved from behind (almost to my death) while trying to get onto an already full subway car
…seeing a man running down the street in a thong
…spending 2 months on people’s couches before finding an apartment
…spending in rent what a beautiful home’s mortgage would be
…having a bathroom in said apartment that is more tempermental than a soprano
…finding cockroaches in said bathroom
…pounding on the floors and ceilings of my apartment to tell my neighbors to be quiet
…walking a minimum of 100 miles per hour where ever I go
…picking up dog poop

the list goes on and for more details, please refer back to earlier posts, but the final initiation happened last week while on the bus.

The woman next to me fell asleep on my shoulder!

I’ve seen it happen to other hapless riders on the MTA and wondered how long it would take for it to happen to me.  Approximately 7 1/2 months. Not bad considering I live on the subways and buses almost as much as the homeless.

So I always wondered what I would do in such situation.  Well, I found out that I first laughed.  The shutter of my shoulder jolted the woman a little bit and she sat up for about 10 seconds before slumping back over onto my conveniently placed shoulder.  Feeling sorry for the poor lady who looked like every other over tired and over worked woman in the city, I didn’t just want to wake her up. (Mind you, had she been a man or someone dirty and nasty, I would’ve had no problem telling them to back off). So instead, I’d find some reason to move to get her to move off my shoulder (and she managed to sleep on). This was all fun and games until I realized I had to get off at the next stop, and not wanting to embarrass this poor woman, I didn’t quite know how to wake her to get past her.  Fortunately, I was spared the situation, when the next bus stop was announced and she stood up to get off.  Somehow she’d managed to sleep on my shoulder through all my shananigans, and yet still pay attention to the bus stops. 

New Yorkers are truly a talented breed.