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What I've been singing...
Dec. 9th, 2015 02:55 pm…and where, and to whom.
As readers of these very occasional entries may know, I've been taking voice lessons since about 1980, and with the same teacher since about 1988. Since I'm not by any means a professional singer, this tends to mean acquiring a lot of repertoire without anywhere to go, so to speak. That is, it's nice to have a goal of some sort when learning anything, including vocal repertoire.
My teacher (who is also a pianist) tries to alleviate this problem by having occasional gatherings of her students at her apartment, where each of us sings some of what we've been working on for each other. For one reason or another, her pool of students has been decreasing in recent years, to the point that I'm basically the only one active.
So last winter she had me put together a little program (half an hour or so) to sing for a small group of her friends; one of those friends, as it happens, is the activities director at Rogerson House, an assisted-living facility in Jamaica Plain, and after the program she said that her residents would really love this, and would we be willing to perform the program again for them? So we did, about a week later, and they did seem to appreciate it; I felt that I did pretty well, and it was fun to perform for a real live audience (about 25 people showed up).
This led us to decide to repeat the experience with a somewhat more ambitious program; furthermore, another friend of my teacher's is a resident at Fuller House, a senior housing community in Melrose, and -- I'm not exactly sure how this arrangement came about -- we decided to add a performance there as well. These ended up being scheduled about two weeks apart -- Rogerson on November 22 (with a warmup performance at my teacher's two days before), and Fuller on December 5 (this past Saturday).
I'm pretty pleased with how it went. For those who are interested, ( here are some details. )
I wouldn't mind doing something like this again. I might choose a program that's a little less challenging for both the performer and the audience.
As readers of these very occasional entries may know, I've been taking voice lessons since about 1980, and with the same teacher since about 1988. Since I'm not by any means a professional singer, this tends to mean acquiring a lot of repertoire without anywhere to go, so to speak. That is, it's nice to have a goal of some sort when learning anything, including vocal repertoire.
My teacher (who is also a pianist) tries to alleviate this problem by having occasional gatherings of her students at her apartment, where each of us sings some of what we've been working on for each other. For one reason or another, her pool of students has been decreasing in recent years, to the point that I'm basically the only one active.
So last winter she had me put together a little program (half an hour or so) to sing for a small group of her friends; one of those friends, as it happens, is the activities director at Rogerson House, an assisted-living facility in Jamaica Plain, and after the program she said that her residents would really love this, and would we be willing to perform the program again for them? So we did, about a week later, and they did seem to appreciate it; I felt that I did pretty well, and it was fun to perform for a real live audience (about 25 people showed up).
This led us to decide to repeat the experience with a somewhat more ambitious program; furthermore, another friend of my teacher's is a resident at Fuller House, a senior housing community in Melrose, and -- I'm not exactly sure how this arrangement came about -- we decided to add a performance there as well. These ended up being scheduled about two weeks apart -- Rogerson on November 22 (with a warmup performance at my teacher's two days before), and Fuller on December 5 (this past Saturday).
I'm pretty pleased with how it went. For those who are interested, ( here are some details. )
I wouldn't mind doing something like this again. I might choose a program that's a little less challenging for both the performer and the audience.
