Audition Posting Day

Tomorrow is the day I post audition results. This is one of my least favorite days of the year.

At PMEA festivals, the directors call the 15 minute break that occurs after results are announced as "Grieving and Gloating Time". It's a nasty combination of tears and smug expressions. It isn't any better when I post results on the choir room door.

Some will throw their arms around me to thank me - as if getting in to a certain choir were some sort of special favor that I granted them because I like them, rather than the result of a well-sung audition. I never want to be that kind of a choir director. I could never stand the teachers who played favorites, and want to avoid it as much as I can. That's why I use three judges, instead of my opinion alone.

Their will be crying girls. If success isn't immediate, in their minds it means that they are horrible singers, and will never succeed. I warn them against tying up their self-worth with the results of one audition, but it goes in one ear and out the other.

School isn't like real life, but on audition posting day it is more like it than most. There are winners and losers. There is success and failure. They get one shot each year, and their are no do-overs. They can't do extra-credit work to sneak in the back door. They make it or they don't based on how well they perform.

Part of the beauty of choral music is the fact that it brings so many disparate people together and creates something beautiful. It is one of the ultimate expressions of "e pluribus, unum". No one rides the bench, no one is unimportant. We all add our distinct voices to the whole, and the result is vastly superior to the sum of the individual parts. Good individually, but as a group - absolutely incredible. It is a beautiful thing, and a wonderful experience.

But before we get there, I have to post that list. Some who aren't on it will label themselves as failures and drop out of choir. Such a loss. It's like a toddler giving up on walking when the first few steps aren't very graceful. My favorites are the ones who think, "just wait until they hear me NEXT year," vow to work harder, and take voice lessons. No one ever believes me, but I prefer them to the ones who are already excellent singers when they arrive. I feel as if I have made a bigger difference in the lives of the greatly improved rather than the greatly talented.

Another Pops Concert Over

I looked over my ancient blog, and decided to dust it off. It's funny how the few blogs that I write take place immediately after concerts. Who has time for blogging before concerts?

So, what to say? The concert went well, with no major blunders and another senior class that I am sorry to lose. You would think that after all the years I've been in this biz it would get easier, but it never does. After four years of making music together, you can't help but get attached.

What's next? The usual end of the year stuff - Auditions for Acap/Mads/Divas/District Choir, Mads at the Sr. Award Ceremony, Acap at Baccalaureate, and Mads at commencement. Nothing very challenging from here.

While gearing down at school, I can gear up for summer music school. I'm teaching a "vocal percussion" class along with brass lessons. This should be interesting. I'm not like to find a ready-made curriculum for this anywhere. Gotta love the path less traveled by.

There's also pen making. It's all Steph's fault for buying me the lathe and book on how to do it. I've got a bunch of really cool pens now, but they're starting to stack up, and the materials are a real drain on the bank account. The next project is going to be www.paragonpens.com. I've been given the ultimatum that I have to sell some of the ones I have in order to continue to feed my habit. Sample below.

Other plans include sprucing up the PMEA D2 website, making some tutorial videos, doing some commercial audio for Audio Jungle for fun & (very little) profit, a couple dozen books, vacation (who knows where this early), helping out with "Secret Garden" occasionally, a conference at PSU, and building a back porch swing with Roman. That should do for awhile.

There. That's my current life for awhile. I can turn to philosophical, religious, cultural, and political rants later.

The Concerts are done!

Ahhhh, what a feeling. As much as I love doing the whole choir thing, there is nothing like knowing that all the concerts are behind you for the first semester. I am really looking forward to two weeks to spend with family & friends, sleeping in, taking in a few movies, and just relaxing for awhile.

The concert was supposed to be Thurs. the 15th, but snow postponed it until this past Tuesday. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but it sort of messed up "my groove". You get all geared up and ready to go, and then you have to wait for five more days. It just throws off your timing.

The concert went pretty well, overall. There were some serious soprano sharping problems in spots, but otherwise it went very well. My biggest screw up was dropping a song from A Cappella's lineup (the music somehow disappeared from my stand). The solos all went well, with no girls sobbing backstage this time around. That's always a plus. The Divas were the biggest standout in my mind this time around. Half the size of last years group with twice the volume and 10 times the heart. As long as I pick good music for this group, they are going to do some impressive work this year. Now if we can only sell enough tickets to pay for those uniforms....

We sang in front of the student body today. They would get quiet eventually, but the hooting and hollering for individual friends between songs got to be pretty obnoxious. It's pretty embarrassing. They can't seem to tell the difference between a concert and a World Wrestling Federation Cage Match. As connected as we all are in the post-modern world, I sometimes forget that I live in the sticks until something like this. Northern Rednecks. Spare me.

To lighten things up on the last day of school, I unveiled my latest masterpiece, "My Least Favorite Things". It has a few good zingers in it, but they all seemed to get a laugh out of it.

Well, time to get my Santa suit on. We open presents on the first free day of vacation to keep Christmas uncluttered. Hope we struck a good balance with the presents this year. The price of gas and taxes when up by a lot bigger percentage than my salary ever has. Maybe Santa will leave me an Exxon card.

One day to the Christmas Concert and.....

the skirts and blouses showed up a day early....so that takes some of the pressure off. The decorating fanatic alumni Anna Forbes showed up today and started a frenzied campaign to spruce up the stage. (I thought the holly branches with white lights and red bows would serve, but it turns out that we needed golden snowflakes, a fireplace with stockings for each choir, entrance doors wrapped like presents, a couple live Christmas Trees, and possibly a dove release if she can talk me into it.) The young woman definatly goes overboard, but I have to admit that it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

The sickness is still there. There were still plenty of absences today, and a very sad Melissa Larsen asked to pull her solo from the concert because there is just no voice there at all. It was looking as if we were going to lose our "Santa Baby" act too, but Rachel Drennen seemed to be improving by the end of the day. The last few days have been brutally cold (single digits), and it's really knocked the stuffing out of a lot of students. They got the standard "home remedies for sickly voices" speech. Let's hope it works.

On the home front, Steph managed to get a "girl's night out" in with a cookie exchange that resulted in a good take. If we can buy up a few plates at the concert tomorrow night, we could potentially be covered for the holidays. Cookies. Yum.

The kids and I watched "Indian in the Cupboard" while Steph was out. I hadn't seen it before and found myself getting choked up at the end. What a softie I am. I should take up a martial art or something. It was nice to be able to spend the night before the concert watching a movie with the kids. I got home at 4:45 and spent about an hour running through the accompaniments for the concert, but everything else is pretty much finished. There's back burner stuff, but I feel justified in not doing it. Those last Districts songs can wait a few more days.

Two days to the Christmas Concert and....

they're all sick! It seems like there are more 'A's on the attendence sheet every day. And intonation was horrible today! And the freshman still aren't supporting enough to project their voices past the piano. I need a tums.

OK. I suppose this rant happens before every concert. I've been at this for awhile. I thought that it was supposed to get easier. But the good news is that the concert is one week before Christmas Vacation starts, so I have some time to get ready for Christmas after the concert is over. No wrapping presents the day before this time around because I'm obsessing over the concert program. One of these years I'll learn to be carefree two days before the concert. But this is not that year.

Arrrgghh! Has it really been that long?

I was reading a friends blog the other day and I said to myself, "Hey, I have a blog.....somewhere." So I figured that I should root around in my favorites folder until I find it and then write something. Here we are.

It's surprising that almost a whole year has gone by. The kids are now 9 and 6. I'm 40 and feeling old. I should be having a mid-life crisis soon. Maybe I'm having it now. Should I run out and buy a sports car, get a toupe' and have an affair? Naaaaa.

I suppose I should get back to the whole blogging thing. It is free after all, and gives me a chance to get my wild and unruly thoughts down in some tangible format. We'll see how I manage. Life is busy.

New Year's Eve

Every year it's the same thing: my wife gets sleepy and goes to bed early while I stay up until midnight to see if anything amazing happens. Nothing amazing has ever happened so far. The ball drops, the TV host in Times Square blabs over the music, the confetti falls, and a few local fireworks go off. That's it. I don't feel any different, and everything is the same. Even when we flipped over to the new millenium it was the same. Remember the Y2K scare? I was so sure that something was going to happen. But the power stayed on, all the appliances kept working, the heat stayed on, and the toilet kept flushing. I was disappointed. I was hoping for at least a little disaster.

There is a group called Eddie from Ohio that sings a song called Monotony. I like it a lot. The singer goes so far as to say that he would welcome being run over by a car or hit by a bomb - as long as it would break the monotony. OK....I don't want to go that far. I understand the feeling though. They say that 'variety is the spice of life', and sometimes it feels as if I where stuck with only salt and pepper. I need some basil or something.

My van will turn over 100,000 miles this year. How often in a lifetime will I get to see that happen? But do you know what will happen when all of those zeros flip over? Absolutely nothing. What should happen? Something like this: The stereo should turn itself on and play the Stars and Stripes Forever while a booming voiceover repeats "ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MILES!" for five minutes. The windshield wipers should all do victory swipes to the rhythm of the march on the stereo. The lights should flash. The horn should beep a happy tune - or maybe play auld lang syne. All of the dials on the display should spin out of control for a few minutes. The whole van should bounce up and down as if it were a hotrod on airshocks. That is the sort of thing that should happen.

I know; I could make things happen. I could put in a CD, flash the lights, beep the horn, and turn on the wipers. But it isn't the same. Our vehicles all have computer chips in them. Video games give us a nice little show when we beat the Level Boss and move on to the next level. Shouldn't our cars do the same? We spend a lot more on them than we do on any video game. Maybe it's time I circulated a petition.

Happy New Year! Pass the taragon.