A Life Changing Event?

I spent last week at the Jewell Early Music Festival Workshop. It was a great experience and has taken a few days for me to digest my feelings about the workshop. For one thing, this was the first time since Boyo was born that I've been away from my children. Sure, I saw them each morning before I left for the day, but they were always asleep before I got home and I was basically away from them for 5 days straight. (Thanks to Curmudgeon. A lot of husbands might complain or feel put-upon to do that for a full week, but not mine. He's enthusiastic, supportive and excited to spend time with the kiddos. :)

Those of you who know me well know that for the past 12 years I've had an unhealthy, unproductive relationship with my voice. I have never quite been able to get over the disappointments of college or the shattering blows to my self confidence. I've gone back and forth between heartbreaking desire,  crippling fear and bitter resentment at the perceived injuries done to my nonexistent career.

At the same time, I've continued to sing here and there, even doing a public solo recital in Alaska and joining Curmudgeon in his recital at OSU. When we moved to Kansas I was determined to find a way to sing here so I began researching for a teacher. I was lucky enough to get a place with the best early music specialist in the area and we've been working together now for about six months. The improvement in my vocal health, confidence and knowledge is plain. 

When I found out about the JEMSfest and immediately knew I needed to attend. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the experience will change my life. The workshop was a fun mix of vocal masterclasses and lessons, ensemble work, rehearsals with instrumentalists on period-instruments and finally, solo and ensemble recitals and a final concert including the performance of the first English opera: Venus and Adonis by John Blow.  As much as I enjoyed all of the work and the rehearsals, the most important aspect of the week was making connections. Getting work in this (or any) business is 90% about who you know. Cynical as it sounds, it's been a huge boost for me to realize that. 

My confidence also got a big shot-in-the-arm as I worked with other professionals who treated me not like a student and not like an amateur, but like a fellow musician. I came out of the workshop with invitations to join a number of local ensembles and I'm on "the list" now. One of the voice faculty, a professional countertenor, told me that he was so glad I was in KC and that he is going to do whatever he can to make sure I get work as a soloist around here.  For the first time since I was a teenager, I feel like I am not just a pretend-musician. I feel like I just found the golden ticket...I have relationships now and there are people in my corner.

It has all been a treat. In September I'll start rehearsals with these different ensembles. I'll continue working with my own fabulous teacher and keep building my skills and repertoire. It's exciting.

Less exciting is the fact that I can't seem to make embedding audio in blogger work anymore, so if you want to hear anything, you can check out my website here on the ABOUT page. There's one recording from the workshop and I found it a little disappointing. The mic was too far away so it's a bit quiet and when I listen some major things pop out that I'd do differently next time, but it at least gives you an idea of the stuff I'm working on. That piece, by the way, is one that I transcribed from a facsimile of the original 1664 printing...pretty fun project.

I was recording a couple of songs for a voice student this morning when Happy came into my room to investigate. He was taken with the microphone and wanted to do a little recording of his own:

For those of you unfamiliar with what kind of tv attracts 3-year-olds, this is the theme to Bob the Builder. If you're having trouble understanding what he's singing, don't worry. Most of the song is listing the names of all the characters so if it just sounds like babbling, that's because that's what it is :)

and our family's favorite tune.

(these players run on quicktime. If the players don't appear to be coming up, check the permissions on your browser, you may have to allow quicktime somewhere. Don't ask me for more details than that...on chrome it just shows up at the top of the browser window. Good luck with that)

Viola Swap

 Big smile from the Curmudgeon.

He now has a full complement of strings...A bass, a cello (as of Christmas) a viola, and two violins (one is Happy's little 1/16th). But also at Christmastime, we purchased a new viola to replace his student-grade one. The new baby is bigger, better, and much beloved by its new papa. 

Old viola? Just sold on craigslist two days ago. 

Christmas Album 2011

Let us present our second-annual Wood Family Musical Christmas Card! This is our biggest self-imposed project of the year and so we happily share with you a selection of holiday music that we have performed and recorded as well as arranged, composed or adapted to fit our abilities. Much of it will probably be new to you. This is not your every-day holiday album. But we love the music that we selected and hope you'll give it a listen and feel our best Christmas greetings coming to you through the sounds. 

(and be gentle with us. This is by no means a professional recording and if you listen hard you'll probably hear lots of squaks or squeaks or other little things that would embarrass us if we didn't love you so much. So listen, but don't listen too hard. okay?)  

Link to playlist

1. Christmas Day I’Da Mornin’  traditional......fiddle, Nate
2. I Sing of A Maiden  Patrick Hadley......vocals, Leslee; piano, Nate
3. Lo How A Rose  trad./arr. by N.Wood, L.Wood......violin & cello, Nate
4. That Yonge Child/Balulalow  Benjamin Britten.......vocals, Leslee
5. Hark the Herald Angels Sing  Felix Mendelsohn......bass, Nate
6. In Dulci Jubilo  trad./harm. by B. Gesius and J.S. Bach......vocals, Leslee
7. The Shepherd’s Carol    Daniel Lyman Carter......cello, violin, Nate
8. Star in the East  traditional......guitar, Nate; vocals, Leslee
9. In Natali Domini  L. Wood......violin, viola, cello, Nate; vocals, finger cymbals, Leslee
10. Silent Night  Franz Gruber.....bass, Nate

...And we're back

It's always when the most is going on (when you really should be keeping a good record and keeping your family and friends in the loop) that journals, letters and blog posts go by the wayside. I won't attempt to get you up to speed on all our recent happenings in one long post because it would be too long, too boring, and would take me such a long time to write that it just wouldn't get done and you'd never get the update.
So here's the concise list version:

• I went out to KS to scope out a place for us to live. Not a lot of success in the rental department and some really awful foreclosures for sale. Then this gem:

It's also a foreclosure, but it's in great condition, a well-made "Prairie Box" house built in 1930. It was love at first sight. So we're on the road to owning our own home. Exciting!

• Curmudgeon is in his last week of student teaching! YAY! A couple of weeks ago the school had their final orchestra concert. I wasn't able to find a babysitter so I didn't see it firsthand, but C made a recording of it. Sounded good! Here's a clip: this is the high school orchestra playing C's arrangement of "House of the Rising Sun".

• Happy and Punky just keep growing bigger and bigger and bigger! Happy loves tractors, trucks and busses more than ever. He's also a modest boy and won't move unless he's got pants on. Honestly, when we change his diaper, he'll lay on the floor for ten minutes waiting for us to replace his pants! He's talking more and more all the time. Some notable additions to his vocabulary are "ga-goof" (tractor), "gee-kees" (pancakes) and "shirt" (he doesn't say his 'r's yet, so we get a big kick out of that one and as we laugh gleefully he says it over and over with great emphasis. I know, we're terrible).

• Punky is 10 months old now! She doesn't win any awards for sleeping through the night. In fact, her brother was a horrible sleeper but at least he started sleeping through the night around 8 months. Girly, not so much. But in every other way she's a complete peach! She laughs and claps and coos and generally enchants everyone she meets. She seems perfectly content to sit immobile on her bottom and play with anything in reach and ignore anything out of range. No sign that she'll be crawling anytime soon. Maybe she'll walk before she crawls.

Anyway, that's the news from our end of the world. As things slow down we hope to get a little more consistent again. We also look forward to resuming our weekly movies...and boyo have we got some good ones in the dock! Just you wait...

music, music everywhere

Happy will have his first "official" violin lesson tomorrow. The teacher Curmudgeon is student teaching with is a Suzuki guru and has kindly consented to meet boy-o and give us some further tips on how to teach him at this early stage.
So in the spirit of that lesson, here's a cute video I took of him playing the other day:

Also, if you're interested, I promised to post some of the music from our Easter Program a couple of weeks ago. I'll refer you to my other (dedicated music) blog: singlikeanything.blogspot.com. So you'll know what might be most interesting to you, I'll give a list of what we were involved in:

Choir Numbers (I'm the director and C sang in the bass section)

• "In the Upper Room"
• "Mid the Stillness of the Night"
• "Dona Nobis Pacem"
• "Abide With Me" (I arranged and sang on this one. The balance is a bit off because the mic wasn't exactly in the middle so I'm louder than I should be, but you can still get a bit of a feel for it)
• "He is Risen!" (C arranged this one and sang too. Ditto about the balance issues)
• "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" (C on bass)
• "Who is this Jesus?" (C on violin. But I feel I should mention that he didn't feel great about how this one went, so just bear in mind that this may not be a fair representation of his skills)

By the way, on a totally unrelated topic, you may have noticed that we've gone two whole weeks without any movies! Worry not, the weekly tradition will continue...probably next month. Or maybe when we're settled into our new place.

A Very Happy Saint Pat's Day to Ye!

Maybe we've got Irish-envy. Maybe it's that we love all things green. Maybe we wish we could find a pot-o-gold. Whatever the reason, we're feeling especially festive this year and wanted to share a musical Saint Patrick's Day greeting with you.
You'd be right in guessing that we don't have a lot of time to play music together these days, but we were both able to record a few things individually. Curmudgeon has been entertaining us all with his Irish-fiddle-playing and I still like to sing the old sad songs. Don't mind the noisy pub-goers in the background. We thought they were so cute that I didn't want to cut them out during the editing process. I also (apologies to Curmudgeon) enjoyed the little warm-up sounds and squeaks of the fiddle. And since I was in control of editing, I left those in too. Because they're charming.

Enjoy!

Men Singing

We have been doing a lot of musical arranging lately. I think for both of us it has provided an enjoyable creative release and we've been learning a lot as we experiment on our patient and long-suffering musical friends. 

The only performance we've managed to record yet is this one by Curmudgeon. It is his own arrangement of "As I Survey the Wondrous Cross" which he and 3 friends sang in church last week. It was really lovely so I'm glad we were able to get a nice recording to share with you!

As I Survey the Wondrous Cross (click the link to go to the audio stream)

If any of you would be interested in getting a copy of the sheet music just let us know. We'd be glad to email you a copy (maybe you'd like to try it out yourself!).

Early Birthday Present (and good news for choir!)

Yesterday I came home from teaching to find an early birthday present waiting for me:

I had mentioned to Curmudgeon the other day how nice it would be to have our piano tuned again and voila--wish granted. I've got awesome in-laws who really take good care of us :). Now it will be slightly less embarrassing to host church choir practices at our house. The choir members and accompanists have been suffering through some pretty sour notes for a few months now.