One month in Ann Arbor...

School is keeping me busy. 9:30-12:45 in classes, and then this afternoon about 2 hours teaching and 2 hours practicing and working with my coach/accompanist on audition pieces for Sunday's audition.

Last Monday I sang at the "Vocal Arts Lab" - basically a group performance get-together for all of the voice and musical theater majors, scheduled about 4 times each term. Made a positive impression, since lots of faculty types were very complimentary afterward; Richard Swedberg made a point of introducing himself to me and chatting some, and making sure I was planning to audition for the spring opera. I think my favorite comment was "What a horn!" (I think that was Prof. Racine, who's current chair of the voice department; I was all in trouble with her for missing a meeting during orientation week).

I HAVE ELEVEN VOICE STUDENTS. Half hour lessons, thank grod. Though tonight I went over. This one undergraduate--from the liberal-arts school at UM, majoring in Latin & Caribbean Studies and Anthro--has a whopper of a voice... I feel sort of like I was handed a random pile of boxes with stuff in them, and I opened one up and there was a Stradivarius cello inside. I like my students, and pretty much every one of them has some issue or problem I feel like I can really help with.

Today one of my students said "This is my favorite class!" :)

I failed my Italian diction placement hearing and am taking an Italian diction class--and now that I'm working through the text of one of my Mozart arias, I UNDERSTAND WHY. And now I have the skills to really make it come alive.

I got to sing a Brahms lied with MARTIN KATZ. (I don't think I've ever heard the stormy piano interlude played with that much passion--and he was transposing at sight from a different key, and hardly missed a beat despite key changes and, well, Brahms!) Luckily someone dropped out of his art song class at the last minute, so I got to audition for him and jump in.

For my pedagogy class, we have to sit in on a number of lessons and write about them in detail. I asked someone in my class, who's a new MM student studying with Shirley Verrett... so I sat in on her lesson yesterday.

George Shirley ALWAYS says hi to me when we pass by each other around the building.

I have a bed, thank goodness. I still don't have any furniture in the living room other than the chair I'm sitting in and my little computer mini-desk... other than that, it's full of boxes and trunks and pillows and yarn and ironing in a big basket...

The tiny little office-nook has one set of shelves; the only thing unpacked and set in anything remotely resembling order? Music, of course. My scores and books, tossed up there in vaguely sorted sections, just so I can *access* things for myself and my students.

OMG. I'm here. I'm DOING this THING. And I LIKE it.