Complaining with Kay, Episode 36: The swiney flu + Plan C

I posted this to the RSS last night and completely forgot to set up a post for it here.  Apologies.  Anyway, in this episode I complain about have the pigdogbirdman flu, and ponder my next career move.
Link.

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A very swinish influenza

OK, so I don’t know for a *fact* that I have swine flu. I do have something, either a bad cold or a flu of some type, so I’ve spent the past couple days off work, lying around and watching movies. It would be a lot of fun if I weren’t physically so [...]

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Unlike real life…

I had an awful dream last night. I had an audition for something – I can’t remember what, but instead of arias they wanted two art songs. OK, I thought, and picked two that were impressive and I sing well, and put the sheet music in a binder.
The audition was in one of [...]

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Repertoire

For an audition next month, five arias under five minutes each.  My notes from trying to figure out what to sing:
- Durch Zartlichkeit
- Caro nome
- Les oiseaux dans la charmille
- Lulu
- Stravinsky is too long.  I need something shorter in English: New music?

– I’m not doing any goddamn Britten.
– Why don’t I have [...]

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Complaining with Kay, Episode 31: Killing the mini-fridge and its consequences.

Killing the mini fridge.
La dolce vita.
My compositional debut.
Link.

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Melancholy Inventory

Today I did something I’ve been putting off for weeks.  I wrote the third of my opera libretti (librettos?  whatever), the one about Edith Sitwell.  Here’s a little excerpt, in the style of Facade:
Melancholy Inventory
The gilded bee
The satin sea
The black sun rising over me
The honeycomb
The marksman’s tomb
The exit from the morning’s womb
The sheep-like crowd
The laugh [...]

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Done for now

I had an audition yesterday.  It went fine, though I was kind of nervous and babbled a bit, and the high D sharp in Caro Nome fluted a bit (dammit!).  I don’t think I’ll get anything from it, but you never know.
Anyway, unless something spectacular comes up, or something I’ve already inquired about calls me, [...]

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Magic bullets

I was testing some mics the other day by singing the same passage of “Caro nome” into them, and listening back to the recordings of each mic I noticed a little bump in one descending scale passage.  It happens in the place where “somewhat high” turns into “high medium”, and its effect is to throw [...]

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Start the week right – with some mild despair

I love the internet.  I do.  It’s this massive explosion of creativity and information and entertainment – it shows me that everywhere in the world people are doing things, just doing them, and while most of those things are negligible and stupid, when the pool of doing gets big enough awesome things emerge.
But because I’m [...]

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What I’ve been up to

It has been a little while, hasn’t it.  I have no excuses.  I could have written.  I could have phoned.  I could have posted wry videos on YouTube.  But I didn’t.  My apologies.  Here’s what I’ve been up to since Friday.  I:
- went to a clothing swap where I got a pantsuit (that fit me [...]

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