Oh my gorgeous cupcakes! This song just came on on the radio. Not FM radio, itunes radio. I was listening to Always Christmas (1.FM) because they normally have a nice selection of songs to play, and then this came on. It hurt my ears and I had to stop it. Their vowels and their consonants! My goodness!
Anyways... Today I decided to jump into the world of torrents. My friend had talked about it and I knew she got most of her songs from there, so I thought, "Heck. Let's give it a try." So I did. And....
OH MY GOD IT IS AMAZING! I found the download of 35 of Eric Whitacre's pieces. 35! I absolutely love his music. It is so amazing. This is my favorite and the singers are amazing too.
Okay. Go ahead. Call me weird and strange and all of that stuff; but this song is so amazingly beautiful. The dissidence in it is stunning. And building 13 part chords? (yes i counted) Who does that? Eric Whitacre does! And the high note at 1:08 just makes me melt. And I am currently downloading his music :-D
You should be jealous of me. Oh! And just thing. Lyrical/Contemporary dances to Whitacre's choral pieces! I must go call Mia Michaels!
Well, I think you've had enough of my being nerdy. I'll leave you be...
But seriously... Listen to his songs. You will die.
This past week was so insanely stressful. I think it was mostly because I had auditions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Monday auditions were for a special that my friend and I wanted to do at our school's Christmas Concert.... I'm sorry.. Holiday Concert (we always have to be politically correct here!) Anyways, we got that. There weren't too many people trying out for it so I was pretty sure we'd get it. Plus our choir director absolutely loves us. We're singing "Grown Up Christmas List" as a duet; it sounds pretty!
The next day, Tuesday, was the day of auditions for my school's production of Chicago. (It is very rare that a high school gets the rights for Chicago. From what I heard, only 5-10% of the schools that apply for the rights actually get them. So this was a big deal.) I was pretty solid on my audition song, but not my monologue. I had chosen my monologue about 2 weeks before but had not memorized it yet. So, all of Tuesday I was memorizing my monologue, which was from the movie Clue. It was a very well written monologue, but I couldn't remember all of it. So during my audition, I just improved it and then acted boisterous and outrageous. (No regrets) When I sang my song, I cracked on my last note. I was pissed at myself, but not worried too much about it. And then we had to do the dancing part of the audition in a group. We had learned a dance 30 minutes before auditions. I felt like I knew it, and I did. In conclusion, my song was decent, monologue - decent, and dancing was strong. (Results of auditions later in blog)
The next day, Wednesday, I had an audition for another special during another concert. I had not rehearsed with my accompanist before auditioning and had not really practiced it sufficiently with my voice teacher. So my audition was definitely not the strongest. Plus, when I went up to sing, my throat got completely strange and I think my nerves got to me because of it. I was so embarrassed when I finished my song. I felt like a complete failure and was tempted to even say I didn't want to do a special anymore. I felt like a fool, but my other director still said I could sing at the concert.
Also, this week, I had a good amount of homework. On Thursday, I had two tests in my two hardest classes - AP Euro & Honors Physics - and a quiz in my math class. That was not fun, especially since it was the day of callbacks for Chicago. Which brings me to my audition results...
I received a callback, which I was very happy about, but not surprised because I was a guy that could sing, dance, and act, and they don't have enough guys. A callback meant that they were considering you for a major role in the show. The callbacks on Thursday were rather nerve racking. At first, I went to the chorus room and received music that they wanted to try me for. I received two pieces: A Little Bit of Good sung by the character Mary Sunshine (yes, a girl) and Mr. Cellophane sung by Amos. The song A Little Bit of Good is extremely high (look towards end for video). It calls for someone that can hit an A above the staff. I was singing the song along with four other girls (all of which were my friends = not fun competition). Anyway, the girls and I quickly learned the song, and when we auditioned, we only had to sing a small bit of the beginning and then we had to sing a measure where you sing a high F to and high A, which is held by a fermata, down to another F, I believe. I sang the beginning fine. I had looked at the directors as I sang the beginning and they were pretty impressed. (Reminder: I had to sing this in front of about 16 other people who were being looked at for lead roles too.) Then came the F-A-F (I hope I'm not scaring you off with my music-ness). The accompanist played the F, I took a super, deep breath and shot out the F and then popped up to the A and held it for a pretty long time and then went back down. The A was so strong, I was surprised. From what I hear, after I hit it so strong, I kind of stood there for a moment with a did-I-really-just-do-that look on my face. And everybody else in the room clapped and the other guys were like "holy crap" and were laughing out of awe. It was awesome; maybe even my proudest moment as a singer. :-P
Moving on. We did a short, little, easy dance for them and then did some acting. And then it was over.
Today, after chorus, during lunch, the cast list was put up. There were about 20 people waiting right by the board to see it. Once I saw the number of people, I just turned around and went to lunch. I didn't want to look in front of all of those people. Two of the people I sat with at lunch were very anxious to see the list, so they left to go see it. They came back smiling. They said, "You got Mary Sunshine."
My response, "No! No! No! Don't tell me!" But it was obviously too late.
I soon after went to the board to look at the list myself. I was so shocked. I couldn't believe that I was going to play a woman in the show (still can't). I was ecstatic. Now, I can't wait until those nights of the show when I just hit those As over and over again and leave the audience with their jaws dropped to the floor! I can't wait!
