voice

I received a very nice compliment today. A classmate stopped me after rehearsal and said that my presentation yesterday on Futurism was very well-done, and that I lecture very well. Go, me! And thanks to mixedborder for the extra trivia bits that gave my presentation that special machine-oil edge.

It reminded me of the other nice compliment I got recently, which came after I sang my first Westminster solo. I was filling in the alto part of a solo quartet in a student's composition performance, and there were 2 little solo a cappella bits that had me extremely nervous. A day or two afterwards a soprano that I have immense and enormous respect for (good musician, smart and nice person, stunning voice) came over and said, "I never knew you could sing like that! Great job!" or something like that. It was the enthusiastic straight-forwardness that really made it special, and I'd been desperately needing a compliment like that on my performance, b/c I am not very confident about my solo singing voice (though I'm capable of being insufferably arrogant about my choral one.) This is partly b/c it's always been obvious to me that I've never had what it takes to be a solo singer, and if I had, I probably would have gone for it. My voice teacher is changing this, however, and his support is giving me hazy notions of joining the Tallis Scholars or some Bach cantata group or something professional like that.

My voice teacher is really good at making me feel good about my voice. Speaking of compliments, every voice lesson is like one big compliment, not only because he tells me that I'm doing well and he enjoys listening to my voice, but in the sense that everything just sort of works right in his presence - sign of a good voice teacher. He wants me to sing for one of the mini-recitals on campus. This makes me rather nervous, but since being scared of something is never a reason not to do it, I think it will happen.

Anyways, the point was, compliments are nice, and I should make a point of giving them out more.