diva for a day
On Saturday I gave a small salon concert. It was my singing debut, and it went well. I sort of still can’t believe I did it, because singing in front of people was not on my to-do list. Ever.
During the past year I’ve been taking unofficial voice lessons from my friend M, a singer and voice teacher. We met last year preparing for a concert based on music from Les Mis; the music teacher here at school asked me to coach the cast in their English pronunciation, and M was singing a couple of lead roles.
[It just so happened that I was supremely qualified for this task, having sung every song by heart a million times in the shower. How often do you get to put an idle hobby to good use? It’s a rare pleasure.]
M and I hit it off, and we decided to trade voice training for English pronunciation coaching. We continued after the concert, her always offering another lesson and me always trying to find ways to be useful in return, until this spring, when she decided it was time for me to begin performing.
I begged, I made excuses, I dodged with the best of them, but then betrayed myself one evening after an enkai when I dropped by to give back some books, and made the mistake of stopping in for tea. I wasn’t drunk! But I guess my inhibitions were still a little relaxed, so when she put the recital question to me again I agreed cheerfully. The next morning I woke up stone cold sober and thought, shit. What have I agreed to?
We bargained it down from a concert in a rented hall to a small salon performance with M as my accompanist, and I invited the people who have been closest to me during my stay in Japan.
I sang two Italian madrigal love songs, two Schubert Lieder, Summertime from Porgy and Bess (transposed, that song is too high for my range), On My Own from Les Mis, and Kimi o nosete, the theme song from Laputa, Castle in the Sky.
I’m glad I did it. M was right; it did make me work harder, knowing people were going to be listening, and as much as I hate anticipating a performance, I was paid off in the sheer ecstatic relief of having gotten through it, and the happy afterglow of having done something that took nerve and went off as I’d hoped, and having been able to show it to people I love.
Dinner after was also delicious. Yesterday just got better and better.
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