I have to say it: I hated teaching in person this semester – mostly. Private voice lessons with me wearing a mask and the student wearing a mask were frustrating and almost completely useless. The students were thrilled to be back in person, and OK, it was nice to be able to accompany in real time. But the technical instruction that the students needed was impossible to convey. I took them through their exercises and guessed at what they were doing with their mouths and tongues. I did try to do some hands on physical adjustments in posture and movement but I also wanted to keep my distance. In general, I was not comfortable being in a small room for an hour with someone deliberately exhaling at me. And the students were all incredibly sick with everything else but COVID: strep throat, bronchitis, laryngitis, colds, mono, stuffed noses, coughing, you name it. They called it the Princeton Plague and it got most of the students at one point or another. OK, I didn’t have to sing at all, but my historic trauma with worrying about getting sick, combined with the past 18 months of being conditioned to be afraid of getting sick had me extremely triggered.
At the other extreme, I was teaching Singing American Musical Theatre as a performance class again and it was wonderful.
I was so proud of Solène after she sang Barber’s “Knoxville Summer of 1915” with the Princeton University Orchestra on their March concerts. We had worked on it a lot last fall in preparation for the concerto competition. I loved teaching the piece to such a sensitive and talented singer, sharing all my favorite moments of interpretation and expression. It was actually good vocal practice for Solène as well, focusing on the simple, sweet, childlike quality of the music and text, learning not to overload her voice and do more with less. 
At long last the new music building in the Lewis Arts Complex is ready and the university celebrated with a weekend of festivities and special events to inaugurate all the new rehearsal and performing spaces. The theatre and dance departments brought in famous special guests from outside the university community. The music department showcased all our in-house talent, featuring faculty and student performers from the orchestra, glee club, jazz ensembles, as well as Richardson Chamber Players, So Percussion, Plork, new music by the Sound Kitchen faculty and grad student composers and more in performances that took place all over the campus. 
Was it really four years ago that we went to Australia for the International Congress of Voice Teachers and an amazing travel adventure? It was time again for the ICVT meeting, this time in Stockholm. I would present my menopause research and Michael would come along for a Scandinavian tour. 
This was my last year singing High Holy Days in Wichita. An odd set of circumstances led to this outcome, but as usual, things seem to have worked out for the best. I’m very happy to have no future singing performances to look forward to at this point. In the photo I am standing in the entrance way of Congregation Emanu-El with my Kansas mom, Marcia Solomon, and Rabbi Michael Davis. 
I’m writing this much later, but I want to preserve some continuity for what will follow. I think this was my 21st year singing High Holy Days in Wichita. I don’t remember much about the singing, so it was either perfectly fine or perfectly awful, or somewhere in between. I do remember that I went to the Sedgwick County Zoo where I hadn’t visited in many years. 
A lot of time has gone by since the Richardson Chamber Players performance of Pierrot on March 1, but I wanted to relate the crazy time leading up to it and my thoughts in the aftermath.