December 14, 2024
I am so lucky that I get to teach a musical theatre performance class every few years. There are easily enough students interested to offer it every year, but not enough resources in the Music Department, alas. It is always a treat in any case. For the Fall semester I had a class of five women and five men, many Triangle Club members, some my personal students some not. After the competitive auditions last spring, I thought it was a strong group, but as we got into the first few weeks of the syllabus, I realized that they had a lot to learn, both in terms of the 20th century repertoire and many basic skills. Fortunately, they were all open to trying new things and investigating the unfamiliar songs by Irving Berlin, Kurt Weil, Jerome Kern, Porter and Gershwin. Yikes, it is hard for me to believe that they don’t know these composers, or legendary performers like Fred Astair and Ethel Merman, but they were game to dive in and they loved what they found. The chemistry of the class was also very supportive, and the students brought in fun duets in many combinations of voices. We had one student pianist in the class and were fortunate to have the fantastic pro pianist Vince di Mura playing for every class as well. Vince brought a wealth of experience and great flexibility to the work with the students. After Fall Break all the students started making real progress and each class saw one show stopping performance after another. As they got into the more recent rep that they knew, their performances became even better, supported by all the new tools they were honing and the increased confidence they were building from singing in class each week. The final performance in December was fantastic, and though hard to believe, perhaps this bunch of performers were even stronger than the last time I taught the class. I think all the students had a great time and I had too many wonderful tunes swirling in my head all night and day!
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.