And so, I am back directing and teaching all six of my choral groups. Six you say!? Absolutely: The Anything Goes Chorus (one in Oakland and two in San Francisco), Swingshift Singers, Treble Makers and Girlfriendz. Oh yes, and then there's one more: a Master Class in Solo Singing that I offer a few times a year. That actually makes seven then. Every other choral director I mention this to looks at me like I must be out of my mind to take on such a Herculean task. I am, but I love what I do. Working with music and singing every day, and being the guide and cheer leader for singers to find their own voice and fill the planet with harmony---what could be better? Well, perhaps singing in my own performance. But the work I get to do IS indeed a blessing to me.
My own show is coming in October and I will move aside all the needs and questions and concerns and emails of my students to make time for myself and my own voice. Charts to write, lyrics to memorize, melodies to solidify, set lists to prepare, rehearsals to schedule - and then of course charts to rewrite...on and on and on. I can't wait.
I do love singing!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
High Sierras again!
Every year for the past 25 years I have taken time off in the summer to rest my ears and rejeuvenate my spirit. It helps me to stay fresh and sustains me so I am able to do the work I do all year long: leading, coaching, inspiring, directing, teaching, organizing, envisioning, composing, arranging, promoting, selling...and finally performing!
This year I went up in to the Minarettes from the Devil's Postpile trailhead near Mammouth, CA.
My idea of a vacation is to drive 6 hours to a trailhead, put 40 pounds on my back and hike in about 8 miles to the Sierra high country above 9,000 feet and spend 8 days in the awesome quiet majesty of the mountains. I am blessed to have a dear crazy friend who has also been willing to rearrange her entire life for the past nine years so she and I can take off for 10 days and totally get away. Mind you, not all of it is very glamorous: it's exhausting hauling the pack on the first day when it is at it's heaviest and climbing up what is inevitably some steep pass and all the while getting acclimated to the change in altitude. And by the end of 8 days I'm mighty dirty. "Ripe" we call it. Sleeping on the ground is not actually sleeping at all, but more like a fish flopping back and forth on dry land trying to get comfortable all night long. (Is it morning yet?) Basically, we don't really sleep at all. But my brain...ah, it is calm at last and my heart opens wide. My spirit is very turned on, my senses are very awake and I feel fully alive. So, I keep going back. I plan to continue to do so until my legs will no longer carry me. My friend and I talk every year about what we'll do when we can no longer carry our own packs: using mules to take in our belongings or get air lifted in by helicopter or other alternatives. But for now, I am blessedly healthy at 58 and glad of it!
What is so magical that I must return every year dispite the effort? Maybe it's because it is SO different from the rest of how I spend my year: I don't have to care about how I look or sell anything to anyone, there is no one telling me what to buy or trying to impress upon me their point of view---in fact, there is nothing but wide open space and beauty in every single thing I see. Not a billlboard or sign. Not the sound of one car. Not a cell phone or computer. No machinery at all.
The experience cleans out my head of all the noise, and I remember what is most important to me once again.
I take lots of gorgeous yummy pictures with my Contax point & shoot film camera. It's really the only time I take pictures at all. Still no need for digital since my camera takes killer pix and weighs hardly anything (besides I spent alot of money on it). I make a slide show on my computer in iPhoto and add wonderful music and watch it over and over and over...then I get to watch it over and over again as I share it with each of my friends.
I write music when I'm in the mountains and when I come home, I arrange the songs for my choral groups. This music is very different from the kind of songs I sing when I perform or the tunes I write for my jazz trio. It's written from a perspective I can only get in touch with when I am so very close to the clouds. When I go back to work with my six choral groups, I teach the songs to them and I get to hear the music sung back to me in four parts and it is glorious. What a kick!
And for a few months (if I'm lucky) after I return from the mountians, I can hang on to some of that feeling of openness and connection till the rhythm of the city pounds in my ears and I am filled with details and deadlines, once again.
This year I went up in to the Minarettes from the Devil's Postpile trailhead near Mammouth, CA.
My idea of a vacation is to drive 6 hours to a trailhead, put 40 pounds on my back and hike in about 8 miles to the Sierra high country above 9,000 feet and spend 8 days in the awesome quiet majesty of the mountains. I am blessed to have a dear crazy friend who has also been willing to rearrange her entire life for the past nine years so she and I can take off for 10 days and totally get away. Mind you, not all of it is very glamorous: it's exhausting hauling the pack on the first day when it is at it's heaviest and climbing up what is inevitably some steep pass and all the while getting acclimated to the change in altitude. And by the end of 8 days I'm mighty dirty. "Ripe" we call it. Sleeping on the ground is not actually sleeping at all, but more like a fish flopping back and forth on dry land trying to get comfortable all night long. (Is it morning yet?) Basically, we don't really sleep at all. But my brain...ah, it is calm at last and my heart opens wide. My spirit is very turned on, my senses are very awake and I feel fully alive. So, I keep going back. I plan to continue to do so until my legs will no longer carry me. My friend and I talk every year about what we'll do when we can no longer carry our own packs: using mules to take in our belongings or get air lifted in by helicopter or other alternatives. But for now, I am blessedly healthy at 58 and glad of it!
What is so magical that I must return every year dispite the effort? Maybe it's because it is SO different from the rest of how I spend my year: I don't have to care about how I look or sell anything to anyone, there is no one telling me what to buy or trying to impress upon me their point of view---in fact, there is nothing but wide open space and beauty in every single thing I see. Not a billlboard or sign. Not the sound of one car. Not a cell phone or computer. No machinery at all.
The experience cleans out my head of all the noise, and I remember what is most important to me once again.
I take lots of gorgeous yummy pictures with my Contax point & shoot film camera. It's really the only time I take pictures at all. Still no need for digital since my camera takes killer pix and weighs hardly anything (besides I spent alot of money on it). I make a slide show on my computer in iPhoto and add wonderful music and watch it over and over and over...then I get to watch it over and over again as I share it with each of my friends.
I write music when I'm in the mountains and when I come home, I arrange the songs for my choral groups. This music is very different from the kind of songs I sing when I perform or the tunes I write for my jazz trio. It's written from a perspective I can only get in touch with when I am so very close to the clouds. When I go back to work with my six choral groups, I teach the songs to them and I get to hear the music sung back to me in four parts and it is glorious. What a kick!
And for a few months (if I'm lucky) after I return from the mountians, I can hang on to some of that feeling of openness and connection till the rhythm of the city pounds in my ears and I am filled with details and deadlines, once again.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Welcome
This is a completely new venture for me. I am excited to be able to communicate with you about my upcoming performance dates and new musical ideas, as well as reflections on the progress of my music career and musings on life in general. May this be the beginning of many exchanges to be shared.
Today was a large and profound day for me. I sang at the memorial of a very dear high school friend. The song I sang is called "Guide Me." I learned it from Bonnie Barnett (creator of the nation wide "Tunnel Hum") when I first came to San Francisco in 1977. Since then this song has had a rich history for me--I've sung it on mountain tops at 11,000 feet in the High Sierras and at the memorial for my friend's mother as we scattered the ashes in the San Francisco Bay. I also wrote an a cappella arrangement and recorded it with Vocolot (on the "Heart Beat" CD) during the time I performed with this women's group. I sang it again at my own mother's funeral in 2003.
My friend Anne Moses had been battling lung cancer for the last eighteen months and finally died at the beginning of June of 07 in a hospital in Egypt (of all places!) while on her last vacation. When she first told me she was dying she had asked me to sing at her memorial...my breath stopped for a moment, and then I answered: "of course I will." We agreed the song would be "Guide Me." Eighteen months later I downloaded the Vocolot recording and sent it to her partner Gloria, who played it for Anne on a laptop the day before she died---I was able to sing to my friend right in her ear as she lay dying in the hospital in Egypt on the other side of the world. That was, and still is, utterly amazing to me.
Listen to a bit of the song:
http://www.vocolot.com/music/heart_beat/guide_me.html
And today was not a performance. It was a gift I gave to my dear friend, and I was so glad to do so. I wasn't sure if I could pull it off, but I discovered a calmness I did not know I could muster up in such a situation. Gratefully, it was an alcohol free gathering in honor of Anne's 24 years of sobriety. And so, everyone was very present, open, full and authentic. My task became easy...just be myself and do what I do best. And so I sang.
Goodbye my friend. I know you heard the song.
I will carry you in my heart.
Today was a large and profound day for me. I sang at the memorial of a very dear high school friend. The song I sang is called "Guide Me." I learned it from Bonnie Barnett (creator of the nation wide "Tunnel Hum") when I first came to San Francisco in 1977. Since then this song has had a rich history for me--I've sung it on mountain tops at 11,000 feet in the High Sierras and at the memorial for my friend's mother as we scattered the ashes in the San Francisco Bay. I also wrote an a cappella arrangement and recorded it with Vocolot (on the "Heart Beat" CD) during the time I performed with this women's group. I sang it again at my own mother's funeral in 2003.
My friend Anne Moses had been battling lung cancer for the last eighteen months and finally died at the beginning of June of 07 in a hospital in Egypt (of all places!) while on her last vacation. When she first told me she was dying she had asked me to sing at her memorial...my breath stopped for a moment, and then I answered: "of course I will." We agreed the song would be "Guide Me." Eighteen months later I downloaded the Vocolot recording and sent it to her partner Gloria, who played it for Anne on a laptop the day before she died---I was able to sing to my friend right in her ear as she lay dying in the hospital in Egypt on the other side of the world. That was, and still is, utterly amazing to me.
Listen to a bit of the song:
http://www.vocolot.com/music/heart_beat/guide_me.html
And today was not a performance. It was a gift I gave to my dear friend, and I was so glad to do so. I wasn't sure if I could pull it off, but I discovered a calmness I did not know I could muster up in such a situation. Gratefully, it was an alcohol free gathering in honor of Anne's 24 years of sobriety. And so, everyone was very present, open, full and authentic. My task became easy...just be myself and do what I do best. And so I sang.
Goodbye my friend. I know you heard the song.
I will carry you in my heart.
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