Last Performance

Seeing this picture, what do you think I am doing?

1. The lady (showing her back) is my teacher. I am being scolded by her.

2. I am storytelling. The lady is listening.

3. I am singing. The lady is an accompanist.

The answer is 3... Is it obvious?

Last month, I performed at the West Lafayette Musicale Group's meeting. The group consists of professional musical performers, teachers, and amateur musicians like me. All members are living in this town or near here. My voice teacher, Mrs. Paine, has been an influential member of this group. So, I have joined the group for two years and a half.

The main purpose of the West Lafayette Musicale Group is "to stimulate the love of music in the community." We have meetings regularly, perform there, and encourage our community members to come to our meetings. We have junior musical competitions, let teenager musicians together, and give awards to winners from our donations.

You know, EVERYBODY in this group LOVES music ( I would say, especially, classical music.) I, who also LOVE music, but mostly pop music, love singing but I am almost musically illiterate, and don't speak much English (loooooong negative? adjective clause describing me!!)..... became a secretary of this group last year.

Whenever we have official meetings, I have the HARDEST time to keep our minutes because everybody talks fast about how we can spread the love of music enthusiastically!!

But I always enjoy the meetings because I LOVE being surrounded by PASSIONATE people!!!

Once you became a member of the West Lafayette Musical Group, you have to PERFORM something regularly in our meetings.

But you know... I am an amateur singer, and not a VERY good singer... So, performing here makes me reluctant!! But I should, so I have performed once a year.

Two years ago, I sang "Sentimental Journey", a standard jazz number, with my Japanese friend. Mrs Paine, my vocal teacher, may have thought we needed to do something besides singing because she knew we couldn't impress members very much just by "our singing." ( of course she didn't say so...)

Therefore, she suggested our doing some dance. Probably I shouldn't call them "dance." They were...movements like swing.

On our performance day, we were freaked out because coincidentally, other performers at that time were vocal musical students of IU (Indiana University, which is famous for vocal music education)!!! Thus, they were like professional OPERA SINGERS!!! On the other hand, we were freaked out reluctant singers who sounded apparently amateur( I am sorry for Mrs.Paine! She has taught me SINGING for a long time!!)... But we tried our best to sing & dance with forced smiling!!

After that, everybody complemented our performance. Oh, they said, "How pleasant YOUR DANCE was!!" They were really kind...

My friend recorded the performance (even though I disagreed with that,) and she gave me a copy of the tape. When my hubby watched that, he laughed & laughed.

For him, our dance ( I mean, our movements) looked like the same as some Japanese MANZAI (comedy) pairs.

He said, "Isn't is a STAND UP COMEDY? You did a great job!!"

Anyway, what I learned from this experience was... " I should perform something exclusively for me!!" I am not a (semi-)professional singer, so I should create something besides singing to entertain people.

(Do I stray from the main purpose of the music performance? Don't mention that!!)

Therefore, last year, I sang a Japanese piece, "The Rhyme of Early Spring(早春賦）."

Mrs. Paine and another professional singer became my chorus singers.

I sang a solo with a professional chorus! That was pretty exciting!!

This year, I also did two solos without chorus.

1. "So In Love" by Cole Porter.

If you watch a movie, "De-Lovely," which is about the life of a great composer, Cole Porter, you will love this ROMANTIC number!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcMxlpOJ_6I I LOVE this movie!!

2. "Oborozukiyo朧月夜(Dim-moonlight)" by Mika Nakashima 中島美嘉

This original song was written in 1900. The songwriter was from Nagano, where the winter Olympics was held in 1997. He described the beautiful nature in his hometown. It was a traditional Japanese song. However, a few years ago, one young Japanese pop singer, Mika Nakashima, and a famous guitar player, Taro Hakase(葉加瀬太郎）, who corroborated with Celine Dion, arranged this song.

Then, this song became popular among young Japanese!

I was looking for a traditional Japanese song which has contemporary taste.

So, this one is the best!

Oh, the very last graphic of this article is my new resource. This is from Sony Music Online, a free trial music Janapese Web-site. You can listen to this "Oboroaukiyo" music if you click the graphic amd see the CD's jacket design.

If you see just some Japanese words"登録したＵＲＬと一致しません”, please go to the left side, the "previous posts" section, and click "Last Performance" article. Then you can see the CD jacket design, and click there!

Because my "blogger.com" is not so popular in Japan, I should register individual articles to download this one. If you have any questions about that, please ask me!!

Back to my last performance...even though I picked wonderful songs, they were difficult to sing for me!!

I could sing " So In Love," but the Japanese one, "Oborozukiyo"...was a pretty hard song, as Mrs Paine said. We listened to Mika Nakashima's CD and watched the video of the traditional Japanese music TV program, "紅白歌合戦", because she performed that song there... Mrs Paine said,

"Mika Nakashima sounds really good on her CD, but she couldn't project this high sound when she performed."

I am sorry if you are her fan! She always does a great job, but only this time her voice condition was not so good, or she arranged the song with too high octaves!!

As Mrs Paine said, this song is very characteristic with frequent dynamic intervals and a lot of difficult vowels, like "e."

"E" is the most difficult sound for singers because we should open our mouth the widest, so lots of air goes out of our mouths. That means it becomes difficult to produce higher sounds.

Until the performance day, I practiced a lot with Mrs. Paine. Sometimes I was discouraged, but she encouraged me saying,

"You know what? There are MANY professional singers who aren't better singers than you. But they have their own performance style making many people excited!! Don't forget, ENJOY yourself!!"

We did a few rehearsals with the accompanist. One day, I just couldn't produce high sounds. Then Mrs Paine said,

"Have you had a dairy product today? Or a dessert?"

I nodded, " Yeah, I had a cup of cafe au lait and a chocolate coissant."

She frowned, "Let's avoid these when you have a performance. Any dairy product produces mucus, which makes difficult for you to sing higher sounds. The same as the dessert."

I was surprised, "Wow! I didn't know that! So, is there anything you recommend my having on performance days?"

She smiled, "I have at least a teaspoon of lemon juice per day. Any fruit works well on your voice. Oh, especially, oranges give you lots of energy! An amazingly genius piano player (I forgot which one she mentioned...) eats 16 ORANGES on his performance day."

Well, I don't know whether eating ONE food too much is good for his HEALTH or not...but, her information was good for me to know!!

Finally, the performance day? I was quite relaxed& enjoyed it!!

Well, the picture was taken on the the performance day. Our meetings are always held at a member's house. (Some members have pretty gorgeous houses!!)

You can't see the audience, but there were 25-30 people. I didn't dance this time because I wore a Japanese Yukata ( a summer cotton Kimono)! Please don't say my Yukata looks untidy... I am not good at wearing Kimonos...

My costume, and the Japanese e-varietions that Mrs Paine mentioned as difficult to sing, impressed theaudience, I think... They felt "the mysterious oriental taste," some members said. I couldn't sing "perfectly," but it's OK! They liked my performance!!

On that day, I quit Mrs Paine's singing lessons and the West Lafayette Musicale Group. I enjoyed them, but in fact, sometimes I had to take much time for those activities. Therefore, that performance became literally, my LAST performance in the group. I love singing! However, I have some personal goals that I want to achive, hopefully, until I go back to Japan, like getting a full score on the TOEIC and being an ADVANCED speaker at the Toastmasters.

Therefore, I chose to concentrate on pursuing my resolutions!!

Sometimes we need to "choose" something from our lives...but, don't forget, ENJOY YOURSELVES!!!