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Sunday, March 17, 2013

New Performance Genre

Guess what I did on Thursday?  I gave my first-ever live performance my own original songs.  I did it at the "Cabaret Night" Vocal Department Recital at SFCM.  I was really nervous and felt kind of embarrassed, in a way, to be singing my own music in front of a bunch of people.  But people liked it (at least they cheered and told me they did, haha!).    

I met this really cool guitarist named Nahuel Bronzini, who approached me in the hall one day at the conservatory.  He said, "I think I saw you singing some sort of pop song on Youtube. Was that your own song?"  I said yes, that it most likely was.  He asked me if I had made an album, and I said no.  He asked, "Why not?".   I said I wanted to, but so far I haven't really had the facilities or the means to actually produce an album.    "Well, that's what I do,"  he said.   He said he has started his own production studio, and asked if he could send me some of his stuff, particularly a collaboration he has with another girl who is a singer/songwriter.  Of course I said yes.    So I emailed him and asked if maybe he could listen to some of my songs, and maybe we could do some collaborating!      So one evening I went and played and sang a bunch for him. He kind of strummed along on his guitar, and had some good and interesting suggestions for my harmony and form.  He also had lots of ideas about possible arrangements and instrumentation if we were to actually try to make some recordings.   So, I feel excited to have met him!

 Then I heard about the Cabaret Recital, which is kind of an anything-goes-night for singers at the conservatory.  We can sing Jazz songs, or Broadway, or old crooning tunes, or whatever.  So I asked the department if I could sing two of my own songs.  And then I asked Nahuel if he would be interested in performing with me.   We just got together a couple of times and sort of improvised and worked out an arrangement together. It was so fun!  I even sang with a microphone (microphones are not normally EVER used for a singer at the conservatory...because in classical singing it's all about a singer's natural ability to project).   But it's different when you are singing jazz or pop and have to be seated at the piano, turned sideways to the audience, and at the same distance/level as the piano.  

Then, Nahuel messaged me on Facebook a couple of days ago... He uploaded one of the songs we performed to Youtube.  It's still set to "Unlisted", so you won't be able to find it in the search engine right now.  But here it is.   There are still a lot of things about the arrangement I want to work on and improve, but for a first run - it's not so bad, right?  

Enjoy:

    

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Busy-ness

Oh my goodness,
I have this serious craving to make music, to write, to play piano, to compose, to record something, but I'm soooo busy!!!   Aaaaa!   I am taking 20.5 credits this semester and I always have something else coming up to think about.  I mean, I'm singing, of course, and acting, and teaching, and preparing presentations, and writing little papers, and memorizing French vocabulary, etc. etc.   But everything takes its toll, that's for certain. 

BUT SOON.... I will somehow find a way to create, to make everything I want.  Somehow I will find a way!  I will !!! 

Bye for now...

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Something new...

 
So guess what I have started doing here in San Francisco....
 
Taking a contortion class!
 
My teacher is amazing, and I'm having so much fun.
 
Look what I did tonight!
 


 
This one below my teacher calls "The Snake"...but I'm not very good at it yet.  She has to hold me there.

 
 
She's also been helping me a lot with my splits, which I guess I was not keeping my hips totally straight in so I kept pulling certain muscles that were getting over-stretched. 
 
I'm so happy to be here in this city where I can learn so many wonderful things from so many wonderful people.   Life is good.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Losses and Gains...and Transfigured Nights

Tonight I sang in the Conservatory's Concerto Competition.  I didn't make the final round, which will take place tomorrow.  I am sad about that, but I am happy because I feel like I gave perhaps the best vocal performance of my life, both technically and emotionally.   It wasn't perfect, but I felt like it was all there...you know?   There was a kind of magical energy in the air that happens when you know you have created something wonderful.  

I sang Mozart's concert aria, "Mia Speranza Adorata".  I love the piece.   But, now that the concerto competition is over, I can concentrate my energies on some other repertoire as well.

But I feel as if I have turned over a new leaf technically, that suddenly much of what I sing is easier, I am finding ways more quickly to overcome difficulties.  Jane is helping me a lot with this.   It makes me excited to see what more progress I will be able to make this year!


Today in the class I am taking about Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, (taught by my piano teacher, Paul Hersh), we listened to and talked about Schoenberg's sextet, "Verklarte Nacht".   It's a piece that Schoenberg wrote based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, which I thought was so beautiful I wanted to share it here (first in the translate by Stanley Appelbaum and then in the original German):

Plus a link to a recording of Schoenberg's piece on Youtube: http://youtu.be/U-pVz2LTakM

Transfigured Night

Two people walk through a bare, cold grove;
The moon races along with them, they look into it. 
The moon races over tall oaks, 
No cloud obscures the light from the sky, 
Into which the black points of the boughs reach. 
A woman’s voice speaks: 

I’m carrying a child, and not yours, 
I walk in sin beside you. 
I have committed a great offense against myself. 
I no longer believed I could be happy
And yet I had a strong yearning
For something to fill my life, for the joys of
Motherhood
And for duty; so I committed an effrontery, 
So, shuddering, I allowed my sex
To be embraced by a strange man, 
And, on top of that, I blessed myself for it. 
Now life has taken its revenge: 
Now I have met you, oh, you. 

She walks with a clumsy gait, 
She looks up; the moon is racing along. 
Her dark gaze is drowned in light. 
A man’s voice speaks: 

May the child you conceived
Be no burden to your soul; 
Just see how brightly the universe is gleaming! 
There’s a glow around everything; 
You are floating with me on a cold ocean, 
But a special warmth flickers
From you into me, from me into you. 
It will transfigure the strange man’s child. 
You will bear the child for me, as if it were mine; 
You have brought the glow into me, 
You have made me like a child myself. 

He grasps her around her ample hips. 
Their breath kisses in the breeze. 
Two people walk through the lofty, bright night. 





Verklärte Nacht

Zwei Menschen gehn durch kahlen, kalten Hain; 
der Mond läuft mit, sie schaun hinein. 
Der Mond läuft über hohe Eichen; 
kein Wölkchen trübt das Himmelslicht, 
in das die schwarzen Zacken reichen. 
Die Stimme eines Weibes spricht: 

Ich trag ein Kind, und nit von Dir, 
ich geh in Sünde neben Dir. 
Ich hab mich schwer an mir vergangen. 
Ich glaubte nicht mehr an ein Glück

und hatte doch ein schwer Verlangen 
nach Lebensinhalt, nach Mutterglück

und Pflicht; da hab ich mich erfrecht, 
da ließ ich schaudernd mein Geschlecht 
von einem fremden Mann umfangen, 
und hab mich noch dafür gesegnet. 
Nun hat das Leben sich gerächt: 
nun bin ich Dir, o Dir, begegnet.

Sie geht mit ungelenkem Schritt. 
Sie schaut empor; der Mond läuft mit. 
Ihr dunkler Blick ertrinkt in Licht. 
Die Stimme eines Mannes spricht: 

Das Kind, das Du empfangen hast, 
sei Deiner Seele keine Last, 
o sieh, wie klar das Weltall schimmert! 
Es ist ein Glanz um alles her; 
Du treibst mit mir auf kaltem Meer, 
doch eine eigne Wärme flimmert 
von Dir in mich, von mir in Dich. 
Die wird das fremde Kind verklären, 
Du wirst es mir, von mir gebären;
Du hast den Glanz in mich gebracht, 
Du hast mich selbst zum Kind gemacht. 

Er faßt sie um die starken Hüften. 
Ihr Atem küßt sich in den Lüften. 
Zwei Menschen gehn durch hohe, helle Nacht.

New Poem Post

Sunday, January 20, 2013

My new job

Did I tell you that I have been teaching a rhythmic gymnastics class to little kids on Saturdays?

Kind of crazy, I know, but I have - and they had their New Year's recital today.  Here is a video of their ball routine:





Aren't they adorable? They are almost all little Russian-American girls.  So the first few classes they were always asking me, "Do you speak Russian?".   I wish I did!!!


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

New Videos!

A few of them... a couple of old recordings, a couple of new ones...

This first video (well, actually, just audio) is from a performance I gave several years ago, which I was always too embarrassed to put online anywhere because of the mistakes I made in it.  But I just listened to it again for the first time in a long time, and I realized that in spite of some things that are messy... it overall was an effective performance.  


These next two videos are from my opera direction class that I took last semester. The first one I am playing one of the wicked stepsisters in Isouard's rendition of Cinderella.  My director decided to put a modern spin on it - So in this scene my sister and I have just received notice (via text!) that we are invited to the prince's ball.  We are excitedly exercising to prepare ourselves, whilst arguing about who the prince will like better.  My sister, Thisbe, with her dancing, or me, with my singing!  

Here I play a famous Spanish dancer who has just performed for the King, but a young pageboy falls in love with me and is wooing me from my garden window...



And this is a song from the recital I gave at the end of last year at the conservatory. 

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Airport troubles

December has certainly flown by, my goodness. And soon it will be 2013. I can't quite believe it! This semester has been very intense, both academically and musically. And I'm afraid next semester is going to be even worse, looking at my course schedule. Do you know when I am done with all of this I will have a degree in vocal performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music? I had a bit of trouble getting home for Christmas. I have started flying on a new airline that created a straight flight between my home in Montana and San Francisco, California. It's really nice because it also is really cheap. However my flight this Christmas turned out to be a bit of a nightmare... I was supposed to leave at 1:00 in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, but a pilot got sick in the morning and they decided to give the pilot for our flight to an earlier flight, but then they couldn't find a replacement for our plane so the flight was delayed. At about 5:30 in the evening they announced that a pilot was on his way, but that it would take him an hour and 50 minutes before his train arrived at the airport. We ended up sitting in the airport until 7, however once the pilot had arrived, they realized that the flight crew had to leave because their shift had run out. And of course they didn't have a crew to replace them, either. So at about 7 in the evening they cancelled the flight, after making us sit in the airport and wait all day. Lots of little kids started crying, probably worried about missing Santa in the morning! And the airline actually brought in the sheriff and several policemen before they announced the flight was cancelled, just in case anybody lashed out in anger at them. So we all stayed overnight at a hotel near the airport (after waiting in line for another 2 hours for a voucher from the airline). They told us our flight would leave at 2:15 in the afternoon the next day on Christmas. But then the next day when we got on the plane, there was ice on the wings (which, incidentally, had come from Montana, where it was zero degrees!). The Oakland airport didn't have much in the way of de-icing equipment, so we just had to sit in the airplane for two hours while the ice slowly melted off the wings in the rain. I suggested to one of the passengers next to me that perhaps we should go sit on the wings to help warm them up instead of wasting our time in the seats in the cabin. But eventually we did take off, and I arrived back home at about seven in the evening, just in time for Christmas dinner with all of my family.
It is sooo nice to be home!!!