Where have I been all summer?

You know, I don't think I'll ever be good at this whole blogging thing. I do want to wrap up the summer since I wrote last. There have been some fun things. I went home to California instead of going to Spring term at BYU. I hadn't been at home for more than a week since 2009. It was time to just chill for a while. It started out pretty good and I got to hang out with my best friends from home and I had all day long to sing to my heart's content. Unfortunately, that gets old REALLY fast. It didn't take too long to learn the role of Frank for Die Fledermaus, so I turned my musical attentions elsewhere. Needless to say, there was a lot of musical theater and even (gasp) Disney songs. May I just say, those two genres in particular are not very friendly to baritones. But it's just so fun to sing!

I celebrated Richard Wagner's birthday by having an all-day Wagner Fest where I did nothing but sing the great Wagner baritone roles: Wolfram, Wotan, Dutchman, Hans Sachs. It's really fun, but at some point your voice is not going to think so. At that point I turned to just listening to the Ring. My Ring has the great Theo Adam as Wotan and boy does he do the role justice. When my mom got home that day, this is what she saw.

I also went home for a more specific purpose, namely to get my driver's license. This is one of those secrets that should probably have remained so, but I don't really care as much any more. I had never really run into any huge problems not having a license, so I never got one. I now have it and I drive my (sister's) car all over the place as if I've always had a license. Following that lovely ordeal it was time for me to bid farewell to my beloved homeland and return to the fair state of Deseret...I mean Utah. I brought a few friends/colleagues along on the trip. One is a wonderful pianist and the other is an excellent tenor. Over the break I helped organize one of the most fun gatherings I've attended at BYU. We got together everyone that was around for that weekend and had a salon/soiree up at a cabin near Sundance. We ate food, we sang, we got to know each other better. It was really great. I can see us doing it again. This semester has been mostly me trying to learn all the music that I have been assigned/hired to learn in the short amount of time that I have. I've been singing three Italian pieces. Dolente immagine by Bellini, O cessate di piagarmi by Scarlatti, and Ah! Per sempre io ti perdei also by Bellini. They are fun and I'm learning a lot about "bel canto" style, especially how it works in my voice. It's been fun. I have also been involved in a production of Gianni Schicchi with the Utah-Idaho Performing Arts Company. We will be performing on the 23rd and 24th of this month and it promises to be a great show. I love all the people I'm working with and their awesome voices. I'm singing the role of Marco by the way, for all of you who care. This has been a really long blog post so thanks to all of you who stuck through it just to know what I've been doing with my life. I'm going to try doing more frequent, shorter posts. Thanks for reading, until next time I'll keep loving Being a Baritone.