Imagine

On Saturday, I helped lead the ATP auditions for next year’s freshman class.

We heard almost 30 students, all of whom are DESPERATE to be part of this department. DESPERATE to do what we do every day. DESPERATE to be given the chance to work toward their dreams and goals.

The heartbreaking part of this is that we cannot take all of those students into our programs. We have a limited number of resources and if we are to continue to serve all of our students in the way that they deserve, we cannot accept more than would allow us to do that.

So, my reaction to these auditions was not to pat myself on the back for being part of a sought-after program. Rather, it inspired a huge dose of humility and re-evaluation to make sure I am serving all of you in the way that you deserve.

Of course, we are not a perfect program. Just as you are all flawed and developing performers, we are all flawed and developing teachers. We do our best but we fail sometimes. Or often.

But we are committed to the journey. And I hope you are too.

I tend not to get taken in by slogans and advertisements but the ad I keep seeing for the University of Utah is "Imagine U.” This is actually quite a profound, university-wide statement on who we want to be. Artists must imagine. We have to imagine possibility. We have to imagine ourselves in places we never thought we’d be. We have to imagine direction and momentum. We have to imagine achievements that we had absolutely no business imagining for ourselves.

After I post this, I get to call a high school senior to tell her that she has been accepted into the MTP and, as such, will be the first member of her family ever to attend college.

Our work is important. It is an honor to do it every day. If you don’t believe that, please do something else. If you do believe that, please insist that I push you as hard as you deserve.

Imagine U.  I have.

Now go practice.

Structured Practice

Here's a website about practicing that I recently came across:

https://privatelessons.com/article/how-practice

There are lots of good insights shared but one that particularly caught my attention was the idea of having goals for each practice session. 

The author says, for instance, "Practicing should be highly goal oriented. For example, “Today I intend to clean up the runs in my Handel aria, and bring measure 8 up to full tempo.”"

Then he gets even more specific: 

Practice Plan for Tuesday

4:00 - Warm up with open vowel exercises and some light runs. Warm up to a “g” and down to a “c”

4:10 - Practice bar 12 of French aria until it is clean at 72 bpm

4:15 - Run Italian piece multiple times until memorized

4:35 - Practice speaking in rhythm French piece

4:45 - Work baritone entrance in choir piece on pgs. 5 and 6

I think we all have goals when we practice, but some of them might be too broad: learn this song, improve high notes, etc. Maybe we could benefit from getting even more specific: learn notes of the A section cleanly, speak the B section of my Italian text in rhythm until it's solid, work an [i] vowel into the passaggio without raising the larynx, etc.

Maybe it would help to have an overall goal in mind as you are also working on a smaller goal. A couple of my goals lately have been to explore two frequent areas of tension that I keep running into: my neck muscles (specifically the sternocleidomastoids, if you must know!) and the muscle under my chin (the mylohyoid). As I'm vocalizing and working toward my other mini goals, I also try to be intentional about keeping those muscles as uninvolved as possible as an overall goal.

Do you use small practice goals? Consider taking a few days to plan out a practice session that is as detailed as the one above and see if you can stick to it. Identify some big goals and then see how specific and task oriented you can be about breaking them down into smaller, manageable steps. You can even use the first couple of minutes of your practice session to create an outline of goals.

Give it a try and let us know how that works.

Now go practice.