Luck Be A Lady

Cue the Mission Impossible music! I'm sitting here at CSTOCK at our interns meeting and reveling in how cool this workshop is. The 31 kids here are outstanding. They are so talented and I feel lucky to be here. The interns are learning how hard it is to direct and gaining a lot more respect for those of us who are crazy enough to do it, LOL. This show has pre-recorded music which is a blessing and yet a curse. I love that I can use vocal tracks to help the kids learn their music. They are such quick studies and we were using the accompaniment tracks by the third day. I'm so impressed! With people who can't play the piano, these CDs are a godsend. They don't have to be able to read a full score and play like an expert. Teachers can relax and not worry about playing. That's the good part about it. The bad part is that there is no spontaneity allowed with recorded music. There is no way to jump around and follow the singer. The singer has no chance to use rubato...

There are moments when you feel used. This is one of them. I'm not mad. I'm not upset. I'm just disappointed. Life goes on and I am fine. As a matter of fact, things are great in my life. I guess what I feel more than anything is pity and sadness. Something isn't quite right and I'm wondering how much longer before the you-know-what hits the fan.  I'm praying.....not for me but for someone else. Speaking of the 'you-know-what' (here's a bit of TMI if you want to skip this but I find this to be rather funny), I was feeling really bound up and tighter than a drum late this afternoon but once I was able to let go of something, I let it all go literally. I laughed.... God really does have a sense of humor! I am feeling so much better right now (even though I'm not at 100% just yet) that I know everything that happened to me today happened for the right reason. And luckily, God found it in his heart to keep me regular!

So it was a fun day of playing piano for a theatre audition today. I was pleasantly surprised at how many people brought music (rather than CDs) today. It gave me hope that all is not lost. As much as I am down on karaoke for auditions, I know how convenient they are and so I don't mind them showing up as long as they're appropriate and don't have the vocal track on them. You'd be surprised how often people used to bring in CD's of a song WITH the singer on the track. I haven't seen that happen lately and then with today's abundance of sheet music, I have found hope again that people want to sing with a live accompaniment. It was a good day filled with lots of talented performers - I find it hard to see the numbers of auditioning actors that show up going down. Gone are the old days of 75-120 actors coming to an audition. Typically, there are about 35-40 showing up and usually too many girls/women. There's too many theatres with too many opportunities