Senior Recital

I recently had my senior recital on April 28th. I've just been slow about doing a post. Words cannot express the relief of having it over and done with. Oddly, it was much easier to do than I thought it would be. And, I can honestly say that it was kind of fun. Somehow, I was able let go of my inhibitions and get into the music, which isn't the easiest thing for me to do when I perform. So, I'm grateful to report that it was a good experience.
As a little girl, I remember looking up to my older brother (who is an awesome opera singer now) and thinking that I could never get up and do a whole recital by myself on stage. It's a bit of a running joke that I'm a performance major, and especially that I'm a soprano. I'm so opposite of a diva--at least in the idea that I don't enjoy being in the limelight--it's not even funny. Anyway, it feels pretty good to have accomplished something that has truly frightened me for so long. I look rather silly in this picture, but I didn't get very many pictures, so here is a pose onstage after the recital was over.

This is Kiyona and me. Kiyona is an awesome pianist. I was lucky enough to get the best student pianist at NEIU to accompany my recital.

I was grateful that Chris and some friends from church could come. Poor Chris has barely any time do to anything besides study, so it's almost astonishing that he was able to make it. :) I'm not sure what is causing the expressions in this picture. All I can remember is how good it felt to be done!!

This is my program. Hopefully it's not too small to see... Anyway, I really want to thank my family for their encouragment and faith and prayers on my behalf, because this is what gotten me through it all without freaking out too much. :) And thank you in particular to Brian, who has been so instrumental in helping me to learn to sing better and who gave me so much encouragement.

Into the Woods again

Many thanks to Michelle for all these pictures. This is backstage with Mike (The Baker) and Michelle (Little Red), both of whom were wonderful as their respective characters.

Little Red is sad because we made plans to kill the giant and thinks we ought to have shown forgiveness. This is right before Cinderella sings the famous song from the show: No one is alone.

This is the wedding scene, of course. John played an awesome Cinderella's prince. One of the best lines of the show is after Cinderella gets mad at Cinderella's prince and he responds, "I was raised to be charming, not sincere," as some kind of excuse for infidelity. Nice. John did a great job and hammed it up.

Here is my solo song onstage about how the prince spread pitch on the stairs of the palace and how I lost one of my gold slippers as a result and also what my plans are.

We're all singing about how happy we are in this scene. From left to right, Dave (Cinderella's Father), Rose (Cinderella's stepmother), Chrissy (Lucinda), Carrie (Florinda), all of whom were great and fun to work with.

Backstage shot of Cinderella's princess attire.

Backstage as the wedding couple. Fun fun.

Into the Woods

Finally, we have made it to production week for Into the Woods. This is the final scene of the show right before our final dance number. This show has been very challenging. Of my limited experience with opera scenes--specfically Massenet, Mozart, and Kurt Weill (operetta)--that I've been involved in, they have been much easier for me than this show. First of all, Sondheim likes to mix song with rhythmic speech in his music, and it makes it very difficult to coordinate. Also, since there is dialogue in between the songs, the orchestra has to find its cue from our lines (a challenging thing if someone happens to drop a line), and we in turn have to figure out when exactly to start singing, which isn't always as obvious as it could be. I'm glad that tomorrow will be our last show.

On opening night, I had a pretty terrible cold. I was just REALLY glad I was singing broadway and not opera, because that would have been very interesting to try to get out any technically difficult notes. Thankfully, due to faith and prayers, I got through the performance. My part wasn't fabulous by any stretch of the imagination, but I was grateful that I had a voice at all and didn't have to hold a tissue to my nose the whole time.

This is my first costume for the show. Note my curly hairpiece. It's kind of weird to look at myself with a mass of hair in the back. Especially when I just got my hair cut nice and short:

Here is another picture of me in Cinderella's ballgown. It was supposed to be on the shoulder, but the sleeves kept falling off, (I have a very short torso, and the ribbing of the dress kept the dress up too high for the sleeves to stay on) and so I had to wear it like this. Note the gold shoes. In Sondheim's production, Cinderella has gold shoes instead of glass. I'm rather glad about that.

Happy Valentine's Day

It's been a while since we posted, mostly because I can't ever remember to bring my camera with me. I guess I could post without pictures, but that's not as much fun. Things have been going well for us. Chris is busy with school and is now seriously thinking about a clerkship. So, it'll probably be another three years at least before we're actually settled somewhere.

I'm involved with my university's production of Sondheim's Into the Woods and so I've been keeping busy with that. Maybe I'll get some pictures of that in the future. Apparently I get to have a wig since Cinderella doesn't usually have short hair. That'll be interesting. I'm also trying to schedule my senior recital. I still don't know when that will be, but I'm shooting for May 10th.

Anyway, the first two pictures are of the fun costumes and wig I'll get to wear for Into the Woods and the rest of the pictures are from our Valentine's Day trip downtown. We had a lovely time and had a very yummy lunch at a little Irish restaurant by Millennium Park called The Gage. If you know me well, you know that I'm always looking for the best fish and chips, and this place can definitely compete. If any of you come visit, we may have to stop by.
This is Cinderella's outfit when she becomes a princess and marries Cinderella's Prince (that's as much identification as his character has in the play--no name, just Cinderella's Prince).

And this is the ball gown. Fun fun.

So, this is an interesting sculpture rendition of American Gothic. It's quite large, as you can see from the picture.

This is Utah's claim to fame on the Chicago Tribune building. We didn't get a close up shot of it, but it's a piece of the Salt Lake Temple...we're not quite sure how they got a piece of it, but here it is, nevertheless.

And here is the piece of Mount Rainier. Home sweet home.

Chris and I took the Metra to downtown. It's kind of a fun experience to take the train every now and then. Note our Valentine's tradition of getting breakfast at McDonald's. I have a weird affinity for their bacon, egg and cheese biscuits.

Schiff Hardin

Thanks for your faith and prayers, family and friends. Chris has decided on accepting an internship with Schiff Hardin LLP in Chicago. He will be enjoying going to work in the Sears Tower on something like the 60th floor. Supposedly some people need dramamine on the really windy days... We have hopes that this firm will be a good fit for Chris. He has said that they have a reputation for being more family-friendly, which is very nice. Anyway, thanks to everyone for your support during this difficult time. It has been very stressful, especially for Chris, and we have felt the influence and blessings of your prayers. Unfortunately, we won't be heading to Seattle in the next few years like we originally planned, but Chicago's a great place to be, horrible winter weather notwithstanding! We are sad to be so far from family (although Chris's family will be fairly close, so that's nice), but we will visit as often as we can and try to post faithfully on our blog.

More recent activities

Sorry for the technology post. I'm still learning and having trouble with formatting text. And sorry for having to look up my nose. I took this picture by myself. Here is my broken, badly decayed tooth. Let this be a lesson to you all to floss daily!!! Luckily, no pain so far. I'll be seeing a dentist this week, and hopefully won't have to have a tooth extraction or something horrible.

This is our attempt at pumpkin carving. Our pumpkin looks slightly mental, but he's supposed to be winking. We used our kitchen knives to do the carving, and as you can see, made the best of carving errors. We'll try again next year.

This picture is of my favorite cards that I've recently created. I am not a very good photographer, and the lighting is either way too bright with the flash, or too dark without.

Anyway, we will do better in the future about picture taking. Sorry to Brian for not getting pictures of him during his visit here. And we wanted to take pictures when we went to Manon at the gala opening night at the Lyric, which was very fun, but we didn't. :( Chris wanted to get pictures of all the people in beautiful gowns and tuxedos fighting over complimentary cookies and champange during the intermissions. So, we are not completely boring people--we just don't document anything.

Technology, here I come!

Thanks to Brandon, I have figured out how to put all my pictures on the computer without the use of a USB camera cable. Yay! I didn't think myself so bereft of technological knowledge, but I guess I was wrong.

Unfortunately, because we have not had a cable, I have not taken opportunities to take very many pictures (to some of you, it will look like I've taken hardly any pictures). So, enough with the excuses. Here are a few of the pictures I have had on my camera for the last couple years. (Yes, I've only taken a few pictures in a couple of years).

Okay, I don't really understand the formatting for pictures, but here are a few from our trip back to Washington from our family reunion (two summers ago), as well as a fun stormy picture of a sky in Wyoming (I remember the sky being scarier in real life. I couldn't capture the lightning, unfortunately).