NATS

Every year I get the opportunity to participate in a vocal adjudication. This is an opportunity to receive feedback from other vocal instructors/coaches and even has a competitive element to it. Why is it called NATS, you ask? Well, it's an acronym that stands for National Association of Teachers of Singing. My voice teacher is a member of the Puget Sound Chapter, thus I get to participate.

This year, I was in a brand new category, again with my sister. Last year, I needed to learn three pieces but this year was a bit tougher - four pieces. One had to be an aria (Italian - check), the others were to be art songs, only one could be in English, and the others had to be different languages (French, German, English - check, check, check).

Now last year, I met with my accompanist several times. We had our timing down! We practiced, we cut interludes, we sped up songs - anything we could do to get my three songs introduced and performed in 10 minutes or less. This year? Well, new category = 15 minutes for the four songs. Piece of cake, right? Ha ha ha - here's where the major praise of my accompanist comes into the equation. I think we practiced twice prior to the day of the adjudication and one of those practices was during my voice lesson where my voice teacher grew very visibly more and more nervous with each piece we rehearsed for her. Why? Well, I didn't know the words to my songs yet (no biggie, when in doubt, make up new words - it's always worked before... :), I had just changed the key on one of my songs and just barely given the music to my accompanist (whoops) AND, since we can only use original music for the adjudication (they do check the music), I hadn't yet given my accompanist the book for one of my pieces, just a copy. She'd need to read from the book during the actual performance (yikes). Hmmm...things weren't looking good!

Have I mentioned yet that my accompanist is so fantastic? Yeah - she's phenomenal! If I were in her shoes, I'd have thrown a book at me by this time! (Thanks, Chari!!)

Ok, so the day of the adjudication arrives, it was a Saturday so I had worked at the Seattle Temple that morning (at the way-too-early-for-a-weekend-to-start time of 5am). Needless to say, I was a bit tired when it came time to sing. By all rights, I should have flopped this adjudication. Yes, I had practiced at home, but I was still so painfully far away from polishing these pieces, in my opinion, there's no way I should have been able to pull this off. You know though, I'm absolutely confident in the power of prayer because that was the calm that allowed me to be able to recall those words. Were there some minor mistakes, sure, but in the end things went great!

Take a listen if you want - if you hear mistakes, I blame the camera! :)

Remember how I said there was a competitive element to this? Well, I was awarded 1st Place in my category again this year (YAY!!) and Missi was awarded 2nd Place (yay Missi!!!)!!

Isn't singing fun?!