Lessons in Voice and in Life

One of my New Year's resolutions last year was to start taking voice lessons. I was an accomplished singer in high school, very active in choir, musicals, and lots of other singing ensembles, and singing has always been a big part of my life. I had hoped to make it into one of the auditioned choirs at BYU when I started as a freshman, but I found out I was in a much larger ocean of incredibly talented vocalists than I had been in Montana! So, despite auditioning several times over the years I never made it in. I think it took a bit of a toll on my confidence in myself, and though I've continued singing at church and around the house, over the last couple of years I have really started to miss performing. I decided I wanted to find ways to become more involved in singing again. So in September of last year I started taking private voice lessons for the first time in my life!

My teacher is a great lady named Kerilyn Johnson. She teaches in the Music-Dance-Theater department at BYU, is a former member of the Young Ambassadors (a highly-respected and extremely well-traveled performing group at BYU), and also has experience as a recording artist as one of the members of the LDS women's quartet "Providence." Making the time for voice lessons and starting to really work my voice again has definitely been challenging for me, but I am so glad to be working to make this a part of my life again.

My first recital was last Wednesday, February 20th, and I was terrified! Even back in high school I was always incredibly prone to stage fright when it came to solos...I was used to singing in groups most of the time. So I was working hard all week before the recital not to freak out! When my turn came to sing Wednesday night my legs were feeling pretty shaky, and it just got worse throughout the song! But, thankfully I ended up doing reasonably well, at least for how nervous I was...I did lose my breath and crack at one point near the end, which disappointed me, but I reminded myself it was my first solo in public in a loooooong time. One of my greatest goals in taking lessons is to overcome this fear I've always had of performing solos...I want to gain more confidence and enjoy opportunities to share my talent, instead of always being scared to death!

(I'm totally bummed because I had a photo of Kerilyn and I taken at the recital that I wanted to add to this post, but I accidentally erased it off my camera. Insert sad face here...)

The song I sang for the recital was the classic jazz standard "Someone to Watch Over Me." I have always loved this song. One of my greatest memories is of singing this same song as a solo, backed by a live jazz band, at my high school talent show during my senior year. I wore a red satin dress that I felt like a million bucks in, and I just loved the feeling of singing with the band behind me, playing just for me. I remember feeling more confident than I ever had during a solo before, singing by myself to so many people. I won first place, and I never felt so much like a star as I did that night!

I would love to find that kind of confidence again. I want to get brave, seek out more opportunities to perform, and hopefully with more work and practice I can break myself of my habit of fear!