(no subject)

My pianist is so cool. I mean, he's not "cool," he's a geek, but he's such a cool geek. It's like having a vocal coach before I'm a junior and I can get Tom (for which circumstance I am waiting with greatest anticipation). Sean is a second-year grad student, and he's been working with singers all six years of his school life, so he's awfully good at giving suggestions and helping with interpretation. I mean, he showed me some things in Alaiah which I never would have thought of, and yet they're completely related to the whole minstrelesque storytelling Warwickish feel I try to get across in that poem. That, and we can waste a half-hour practice session exclaiming over Rachmaninoff's evil genius and huge hands or the amazingness of chord progressions (in specific or in general).

And despite his obvious skill and worth, I don't usually feel dumb making mistakes in front of him, cause he's just this guy, you know? I can even crack terribly or have an extremely dull performance and it won't feel any worse than it does when it's just me (which doesn't mean it doesn't feel bad, but he's cool and sympathetic and makes helpful suggestions).

Yeah.

I have Egyptian Licorice Mint Tea. My day has been fine. I even got slightly further on c#.

(no subject)

I have such famous relatives. :)

Ft. Worth paper:

Competitive cooks these days can find a recipe contest for just about every ingredient, cooking specialty, skill level and age group.

Just ask Fort Worth psychologist Loanne Chiu or South Grand Prairie High School student Seth Brammer, both of whom were prizewinners in recent national cooking contests.

Chiu, a frequent cook-off winner who enters dozens of recipes in various national contests each year, won the $7,000 grand prize in Veg-All's Makin' It Easy Recipe Contest for her Braided Italian Hot Strudel, topping a list of eight winners announced last week.

Brammer, 17, won a $14,000 scholarship to Johnson & Wales University as one of 20 finalists in the noted culinary and hospitality school's National High School Recipe Contest. The son of Jill Brammer of Grand Prairie, Brammer cooked his Sweet-Potato-Basil-Crusted Flounder With Lemon Cucumber Couscous and Peppered Asparagus for a panel of high-profile judges Feb. 12 in Denver.

(no subject)

I spoke too soon. I got to coach with Tom tonight. He had an open studio, in Stude Concert Hall no less. Three huge-voiced grad-students went, and I finally screwed up my courage to volunteer when he asked for a last person. He has musicality permeating every cell, but even better, he knows how to communicate it in a way that anyone can understand.

I have sung Silent Noon in studio before, and received feedback which improved me, but with Tom coaching and at the piano both, it's utterly freeing and honest, a state I've only found with one other pianist. It nearly made me cry, because I felt so beautiful. I had something so beautiful both to sing, which is there every time because it's a beautiful song, and to express, because I know what the song is about and to show it to other people lets me see it more clearly. Tom shows you... no, he doesn't. He says, "hah!" and throws his hand in a seemingly random direction and plays a chord and it's all there before you and the way it's put together is perfectly clear in the context he gave you, because it's all from you and not from outside.

And he's coming to studio tomorrow, too. I don't know if I can stand it, he's so amazing.