When I got back home, it was like nothing changed. First of all I was home. In my grandest dream, I thought I was going to have to send for my husband and cats. We were going to have to set up shop in Salzburg because I was offered work singing somewhere in Europe. As it turned out, sometimes dreams turn into nightmares. The festival was a great disappointment which led to a depressing 16 hour plane ride home to depression. I had one gig to look forward to. In kind, I agreed to cover the Soprano in a Beethoven 9 concert with a local orchestra. I was excited about this initially. When I came home it was all I had. I took the one recording we manage to get from the whole event, and create a video for it to shop around to various Opera companies and orchestras. I figured I put all that work into training my voice at the highest level , somebody should bite. I got nothing. Not even an “come in and let us hear you sing”. When we began rehearsing for the concert, I was confident in how I prepared myself, even though my heart wasn’t fully into it. I walked around the world like I had been battered and bruised by a heart breaking experience. My coach who helped me with my preparation dealt me a harsh blow when she said I should have been cast for the concert but I looked too old compared to the others. It hurt. Myself image was taking a bruising in the weeks after Salzburg. It was as if the world had changed right under my broad nose. Here I am, undeniably black, and I don’t fit in. Being the Christian woman I am I kept pushing. My duty now was to get a day job and continue with voice lessons and auditioning. The day job was proving more and more difficult to come by. After all, Los Angeles is one of the cities with the highest unemployment. I was able to sign up with my 10th temp agency. They were sending me out on assignments here and there. By this time I my hair was beginning to flourish again. I had braided it with some box braids and it looked okay. The hair that I used was so cheap it would unravel and the braids would tangle leaving me with a mess. I took them down and sported my signature twist and tuck. It was a neat hairstyle that I could undo into a nice textured afro! It was my go to “protective style”. Now at this point I was not so hip on the entire Natural hair lingo. I had gone natural in 1991 and all we had was Caesar cut and braids! Those were the terms we used.

As the subsequent days rolled by, I kissed my husband good bye each day and remained home slightly depressed from the lack of work and prospects I would send out two sets of resumes to opera companies and regular companies for receptionist jobs. I got one call to audition for San Francisco opera’s chorus. I get that one every year. They put me on the wait list and leave me hanging for never. Then I got a call from Long Beach Opera asking me to help them out with the School program they put on for the schools. I thought his would be great to do. I was excited to do it even though they were only going to pay me $50 to do it. Then I had a recital for the Music club I belonged to and another Christmas gig paying $200 at my church. So I was set up for the holidays! I began to heal. The temp agency called me as well. They had a job downtown covering for the receptionist who had lost her mother suddenly. I was excited, real work! Since my hair was growing out, I still wanted to look professional and not do too much to my hair. Plus they called me at 9 am I had to do something quick to my hair. So I pulled out one of my pixie wig and wore it to the assignment! This proved to be a smart but incredibly dumb move. Smart because I got tons of compliments on my work, they were impressed at how quickly I caught on to the office culture and how well I worked the front desk. I looked professional and pulled together with my little pixie wig on.

I wore the wig for a couple of weeks and occasionally switched it up with another short wig. I got tons of compliments on it too. One lady screamed out I like your hair! I walked back and said thanks it’s a wig! Winked and kept going. She came to the front desk and marveled at my wig. The next day, she told me she went to her hair appointment bragging about it and how she wanted my hair cut. The beautician talked her off the ledge. There was one girl who would cover my desk for lunch and she would go on various blogs but one she would go on was BGLH or Black Girl Long Hair. I thought that was interesting. I didn’t know what it was about so I told her to write it down for me. I would look at it later. She had long hair but I think it was a weave. However there was another girl who covered for me who had very long hair. She too was black. This was not a weave. It was hers ALL hers. I thought like most people “she must be mixed with something. I never went back to the website. I thought it was a site for girls who were somehow more blessed than us ordinary girls with ordinary black hair. When I got home, I looked at myself in the mirror as I took my wig and make up off. I undid my little twist and tuck buns and began to think, what if I just not wear the wig tomorrow. Just undo my hair, fluff it out and dress really nice and go into work like this? The next morning, I began operation phase out. I put on a very sleek outfit, and fluffed out my twist and tuck and went in to work as is. I got compliments on my thick hair from some the other said the phrase I dread, “You Changed your hair”. How many of you have heard this phrase? I always think when someone says this it’s their way of really saying, “I don’t understand why your hair is like this, but if I don’t say something you will think I hate it, I actually don’t like it but you caught me staring so I have to say …You changed your hair!” insert slight smile. The head of the company even began to look at me differently. I thought to myself “uh oh”!

I had spent two months working there when the powers that be decided to promote the old receptionist and hire me on as the new receptionist. I was through the roof! I thought “My hair won”! And I got a job! This is great! Prior to taking on this job, I had informed my temp agency of the days I would need off for my various side gigs and to fly up to San Francisco for my audition. They were in total agreement with this and would work around my schedule. The first week I worked on my own as the temp to perm receptionist, I informed the H.R. assistant of the days I would need off. He immediately rushed to my desk and said he knew nothing of this. A slight warm feeling came over me, then immediately my blood turned cold. This was not good. I went to lunch and called my temp agent and told her what had happened. When I came back from lunch, the other receptionist told me that another rep from my agency came to see me. I was thinking all of this was bad, bad, bad! I immediately, started canceling my gigs; I needed this job, and was prepared to sacrifice my reputation as a musician for a day job. The following week I was on pins and needles. Christmas was coming upon us and I was doing anything and everything they had asked of me to keep this job. Then something happened, I answered a call about the Receptionist position that was available. I went cold. I called my temp agent and she broke the news to me, they are rescinding the job offer, they are looking for another receptionist. I was to stay there until they found someone else. Well as luck would have it, that weekend I got food poisoning. I didn’t make it to Monday and they told me not to come back at all. The next thing I did was try to get my gigs back. I got the one!

Salzburg Voice Festival in Review

Now that I have fully unpacked, I feel as if I can give you an assessment of the past two and a half weeks I spent in Salzburg, Austria. Leaving Salzburg was one of the hardest things for me to do mentally and physically! Traveling to the airport with two suitcases and a backpack is no easy task! I knew I was going to miss this country when a young man helped me load my suitcase onto the bus. The people here are reticent at first glance, but once you get past the blank face and quiet nature they are friendly warm and very helpful people. This ice can only be melted by attempting to speak German to them! Once I got through the security of this tiny airport, I sat down and gazed out of the window to the beautiful mountainous skyline. I knew I was trading one Mountain View for my own mountain view of the San Gabriel Valley. Once I was on the plane, it became abundantly clear, this is nothing like the SGV and I was going to miss it terribly! Looking at the ever decreasing view, gave me a bittersweet pang of regret and sadness. This had been an intense experience that changed me forever. Yet, coming home I will have to admit is a bit of a letdown. Where do I go from here? I am at zero and I have to work to another goal. Once you have committed time, effort and passion to a project, coming home afterwards feels weird.
To give an honest view about the Salzburg Voice Festival, I needed to order my thoughts in away to paint a clear perspective of what I endured for the whole of July. I remember at Church, the pastor preached about criticism and how healthy criticism can benefit everyone especially the one being criticized. If I can recall there were four points of criticism that you should address. What did I like, what didn’t I like, what did I learn, and what could be improved upon? I would like to add a fifth question how did this experience help me? This is how I am going to address my experience.
What did I like? The one thing in this whole six month journey that I like was how I rose to the challenge! In six months, I learned how to raise money for a big project, market and sell merchandise for the goal, galvanize all of my resources and build something from absolutely nothing! I gathered support from all of you and people who heard about me from other people! This is a major skill! I learned 23 pieces of music! I rose to the challenge of learning new pieces from nothing, and refined pieces of music I had previously put away, plus I able to build on my German skills! With the help of Marya and my sheer determination, I developed a study plan and practice schedule. I committed myself to this project like it was indeed my job! I traveled to a foreign country, alone and managed to get there in one piece without missing a plane or getting lost! When I got to the festival, I was incredibly prepared and overwhelmed my teachers with the amount of musical preparation. I was ready. This gave me an amazing feeling of confidence. I also liked that I was able to get along with my fellow festival colleagues! I found almost everyone genuine, kind, affable and extremely talented.
What didn’t I like? I will be the first to say I DO NOT LIKE THE HEAT! It was very hot and humid there! I also brought home some nasty bug bites! As for the festival it was clear that the youthful vigor of its two organizers was matched by the plentiful experience of its 18 participants. One pianist, three practice rooms, and all day in the outskirts of Salzburg, made the whole experience feel isolating. In addition, the only opportunity that we would be heard was going to be in one publicized concert of Ave Marias at the end of the festival. We began to feel a little bit let down by what was promised and what was actually delivered. This didn’t stop me from giving my all in the recital I performed. Yet, it was disappointing being in the city of the biggest classical summer music festival and not having the opportunity to be heard by more people. I did not like that!
What Did I learn? I learned that in a lot of areas I am still very green. The acting lessons I received gave me a bigger picture of what it is like to be on stage with a scene partner. I had a great teacher in Javier Andrade. He was able to get me to see the importance of listening to my scene partner. Listening and understanding is key to bring more depth to the phrase am singing as well. I had a great scene partner in the Venezuelan tenor Francisco Morales. He played Cavaradosi to my Tosca. I learned so much from him in terms of bringing more emphasis to key parts of the phrase that I sang in the duet. He also is extremely professional! One can always look to professional singers for lessons on how to carry yourself gracefully! One should always present your best self to the public. I learned to listen to the culture of the people. Salzburg is a very conservative country that has a quiet calm about it! Never did I put on an iPod to block the sounds of loud talking or street noise. This helped me to hear the music inside of my head even better than I do in the states! This also helped me to engage people in conversations in German!
What could be improved upon? On my part, I feel as if I could have done a little more research about festival and learning opportunities in Austria. Hindsight is definitely 20/20. Once I was here and saw what this city had to offer in terms of Musical training, I should have set my sights on the Mozarteum. This phenomenal institution also has a summer training program. The faculty consisted of Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Grace Bumbry, Barbara Bonney, and Edda Moser just to name a few. Being exposed to the great singers and studying with them would have been better match to the skills I brought and am trying to acquire. In its’ second year, the Salzburg Voice Festival was extremely ambitious with its’ intentions of producing an opera film, handling eighteen 80 minute long recitals each night and producing opera scenes in two weeks. Consequently, we all suffered through disorganized rehearsals, logistical disasters of filming in unpredictable weather, plus we were never able to sing through all of the scenes we prepared. It was a mess! This “festival” severely lacked the structure and organization that would offer its’ singers a more well rounded and balance experience. Consequently, we lost three singers necause of the frustration, false promises and utter confusion. One student defected to the Mozarteum out of the sheer desperation. One cannot foster the career ambitions of 18 singers in two weeks. Though, I do not regret going; after all, I met and worked with some of the most extremely talented singers from all around the world, world class a piano trio and opera director.
How did this experience help me? Ultimately, this experience helped me to recognize that I have the ability to make my goals a reality. Once I received the acceptance letter, there was nothing stopping me from accomplishing the goal. It helped me to focus my studies and dig deeper into my vocal technique. When I got to my first coaching, I was proud of the way I was singing. It helped me to see what kind of artist I am becoming. Getting the feedback from my peers helped me to see where I needed to improve vocally and interpretively. This experience inspired me to become the best version of myself and represent my product in a more professional way. Though there were some aspects about the festival that I would have changed. I am still glad I had the guts to go and have the experience. I know I can do it. I have made a promise to go to the summer program next year at the Mozarteum.