Everyone's got something to say...

So, I've been in Vienna, VA for a month now. It's been great fun working at Wolf Trap, and I've learned a lot since being here. One thing that I have learned by living in this area is that Virginia drivers have a lot to say... a lot they want to put out there. Specifically, on their car tags. I'd say 3 out of 10 people have specialty tags on their cars! Example:

Granted, this one's cute. And, it makes sense with a Mini. But some are just weird. "Aries007" was one I saw the other day. Really?

In other news, I just started the rehearsals for Il Ritorno d'Ulisse today, and I think we're going to have an incredible time. The cast is huge... it's everyone at Wolf Trap this year! And, the production team is really amazing. James Marvel is the director, and seems to have a very interesting and relivant view on this production. The conductor is Gary Wedow, and is already so supportive and full of really interesting ideas. I am really looking forward to getting this one off the page and into the space!

Countdown until boyfriend arrives for a visit: 1 day, 21 hours.

Yippee!! :)

~Jamie

My 5:
1. Being at home for fathers day
2. My Nana. AND her biscuits.
3. A supportive opera team. Makes the sport much easier/more fun to play!
4. Indian food... yummm
5. My boy. :)

So, I decided it was time for a change of look. I think I have at least one friend who uses this template, but I like it!

My work is done for today (technically), but I still have a lot of work to do on my own. I'm taking a break in a little while to go have yummy Thai food with a good friend, and then will be back to the grind. I think a good run might be in for today as well.

On a random note, I've started to "train my hair", and it's working beautifully! What this basically entails is me washing my hair one day, and then the next day I just scrub and rinse with conditioner. Conditioners often have enough detergent in them to safely clean the hair of excess oil. It's taken me a little while, but I've started to wash one day and condition for 2 days! "Why?" you might ask? Well, there are a few people out there who think that you train the oil glands in your scalp to work overtime when you wash your hair every day. By "training" your scalp to not produce as much oil, your hair becomes less greasy at the end of the day (in my case, as I have fine hair), and the hair is much healthier because the drying agents that are in the cleansers in shampoos are not such a factor. I can already tell a difference in my hair! I think I'll probably see how far I can go in between with just conditioning my hair for the sheer curiosity of it, but I'll probably settle on a 1 day wash/2 or 3 day off schedule.

So now that you've seen the new page and heard all about my hair-washing habits, it's probably time for me to sign off. :)

'Til next time...
jamie b.

My 5:
1. Allison Krauss
2. Getting to type at a computer that overlooks a national park forest.
3. New roller skates!
4. Thai food...mmm....
5. Feeling productive :)

Summer lovin'...

Hey everyone! Long time, no see! :) I know, I know... I'm bad at keeping this up. No promises to keep it up in a timely manner, but I do promise to not let it go away completely.

So, to catch up, I'm in Vienna, VA at Wolf Trap Opera for the summer. It's a gorgeous place, and I'm having a good time here. There's a lot of music to tackle, but it's doable and everyone is so supportive that it makes doing my job quite easy. The great thing about summer programs is getting the chance to reconnect with old friends and to make new ones. There are so many people here who I haven't seen in years! And, there are a lot of new faces. It's all a good experience, and I'm quite happy to be working here.

A bit of change is happening from my original plans of moving. As some of you know, I packed up my stuff from Houston and moved it into storage in Georgia with the intention of moving it on to NYC after my summer gigs. The plan was to go to NYC and find a place within the first month that I was subletting, but plans have changed quite drastically! I've decided to move back to Houston. This doesn't change my performance schedule at all, and that basically means that I'll be doing a lot of travelling. But, it does mean that I'll be able to call Houston "home". A small fraction of my stuff will be there all of the time, and when I'm home in between breaks, I'll get to enjoy the Houston weather, my friends and loved ones, and the luxuries of having my favorite coaches and voice teacher in the same city. I'm really happy about this decision!

So, things are going well. I'm excited for what's to come, and enjoying what I have right now. If you're interested in a much more reliable source for the goings-on of Wolf Trap, check out Kim Witman's blog... she's much better at keeping hers up than I am, and she even posts pictures! :)

Much love to all,
Jamie B.

My 5
1. Having only a week and half until I see my cousin get married!
2. Having only 2 weeks until I see my boy!
3. Good patrons to stay with (with adorable cats)
4. Steady income (seriously!)
5. Charlaine Harris... this woman is a fluff-novel genius.

Ah, veglia donna...

Well ladies and gentlemen, I'm smack dab in the middle of doing two shows at once. One, is completely new: Brief Encounter by Andre Previn (more on that later), and the other, Rigoletto (by Giuseppi Verdi), is a standard. Almost everyone coming to see this or stepping into rehearsal has seen and heard Rigoletto for years. It's just one of those operas that, if you're in this career or if you're an opera fan, you just know it. You may not like it, but you could hear a snippet of the music and be able to identify it.

Except for me, of course. I'm one of those weird opera singers that had yearly subscriptions to Rolling Stone Magazine and flat out refused to commit to opera and singer-geared magazines until somewhere in the last year. (I still read my RS.) And, I don't come from an opera background, so I don't automatically know the plots of these time honored operas that thousands of people have already fallen in love with. But, there's no time like the present, and in my opinion, there's no better way to fall in love with an opera than coming at it from a completely fresh point of view. I'm performing a very small role in this production at Houston Grand Opera, and her name is Giovanna. I've done a lot of maid/servant roles (and I'll do many more yet as a mezzo), but this is the first one that shows a truly nasty side. Forget this mezzo being the soprano's best pal from years of living in the same house... Giovanna, as small of a sing that she is, plays an important role in moving the plot along: she lets the Duke into the house, which in turn gets Gilda abducted. You know the rest. And, if you don't, I'm not going to tell you! :)

The other show that I'm doing right now, Brief Encounter, is a brand new opera by a wonderful team of creators. Andre Previn, as previously introduced, is the composer. John Caird is our director and librettist. These two men, with countless others, are leading the way to making something that only exists on paper into something living and breathing on stage. I've done several world premieres before, and I have to note... to me, it's not very different from doing a standard rep opera (mostly for the reasons above.) There are a few key differences though... for one, the composer is living. Which means that, in a sense, so is the score. I workshopped this piece about a year ago, and from that time until this point, this score has undergone probably hundreds of changes. And that was probably just before the singers got into town. A real luxury in having a live composer and a librettist who also happens to be the director is that when something doesn't work, it gets changed. If a note is too high, or if a word just doesn't work in a certain spot, the problem is discussed, and in most cases, fixed right there in the rehearsal. Of course, that makes for an interesting challenge in remembering all of the changes and unlearning what you put a lot of time in the first place to learn, but it's worth it for the ending product.

So, as you can see, it's quite busy around here right now! But, I'm looking forward to opening Rigoletto on April 17th and to getting into dress rehearsals with Brief Encounter. Both shows should result in one heck of a sending off for the end of my time in the HGO Studio!

And now...

My 5:
1. Family and friends visiting from out of town
2. Early mornings (that don't feel like early mornings)
3. Running
4. Erik Satie
5. Being in posession of a filet mignon. :)

Good Enough

So, it's been a while. I seem to always start with this same sentiment, but really... I'm pretty horrible at keeping this up! However, I love reading the short list of blogs I keep up with. So, even if I'm not responding or writing, chances are, I'm reading up on a few of you out there.

The last few weeks have been a rush of wonderful, busy, not-so-busy, and bitter sweet. I could go into it, but I am all about keeping it short tonight. So, short of giving the entire story, I'm happy. Like, very happy. I'm coming to the end of my time in Houston, and I'm happy that I've been here. I'm happy that I'm here now, and I'm happy that I'm moving on to a great place in my career. I've been discovering and facing some things that I'll really miss about living in Houston... my apartment, having a car, Tex Mex, and even a boy. But in the end, I know I can come back. I definitely will over the next year, if for no other reason than for voice lessons and to get away from the NYC winter season, but there are a surprising number of reasons for me to come back here more often. I've had a wonderful time discovering these reasons to keep up with Houston.

In other news, we've begun rehearsal for our shows at Houston Grand Opera. There are some seriously talented people in town for both Rigoletto and the new Andre Previn called Brief Encounter, and I'm excited to be a part of both of them. I'm supposed to blog more on these shows for HGO, so I'll leave the link around here sometime for that.

So now, to bed. But, before that...

My 5
1. The talent, beauty, and lyrics of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSxoKQ_sWYY
2. Balancing life and career.
3. No sugar or flour brownies... yum!
4. Surprise presents and/or kidnappings
5. Tears

Less like scars, more like character...

I've just gotten back from a trip to Baltimore, MD. It was my first time there, and I had a great time! It was an incredibly short trip - just a little over 26 hours in total, including flights - but an incredibly happy and fun one! I got to see several people I haven't seen in a little while, and I got to meet several new people, which is always fantastic. I love that part of my life... meeting new people who do the same strange career I do.

What brought me to the University of Maryland, you might ask?

I was brought in to do a lecture. :)

How awesome is that?? The series I was invited to speak on is called "I Have a Music Degree... Now What?" So, I spent an hour and a half doing just a little bit of singing, but mainly talking about my life and what has taken me from where I came from (being a little farm in Georgia) to where I am now. I'm barely older than most of the audience, but it reminded me of how far I've come and how much one can learn in such a short amount of time. I opened the last half of the time up for questions, and they had some really smart things to ask about. All in all, I'd say it was a great trip!

In other news (but rather important and happy news), I got some good news from my doctor today. Just to give a small background on this, last April I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. The doctor put me on meds, and didn't feel she needed to make me start doing the whole test strips/blood business, but wanted me to come in every 3 months to check my progress. She told me early on that if I could lose weight and really rethink my way of living that there was a possibility I could reverse the effects and get rid of the diabetes entirely. I started trying to figure out how to do that and have managed to succeed rather well in most aspects. I decided it was time to check and see how things were going... I'm facing not having health insurance come the end of May, and I thought that if my blood was where it needed to be, maybe I could just go off of meds entirely. Well, what do you know... I got a call today, and I am 100% diabetes free!! :) They've told me to go off of all meds, and to just keep doing what I'm doing because it's literally worked a miracle for me.

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." Now that I'm starting to look at my body image and health with a little more optimism, I'm starting to view the older me as one who helped me learn how to be the newer me. "Less like scars... more like character..." :)

My 5:
1. Avacados
2. Being held... feeling the love from friends :)
3. My childhood best friend being in Houston!
4. Watchmen. ROCKS.
5. No more meds. :)

Iiiiiii don't wanna work... I just wanna play on the drums all day...

Wow... long time, no see! Seriously... it's almost a month now, right? Wow. I've been slacking!

So, a quick rundown of the last month:

• I got a double eye infection after having the flu. NOT fun.
• I got my first Met contract. FUN. :)
• I got to go home and do a recital at my undergrad with one of my best friends and see a half of a bajillion people from my past that I haven't seen in years. RIDICULOUS FUN!

It's been fun, really. I had to hide the Met thing for a while because I was waiting on the contract to come, but I've signed the contract and made it all official and such, so I can tell my friends. :) I'm really excited... you can see me as 2nd Lady in their Die Zauberflote in the 2009-10 season (which runs at the end of September and beginning of April.)

As for the eye infection, it went away. I think. I need to go get that double checked... it happened right before I went home for the recital at Shorter. Which, is what's on my mind tonight, and has been on my mind for the last few.

You know, when I started to think about it I realized that I've been sequestered away from my family and home for about 5 years. For 5 years I've been either in grad school, working at HGO, or doing summer gigs. I get to see my loved ones on average about twice a year... once at Christmas, and then it's worked out to where I could see them once sometime else in the year. I've gotten lucky with that. When I go home, I spend a week (give or take a few days) trying to experience everything I love about the place. Most of the time, I leave with a real soft spot in my heart for the place and look forward to the next time I can visit, but I am usually happy to go. I love where I live now, and I love the space I have. I've realized as of late that I'm a rather independent and secluded person when it really comes down to it, and when I'm at home, I'm sharing myself with everyone in an effort to catch up and keep relationships up. So, it's nice to get to visit Georgia, but it's also nice to then go away back to a career that I love. However, there are some trips home that really just leave me wanting more.

The last trip I had like this was over spring break of my first year of grad school. Now, there were a lot of factors going into this... it was my first year away from home (literally... I went to undergrad in the town I grew up in), so I was really homesick all year. There was a boy I had a lot of mushy feelings for back home, and a lot of my friends from undergrad were still there. Shorter College and Indiana University's spring breaks managed to coincide, and so I spent a week at home, living with my best friend and her husband and sharing all of my time with a group of friends that I just couldn't pry my death grip off of. I didn't want to go back to Indiana... I even had thoughts of quitting grad school and just getting a 9-5 job in the admissions office at Shorter College. I figured that I'd get a decent enough wage to live off of, and best of all, I'd be with my friends (which are very much a family to me.) But, somehow, I managed to force myself to make the 8 hour drive back to Indiana, and just waited impatiently for the summer to come. I just ached for the people who I'd shared so much with. I saw many of those friends over that next summer, and have managed to keep in touch with all of them thus far. But, there's just nothing like being in the same place at the same time and having a week (like that spring break) with which to just bond even more than we already had.

That brings us to this trip. I've kept in touch with my very best friends, but over time I've fallen out of touch with some. There are only 2 or 3 friends that I manage to see on a regular basis, and even then "regular basis" is a very loose term. So, let's just imagine for a second that, not only have I gotten the chance to do a recital with a dear friend who happened to be my undergrad collaborator, but we've been offered the chance to do this recital back at our undergrad. And, seeing as how we all went to a rather small undergrad, there are actually a large number of our friends who are still in the state of Georgia. Now, let's just also imagine that my friends are awesome enough to drive from all sorts of places... Atlanta, Birmingham, Athens, Macon... and we are all going to be back at the same campus on which we began our friendships. All of us, together.

That's exactly what this recital last weekend was about.

I got to spend an evening singing for a room full of my family and friends. The audience was full of people who love me and know me in a way that most people beyond that time in my life do not know me. I saw people there whom I hadn't seen in nearly a decade: my high school choir teacher, my great Aunt Mary (who drove from Charlotte, NC), and my first love were among the many. Every single person in that audience was there because they know me and love me from different ages of my life. There were people from the valley that I grew up in... one of my old youth directors at my home church (who still looks like she's in her 20's... SO beautiful!) came with her Mom, who is my Nana's best friend. Oh, and Nana was there too. :) And my Dad and brother, Mom, Stepdad, cousin, Aunts, Uncles. My very best friend in the entire world was there with another one of our friends who drove from Jacksonville, FL. Jacksonville, Florida. He drove 5 hour drive to see me and hear me sing. 5 hours on the road to join the group of friends who were there, who all went to school at the same time and shared the same experiences, and who were all going to be there for one more night to share in memories of a time past.

Can you tell that I loved this?

Can you tell that I really didn't want to leave?

I love my job. I love my career. I love that I get to come back to a town that stays in the 70's throughout the winter season. But there are days when I wish I could push my job aside for a moment, and go spend time with those people. There are times when, as fortunate as I've been in this career, I really feel the want to live and breathe something other than music. I love singing... don't get me wrong. It's literally been the longest relationship I've had, and I wouldn't give it up for the world. But, just as in a real relationship, there's something to be said for personal space at times. For breaks. For getting out of the norm and experiencing life in a different way.

So, I'm looking forward to having that time this next year. I will no longer be under contract for 9 months solid, and for the first time in 5 years, I'll have multiple months where I am not obligated to be in one place. So, you know what? You can find me at my Nana's helping pick vegetables, or in Florida with my best friend. And I really, really can't wait.

~Jamie

My 5
1. My Nana's cooking. I cheated, and I don't care.
2. Friends who are my family.
3. Family who are my friends.
4. Airports with free wifi.
5. Music, because I will always love it.