Man that was beautiful! Not perfect beautiful, but music beautiful! I just got finished conducting the Randall Thompson 'Alleluia' AND Trevor Weston's 'Deliver Me O Lord' that Andy threw at me literally a half hour before the performance. The concert is still going on upstairs, that's how recent this all is, my heart's still pounding a little. I could hear myself breathing loudly as I went through the piece; it's amazing because where when I was singing before, nerves would greatly effect my sound due to breath and the consistency of my voice and all that, but with conducting if I lock up my wrists that's a good thing- there's no confusing where the beat is, in my wrist or in my fingertips. My nerves make me rigid, shoulders back, demonstrating the singing posture that'll get the best sound out of my guys. They didn't pay great attention to crescendos and diminuendos as I would have liked, but there were no big big big mistakes. No big mistakes either. I finished to great applause, and whistling too, because not only was the house full, but the chamber singers with whom I sang last year, the ones I conducted on the rooftop in Cordoba, were in the back of the house waiting to perform next and they whooped and hollered and I honestly felt popular for the first time since...god...Marlborough I guess, when I played Jacques. While the audience was still clapping Andy grabbed my arm and whispered "I think they have something for you", and one of the sopranos came out with a bouquet of flowers for me. I tried to keep from crying and bowed my head and thought about Dad and Michael and Mr. Bruneau, and about standing by the bookshelves upstairs at Dad's house when I was little holding one of those batons and being frustrated that I didn't know how to conduct other than keep time. In some ways I still don't. In most ways, in fact. Once I left the hall John McDonald, my advisor (and a composer whom I greatly greatly respect) took my hand and told me he thought I'd found my calling. I don't know that it's true, but it's damn nice to hear from someone I admire so much.
I've been an unbelievable emotional wreck today. I think that makes experiences like this one better; something to foil it against, something to stretch my very humanity to it's capacity. I couldn't be inspired and moved to tears by that heroic arrival in measure 52 if I weren't also capable of feeling pockets of deep loneliness. I eat like that, I breathe like that, I run like that. I love like that, and I think I'm a better human being for it.
Oh, and I had 9 months on the 13th. *beams*
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