Shameless Self Promotion and Other Joys

Saturday, April 19, 2008

This coming weekend, the 25th, is my early music ensemble's concert. Donne di Mezzi will perform at 7:30 at the ProArts Gallery in Oakland (550 Second Street, Oakland). Click here for tickets and info!
I'm getting really excited. Especially after the gig I sang last night, when my only thoughts were "God this is miserable" and "when is it over." No, Donne di Mezzi will rock. We're discovering cool things about the music each time we run through it, as well as neat interpretive stuff. I'm also pretty psyched that the venue (an art gallery not known for staid, classical kinds of presentations) means that we can eschew all concert etiquette! Well, probably not all, but it gives us a certain freedom that we wouldn't necessarily have otherwise. We're thinking of giving an oral description of the pieces, rather than writing academic sounding program notes, for instance, or reading the translation to the audience before singing....

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On the "strange things that happen on earth" category, France is considering legislation that would make it illegal to glamorize incredibly thin women. I think this is targeted at the fashion industry, in the wake of the death of a model due to anorexia-related illness. It's also related, I think, to Spain's desire not to let ridiculously skinny models take part in fashion shows.

Here's the thing. France seems to be populated entirely by skinny women! Seriously, I don't know how they do it, but the reason that you hear Europeans going on about how fat Americans are is that Europeans are significantly thinner than we. Celeste and I have both had the misfortune of trying to buy pants in France, only to find that France doesn't make trousers that fit our American asses. The sick thing is that we're both firmly within the definition of "slim."

Anyway, back to the point. I applaud the bill's author for trying to take on the industry that makes women feel inadequate. I don't know how they'll enforce it, though.

It will be illegal to "provoke a person to seek excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing them to risk of death or directly compromise health."

How are they going to differentiate between that and a magazine that claims to "just depict people who are naturally very thin." Wouldn't that be the immediate response if you get hauled into court? Apparently, though, they're also targeting "pro-anorexia" websites. Again, I applaud the effort, but it's going to be even harder to prosecute people with blogs or websites.....Sigh....
Standards of beauty are weird things....My theory is that what's considered most glamorous or beautiful is what is least attainable. In the 17-19th Centuries, when the majority of people were working in fields and were pretty fucking starving, the Western European goal was to be round and curvy (only possible if you're well fed and not doing back-breaking labor all day every day) with super pale skin (only possible if you're not outside doing back-breaking labor all day every day). Now that we're mostly pretty sedentary, driving to work, working in offices or otherwise less physically than agriculture allows, the goal is to be tanned (not possible if you work inside every day) and super thin (only possible if you have the means to work out like a motherfucker for hours a day, or have the mental energy to constantly deprive yourself of nourishment....Which seems like it would preclude using your brain in any other way).

holy crap that was a run-on sentence......

But yeah, society conditions us to want what we can't have. That's something that legislation will have a hard time fixing....

Oh, by the way, here's the article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080415/ap_on_re_eu/france_anorexia

Out, damned germs!

Thursday, February 21, 2008

So, I've gotten sick again. Or maybe it's not even again, maybe it's STILL. Maybe I've got the same cold that I've had since Christmas. Either way, I'm really sick of it......no pun intended. The really frustrating thing is that every time I have to prepare a concert or an opera or something recently, I've gotten sick. I'm not sure what's going on, but it's really annoying.

Orpheus opens on Sunday. Our first rehearsal with the orchestra is tonight. Yay, singing with a sore throat.....ugh....Anyway, I listened to the orchestra rehearsal last night, which is good, because it gives me some information that I can use tonight. #1 I cannot rely on the orchestra to give me a beat. Yes, you heard that right. At one point, there were 3 different beats happening, and none of them was the beat the conductor was giving. #2 The whole cast needs to sing quieter. When we're all singing with piano, we can't hear it, and sound awful. The orchestra is really small, and therefore only a little louder than the piano.....

I'm worried that none of our rehearsals have been in the performance venues. One of the theaters I know pretty well, but I've never been to the other, so I have no idea what the space, light and acoustic will be...

In other news, I got an expensive haircut the other day. I think it makes my head look like a mushroom.

This week off from work was supposed to be relaxing, but as usual, it hasn't really. I'm trying to get the repertoire planned for the next Donne di Mezzi concert, which will be in April.

For those who don't know, my friend Celeste and I started an early music ensemble last year. The name is a bastardized-Italian translation of the phrase "Women of Means," but it's also a pun, because we're both mezzo-sopranos, so mezzo/mezzi, you get the picture. Our little gimmick is that we try to feature female composers. Since we focus on 17th C music, that goal is much easier than it would be with other centuries. There were some awesome women writing in the 1650's, from nuns writing for their convents to daughters of famous poets or artistically-minded wealthy people.

This time, we'll have 2 pieces by Chiara Margherita Cozzolani, who was from a wealthy Milanese family and studied composition with the leading teachers of the time, before becoming a nun (and later abess) at a convent whose music program was famous at the time. We'll also have a couple of duets by Barbara Strozzi, hopefully, even though our viola da gamba player hates Strozzi's music. We might also add one by Francesca Caccini, who penned the first opera written by a woman, and who was the daughter of the man who revolutionized solo singing. Our first concert, last year, focused on what we called "duets for matched voices" since Celeste and I sound almost identical (though my voice sits a little higher than hers). We'll do some of that this time, but also incorporate more solo work. Our instrumentalists rock, and they'll do some solos as well. We are, however, going to break our "chicks over dicks" rule and include one man, a fabulous lute/theorbo player. We've decided NOT to make him wear drag.....The picture I linked to is of two random guys and a theorbo. I did that to show its sheer size. Gary, our player, is so tall that he's pretty much the only guy I know who's taller than his instrument.

Anyway, more on the concert will undoubtedly follow, as I have more plans and eventually a poster or flier or something.