oh snap!!

I LOVE this feeling.
Let me tell you about it.
It's the feeling of FIRST mildly freaking out because I have two weeks until my next gig and I'm not SO sure that I know all the music as perfectly memorized in my head as I want to which is usually the case when I'm working on another show and not paying attention to the NEXT one except that this NEXT one is a brand new one, and modern and not 'hard' per se, but hard enough that I have to constantly think about counts and weird arpeggios that I have to enter on some offbeat in the middle of a 16/8 bar...(yes this is a run-on sentence, deal with it)...and THEN it's the feeling of NOW, having looked at Act III yesterday for about an hour, having already known that I know act I, and having looked at Act II tonight for about an hour...feeling like- WHAT was I WORRIED about?
THIS IS EASY!
It's the feeling of CLICK- it's there!
Magic!
I didn't even have to do anything! Well, except drill and practice and listen and think about before I go to sleep and while I'm walking to the post office and the grocery store.
But it's that GOOD feeling.
That feeling that this is two weeks away and eeeeverything will be juuuuust fine.
I might not even bring the score in my carry-on to the plane, THAT's how good I feel about it.
When it clicks, it clicks. I don't question it, I just go with it.

Sometimes singers ask me about my 'process'...(ok, like, TWO times they asked me) and it's always one of two answers.
I either broke it down FROM the beginning. Word by word. pitch by pitch. rhythm by rhythm phrase by phrase page by page, scene, act, until every day, memorizing one piece, learning another piece, starting breakdown work on another piece...until I knew I had it all.
OR--
I barely practice it, I KIND of test myself before I have to be at the gig, and it's MAGICALLY there in my head-- memorized and ALL. Ready to go.
I don't know why or how this happens. I mean, obviously I DO spend enough time with it for things to sink in.
But it's not the daily- page 1,2,3, etc. type of 'studied' approach as my other approach.
It's more like- ehh..let's listen to Act I on my ipod even though this chick sings 4 entrances wrong and changes a few pitches.
And then it's like- the score is in front of me, but so is facebook.
And then it's kind of like- gee, I hope I know this...the gig starts next week.
And then it's like- someone better invent some kind memory injection or osmosis drug because the score has been open to page 143 for the past 20 minutes and I've been watching Sky News about Libya instead of counting.

And in the end, I'm always super prepared and having FUN in the first musical sing-through instead of holding on to the score for dear life before the director rips it out of our clammy hands in the first staging rehearsal....

FUN.
Just under two weeks until the first musical rehearsal.