Our days begin around 9 am with a wake up call from our supervisor, Nija. We head downstairs by 9:50 to walk to breakfast, which is usually at Starbucks. Classes begin at 10, and it's different for everyone. We're split into Group A and Group B, and more often than not the two groups are doing different things in different rooms. For example, Group A could have song analysis while Group B is dancing. Lunch is a different time every day, just depending on how long our morning classes run. But it's usually around noon or one. After lunch we have class until 6, when we go for dinner and then head off to whatever activity they have scheduled for us that day.
The classes that we take are: song analysis, coachings, dance, tap, creative movement, private voice lessons, and various master classes.
Song analysis is what it sounds like. People go up in class, sing their song, and then Professor Ricciardone goes through the lyrics to help them improve their performance. It's pretty interesting to hear what he has to say for various people, it's never the same. People bring in different songs, and different types of songs, so it's always a mystery what he's going to say or have the person do. But he's a really good teacher, I like his class a lot. Even when I'm not up there performing myself, I feel like I learn a lot, purely from just sitting and observing.
Coachings are fifteen to twenty minute periods of time where we go in a practice room with the Group A (or Group B) accompanist and work through some of our repertoire. Because the time is so short, we don't really work on the voice or technique, like you would in a voice lesson. It's more time to get questions answered and work on the interpretation of the piece, the acting bit.
Dance is where we learn our group numbers for the final showcase. I'm in Group A, and we're doing "Coffee Break" from How to Succeed... It's a very interesting song for sure. Then for tap, I'm in Tap 1, so we're learning the basics and getting the foundations down in order to move on to more complicated steps. The teacher is a bit intense but in a good way. She knows what she's doing and she gets results out of us.
I'm not entirely sure what creative movement is, because we haven't had it yet.
Private voice lessons are fun. We get to work with a professor in the program for an hour and basically just have a voice lesson. But it's so interesting to experience their different methods of teaching, or of getting you to improve. My voice teacher had me blowing raspberries on pitch for one of my warm ups. It was weird, but it made sense why I was doing that. And it was a bit of a confidence boost too, because she and the accompanist kept saying how beautiful my voice was, and how I could easily switch "voices" and make it sound effortless. They gave me two new songs to learn, which are "Feelings" from The Apple Tree and "Love, Look Away" from Flower Drum Song. "Feelings" is a really fun, upbeat song that goes all over the place, and "Love, Look Away" is a pretty soprano piece. My teacher is having me embrace my inner soprano, and it's kind of fun to sing that high in a musical theater piece, because usually I only sing that high in choral music.
Master classes are always different. Sometimes it's a class on miming, sometimes it's one on audition skills. But I take notes on them all and learn a lot for sure. I'm recording them too, so I can go back and listen to them. I have a feeling I'll have a lot of new recordings from the next two weeks.
And that's basically the program. The professors are amazing. I really learn a lot from each and everyone of them. And they're all very nice and approachable. They just want to help us learn and grow, so they're willing to answer any questions we have. I hope I'm making a good impression on them too.
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