On Being Professional

The title is, of course, an excellent use of hyperbole. I still don't consider myself a professional anything... with the possible exception of professional dogsitter. But I had a really great experience today and I felt the impulse to blog about it. (I go in and out of blog spells, apparently. I still am yet to match September's 17 posts. I obviously had little to do then.)

So my family and I drove up to Ft. Collins today to the somewhat obscure Avogadro's Number Restaurant. (I KNOW! What a cool name! Unfortunately, its address is 605 Mason St. in Ft. Collins, when Avogadro's Number is roughly 6.02 x 10²³, so the numberin

g is a bit off... but maybe its owner was just a chem major at CSU (something that I, for the record, will never be), or a big nerd (something that I, for the record, have always been.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is not a blog about chemistry, but about the joys of singing.

So, anyway, I had my first paying gig, receiving a whopping $25 for my singing ability. This was the first time I was given money for singing in a non-artistic setting. (Though I have accompanied on piano for money, but that wasn't performance... after all, the singer is the main attraction.) But I sang three songs:

Non piu andrai, by Mozart (from the opera The Marriage of Figaro)

Chiquitita la Novia, by Fernando Obradors (fro

m a collection of traditional Spanish songs called Coplas de Carro Dulce)

Our Great Mikado, Virtuous Man, by Gilbert and Sullivan (from the operetta The Mikado)

And I frankly thought they were highly entertaining. The other singers were great as well. And, at the end, I got this lovely little honorarium for my troubles:

It is only $25, which (at least, hopefully) will eventually be like a drop in the bucket of the millions of dollars I'll be making as a vocal performer. But it's just kind of special, because I have never gotten money for singing outside of a competition setting. Just for performing. It feels kind of cool.

The performance's purpose was to honor those who had finalled in the Colorado regional Classical Singer Competition, something that only eight students in the state were invited to do. For those of you following my vocal pursuits, this is the competition that is taking me to LA this summer along with my best duet partner Hillary Thompson, who is amazing as well. It's also the same competition that sent me to New York last year, so this is the second year I've participated in the second round (hopefully, though, this year I'll make it a bit farther... last year I think I was disqualified because I was never told that I needed to have more than one piece prepared-- the website was fairly unclear. This year, of course, I know better.) I'm just as excited this year (even though LA isn't quite New York... haha) and I really hope I get far enough to at least garner some scholarship money. We'll see.

Well, at any rate, I have $25. :D That will pay for lunch at college... for a week. Maybe. Or maybe a few trips to Starbucks. Like now. Or I can spend it on clothes... I could buy more vests. But you know what? It's my money that I earned, so I can buy whatever I want!

(Well, as long as whatever I want falls within the price of $25.)