(no subject)
Five interview questions from mon_bouche.
1. What started your passion for music?
Hard to say. In some ways it’s just what I’ve always done. My mother is a choral conductor with a background in musicology, my father is an acoustic engineer and a passionate music lover, so it was always around the house. And I’ve been singing in choirs since I was tiny, sometimes three different ones at a time. And as a kid, one of my favorite movies was a Swedish production of Die Zauberflöte, long before I could read the subtitles. And apparently at my very first opera (Orpheus in the Underworld, age four), I was too excited to sit down; I stood up in my seat the whole time and stared with my mouth open.
But I didn’t so much make a conscious decision to study music (or to major in it -- I’m still not exactly sure when or why I became a music major and not a neuroscience major) as just suddenly look around me and discover that that’s what I was doing.
Although I do remember one particular moment when I became suddenly, consciously fascinated by opera. I was probably about fifteen , and it was on a car trip to Northern California to visit my godmother. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I’d decided to filch a recording of Carmen from my mom’s CD library and listen to it on the trip up. I was listening along, thinking “wow, this is a lot of fun.” Then there’s a moment in the first act when Carmen throws a flower at José and the orchestra plays a beautiful sweeping motif, which reappears at fateful moments throughout the opera, and for some reason something clicked for me, right then. Suddenly I wanted to know when this had been composed, and why, and why exactly that particular moment was so effective, and what it would look like onstage, and what other recordings would sound like, and who this “Tatiana Troyanos” person was and what else she had sung... I spent a lot of time that visit nosing around my godmother’s score library -- she used to be an opera singer -- and happened on the score to Der Rosenkavelier. When I went home, I listened to a recording of that, heard the second act duet, got obsessed with that, and so on.
Having two of my closest friends be music nerds too -- one a singer and one a musicologist -- also sort of nudged me in the direction of music. My last year of high school, a good half of my social time was taken up with music nerding, and when I got to college, it just seemed natural to keep on going.
... That was way, way longer than answers to these things are supposed to be, I suspect. Oops.
2. I remember you mentioning somthing about ballet. Would you tell me more about that time in your life?
Um... well, when I was two or three I fell in love with Gelsey Kirkland in the Baryshnikov Nutcracker. Like most small girls, I loved pink and purple and fluffy sparkly tutus. I took classes from age five to age twelve, but was never super serious about it. The interest petered out around sixth grade, although I did some intensive classes (along with modern dance, which I preferred) in the summer at Interlochen, a wonderful arts camp which I went to for theater for three years (8th-10th grades). My perfectionism was at its most intense and controlling and horrible at that point, though, and ballet made me hate my body, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t try to keep going through high school.
I had some fun taking classes again this summer. I’d like to take it up again as a more regular thing, but with what time I don’t know....
3. What to do you think a male version of you would be like?
Much the same. Except with a little less self-doubt and a little more casual sex. And probably an instrumentalist and not a singer.
4. Considering your temperment and personality now, do you think you would have been able to live in a different time period?
Well, that’d depend on the time period. And my circumstances. If I had access to an education and wasn’t forced into marriage, I’d be fine, but that’s a big if...
5. If you were an Oscar Wilde play, which one would it be?
I hope The Importance of Being Earnest, as that’s my favorite. (Damn, do I wish I had gotten to be in that play at some point when I was a theater geek.)
Just so long as it isn't Salome, I'm fine.
1. What started your passion for music?
Hard to say. In some ways it’s just what I’ve always done. My mother is a choral conductor with a background in musicology, my father is an acoustic engineer and a passionate music lover, so it was always around the house. And I’ve been singing in choirs since I was tiny, sometimes three different ones at a time. And as a kid, one of my favorite movies was a Swedish production of Die Zauberflöte, long before I could read the subtitles. And apparently at my very first opera (Orpheus in the Underworld, age four), I was too excited to sit down; I stood up in my seat the whole time and stared with my mouth open.
But I didn’t so much make a conscious decision to study music (or to major in it -- I’m still not exactly sure when or why I became a music major and not a neuroscience major) as just suddenly look around me and discover that that’s what I was doing.
Although I do remember one particular moment when I became suddenly, consciously fascinated by opera. I was probably about fifteen , and it was on a car trip to Northern California to visit my godmother. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I’d decided to filch a recording of Carmen from my mom’s CD library and listen to it on the trip up. I was listening along, thinking “wow, this is a lot of fun.” Then there’s a moment in the first act when Carmen throws a flower at José and the orchestra plays a beautiful sweeping motif, which reappears at fateful moments throughout the opera, and for some reason something clicked for me, right then. Suddenly I wanted to know when this had been composed, and why, and why exactly that particular moment was so effective, and what it would look like onstage, and what other recordings would sound like, and who this “Tatiana Troyanos” person was and what else she had sung... I spent a lot of time that visit nosing around my godmother’s score library -- she used to be an opera singer -- and happened on the score to Der Rosenkavelier. When I went home, I listened to a recording of that, heard the second act duet, got obsessed with that, and so on.
Having two of my closest friends be music nerds too -- one a singer and one a musicologist -- also sort of nudged me in the direction of music. My last year of high school, a good half of my social time was taken up with music nerding, and when I got to college, it just seemed natural to keep on going.
... That was way, way longer than answers to these things are supposed to be, I suspect. Oops.
2. I remember you mentioning somthing about ballet. Would you tell me more about that time in your life?
Um... well, when I was two or three I fell in love with Gelsey Kirkland in the Baryshnikov Nutcracker. Like most small girls, I loved pink and purple and fluffy sparkly tutus. I took classes from age five to age twelve, but was never super serious about it. The interest petered out around sixth grade, although I did some intensive classes (along with modern dance, which I preferred) in the summer at Interlochen, a wonderful arts camp which I went to for theater for three years (8th-10th grades). My perfectionism was at its most intense and controlling and horrible at that point, though, and ballet made me hate my body, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t try to keep going through high school.
I had some fun taking classes again this summer. I’d like to take it up again as a more regular thing, but with what time I don’t know....
3. What to do you think a male version of you would be like?
Much the same. Except with a little less self-doubt and a little more casual sex. And probably an instrumentalist and not a singer.
4. Considering your temperment and personality now, do you think you would have been able to live in a different time period?
Well, that’d depend on the time period. And my circumstances. If I had access to an education and wasn’t forced into marriage, I’d be fine, but that’s a big if...
5. If you were an Oscar Wilde play, which one would it be?
I hope The Importance of Being Earnest, as that’s my favorite. (Damn, do I wish I had gotten to be in that play at some point when I was a theater geek.)
Just so long as it isn't Salome, I'm fine.