PINE MOUNTAIN OPERA AUDITIONS

So, I won tickets to see the David Letterman Show, but I had to be available for five hours.  Instead, I decided to take a tour of New York City.  By the way, my Pine Mountain audition went well, I had a powerful voice because of allergies, but now I just have to wait and see.  Also, next year, I was granted auditions for North Texas, Florida State, and UMKC so far.  I will hear more from other schools later this month and next.

Enjoy the tour!

Chautauqua Opera Auditions

It's definitely worth living life to the fullest, even if you have to deal with the repercussions.  I woke up this morning at 2am and my good friend Evan drove me to the airport in KC (thanks so much!)  I then slept during my flights to Chicago and then to New York.  I wore my suit and just carried around everything else in my backpack.  I took a taxi from LaGuardia to Grand Central Station.  Once I was there I got some food; I went to a pizza shop and ordered "the Newman" named after the guy off of Seinfeld - it had salami and feta cheese.  It was raining, but I really wanted to walk around the town.  So, I started off 42nd avenue, walked by Bryant Park (where the fashion show are), went to Times Square (this was like the Vegas Strip on steroids - I was completely impressed) and walked up broadway and found the building that my audition was in.  It is the same building as the David Letterman show.  So, before I went in to wait for my audition, I applied for free tickets for a taping.  Then I went to wait for my audition.  It was on the 11th floor, and when I got there, it was in a studio off of a small hallway.  The hallway was packed with people preparing for auditions.  I talked to a few of the singers, some of them have had over 25 auditions just this year!  Anyway, we received a letter saying what they expected in the auditions and that out of over 800 people they were selecting only 11!  Tough odds.  Anyway, I waited for almost 6 hours for my audition!  They were running really slow, and I was the very last person on the very last day.  With that being said, I was very proud of how I sang today.  I sang Questa o quella and they asked that I sing En fermant les yeux.  They were obviously impressed, and even commented on how well I did. One of them smiled huge every time I sang some crazy high notes and would move around feeling the musicality in my second piece.  The other said, in French, that how I sang it made him close his eyes and dream - a parody of the words of one of my arias. I thought it was a great compliment - AND, that I so quickly understood something in French! (I was very happy, in a nerdy way). After that, I went back to Grand Central Station, and I received a voice message saying that I got tickets to see the David Letterman Show tomorrow!  I am assuming it is the one that will air tomorrow night, but I do not know for sure, so make sure you watch.  Then I had some trouble with my hotel.  It is in New Jersey and it is really expensive to take public transportation from the state of New York to New Jersey even though they are so close to each other.  So I walked from Grand Central Station to Penn Station.  I passed Times Square again, the Empire State Building, Macy's, Madison Square Garden.  From there I got on a train to dirty Jersey and then took a shuttle to my hotel.  It took about 4 hours, but I eventually got there.  Lastly, I wanted to add a little odd sidenote, that the police car sirens here not only do the high squeel we all know, but they also have a deep booming noise as well, really similar to thug car sub woofers; it's kind of hard to believe that has never caught on any sooner.  At any cost, it definitely echoed so much more than just the siren.