Today's the Day

Today's the day I hear from the Seattle Symphony Chorale (via email) whether or not the audition I did with them was good enough to get me into their hallowed ranks. I'm shaking in my little booties, people. Here's the plea for good wishes I submitted at my high school alumni forum:

I'm auditioning to sing in the Seattle Symphony Chorale - the huge choir that belts out the choral parts of classical works (like the poor bastards in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, for example, which the choir is doing this season, by the way. Ouch. Hard stuff). I'm terrified for the following reasons:

1. Seattle is by far the biggest gene pool of good singers I've ever lived in. That means I'll be competing for a spot with lots of people who sing as well as and better than me. Oh, how it rankles...
2. I'm rusty. I've had neither vocal training nor choral experience for several years and so will be trying to overcome the onset of lack of practice, range, and sight-reading skills. The director is no slouch, not by a long shot, and will be able to tell that I've been out of the loop for a while.
3. I'm a big danged chicken.
4. I think I'm coming down with something. [just kidding. Knock on wood]

I also have an OK chance of getting in, you know, since training never really goes away and they'll be able to hear that. And I may not be the monster of a sight-reader that I used to be, but I can still sing most things on sight. My resume is also not too bad, and the fact that I have a degree in singing, years of training under my belt, was El Presidente of my college choir (though long ago), and the fact that I'm singing my audition piece in German are all things that will work in my favor. So it's not hopeless. However, I've spent my life as a big fish in pretty small ponds, musically speaking, and have a good chance of not making it. This would be the first time I've been rejected for a musical group I've tried out for. No more playing it safe, I guess. Yikes.

I know a lot of this sounds like bragging, but I hope you know me well enough to know that listing my assets is just a way of bolstering what's left of my courage. You know me.

Anyway, my church choir director says my chances are 50-50, probably, so if y'all could take a second to tip the balance in my favor (metaphysically speaking) I'd be eternally grateful. I've got a lot riding on this, actually, and this audition signals a return to music and to no longer playing my life so safe any more. Which is a good thing (tell that to my knocking knees, sucka). But competition is the thing I hate most in the whole, whole world (just under extreme poverty, starvation, and willful ignorance). It makes me sick with total, craven, yella-bellied fear. So think about me tomorrow. I'll owe you.

So, there you have it. The audition went very well, by the way. I didn't throw up on the director or anything. I sang very nicely, was never asked to sight-read or show them my range (after all that worrying), and the director and the tenor section leader, who was sitting in on auditions that day, were both very complimentary and very kind. And totally unreadable. Drat.

Now I wait. And try not to check my email every 5 minutes. You can imagine that I'm failing miserably.

Cerise