Day Ten

25 days 15 songs 5 languages
On Wednesday I did not want to write much because I was tired but now I am ready to talk about what I learned on Wednesday. I memorized two of my English songs. My English cycle is Le Bonne Cuisine by Bernstein, four recipes from a French cookbook. I picked the cycle because it represents my enjoyment of cooking. The way Bernstein set the recipes makes it for a rather hillarious set of songs, in fact I think there is something about the way recipes are written in French cookbooks that are kind of funny. If you have watched Julie and Julia there is a scene where Julia is reading a french recipe to her husband and it sounded very similar to Rabbit Stew. Something that is half funny and half sad is that my voice teacher is a vegetarian who loves animals, so the one day that I brought the cycle for us to work on she just about regurgitated at the thought of animals boiling in their blood with their liver mashed and other descriptive cooking pictures. I felt really bad for her and in fact I am delaying the time that I will bring it up again :o)
I memorized the first two in the cycle which are Plum Pudding-now first you take eleven pounds of juicy concord grapes combined with equal parts of extra fine Tokeys...be sure they are juicy.... and Ox Tails--are you too proud to serve your friends an ox-tail stew...you're wrong for if you have enough of them you'll find you can make a fiiiine ragout.....
Today I actually spent about an hour and half working on three of the four Spanish songs with my accompanist. I am glad that they have allowed me to choose my own accompanist, for one thing Matthew lives close to us so its not a crazy drive and I have worked with him before so I feel rather comfortable. It is funny because when I worked on those songs at the university the professor suggested I use a metronome and God knows we needed the use of the metronome for Mananita de San Juan. it is a 6/8 time but the way the accompaniment is written the second beat sounds/feels like the downbeat so its a constant fight against the 'feel' and towards the 'know'. I am sooo happy my songs are musically challenging!!!!! I could not have done it any other way even though I am rusty. God is really helping me and I know that when it is all said and done I will be really proud of what I was able to accomplish.
"...and whatever I put
my heart and mind to
I will thrive in You Lord"
now I'm off to cook a pastichio, spanakopita and a greek salad...we are having friends over tonight :o) ciao