December & The Big Winner

I'm attempting to get all caught up before Christmas since I'm sure I'll have plenty to post about after our trip home.

On December 1st a friend of mine from Singers who is a jazz comp. major offered me a free ticket to come with her to see the Jeff Hamilton Trio that evening in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel down town. I will NEVER pass up the chance to see good live jazz for free! They were absolutely amazing. Jeff Hamilton is the best drummer I've ever seen!

Tuesday afternoon the Singers performed for the U's administration party in the Park building where we got the opportunity to sell CD's after our performance. I've sold a lot by now and its fun to see it reflected in my tour balance which is growing smaller and smaller. Friday the 5th I was selected to be one of 2 quartets to sing carols at the OC Tanner company Christmas party. It was a really swanky formal party held at the grand pavilion at the fair grounds. They asked us to dress like we were going caroling and to be prepared to sing for at least an hour standing up on 2 platforms by the buffet tables. It went well and we got paid! Easy money! Here's our group getting ready to leave the school of music to go to the gig.
Kim came up that night and we enjoyed spending the weekend putting up Christmas decorations and just hanging out together. Monday the 8th started out snowing and it didn't stop all day. I usually spend most of the morning hours trying to get as much of my lab work done as possible so I can spend my afternoons catching up on paperwork, emails, and stuff that doesn't require me to gown up. Monday morning was no different, but I was pretty much alone in the lab. I was working in the "yellow room" at a wet bench with a hot plate and several different chemicals. I had been in there about an hour when suddenly the power went out. It sounded like the tractor beam being turned off on Star Wars. Along with the lights going out, the fume hoods also shut off and no longer gave suck. That means that all chemicals in the room were now en route to my lungs. It was completely pitch black. I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face, and here I was holding beakers of chemicals. I waited a moment to see if it would come back on, but it didn't. Carefully I felt around on the wet bench so I could put my chemicals down without burning myself. At that point someone opened the door and called into the room, "Is anyone in here?!" I responded that I was, and was asked to report on what I was working with when the power went out. When I told him, he said, "You need to get out of here NOW!" I didn't wait around for a second request, but I had to remove my chemical gloves and feel my way blindly to the door. Once I got out of the yellow room I was evacuated from the lab still fully gowned where I had to wait to be debriefed by the lab staff and environmental health and safety. The power to the entire building had gone out. Every time power goes in the building, everyone assumes it was someone in the Microfab's fault. Once it was determined that it wasn't my fault, I was allowed to go sit in my dark office and wait for an hour for the lights to come back. I was lucky that I wasn't working with anything more dangerous when the lights went out. They are now going to see about installing emergency lights so that someone doesn't get hurt next time that happens.

That afternoon the Singers were scheduled to perform at the President of the University's home at a holiday party. The snow was still coming down pretty hard and with all the schlepping around from the engineering building to the music building to the Presidents house and back, I managed to get soaked and frozen clear up to the knees and was cold the rest of the day.
The adventures weren't over the next day when my tire practically exploded while I was going 70mph on I-80 on my way in to work that morning. I was lucky I didn't crash. I was also fortunate to have a friend from Singers willing to miss a class to help put my doughnut on so I could limp around the rest of the day until I could get to a Pep Boys for a new tire. He did all the work and it was nice not to have to kneel down in the dirty snow and get all wet for the second day in a row.


That morning also happened to be my Singers final exam which I almost didn't make it for. It was the same type of memory test as the midterm, just with our Christmas music this time. I was a bit frazzled from the tire incident, but I did well. After the test, we had our final Alto 1 sectional of the semester. My section is a great group of girls, and our section leader Laurel was so sweet to get us all necklaces and chocolate bars.
Wednesday afternoon, Singers performed at the Institute Building. It was my first time in the U's Institute building and I must say it is impressive!

Thursday evening I had plans to go with a group of friends from Singers to see the MoTab Christmas concert. My good friend Kiersten's parents are both in the choir so she got us all tickets. Layne couldn't come because he was taking the GMAT exam the next day, but he joined us for dinner at Paradise Bakery before we left.

(Laurel Enke, Me, Layne, Kiersten Honaker, Shawn Peterson, Austin Thorpe, Carol Ann Allred, Dr. Allred, Marianne Mabey)

After dinner we hopped on Trax and headed to temple square. It was packed but our seats were right up front! The concert was FANTASTIC! Brian Stokes Mitchell (who I LOVE) was the guest artist and he certainly did not disappoint! Edward Hermann was another guest artist. He told the story of the Longfellow's Christmas which I also loved. We had a wonderful time. After the concert we strolled around temple square for a bit before heading home.
Friday was a big day for Layne as it was GMAT day after weeks and weeks of study. I'm so proud of him for all the effort he put into his preparation. Friday night was also the first of our 2 holiday concerts. We arrived at 5:30 for another formal photo shoot and rehearsal. The concert was sold out and then some! It was standing room only in Libby, and I dare say that people were rewarding for standing. The concert went great! Really, really great. It was also professionally video taped and recorded both nights so hopefully I can get my hands on a finished copy of the DVD. There was a reception afterward, so I didn't get home until after 11pm. Here are a few non-professional pictures from Friday night.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

Combined choirs for "Carol of Joy" (including the Alta High Madrigal choir)

Kiersten & I

Carson & I

Saturday morning I had to be up by 5:15 to get ready for another performance on KUTV's morning show. I had only slept for about 3 hours. We had to be at the Wells Fargo building down town at 6:30 and sang 4 spots on the show. I'll try to post the video if/when they put it on their website. The performance went well. As we left the station, it started snowing hard again. By that afternoon we had quite a good 6 inches piled up. I took a nap so I would be able to survive another concert that evening. Our call was at 6:30. Layne came to the performance and it was again a packed house. We performed almost the same program as the night before and it was just as good. We were all very pleased. I noticed Jerold Ottley and Don Ripplinger (former MoTab conductors) there along with their families. A fellow alto, Jane and a doctoral student who arranged and conducted a piece on our program is actually the daughter of Don Ripplinger. At the reception after the concert, brother Ottley told me that it was a joy to watch me sing. :) Layne thoroughly enjoyed the concert and when I got home there was a bouquet of beautiful roses waiting for me, though the performing for the weekend wasn't over yet.

Sunday afternoon the Singers gathered at Dr. Allred's ward to sing a special Christmas program for their sacrament meeting. We were pretty much the entire program though Carol Ann (Dr. Allred's wife) spoke briefly in the middle. We most the rep from our concert and the spirit there was amazing. It was really neat to get the chance to perform such sacred music in a dedicated building. There was a lot of crying (in the congregation and in the choir). It was a very special experience for all of us to share.

Sunday evening we had a lovely dinner with aunt Emily and uncle Loy and made plans with them to come back the next evening for FHE to learn Grandma's special homemade honey taffy recipe. It was fun last night to go learn the secrets of pulling taffy and to talk about Grandma.

This morning I am totally snowed in at home. It has been snowing SOOO hard all day that my co-workers told me not to risk trying to make it up to the U because of closures and accidents and a huge mess. They don't pay us nearly enough for us to take the risk trying to get up there in such weather and they know it! :) Its been nice though because I got to talk to my mom on the phone for an hour and a half and am now getting to finish another catch up blog post.

Another great thing happened this morning while I've been snowed in. I got a very exciting phone call! So to set the stage a little, Layne had been planning on coming with me for a portion of my upcoming European tour in May, up until a few weeks ago when we realized that it would not be possible financially and that with all the layoffs at his work, he's not going to be able to take enough vacation days in a row to make such a trip worth while. This made us both pretty sad because we haven't had a real vacation together (just the 2 of us) really since our first year of marriage. Well, several weeks ago I attended the U's annual employee appreciation event that we go to every year where they serve lunch and give out a bunch of free stuff and have all sorts of vendors and booths set up where you fill out entry forms for drawings and such. Well, I got a call this morning from the Global Travel Network telling me that my name was drawn for the free vacation package!! WOO HOO!! I was in total shock. With our luck the way it has been with our house and our cars and everything else lately, I couldn't believe it!

SO, what did we win? I shall tell you. We get 4 days, 3 nights at our choice of the following destinations:

Cozumel
Cabo
Mazatlan
or Cancun Mexico
Orlando
Las Vegas

OR, a Caribean cruise!

This includes roundtrip airfare, hotels, meals, and ALL non-motorized activities (ie. snorkeling, kayaking, rappelling, horse rides etc.)

The only catch with the cruise is that they wouldn't pay for our airfare to get to the boat in LA. We can book our trip for any time this year.

SO, where shall we go!? I have never been to any of those places in Mexico so I need your help those of you who have been. We are going in to claim our prize on Wed. so give me your input! YIPEE!! Finally something surprisingly GOOD happened! Merry EARLY Christmas Layne and Kelly!!

November At-A-Glance

Though I'm certain that anyone who once read my blog has long since left it for dead since I appear to have abondoned it weeks ago, I'm going to attempt to get back on track. So here goes a quick run down of November picking up where I left off (voting day). November was a busy month for singing. The 2nd week of November I had something for Singers nearly every night starting on Monday evening with a little "gig" at the Alta Club downtown. About 12 of us from Singers put on a little holiday program for a private party at the club. For singing only a 20 minute program we got paid quite well. Easy money!

Tuesday night was normal SLCA rehearsal. Wednesday night was our first rehearsal with the Grammy Award winning Kronos Quartet, with whom we would be performing Sun Rings at Kingsbury Hall. Sun Rings is a multimedia piece commissioned for the Kronos quartet by NASA featuring sounds recorded from space. The rehearsal went really well and we finished early. The first violinist later emailed the composer and told him that out of over a hundred times that they're performed his work, we were the best choir they had ever performed with. The next afternoon we had a quick sound check and then the concert that evening. Here is a YouTube video promoting the concert (though the clips are old, the cellist is a different guy now).




Here is a picture of us in the orchestra pit before the concert.

After the performance (which went off without a hitch) there was a special reception held for the Quartet and the Singers upstairs. We got to meet and talk with the players and take some pictures with them.


They seemed very keen on the idea of future collaborations with us so we'll see what happens. I would certainly welcome it as they are phenomenal musicians! I won't call that easy money, because that was hard (and weird) music to learn, but it was money none the less! More than that it was a great experience to work with a group of world renowned professional musicians.

That weekend kicked off the first of 3 weekends in a row that I'd have to work. The next week was one of the busiest and most stressful weeks I've had in a LONG time. I don't think I got to bed before 2am a single night that whole week. I had volunteered to make a DVD presentation for YW in Excellence combining video clips and pictures of all the activities we've done done this year, set to music and burned for each girl and leader to have a copy. Needless to say it was a LOT of work to put together and of course I lost my work and had to start over on it at the beginning of the week. Monday night Layne and I went to the Suns/Jazz game at Energy Solutions Arena. While we lost, and the game couldn't have been on a less convenient night, we had a good time. Tuesday night was rehearsal and again I came home and stayed up till 2 working on the DVD. Wednesday afternoon was our first rehearsal with the U Phil. for the annual Scholarship concert. I spent the morning hours doing everything I could to burn 30 DVDs. Of course our burning software was giving me errors. It was a nightmare. Layne called me telling me that they had had a massive layoff at work and out of respect for those laid off, they were closing the plant and sending everyone home for the day. Fortunately for us, Layne was not among the poor folks who were canned, but it still shook everyone up.

It was actually a blessing in disguise because once I got the burner working, he was able to take over burning for me while I went to work. Thank goodness for Layne! If it weren't for him, I never would have been ready for YW in Excellence. As it was I got home with barely enough time to change and go to the church to set up. The evening was a success and everyone really liked the video. PHEW!

Thursday afternoon we had another dress rehearsal and Thursday night was the first concert. We performed Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and Holst's The Planets. I really liked both peices though this year's concert certainly featured more orchestra than choir, which was FINE WITH ME! Friday night was the second concert which went even better than the first night so everyone was pleased.

Saturday morning, Dani picked me up and we went to see Twilight. The girls were absolutely insistant that we all see it so we could discuss. It was exactly what I thought it would be. I maintain that the casting was the most important part of the moive. They got some right, but they got some wrong. I won't go into detail. It was fun to go out with the girls though. That afternoon I had a meeting with my website design team at Dr. Allred's house which was productive.

The week of Thanksgiving was extremely busy at work as we had a deadline to ship arrays to Germany BEFORE Thanksgiving and all the responsibility for it was on me. That's just the way it works out sometimes. All of us on the production team have certain "expertise's" which means that certain steps of the array manufacture process and testing are fully one person's responsibility. This particular week all the steps happened to be my area so I worked a lot of over time AND over Thanksgiving weekend, but I managed to get my shipment out on time (by no small miracle). Layne and I had Thanksgiving dinner with the McLaws family at Emily & Loy's house. It was a great feast and good company! That evening I got to attend a bridal shower for my dear friend Nedra who was in town to spend Thanksgiving with her fiance's family. It was a lot of fun. Friday night we went out to dinner with Nedra and Matt and had a great time getting to know him. We love him Nedra! Two thumbs way up!!

And there you have November!

Carol of Joy

The time has come for me to make my official blog pitch for the new U Singers Christmas CD that was released a few weeks ago and to implore all my friends and family to purchase one. I'll try to make it as painless as possible. :)

Christmas is far and away my favorite time of year, and one of my favorite parts about the season is the music. It doesn't matter if I'm listening, playing or singing it, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (especially the sacred music). My hope is that I can spread my love of Christmas music with my friends and family this year through something that represents a lot of hard work and also has given me a great deal of joy and personal fulfillment. There really is a little bit of everything on this disc and I echo the promise made on the sales poster in the hall

"...the music will warm your heart and fill your home with the spirit of the holiday."

Without further ado, I present: Carol of Joy. Below is the track listing with some clips for your listening pleasure. Just click the links to download and listen.

1. Here We Come A-Caroling
2. Ding Dong Merrily on High
3. Were You There on That Christmas Night?
4. Hallelu
5. El Rorro (The Babe)
6. Weihnachten
7. Sing We Now of Christmas
8. Room in the Inn
9. Baby, What You Goin' to Be?


10. The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy
11. Love Came Down at Christmas
12. Mary's Lullaby
13. What Sweeter Music Can We Bring?
14. (One of my favs) In Silent Night
15. Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming
16. 'Round the Glory Manger
17. Go Tell It on the Mountain
18. Silent Night
19. Jingle Bells
20. Cowboy Carol
21. The Secret of Christmas
22. We Need a Little Christmas
23.(I'm not even ashamed to admit that I just might weep unabashedly when we sing this piece at the Christmas concert -- its that beautiful) Carol of Joy

It is a big year for the Singers as we will be embarking on a 4 week tour of Eastern Europe this May. Some of our destinations include Prague, Budapest, Salzburg, Munich, and various cities in Croatia, Northern Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Austria and Germany, culminating in our competing in the Marktoberdorf International Chamber competition in Bavaria. This is a big deal for the University, and for the United States to participate in. As you can imagine, with the current exchange rate and price of airline tickets, this is going to cost the school a great deal of money, and while most of my expenses will be paid, the sale of this CD will help me make the trip possible. $10 out of every CD I sell will go directly into my tour account.

The cost of the CD is $15. Here is an official order form for the sale of this and other CDs. If you'd like to purchase a CD you may print out and use the form and include my name, or just let me know in a comment or an email if you want one and I will pay the shipping cost to get it to you. I can take checks or cash by mail or paypal transfer, or if you live in AZ you can give money to wonderful mother. Feel free to buy as many as you want from now throughout the holiday season. :)

Thanks to everyone who has supported me in these endeavors throughout my life and my great thanks in advance to anyone who buys a copy of Carol of Joy. I promise you'll enjoy it! :)

Catch Up - Deleted

My last post got deleted accidentally so sorry to those who's comments were deleted along with it. Just for my own record I have tried to re-create some of what I wrote before.

For my own sake of keeping my journal straight, I'm going to back up a couple weeks to before the flood. I think the last thing I wrote about before our disaster was the SLCA concert weekend. The next Tuesday morning I had my Singers midterm that I mentioned before. My group was the first to go. We pretty much had to sing through everything a cappella while he scrutinized and graded each of us. I felt it went well. Later that week, my friend Ashley and I stayed late at the school working on some things for Dr. Allred. Well, there sitting on the piano in his office were the scores from all the midterms. OF COURSE I looked!! I had the highest score in my group. :) I was pretty pleased, and generally relieved to have it over with.

Last weekend, Kim came up again and Layne and I took her out to dinner for a late birthday celebration. Saturday morning Layne and I went to the temple (which as it turns out was the best possible thing we could have done considering what happened on Tuesday). Saturday night Kim and I met some of my friends from Singers at the U Philharmonia Halloween concert which was a lot of fun! They decorated the whole hall with elaborate Halloween decorations and lights and the entire symphony went all out to dress up. My favorite was the bassoon player who dressed up like a surgeon and put a rubber glove over the top of her bassoon so that it would inflate every time she played. They played music from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Jaws, The Chronicles of Narnia and a bunch of other Halloween appropriate orchestral music. It was a lot of fun!
Sunday night was my Singers concert. While the concert didn't start until 7:30, I had to be there at 5 for a photo shoot. Below are a bunch of pictures from the shoot, interspersed with commentary and some music files from the concert. I didn't include them all because we sang several pieces that we sang that the last concert, and we also did several previews of our new Christmas CD (which I'll post about separately). The concert went relatively well. We certainly weren't at our very best, but all things considered, it went well. Kim and Layne had a great time laughing at me during certain parts of the concert.

I Can Tell The World - Moses Hogan Admittedly, we need to work on our "spiritual" singing. They're so fun to sing but we're such a bunch of white squares sometimes! :)

Sure on This Shining Night - Morten Lauridsen
This was the piece that the concert was titled after. As far as I'm concerned, Morten Lauridsen can compose no wrong.

The following 6 pictures were taken during Peace Like a River - Ronald Staheli. For this piece we got in a big circle on stage facing inward. Whichever section had the melody at any given time would turn outward and face the audience. Well, I was placed at the front of the circle with my back to the audience, which was all fine and dandy until half way through the piece when the altos take over the melody and I had to turn around. Then it was naked solo time! You can see me right in the front center! It was more than a little intimidating with a full house!
The recording isn't the greatest because of the positioning. The microphone picked up individual voices and because half the time those of us in front couldn't see the conductor, we weren't always together. It'll take some more practice to get it down. Its too bad we didn't perform it perfectly because its a special piece.

I didn't know this until right before the concert, but Dr. Ronald Staheli (conductor of the BYU choirs) arranged this during a very difficult time in his life. His son was serving a mission in South Africa when he was hit by a car on his bike and nearly killed. He ended up surviving and came home to recover. He eventually got to return and finish his mission. Shortly after returning home, he was killed in a car accident with 2 other returned missionaries. His parents were reading through his journal after his death and read that he knew he should have died on his mission. Shortly after the funeral, Dr. Staheli arranged this piece.

Dr. Allred became very emotional while telling us that story before the concert. I was glad he told us because it is always so much more fulfilling to have an emotional connection to the music you sing. So here I am "emoting". This is a super embarrassing picture. :) Oh well!

I love all the faces in this picture! Looks like Dave is trying to sell me a fauxlex or something.

Benedicamus Domino - Peter Warlock

The Immortal Bach This was an interesting piece. It's just a simple Bach chorale, but we divided into a bunch of octets and stood in one big line against the back wall of the stage. We sang it through 4 beats per quarter note with each group starting at a different time, but all ending together. It creates an interesting effect with a lot of dissonance.

The picture above was taken during a run through of Oklahoma to which there was a LOT of "choralography". Layne and Kim had a good laugh at this one. We cheesed it up royally. In Europe we'll be doing it in jeans with hats and bandannas. Oh boy. You can tell from this recording that we were much more concerned with the dancing and the acting than the singing! You can see me on the outside there hustling like a woman on a mission. I had 2 measures to get from the back to sitting position on the edge of the stage.

For this piece, The Singing Heart - Bob Chilcott, Dr. Allred asked me to play the hand bells which I was less than thrilled about doing. Its hard enough to play the bells without singing, but to memorize both my voice part and my bell part, sing and play opposing rhythms at the same time...not an easy thing! Even though I happened to have the 2 busiest bells of the whole piece, I survived. Sweaty palms and all.

Glory to God in the Highest - Randall Thompson

My very good friend Kiersten, Dr. Allred and I at the reception after the concert. Dr. Allred self titled this photo "A Rose Between Two Thorns".

Some of the girls.

So there's the concert for you mom! Lets see what else happened since I posted last? Oh, yeah, I got a very interesting message on facebook last week from my former conductor at ECU and friend Dan Bara. He had just gotten a call from the CEO of Gothic Records who we recorded our CD Greater Love with in May '07. Dan was informed that our CD had just passed the screenings for a Grammy nomination in Best Choral Performance! I know what you're thinking, "there is a Grammy for choir?". The answer is YES! The official nominations will not be announced until December, but it is a big deal to even be nominated! I don't think there is any chance on earth that we'd win, but if you know anyone in the Recording Academy, tell them to vote for us!!

Ok now for an update on the house. IT STINKS!!!! ...and I don't mean the situation. It literally SMELLS AWFUL in our house!! The construction guys said its because they removed the p-trap in our bathroom which normally blocks that odor from the pipe, so now the pipe is exposed and its filling our entire house with the smell of rotten gas. Ugh. On a better note, the house is dry now and we came home yesterday to half a floor! They had put down half the floor boards and some baseboards! YAY! It will probably still be a couple weeks before we're completely put back together, but its a start!

One last thing. Today was a big day in our nation's history and I wanted to say something about how blessed I feel to have the privilege of casting my vote. I know it is something that often gets taken for granted, but I am just so grateful that I have the opportunity to make my voice heard. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I went to the Elementary school this morning and saw my fellow citizens doing their civic duty in spite of the freezing rain turning to snow while we all ran to and from our cars. No matter how the election turns out, I am happy that I was able to contribute and will wear my sticker with pride!