Die Krähe

For an aspiring singer with only QWERTY hands and no skill whatsoever to handle a piano, life can be difficult. My dear mother pointed me to a goldmine, aptly named Classical Karaoke. The site holds a collection of accompaniments to the usual stuff; you can find some of the most commonly sung works by well known composers, especially it seems from the classical and romantic era (only baroque I managed to find was Händel and Bach, and I got no matches for contemporary artists). Yes, the piano is rightout hideous, but I still think it is better than no piano at all. The only real complaint I have is that your only means of browsing the works is performing searches. Considering how little common agreement there is to russian ortography, or how ludicrously many misspellings there can be to an artists name, I would have appreciated an alphabetical listing of sorts, too. But me not complaining… listening to synthetic tuba singing Irrlicht. ROTFL.

The long awaited course on flamenco singing was last weekend. Sadly Inmaculada Rivero had trouble with her voice and could not teach us. Nevertheless, we had our course, as Jesús Flores (sang in Kromosomi 47 Flamenco!) took the task. He was absolutelu wonderful and also rather patient and understanding with us timid Finns.

We mostly worked on tangos, also buleria and finally a shy (that’s me being shy, not Jesús) attempt at soleá. I am still processing it all, but it was really all a realization that there is only so much you can do on your own with records. My biggest problem is with the rythm - in classic training you are supposed to follow the beat and not slip - in flamenco you always slip, follow, lead, it’s more of an organic connection. I honestly thought I had a hang of it all at one point, but then when it was my turn to sing alone I did not know when to start. That is something you can not train with a record - the song will not wait, and you will believe you started right even when you did not. But we decided on the course we will bribe a guitarrist to work with in the future, see if we will find one…

The 10th Helsinki Flamenco Festival is near and to my delight, I noticed the festival courses include one on flamenco singing, taught by Inmaculada Rivero. I have never sung flamenco, but I do look forward to it!

My supposed-to-be-today song performance is sadly not taking place, as a nasty winter flu came and took away my voice. This is actually the first time I have ever lost my voice completely and I must say it has been quite an interesting experience. Nevertheless, after two days of mimics and clapping my hands, I was happy to wake up and notice that today I already have some voice back. I sound much like Tom Waits, but that is actually kind of cool. The doctor I visited yesterday however strictly forbade any talking let alone singing for the next few days, so I’ll just continue using my hands and expressions for a while.

The good news is that the flamenco is doing wonders with my neck. Since twisting it nastily in December (department christmas party, dancing, Doris - saynomore, nudge-nudge wink-wink), I have done all kinds of stretching and exercising and paid cartloads of money to various physiotherapists for them to make everything ok again. And now it seems that I have found my remedy. I am so happy that wawing my hands and making dramatic postures is so healthy, considering how fun it is!

After some browsing, I found a more comprehensive list of Lotte Lehmann’s recordings. There are some selected opera arias, a nice list of lieder and, delightfully, 25 of her very first recordings dating all the way back to 1914.

Will be singing Strauss’ Allerseelen on Wednesday 24.1. at Pirkanmaa Music Institute. Today I was searching for the song on the Internet (I purposely avoid listening to other interpretations of a song while I am rehearsing until I have at least some idea of what I am going to do with it) and stumbled on a gold mine via The Lotte Lehmann Foundation. The song, interpreted by Lehmann with several links below for recordings by other artists.