One Final Note!

Okay! My teacher contacted me this morning and he was able to squeeze me into his schedule for a 30-minute intensive! I couldn't wait to get in there and watch him work his magic. He held the key to my success at tomorrow's Broadway Idol Open Call shindig!

The audition breakdown called for 16 bars of "something that would show off your vocal chops" - so, in short, something that would amaze and astound them. You got it misters! Hold onto your hats!

The first song that came to mind was another piece that I've had in my book for good five years - but I haven't used it in quite some time. It's called "Journey to the Past" from the 1997 animated motion picture Anastasia which was voiced by America's sweethearts John Cusack and Meg Ryan and everybody's favorite barroom psychiatrist, Kelsey Grammar - a definite classic.

My teacher agreed with me on this selection right away, and so we immediately set to work fine tuning the piece that was destined to wow the judges. This horse is a winner! He took me through some warm-ups that are good for me to pre-audition to help wake up the part of my register that tends to be a little sleepier. Think nasal Fran Drescher or Edith Bunker from "All in the Family" going "nee-uh, nee-uh, nee-uh, neee-uhhh." It's a sound that would make dogs howl at the moon, but it does the trick so I'm sticking with it!

"Journey to the Past" is sort of an up tempo piece, so 16 bars goes by in a flash, so to give it a little more meat we beefed it up to about 27. We also did a clever little cut and paste to keep the sheet music to two pages, so it would also appear short in length to the accompanist. The cut we used was from the very end of the son where all of the impressive, fancy big finish stuff happens. I like the last note of the song best. It "sits well on me" as my teacher says, and he recommended that I take this song out of retirement and out it back to work for me in my audition book. "Time to start re-loving this song," he said.

We worked the song from many different angles both technical and emotional. How are you going to perform this song? What is the story behind it that you are going to get through to the auditors watching you? These are all important questions to answer before the big day.

"You know what is really interesting about your choice of this song?" he asked. "The words seem to really fit what you're going through right now in your career and your endeavor to make it to Broadway."

"Oh yeah," I realized.

"It's funny how sometimes the material that we select for ourselves magically reflects what's going on in our lives, without us even knowingly doing it."

"Now I want you to sing the song for me again, but this time using these circumstances as your subtext in the song and see what happens."

I started again...

"One step at a time, one hope then another,
who knows where this road may go?
Back to who I was, on to find my future,
Things my heart still needs to know
Yes, let this be a sign,
Let this road be mine,
Let it lead me to my past.
And bring me home
At LAST!!!"

Holy crap he's right! It was all right there in the music! Suddenly, it was as if this song had been written about me on my journey to make it to Broadway! It all became so clear what I was really singing about. I had my answer!
I'm ready.