Well, welcome back everyone. There have been some changes over the last few weeks of the spring and the summer, so I thought I would get you all up to speed and head off some questions.
First, since Dr. Poon has left for the Far East, I am now teaching opera classes and serving as Coordinator of the voice area. For the opera part, that means we will do a fall scenes program and have a "workshop" class that will be open to all students, regardless of year or major. The class section for this will be the old "opera mainstage" section. Somewhere in October we will hold initial auditions for the spring production, "Tartuffe", an american piece based on the classic french play (sung in English). The opera will be double cast (as much as possible) at that time, and those cast will have the rest of the semester to work on the music on their own and in coachings with me and/or their voice teacher. I am hoping to have a weekend of rehearsals before the spring semester starts in order to jump start the rehearsal process. Then, we will work on music in rehearsals for about a month or so, and then stage for about a month. Those who have their music memorized at the beginning of the staging process will continue to participate in the production and perform in the opera at the end of March (there will be two weekend performances). Go ahead and plan now that the weekend (or at least Saturday and Sunday) at the end of Spring break will be used for rehearsals for the opera, since that is very close to show time. In any case, the rehearsal schedule will be planned far in advance and will hopefully only intensify the last couple of weeks before the production - the exchange for this will be a weekly opera commitment for the entire semester.
As for the Vocal Coordinator stuff, you won't really see much of that, except that I will send out administrative stuff from time to time that you will see. Somebody has to coordinate a little, and I got picked, that's all.
Secondly, we hired two new faculty associated with the voice area (both coincidentally moving here from Mississippi).
Dr. Greg Rike will be coming on board this year as a visiting professor of voice. He's a tenor with lots of experience and ability as a vocal teacher as well as a teacher of literature, pedagogy, diction, and other classroom voice issues. Also, he's a nice guy and I think you will like him.
Dr. Karl Nelson will also be joining us as Director of Choral Activities. Dr. Nelson is a great conductor and teacher and has lots of great ideas for the choral program this year. He also has the dubious distinction of being one of my LSU classmates (he even has the mark of shame of conducting on one of my recitals).
Anyway, the faculty searched hard and are very happy to have found such qualified and likable individuals.
Wow, that was a long post! See you when school starts! There may be some photos coming soon from my Colorado Music Festival experience, so keep an eye out.
Dr. T
