Directors Notes Feb 13, 2022
Ear Training thru Osmosis, Breaking it down in Brazil, Vocal Jazz Summit Discount Code, Pink Octopus, and Crowdsourcing
When I was a kid I had a lunchbox of Snoopy and Woodstock sleeping on a pile of books with the caption “learning by osmosis.” I felt that way at Michelle Mailhot’s class last weekend when we were going through singing roots and guide tones through the chord changes with fun backup tracks.
It was a “covert learning operation,” giving important aural concepts in easy to digest delicious fun size candy bars. If you are or were a mom, you’ll appreciate the hilarious zoom bombing of life on the weekend in a busy house. And if you need to work on your music fundamentals, in an easy aural way, that you can do
regardless of your musical proficiency, stop by and check out Michelle’s class - Wake Up Your Ears in the Singer Workshop recordings. And consider signing up for her Multi-Week course Wake Up Your Ears, which goes for six Tuesdays starting March 1st at 7:30pm ET.
We had a second opportunity for a similar type of aural learning on Monday night at Brazilian Breakdown with the singer Jamile. She taught us how to correctly pronounce the lyrics to Triste and Corcovado. This was the third in a series, and after watching them all, I’m feeling really confident that I'm doing correct pronunciation, and have fixed a lot of the errors I’ve been singing for years. In Brazilian Breakdown One she goes over Chega de Saudade and Girl from Ipanema. And in Brazilian Breakdown Two she goes over Flor de Lis and Desafinado.
Later today we have a masterclass with pianist/vocalist John Proulx, who will also be hosting a multi week course for Five Fridays starting Feb 25th called Progressive Piano which I highly recommend. There’ll be opportunities for people at every level to improve and get personal attention and assignments.
Have you been thinking about coming to the Virginia Beach Vocal Jazz Summit April 8-10? Today is a great time to buy your ticket as we now have a discount code for $50 off the ticket price! The code is: Falala Kurt Elling is headlining, and Samara Joy and I will give concerts the other nights. And it’ll feature workshops and singing appearances by Dominique Eade, Stephanie Nakasian, Melanie Charles, Greta Matassa and René Marie, plus a radio panel and a nightly jam session!
In other news, this week Paul and I put an octopus decal on my hot pink wall, something I’ve been hoping to do for about 5 years since I painted it pink. Paul and I met through diving, so we put our snorkel gear on and took some pictures to commemorate our special day - as we became domestic partners - a romantic encounter at the TD Bank Notary desk followed by a reception at Starbucks. I’ve never wanted to tie the knot, and Paul’s done it a few times and isn’t keen either, so Thursday February 10th 2022 might be the closest I get, so I’m glad we made it special with a delicious Pistachio Latte and our photo shoot with our new fun octopus decal.
I had a great meeting Friday with the new design team I’m working with for the evolution of JazzVoice.com. We’re redoing a lot of the naming conventions, which I’m really excited about, since I field a lot of questions about that. But one piece of the puzzle I’m still working on is what to name the different levels of membership. Right now they’re Masterclass, Singer and Performer, but that can cause confusion. We need something to indicate the Silver, Gold, Platinum levels of membership. I welcome your ideas!! It would be fun if they were music or singing or jazz related.