Billings Sr., Ladies Luncheon, & San Jose

As luck would have it, the week after the Chanter’s Concert, I came down with a sore throat and head cold. In spite of my condition, I was still able to sing for some of the choirs at Senior High on Wednesday, December 6. Mr. Corey was my choir director when I was at Senior and this is the second time that I have visited his classes to sing and talk about my musical journey. My long time piano partner, Sandi, was able to join me and we performed a lot of opera arias and a little jazz. My philosophy about music in high school and the prospect to continue it beyond graduation is to expose, educate, and empower the students about all genres of music so they can better understand and enjoy the diversity of the music industry. For this reason, and also because it’s great performance practice, I love to share my classical and operatic singing with students of this age group.
I also performed this week for the LDS Ladies Christmas Luncheon.
My cold grew worse as I prepared to travel to California to work with my voice teacher before Miss America. By the time I arrived for my first lesson, I had no voice. Fortunately, my performances were recorded by Mr. Corey at Senior high a few days before and I had already copied them to the computer. Since I have the best dad in the world, he emailed the song files I needed and they were burned on a disc for me to take for my voice lesson.
Even without a voice, it was productive and worthwhile. I am so appreciative to Ray and the Yang family for “nursing” me while I was miserable with my illness. They are all very generous and caring, and I thank them very much.