lorelei2702

calicomom: I did get a message from you and answered you, so maybe you did not get my message! As soon as I read your latest post, my immediate response was identical to the post after yours: Curtis and Juilliard are not likelies for anyone, and indeed they are quite a stretch. Curtis accepts only the most exceptional natural talents, more often the rare voice types, and it is an extraordinary thing to be admitted. Juilliard accepts such a tiny percentage of the voice applicants, and as I have said elsewhere on this forum, they do not want to accept undergraduate voice students, they do so only to maintain their status as comprehensive music conservatory. Not a single voice teacher (talk about a gross generalization!) at any of the conservatories thinks a conservatory with advanced and older singer is the best place for a young voice. Your daughter cannot rush getting older, and that is an absolute necessity to healthily and wisely use her talent. She needs to be somewhere with fine, nurturing, resourceful, energetic teachers. She needs to solidify her musicianship. She needs to learn languages and stage craft. She needs to get her "sea legs" on the stage. Meanwhile, she needs to get an education, because she has a better statistical chance of becoming a US Senator than making her living solely as a singer. As long as she is making progress, being admitted to excellent schools, winning roles and contests, gaining range, projection, and control, you can be assured she is doing well. If those things are not happening, she needs to think of other options for herself, and you need to encourage that, emotionally and financially. You want her to make choices which will lead her to success in life, not failure, even though there will be disappointment along the way. We have all been disappointed, but we have survived and grown. She can cope, no matter how difficult the moment of reality might be.

THe lifestyle and choices of a professional singer in the early stages are not ones you, as her mother, will like. She will have no sense of stability and home. She will be poor. She will be far away. She will get sick and everything she has hoped for will be at risk. It is a gruesome process. However, if she is driven and lucky, and if she picked the right parents (genetic talent), she will do it all anyway.

About the lesson: there are far worse problems than vowel clarity and pronunciation. It is a safe, more instrumental way to sing, less likely to constrict and limit range and timbre. There is plenty of time to fix that. Do not worry. Joan Sutherland never dealt with it, and she sang far longer than any high soprano about whom I know.

About the schools: Indiana is too big and has too many graduate students for good undergraduate experience. Michigan is a much better choice, good facilities, excellent faculty, strong program. Illinois has good teachers and good facilities. Ohio State has some good teachers, but not such good facilities. University of Maryland has excellent music school, fine faculty, and rumor has it: money! Oberlin is a good option, though it requires really strong academics, as is Cleveland Institute of Music. Eastman is a great school, though very difficult to gain entry for singers. Cincinnati is too big, and almost impossible to get into, graduate or undergraduate. Shenandoah in Virgina has good faculty. Your daughter should think about what external environment she wants, city, town, rural, city, big, little, cold, hot, secular environment, religious school. THose things make a difference in the quality of her everyday life, and she will be more likely to stay healthy.

What else, let me know, either through a public forum post, or try the private thing again. I do not know what happened. Good luck.