The Boston Conservatory!

Hello lovely person who is reading this!

Wow, this has been quite a hectic week. I'm sitting here in my dorm room, just finished with a stressful day of rehearsals, sight singing, diction, music theory, stage works, and yoga classes. I only have a few minutes before I go off to choir rehearsal.
It's been a while since my last post. So, when I left you, we had just been in Virginia. After Washington and Lee, we went to New York City. Our first night there, we saw this new play, still in screenings, super cool, called "The Tin Pan Alley Rag." It was AMAZING! It was all music by Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin, who, believe it or not, wrote America the Beautiful. It was about their lives on "tin pan alley." I enjoyed the show immensely.
The next morning, we got up, and we went to Juilliard! Juilliard is really interesting because it's a very small school. The entire school of about 4oo people, undergrad and grad, are live eat and work all in 2 buildings. The other really cool thing about it is that the school itself is right in Lincoln center, 60th street and Broadway, so it's in the best part of town. It's crazy cool! I loved it!
Right after we finished at Juilliard, we took a cab to Columbia, which is on the upper west side. Columbia is a really cool school. One of the parts that really interests me is this idea of the Core curriculum. It's this set of classes that every undergrad takes. They range from science to literature courses, but they are the basics that you will have to know to study there. So, because everyone has taken them, they can then be referenced in other classes etc. Plus, another aspect that I really liked was the fact that most classes are discussion based, which I would LOVE! I love arguing! Columbia was a little bit pretentious to me. I am not completely sold on it at this point. I like the idea of it; i just didn't get a great feeling on campus.
After that, we went to New Haven where Yale is. First off, Yale is now my top choice. I loved it there. I loved everything about the school. The campus was gorgeous. I was really drawn by the idea of the colleges. For those who don't know, the kids are sorted into colleges, which are aptly compared to the houses from Harry Potter. It's a really wonderful system. The college becomes like your family. Plus, they all have competitions about which can have the best food at the dining hall, so the food's great. It was pretty intense because I got to meet some students at a student forum, and one of them was talking about starting a cirque program at Yale, which means that everything I love to do is covered there! They have a really amazing theater and vocal program, and ya know, decent academics. ;) So I was, and am, really excited about Yale.
We left Yale, and we drove to Boston that night. The next morning, I was supposed to go see Boston college, but I got super sick. So, that was a no-go.
Now, on to the good stuff! The camp! I got to the Boston Conservatory yesterday. It was probably a bad time to be around because Fenway park is VERY close, and it was a game day. EEEEK! Craziness everywhere. Anyway, I moved in this nice little walk up dorm. The room is very nice, and I have 3 room mates. We had an audition during the day, and then a theory test. The audition had sight singing on it. :(
Yesterday night, we had our first chorus rehearsal. It was intensely amazing. The director gives us our binders full of music, and asks us to sight sing the music in all 6 parts. I hate sight singing with a burning passion. Needless to say, I'm not in advanced sight singing. Anyway, the piece actually sounded pretty good! It's amazing to have such a small choir with such good singers.
For today, the best way to describe it was frenetic. The class schedule was not posted until this morning due to auditions, so we had no idea where anything was before hand. I think I got to all my classes on time and in one piece. They are really interesting too! I loved diction! It started out with "what are words? Are they real? Do they exist?" Then, we went on to talk about IPA and Italian diction.
I'll tell you more about class tomorrow, but for now, I need to get my singing sleep. :D
Sorry for the novel. ;)
Clara