Good morning!

Greetings!  It's a beautiful morning here in Zarautz, Spain. I'm sitting in a cafè, enjoying a morning cafè con lleche, and, strangely, listening to musika Americanos. The cafè is playing 60's vocal jazz.

The building I'm in must be at least 500 years old, but updated on the inside.

Today is a busy day. Breakfast is at 9, then a sectional rehearsal with my fellow tenors at 10:30. We will go until about 1, then have a couple hours free to get ready for our concert tonight. I'm excited about rehearsing with my guys. We are a tight knit group, and love singing together. The problem with tenor voices, though, if you have a group of solid soloists, is that our voices don't naturally blend together. We talk about that in our class sometimes, needing to sound like one voice. That's blending. We have to work very hard to try and get the right blend. Sometimes that means changing the order of who we stand near. It ALWAYS means listening. The other problem is that tenors love to be right. Every singer in the group is an excellent musician, and some are very strong leaders. We need to lean on our conductor, and let him figure out how best to make us sound blended, rather than us trying hard to work it ourselves. So, that's the order of the day. It's a tall order, but we will put the work in. 

___________________________________One final note - in Spain, like most of Europe, coffee isn't found in to go cups like at Starbucks. They expect that you will sit and enjoy your coffee for the experience that it is, rather than just buying a gallon of caffeine to power your day. I rather like this model. Makes me want to slow down a bit at home. Although, if American coffee were as good as Spanish coffee, I think I'd have no choice. :). More later, my friends!