My Week in Snapshots: Week 3

Hello Vintage-istas!

This week has been a week of jumping back into real life.  After blissfully running away from all my responsibilities, I am getting back into the practice room, hitting the pavement with my half-marathon training and preparing my music curriculum for the Fall. I am feeling refreshed and have found a renewed passion for my art form, but goodness, it is exhausting!

Here are a few snapshots:

We found this beautiful Fall leaf on our run this week! I am so not ready for Summer to be over....

The sunflowers are in full bloom right now! Ah, a sunflower will forever remind me of my dear late aunt, Lori McLain, who grew the most beautiful sunflower in her backyard.

We happened across these awesome retro chairs at a tag sale! I am not sure where they will even go in our apartment, but I couldn't leave without them.

Well, it is Summer and Connecticut really does have the BEST ice cream!

Soooo much German is being shoved in my head right now! I am preparing a role in Der Rosenkavalier in November, so the practice room is becoming my second home.

Here's a little love, just because the world is scary right now and I don't think too much of it could be spread. A man holding a sign in West Hartford Center said it best: BRAHMS NOT BOMBS.

Leonard Bernstein said, "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

 
Here's a little Brahms' Requiem to help soothe your soul this week. If you jump to 40:01 you can hear me as the soprano soloist with the Arizona State University Symphony and Choruses.

 Salut!

The Vintage Chanteuse

over the weekend

Happy Monday, Vintage-ista's!

We had a wonderful weekend full of warm beaches, beautiful hikes to waterfalls, and lots of organizing musical scores. The weather is divine in New England right now so between training for our half marathon and afternoons at the beach, we are soaking up as much sun as we possibly can! 

Here are a few things that made me so very happy this weekend!

1. These trailers! We are seriously considering selling everything after my fiancé graduates and buying a trailer to travel for a year.


2. “Everyone should go hear a really good, live orchestra at least once in their life. Nothing can compare to the experience of live music: the sound of the air that comes rushing toward you, seeing the bowing of the strings, the percussion affecting your heartbeat, feeling the waves of sound course through your body and encompass you. Recordings cannot communicate these things to you. Music is, after all, about communication. Go to the orchestra.” 

Find yourself on vacation looking for something to do?  Check out this list of classical music festivals throughout the country. You need to hear an orchestra live. It will change your life! 

3. The Lost Art of Letter Writing. We made a New Year's Resolution to send cards to our family and friends for birthdays, holidays, thank you's, and invitations.  Believe it or not, our generation simply does not send handwritten notes anymore. I love this article and vow to write more letters this year! 



4. I received a set of vintage cookbooks as an engagement gift and one is all about fondue!  I am smitten with this retro fondue set!

5.  Get your childhood jam on! I love The Nostalgia Machine! 

Weekly Playlist: Tiki Party

Hello Vintage-ista's!

A heatwave has hit the Midwest this week and the humidity is so high a haze is hanging over the buildings. So we've been thinking, if we are going to be putting up with all this heat it might at well be in a tropical paradise! This week is dedicated to Hawaii's favorite pastime....the tiki party! Yesterday's Lady and I will showing you how to take advantage of this perfectly tropical weather and host a vintage tiki party! Now, for starters here's a little steel guitar and ukelele to set the mood!

Aloha!

The Vintage Chanteuse

Weekly Playlist: Torch Singers

Happy Tuesday! This week's playlist is all about the great Torch Singers of the 1930's and 1940's.  Torch songs are exactly what you might think: songs of unrequited love. The slang saying "to carry a torch for" became popular in the 1930's along with the women who sang about these unrequited loves, known as Torch Singers. 

As a teenager growing up in Nebraska, I was introduced to the great torch singer Ruth Etting and began a love affair with the torch song. Ruth Etting, a native of David City, Nebraska, was a famous actress and torch singer in the 1920's and 1930's. Known as "America's Sweetheart of Song," Ruth Etting was the epitome of the classic beauty, as pictured above. 

I hope you enjoy this playlist of some of the most notable Torch Songs and Singers! 

Salut!

The Vintage Chanteuse

*In order to listen to the playlist below, please follow the instructions to sign-up for a Spotify account. It is quick, easy, and completely free!

Weekly Playlist: The Waltz

Hi There! As an opera singer, music is my life. Between my fiancé (who is a musician as well) and I, there is always music pouring from our apartment. Lately, I've been dreaming of Europe and feeling a bit homesick for cobblestone streets, rich espresso, and rotwein. To help sooth my aching heart, I've created a playlist with music of the most beautifully wistful kind: the waltz! I hope you enjoy this playlist and find yourself dreaming about sitting at a French café with a croissant and café au lait or on the streets of Vienna with a large glass of rotwein.  

Salut!

The Vintage Chanteuse

*In order to listen to the playlist below, please follow the instructions to sign-up for a Spotify account. It is quick, easy, and completely free!