A Felicidade

This past semester I have been practicing a few times a week with a group that asked me to sing for their Bossa Nova group. For those of you who don't know what Bossa Nova is, it's pretty much Brazilian Jazz music and it's fabulous. Thanks to my friend Jordan Riley, I was hooked up with Mike Christiansen, Eric Nelson, Christopher Neale, Lars, Jed, and Don and we put on an incredible show on the 25th of April. You had to pay to come and a lot of people actually came! It wasn't even free for student's and they still came. That says a lot.

This is Christopher and I going over some words during a dress rehearsal in the Performance Hall.

This is the setup on the Night of the show! (L to R: Christopher, Mike, Lars, Jed, Eric, Don, ME!)

So my mom showed up to surprise me. How nice of her. She pretty much sat right in front of me so I saw her right at the beginning of the show, and then she was upset when she came on stage and I told her I had already noticed she was there. Mothers.

All in all, a great experience. It was incredible to hear my voice coming off the walls in the Performance Hall, it was awesome that I had the opportunity to sing classic Brazilian jazz and bossa nova in Portuguese, and it meant a lot to me that my grandparents came to support me (and they LOVED it!). The only downside was that I had to miss the first night of my Latter-Day Voices Spring Show. I sang a ton of Tom Jobim's stuff: Girl From Ipanema, Corcovado, Felicidade, Agua De Beber, Dindi, Berimbau, Desafinado, Aguas De Marco, and many others. Rehearsals were pretty funny with these old guys. At times Mike would have to tell me, "Linda, forget everything you've been trained to do as far as singing goes. The less technique you have, the better." That was probably the most challenging concept for me! Ha! We'll be doing some more collaborating in the future, so look for us!