Having a Bachelor’s Degree in Vocal Music Performance and teaching private voice and piano lessons for 8 years, I should know enough to prepare my music for this competition, right? Absolutely wrong! This competition requires singing in Welsh! Having attended several Welsh festivals through my youth, I’ve picked up on a few Welsh phrases like, “Bore da!” for good morning or “Noswaith dda” for good-night, and “Diolch” means thanks. So, I found a Welsh language/singing coach. Dr. Mari Morgan is a native of Wales and Director of the North American Welsh Choir. I am so thankful for her guidance and her patience as I not only learned the Welsh words, but tried not to sound like an American singing Welsh. Mari currently lives on the East Coast, so my lessons were through Zoom. The Welsh language has a couple unique sounds. The double L is pronounced by curling your tongue behind your top teeth and blowing air out both sides…a huge challenge in singing! Mari had to repeatedly remind me to make my vowels brighter and “less American.” Then sometimes the words fly by so quickly during the song that I could hardly get all the syllables out in time! My biggest challenge was a word with a rolled r. We finally settled on singing the word without any emphasis on the “r” because it just made me sound too American with the “r” in it. After several hours of rehearsal, listening to recordings of native Welsh speakers singing the songs I’m working on, and working with Dr. Morgan, I finally feel confident in my Welsh pronunciations. Now it's time to start memorizing! |