BYU Devotional

For all of you who aren't at BYU or for those who are, but choose not to go to the weekly devotional (don't be ashamed... I rarely go), I'm letting you all know that I had my first televised solo performance. Yay! Every Tuesday, BYU has a spiritual devotional or forum from 11am-12noon. For the devotionals, they always have a musical number preceding the speaker. I've sung in devotionals before, but that was with 45+ people in choir, so I didn't really feel that much pressure. And I hardly got any camera time on those performances because well, let's face it, I'm short and the front row never gets good coverage (but I also believe the camera guy is determined to show the same 5 people every 3 minutes, which never includes me... so it's a lost cause).

Anyway, spring/summer term devotionals aren't as big because of the lack of people there, so they hold it in the JSB instead of the Marriott Center. So a few weeks ago, my voice teacher sent me an email telling me she submitted my name to the head honchos of the devotional committee to perform a musical number - The next day I got an email from them asking me when I wanted to perform. Scary! So, along with my voice teacher, we picked one of the first songs she retrieved from her never ending pile of music and I performed it yesterday around 11:15am. Anthony was generous enough to accompany (convenient, eh?) and I think, overall, it sounded pretty good. I was definitely beyond nervous, so much that my leg started shaking from fright. It wasn't an uncontrollable shaking, but I had to shift my weight every now and then to stop it from being too noticeable. What's weird is that I've performed in front of countless master classes and juries with my peers and professors intently listening for every little mistake, and I've never gotten nervous. But put me in front of a congregation of average listeners who don't know the first thing about reading music, and I start hyperventilating. It's weird...


So if you want to witness my somewhat successful performance (or get a close up of Anthony hands) here's what you must do:

1. Go to www.byutv.com and click on the "Tune In Now" tab in the top left corner.
   
2. Click on the link provided and download the media player (if you don't have it already)
3. Then, when it's loaded, scroll down the "Choose a date:" list and click on "Tuesday, July 22, 2008"
4. Scroll down to 11am and you're there!

The devotional doesn't actually begin until 11:05am so you'll catch the end of the previous program. It's not that bad, but if you're impatient (like me) you can fast forward to about 9:00 and begin criticizing me on my hair, outfit, facial expressions (or lack thereof), posture, singing, or anything else you're bound to think of.