by Web Behrens – January 12, 2012. Chicago, IL
“Among the ensemble, Virginia Cavaliere makes a winning ingénue, opposite the golden-voiced Kyle Carter as her handsome, would-be boyfriend.”
by Hedy Weiss – January 11, 2012. Chicago, IL
“Her dad also is unhappy when she starts getting romantic with his taxi dispatcher, Benny (Kyle Carter, who brings a beautiful voice to his fervent performance), the black guy she has known since school days.”
We’re Baaaaaaack!!!… After a month off of hanging with family and friends in Northern Virginia, it’s back to the grind. I went up to NYC twice to meet with vocal coach Liz Caplan there to keep my voice warm, and now I’m ready to go!!!… So on our first day back we found out that we have two live TV performances :-)… Yesterday in rehearsal we had to rework the blocking and change a few of the lyrics (props to our dancer LD for being the FCC and finding an appropriate rap line for TV, since one of my lines has a curse word in it) to fit our TV spot on WGN News today, and then me and Nina get to sing When You’re Home for the Chicago ABC News channel. We haven’t even had a brush up rehearsal for the real show, and we have to go TONIGHT!!! Just another day of crazy changes and having to adapt to the challenges the production company puts in front of you… We have 8 shows this week in Chicago, and then we’re off to Pennsylvania; we’re already off to a crazy start!
Love,
Kyle
Well, all of our shows for 2011 are done… It was sad to end so early in December, but it only makes my anticipation for what’s to come in 2012 that much stronger. Here’s a quick recap of the last week…
Hey everyone… we’re on our break for Thanksgiving and I’m chillin in Port Orange, FL with two members of the cast at one of their parents houses. Finally, some home cooked meals, time to relax in a non-bus seating fashion, and the ability to catch up with my “To-do list”, which included finally sending my mom some information she’d been asking for for like a month… sorry Mom, hahaha.
So the last week before break was very fun and very interesting… Once we got to North Charleston, SC we were greeted with a wonderful theatre and our producers came in with a film crew. We learned a quick Christmas song arranged by our tour music director and then filmed 3 Christmas commercials to be used for Rogers and Hammerstein, some Chicago TV stations, and general holiday marketing (which is funny, since we’re not doing any shows in December, lol)… I was sooo tired from basically two days of traveling tho, so I had two small hiccups during the show that usually don’t happen… but that was just the tip of the iceberg for my flubs, cuz then we got to Florence, SC, haha.
Hey!!!… It’s been a while since my last post and that’s only because I got ridiculously sick and I was absolutely miserable. There is nothing worse than being sick and not being able to take a day off and rest. Everything is great now though, I went through about 6 days where I could only sing at about 50-75% because I either couldn’t breathe out of congestion or every time I went to breathe I started to cough. Whatever little sickness I had was frustrating as heck because I felt physically fine, but all the gross stuff went straight to my chest and I was coughing all day long which inevitably led to my throat being sore and my vocal chords being tired. It got so bad at one point that for the first time in my life I went to sing notes and what I wanted to sing was NOT what was coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t actually control the pitch of the notes; I would sing and I could hear the note in my brain, but my vocal chords were weak and the muscles would fatigue and force the sound coming out of my mouth the either squeak or fall egregiousness flat. I was scared and freaked out and almost called out of a show in Waterbury, CT but I had friends who were roadtripping up from Virginia, so I enacted emergency remedies and managed to essentially falsetto my way through that show. After that show I worked hard with our tour music director and made it my 100% priority to have perfect breath and perfect mask placement of the notes so that I could sing with a little more power with the least amount of vocal effort. It paid off… I made it through that week without needing to call out. The experience definitely helped me in two crucial ways – 1. I now have a huge respect for the necessity of vocal rest. I stopped talking in order to save the muscle strength for the shows and I noticed the difference. The muscles felt more rested going into those performances that I was sick and it definitely saved me from missing a show: 2. Since I spent almost an entire week focusing on proper technique, I’m feeling the notes in a better placement now that I’m healthy again, and I can feel the growth in the way my voice sounds with this music. Loving it!
Alright… the past 5 days has been absolutely ridiculous and a complete blur… it took me a good 20 minutes to even remember everything I wanted to share. Let’s start back in Canada…
By Kristina Dorsey – October 31, 2011. New London, CT
“A lovely little romance blossoms between Nina and Benny. Actors Cavaliere and Carter create believable chemistry even in their singing, as they wind his husky vocals and her sweet sound into complementary harmonies on ‘Sunrise’ and ‘When You’re Home.'”
Heloooo!!! I’m chillin in Utica, NY right now watchin my roommate cut one of the other actors’ hair. This is our first day off since opening night and it is GLORIOUS. We got to the hotel today at 4pm and we don’t have to do a damn thing the rest of the day and I couldn’t be happier.
This first week has been wild and exhausting and our stage manager told us yesterday that she’s impressed with our stamina and patience… and we needed it. Day ONE at Penn State, they lost the orchestra’s music, so thanks to our amazing crew team, they ran out and printed new scores for the band like 3 hours before the show. Day TWO, our bus broke down on the side of the road and we had to wait for a new bus to pick us up for an hour in the middle of nowhere, and then upon reaching the theatre in York, we came to find that our sound engineer was in the hospital with a weird stomach virus!!! Other than that, we’ve had to continue to be flexible. We’re in a different theatre every day and the acoustics are different, the stages are different sizes, and the houses so far have been anywhere from like 500 to 4000 seat houses. Last night in West Point at the Eisenhower Theatre at the Army Academy, it was packed and I was told it was like a 3500 seat house. The craziest thing we’ve had to get accustomed to thus far tho, was in Indiana, PA at IUP, the stage was a full 6 feet less wide than our usual stage. The dances got preeeetty tight, and I definitely took a kick to the gut in the opening that I don’t think any one saw, so that’s good.
Everyone’s heading out to dinner right now, so I gotta run, but if I think of anything else interesting I’ll post it later!!
P.S., the fans of the show have been awesome thus far, everyone is so supportive… and it’s been amazing having so many friends and family come out to see me, it’s truly a blessing to have this much support in my career!!!
Love, Kyle
Alright… I was so exhausted after last weekend, I didn’t even want to reflect on the awesomeness that was the last week of rehearsal. Quick Recap – As it always happens in show biz, the show must go on, and we were all super sad that about 3 hours before our first full preview run with a Clemson audience, one of our main dancers and the production staff decided that he should heal his extremely sore knee and save it for the actual tour. He’s a big guy and always has a really strong attitude about him, but we could all see how bummed he was that he was going to have to sit out the first two full runs with an audience (but everything’s ok, he saw his doctor this week, and he’s cleared to put his dancing shoes back on!!). The even more amazing part about this story, is that the male dance swing in our show is AWESOME!!!.. He had literally only been taking notes and practicing dance steps on his own (what the swings are supposed to do) and he had everything down so well that after only 3 hours of preparation he KILLED both shows we did last weekend. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen – these dancers are just amazing… one day, maaaybe I’ll be a quarter as good as them, after I take a few years of classes hahaha… yyyyyeeeeaaa, not gonna happen, I’ll just keep training my voice 🙂