Videos

Why Lillian gave up her Career | Part 1

Tonight I have a recital we’re going to show you some video clips from that performance. Doing this recital reminded us of the the kind of career path that I was on when we first met. We want to talk to you guys about why I decided to give up a tremendous career in order to be a stay-at-home mom, and share some of the struggles in transitioning from a career mindset to a stay at home mindset.

When we met we were both in school getting graduate degrees. I was doing a dual master’s track: one in choral conducting and one in music education. In today’s age, women go to university specifically for career paths, and the advice we’re given is that we should marry later, have children later so that we can first pursue and establish a career. It’s a dramatic difference from just maybe fifty, hundred years ago, where people got married in their 20s. (Conventional wisdom of today, if you ask me, is a load of rubbish.) I had never imagined that I would be a stay-at-home mom. I never grew up thinking “oh I’d love to just be a mom and raise kids”. But we’ll save the meaty discussion around this topic for part 2; for now, let’s get into the music in my recital.

I am starting my program with three Italian pieces. The first one is “Una voce poco fa” which is a very famous Italian Aria. It’s a song that I absolutely love. I highly recommend watching Maria Callas sing this. The next two Italian pieces are romantic art songs by Donaudy and they’re not really well known. My second set is French music. French music is my favorite, favorite kind of music to sing. I’m singing Saint-Saens and I’m also singing Bizet’s Habanera. I also play the violin, so I’ll be playing the melody for Swan by Saint-Saens. Following that, I have an eclectic mix: Ave Maria by Schubert in German, Schumann’s piece The Ring Upon My Finger (in English instead of German), and then Ned Rorem’s Psalm 142. I’m ending my program with “O mio babbino Caro”.

This is just a little taste of what I envisioned myself doing as a career when we met, and part two is going to be about why we think it’s so important for moms to stay home.

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