Thanks all, and especially Suzanne, for another lovely little sing last night. It truly is an uplifting, joyful thing, just to make pleasant sounds together.
We sang:
Amazing Grace and Somewhere Over The Rainbow for warm up. In a perfect world, we would learn these by heart so that we can close our eyes and sing them together, relying only on our ears and the singers around us. These are only warm up pieces, but by all means give them a few minutes of your time. It would be lovely to have little pieces like this that we can sing together perfectly any time.
We ran through Linden Lea – this is already solid. Maybe a couple of places where the lower parts could be more precise. Practice tracks are there for you to check at home.
We took our first look at the beautiful Erb arrangement of Shenandoah. We picked up the tune straight away, and there was brilliant work on both sides on staying in tune. Nobody slipped at the two places I highlighted as risks. Excellent musicianship all around. Followed up with a fantastic first shot at the verse 4 ‘stretto.’ Sop 2s got it straight away – but it gets harder with the lower parts trying to throw you off. I’d suggest spending 10 minutes with the practice track, then singing with the YouTube recording by Royal Holloway. Altos – we didn’t get to your second echo in V4 – by all means have a look and a listen. And for all – take a look at the 6-part harmonies of verse 3. Hopefully we could have a bash at this next time we are together.
Then we turned to Danny Boy, and reviewed the 8-part harmonies of verse 1. Again, this will benefit from some practice at home. Tenors, very best of luck with your crazy passage at the top of p2.
And for the simple pleasure of singing something we know well, we had a ragged attempt at the Hostias from the Mozart Requiem, and a much better crack at the Cantique. Suggestions for other things we can knock out without much effort greatly appreciated.
Music and other resources:
Following multiple people telling me that they couldn’t find music, I have reorganised everything and it now resides HERE. You can navigate to this page from the top menu: click on Music and Media Library, and then Repertoire for Autumn 2020 Concert. There are unofficial copies of copyrighted music here, for private rehearsal use only.
The warm-up pieces are in the Downloads page, again accessible from the Music and Media Library dropdown.
Next week, July 28th:
We agreed that it makes sense to have another sectional session to work through some notes before we put things together as a choir again. So look out for an email from your kind section host, and please RSVP promptly.
Have a lovely week!