NO REHEARSAL NEXT WEEK – HALF TERM.
Holly Lodge Concert – there will be a post in the next week or so with a decision on whether or not we go ahead.
Tour – thanks for your responses. Based on those, I am going to take the second Vienna dates out of the mix, so we are left with either July 6-9 singing The Creation or something in Merida. Please keep your responses / thoughts / preferences coming.
Lovely to see more brand new and returning-after-first-week faces again this week.
We are now half way through rehearsals for this term’s programme. Great progress and lots of lovely sounds. One thought that hit me last night. After talking a lot about making our singing sound musical, with flow, expression and phrasing the words, you achieved it beautifully – most notably in Linden Lea. We have not sung that for a year, but it seemed that you knew it so well that it just tripped elegantly into the acoustic, with bounce and flow.
That is the goal for everything. From where I stand, you seem to know your parts well. The missing piece is the confidence that you do know your parts. So, for half term, if you have time and inclination, make your own call as to which pieces you feel least secure on, and spend time with the practice track for your part. Even just playing it in the background while you cook dinner is helpful. You don’t always have to be music out, voice warmed up, studying deeply.
As for what we sang this week:
In the Stillness: we discovered a few shaky notes, especially where they are extremely low, but otherwise worked on making it sound smooth. All the -ness words that define this poem: 5 times the weight on the first syllable as the last, please. Walk around the office repeating STILLness, CALMness, ONEness like that until you can’t say those words any other way!
Dark Night: we dived into the chunky middle passage of this work. It is not long, but it is very much 8 part harmonies. A listen to your part’s practice track will be a big help on this. We also reviewed the coda which we had looked at a couple of weeks ago. The opening passage of the piece is easy, so we are not far from getting the notes for the longest piece in the concert learned.
Abendlied: I had hoped that this would be solid enough note-wise for us to start adding the beauty to the piece. But the confidence in the notes is not quite there yet, so it was coming out as ‘Good Mor Ning Tea Chers’ rather than Agnes’ lyrical German. I am quite sure you DO know these notes. We will prove the point after half term.
Sleep: We went back over the opening pages, having spent recent weeks on the middle and end sections. It sounded very good, harmonies and dissonances well struck, and some nice shape and phrasing. Singing into the middle and end showed that those notes are also pretty solid now. All in all, coming along well.
Underneath the Stars: This is starting to sound very nice. There are some details in the rhythms that we have to pay attention to, but the lilt was there, and that gives it a lovely feel straight away. And the notes were not bad either!
See you on November 1st.
Chris