Author: Siobhan Jones

Hi everyone, I trust you are enjoying your break. Well done to the basses for insisting on a Tuesday evening sing tonight.

Thanks to all who have said that they can make it for the Holly Lodge carol concert/service on Thursday December 8th. We have committed to sing, and will be performing Lully, Lulla, Lullay; In the Stillness; and O Holy Night (possibly with the children’s choirs joining us).

We have just enough of the lower parts, so if anyone has a friend who can help out as a tenor or bass with minimal rehearsal, please let me know.

Hi all,

We have 11 singers interested in singing overseas next summer. Is anyone else potentially interested? It is not last call, but anyone who might be interested in coming, please speak up!

Chris

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

Happy Sunday, all. Brief one today. Please come to Tuesday’s rehearsal with ALL your music for this term’s concert(s), as per the website: https://sheengatechoir.co.uk/downloads/repertoire-outline-for-autumn-2020-concert/

As mentioned, anyone who has ordered but not received a copy of the Gjeilo Dark Night needs to print that please, either of the two options on the page above. The longer one will mean you have the same page numbers as those who have the book; the shorter one will save paper and ink. Your call.

For our finishing piece, at the request of Agnes Corless, we are going to sing Linden Lea, if you could please print and bring that too.

See you on Tuesday

Chris

2023 Tour

Hi all, sorry for the constant posts. If you have a full set of music for this term, you can stop reading here.

I have heard from the suppliers and the publishers are now all out of the Gjeilo (Dark Night) AND, now, the Whitacre (Sleep). We have bought out their entire stock, it seems, and the expected date for both is now late November. So I have made the call to cancel those orders. Which means a couple of things –

First, anyone waiting on those pieces needs to print off copies. For the Gjeilo, I was always reluctant to have you do this as it is big work and a forest of paper. So I have made a reduction of the choir parts, without the piano so it takes about half the paper. The link is on the same page. Feel free to print whichever you prefer, but – FAIR WARNING – we will be looking at this piece on Tuesday so make sure your printer is working and you have paper and ink.

And second, anyone who has not yet had a copy of the Gjeilo, and has paid me ;), is due a refund of £5 plus some shrapnel. I will try to come to rehearsals with fistfuls of fivers to sort this out.

Hopefully this should mean that, from here on in, everyone has their own copy of everything for the concert.

Any problems, please let me know.

Chris

Morning all, hope your central heating is working OK. Our fourth full-choir rehearsal last night was another good step towards the concert. We were very happy to have Ivy and Juliet join us for the first time, I hope you felt welcome and enjoyed singing with us. Thank you to Bex for making a Spotify playlist of the pieces and also to all those arriving early to get the seats out so that we can start on time. Below is what we sang last night, but first, for those who struggle with long mails, ANNOUNCEMENTS:

HOLLY LODGE CONCERT, THURSDAY DECEMBER 8TH: If you have not responded to Siobhan, PLEASE do! Whether it is a Yes, a No, or an I don’t know yet, it will help us make a decision on whether we can commit. Thank you.

HALF TERM: Reminder that we ARE meeting next Tuesday, 18th October. But we are NOT due to rehearse on Tuesday October 25th, although I think I am around so if there were any choristers who fancied a little small group thing focusing on danger areas, that might be possible.

SUMMER 2023 TOUR: Many of you know that this has been a topic of discussion. You will be getting a proposal in the next week, and it will require you to make a relatively quick decision. So please start thinking about it. Possible dates are July 6-9 and July 13-16.

Rameau, O Nuit – we noted the couple of small variations between verses in the inner parts. Then we sang through the whole piece. Notes are pretty much locked in for this piece now, so it’s now about making it sound good. Phrasing and tone are what we are focused on now.

Lauridsen, Sure on this Shining Night – we worked on bar 32 to the end. This is a lot of split part work, so a good place to devote some homework time if you have it. Bars 40-3 especially, as we need to be 100% confident there in order to give it maximum volume to support the soaring soprano line.

Whitacre, Sleep – we worked on the middle passage, bar 27-43. This has to be spooky and dramatic. Basses, practise holding an owlish C for half an hour without losing tone or pitch. Alto 1s, walk around work or home singing A flats to B naturals (‘in the night,’ ‘frightening shadow,’ ‘flickering light’). Tenors and Basses, some homework on bars 35-43 would be good. It isn’t especially hard, but it needs to be accurate and together. Sops, maybe double check your notes in ‘clouds of dream’ bar 39. And just like the Lauridsen, the big climax starting at bar 57, the lower parts are not yet as solid as they need to be to give the soprano top A flat the underpinning it deserves. That section would benefit from some close attention.

Rachmaninoff, Bogoroditse Dyevo – last week we worked on the middle and end sections, and this week we reprised that to cement what we had done. Note-wise, it was very good indeed, and starting to sound impressive. Basses, remember to hold the dotted crotchet at the start of bar 21 for its full length. Tenors, bar 24 is your glory bit – sing it out. Otherwise this piece is filed alongside the Rameau – it’s now about making it sound as lovely as it is. Lots of romantic expression, lots of yearning.

Stopford, Lully, Lulla, Lullay – the notes of this one were never going to be a big challenge and you have them down. The challenge here is not drifting flat. So if you want a challenge to work on at home, try giving yourself a starting note somehow (piano, or off the recordings perhaps) – and singing one verse and one chorus, and then seeing if your ending note is still where it started. If not, work on pushing everything up. And then when you can do that, try it again but extra quiet. Singing down in volume makes the risk of going flat higher. If you can hold your pitch at super low volume, you are good to go!

Have a good week, make sure you have friends and family teed up for early evening Saturday December 17th, and see you next Tuesday.

Chris

Evening all. I am just home from Robert’s knitting concert, which was one of the best little concerts I have ever been to. No exaggeration. Never mind Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood with Yo-yo Ma and the BSO, the Proms – this was exceptional. If you have never been to one of these concerts, make a promise to yourself that you will try to do so before long.

Anyway, for this week’s rehearsal, and for everything here onwards, please bring all of your music. If you are so keen to be prepared for what we will be looking at, be ready for more Bogoroditse Dyevo, Sure on this Shining Night, Sleep, and Lully, Lulla, Lullay.

And our piece to finish with this week will be our old favourite, Cantique de Jean Racine. If you don’t have a copy somewhere to hand, you can download here: https://cpdl.org/wiki/images/c/c8/Cantique_de_Jean_Racine_Faure.pdf

See you all on Tuesday.

Chris

Hi all, another very encouraging rehearsal last night. Thanks to all who made it, some nice noises being made despite three out of four parts being thin on the ground. There are some nasty bugs going around – I hope everyone is well.

Here’s the recap of what we sang.

Abendlied ~ we spent some time on the second half of the piece, which uses a repeating canon on ‘Und der Tag.’ It was coming together pretty well. Those entries, part by part, need to be 100% confident – worth 5 minutes of practice time if you have the urge. And when you work on those entries, please think carefully about the idea of singing repeated notes (und der Tag is a prime example) with each note slightly higher than the last. Soon enough we will be pulling the piano support out from underneath us, and when we do, staying in tune will become the next major challenge for this and other works.

Sure on this Shining Night ~ this was our biggest chunk of time last night, and again, our focus was on the middle and end sections. The middle, from D on p5, covers the climax of the work at the top of p6 – where we worked on note security, which was excellent, including plenty of complex 8-part chords. Great job by the 5 Sops hitting top A flats repeatedly. Bars 42/43, which is the extra-long ‘shining’ was the one little segment that was slightly shaky – another useful place for 5 minutes’ work. We also worked through the coda, from E to the end. Again, the notes were very good in every part. Clearly some homework has been going on, and it is paying off. Thank you!

Bogorditse Dyevo ~ Again, we focused on the middle and end passages. Bars 20-25 cover some intricate moving lines, in Altos and Basses and then in the Tenors. It was good – nothing more to say here. If you want to practise this piece, work on singing in smooth phrases, and with a nice focused tone as you cement your notes.

Underneath the Stars ~ yup, it was the middle and end that we worked on. Bars 33-34, with the one tiny section of unexpected harmonies, received extra attention. Those few notes are a place for anyone with time to practise. From p6 to the end for ATB, the piece is really just a repeated ‘go gently’ to accompany the tune. Not hard, but needs to be precise. When we sang the whole thing through, once again the knowledge of notes and rhythms was excellent.

Dark Night ~ just to upset Lesley after saying you didn’t need to bring the music for this one, we took our first look at this piece. You learned the first theme instantly, and sang it impressively ‘bigly.’ Then, so as to stay consistent with the rest of the rehearsal, we looked at the end passage, from F to the end. Nothing too tricky, but it is in 8 parts, and counting or watching – or preferably both – is essential as the time signature is 3, 4, 5 or 7 in a bar in the space of a dozen notes.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Holly Lodge Concert – right now we do not have enough people who have said they can make that night (Thursday Dec 8) to be able to commit to do the concert, and we do need to get back to the organisers and tell them one way or another. Can everyone who has not already done so please reply to Siobhan’s mail/post asap? Thanks.
Half term – we ARE rehearsing on Tuesday October 18th. There will NOT be a regular rehearsal on Tuesday October 25th.

Finally, if you have any requests for pieces that we can sing for fun at the end of a rehearsal, please shout them out.

Have a good week, see you next Tuesday.

Chris

Just a short one this week, to help those who struggle with getting to the bottom of messages. Firstly, if you have not seen and responded to Siobhan’s message about the Holly Lodge carol service, please do – we need to assess whether we have enough of each part to commit, and we need to give them an answer.

For this week, please bring all of the music, both purchased and printed from downloads. The one piece you don’t need to bring is the Gjeilo Dark Night. For fun this week, a piece you may have heard once or twice – Hallelujah, from the Messiah. Bring your book if you have it, or download here. Thanks and see you on Tuesday.

Chris