Dear all
Many thanks to those present for a fantastic rehearsal tonight! We achieved a huge amount, including note-bashing through the final 2 pieces for the concert. My now-usual please for everyone to prioritise attending the remaining rehearsals – we don’t have any more time for note-bashing as we really need to start tidying the pieces for performance now, so if you don;t know the music, learn it in your own time!!
We sang all through Down By the Sally Gardens, which is a reasonably simple 2-part arrangement which we generally found quite comfortable. We need to tidy up breathing/dynamics etc, but this will be a very popular piece in performance!
We then looked at the Skye Boat Song, our Scottish contribution to the UK tour of folk songs. Again, this arrangement is fairly simple and we picked it up quickly, but the simple things need to be really clean and tidy to be effective!
Next we looked at Ellen Vannin, which we have not touched for a few weeks, but was not as rusty as I was worried it might be (in fact, it was rather good). The texture in this piece remains quite thick throughout, which means it can sound a little stodgy – keep the energy up, especially in the middle verse, so it doesn’t sag!
We then looked again at All Through the Night, and I’m pleased that we are now managing the Welsh fairly confidently (at least, that’s how it sounds, so good acting if it isn’t!). Watch me for ends of phrases in this – a lot of them end with consonants (especially ‘s’) which all need to be together or it will sound messy. Keep revising from my transliteration from the email a couple of weeks ago.
Finally, we had a sing through The Turtle Dove, after some brief revision of the middle verses. This is going to sound lovely, but really does need to be a Capella and we dropped pitch a little. It happens in the third verse when we are all singing the words together – keep thinking high!
I will send another message round later this week (work permitting) with more details about both concerts, but we agreed today that for our concert on Tuesday 14th December we would arrive at 6.45, with a view to starting the concert at 8pm and be insisted by 9.
Have a good week!
Dave