Dear all
Huge thanks to all who came tonight – it’s great that we can all meet and rehearse again!
For those who don;t know (or don’t remember) I will try and send a roundup after each rehearsal, so that a) those who couldn’t make it know what we covered, b) I can give you things to look at during the week (if you can), and c) there is a written record of the things I’ve asked you to mark in your scores!!
Today, we looked at the middle section of Swansea Town, which is much easier than it looks with theirs and basses in octave on their chromatic figure, and altos just moving up and down an octave every now and then! Make sure you mark in breaths every 2 bars (where the phrase phrase marks stop and start again) and we will keep practising this with the dynamics – growing and fading like waves (under the verse about the storm – see what he did there?)
We then spent some time on Danny Boy. This was actually sung extremely well considering how little time we have spent on it, and we even managed to do it a capella! The key to this piece is know your parts inside out – it’s not an easy one to read each time, so it’s all about note bashing until you can’t do it wrong. The general pause after the word ‘hushed’ (page 4) will be a proper break, so make sure it’s marked in your score.
We then tackled Battle of Jericho. The nots are much easier than they look and don;t take long to pick up, so this piece is all about the performance. Ideally this will need to be from memory in the concert, because the effect will be lost if we all have our heads in scores! I’m saying this now – the concert is about 3 months away so there’s plenty of time! We will work on this regularly.
Finally, we sang through Shenandoah. We spent most time working with the sopranos and altos on the 4th verse (page 5), with the sop 1, sop 2 and alto singing the tune in stretto – this is most difficult for second sopranos, trying to fit in between the other two! It worked really well in today’s rehearsal, but it’s a section that needs concentration!
That was all for this week. Please continue to bring all the music shared so far to each rehearsal from now on. We may add more depending on prioress and timing for the concert, but we have plenty to fill our time for the moment!
Dave