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Dear Sheen Gate Choir

Thank you for a highly enjoyable rehearsal last night and for your warm welcome.

It was a big sing, but I thought you did very well indeed and you are on a great trajectory for the concert.  In the concert there will be of course lots of solos to break things up, so the Haydn won’t feel quite so relentless, or at least not for you.

Chris said he was making notes on things to work on.  Things that come to mind are:

• getting the volume down for the quiet passages
• crescendos starting off quietly enough so that there is somewhere to go
• word endings – which were getting pretty slick most of the time
• pronunciation of certain words – we discussed ewig, ihr and ihn
• putting energy into lower notes so that the high notes that follow don’t appear out of place.
• watching a bit more – some voice parts were rather more likely than others to have a few if not many people looking when I conducted an entry.  I know standing up will help with this but avoid getting buried in the score
• rhythmic precision – e.g. the Verdi is a comparatively easy sing, but don’t get too relaxed and lose the dotted rhythms

I think you make a great sound and are doing a great job with the Haydn.  Congratulations to you, to Robert for some fine accompaniment and of course to Chris for getting you to this point.

I am very excited about the prospect of conducting you in the concert.  

Cheers

Stephen

Dear all

I hope you are excited for tomorrow, when Stephen will be coming to conduct us in rehearsal, ready for the big day on the 24th. Please try to be there on time, ready to start singing at 7.45.

If you have not already done so, can I please suggest that you listen to the recordings that Stephen sent. The speeds of many of the movements are quite different – slower – than we have typically been practising. The last movement opening passage, the Andante, is a very good example. It is truly walking speed. Die Himmel Erzahlen is a lot more leisurely than some of our assaults on it. That’s not to say that Stephen will be following the same speeds as the recording necessarily, but puts us on notice to watch and not sing on autopilot. It’s going to be fun for sure.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow

Chris

Dear All

More ticket sales please!

I know everyone has been putting a lot of effort into preparations for the performance in a couple of weeks which is marvellous, but we also need to pay some attention to our ticket sales. This is a big event for us and we need to cover our costs. Remember the aim is for every choir member to sell 3 tickets at the very least. Tricia has only had numbers (& payment) from a handful of people so far, so there must be a lot more of you out there who have sold tickets but just haven’t got round to letting us know……

We were sounding fantastic last week. It’s going to be a really enjoyable concert with an exciting and varied programme which our guests should thoroughly enjoy and which has attracted sales from non-choir members who have seen it advertised. So come on everyone – get selling!

To purchase tickets in advance, transfer payment to the choir bank account and advise Tricia Joshi (patricia@joshifamily.co.uk) of payment and names of guests. Tickets are £15 each or £5 for under 12s.

Sorry for the very late review – been a hectic week. First, a big thank you to those who arrived early on Tuesday and laid out the chairs so we were able to start promptly. Please use that same seat location for the rest of the rehearsals and the concert. If you were unable to be there on Tuesday, please sit where directed by those who were there. Everyone has a seat, I promise!

We ran through all of the movements of the Haydn, the Brahms, both Spanish pieces and the Mozart. The only one we didn’t sing was the encore, Va Pensiero. We tried to take into account the feedback Stephen has given us. He will be here in person on Tuesday next.

The work from here can be summarised in two words: dynamics and precision. You have done a brilliant job of learning the notes and the words. Much of what you are doing sounds wonderful.

In terms of dynamics, we are at the moment, as we often are, much too mezzo – mezzo. Everything needs to be far more varied. Think of your voice as having 8 distinct volume levels:

Marking	Volume level
ppp	1	Quietest
pp	2
p	3
mp	4
mf	5
f	6
ff	7
fff	8	Loudest

We spend too much time in the 4-5 range. We need to be using all of 2-7, and occasionally adding the 1 and 8 for extreme drama.

We are better at pushing up from 5 to 6 or 7. Less good at going down in volume. And Stephen is looking for much more quiet singing in movements like Im Anfang (emerging from nothing) and ‘Und eine neue Welt.’

Precision means word endings as we have worked, not just the first time it comes in a movement but every time; we tend to lose focus and precision as a piece goes on. It means being bang on the beat with entries, especially quiet ones where our voices take a split second longer to produce a sound and we come in behind the beat on ‘Dich beten Erd’ and ‘in Ewigkeit’ (pp134-135 for example). It means being perfectly in time with the whole choir in moments where everyone is on the same rhythm, such as ‘otra vez’ and many other places in Habanera. And it means loads of other things too. The concert is a big one. You should expect to be physically tired at the end from the exertion of singing. But you should also be mentally tired from the constant concentration that precise singing needs.

Which is not to say that you are not singing very well already. If we performed everything as we did on Tuesday, it would be a very good concert. But I for one would love to make it an outstanding concert, and for that we just need to lift the details a couple of notches.

In two weeks from now we will be assembing at Christ Church with orchestra and soloists and conductor, getting ready for the concert. Not long to go, keep up the excellent effort, and see you all on Tuesday, ready for a prompt 7.45pm start please.

Enjoy the sunshine!

CH

Practice Pack

Work on singing to 8 different volume levels, where 1 is as quiet as you can sing and be in control of your pitch, and 8 is as loud as you can, without losing tone. If the neighbours bang on the walls you are doing it right. Work especially on singing at 2 or 3 on the scale, but ensuring your voice makes a noise right on the intended beat, not just after it. And pay close attention to pitch at lower volumes; it’s super easy to drift flat.
Then work on any piece in the program, but using the full range of volumes, especially the quieter ones. The Brahms especially is nothing without the full range of dynamics and drama.

The recording that Stephen is basing our performance around is this one: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2oWkBkmDmF5oxggrbmao9l?si=9bb8bbba5fd44648
It would be great for everyone to use this as their singalong tracks from here on so we all have a sense of how the movements flow. Remember that we are not singing every movement, however. The listing is as on the website.

    

Dear All

I hope you’ve had a lovely half term break enjoying the glorious sunshine.

EARLY SET UP TONIGHT:

With just a few rehearsals to go until our concert we’d like to start promptly this evening. We’ll be on the raised altar area tonight so will need to set up chairs as we used to do. If anyone can get there a few minutes early to help set up that would be very helpful.

.

FOOD AFTER CONCERT:

As mentioned at the end of the last rehearsal, we would like to fit in a social gathering with our much anticipated Spanish visitors and decided that the best time to do this would be on the night of the concert and that the easiest venue would be Christchurch itself. We are therefore asking everyone to bring a dish of food to the concert (finger food would be the easiest) which can be offered at the end to SGC & AL choir members and any visitors who would like to linger. The bar will of course be open throughout (thank you Douglas!). That way any visitors who may have been enticed to come with the promise of food afterwards will not be disappointed and we have a ready made venue that can fit all of us.

Please could everyone let me know what they plan to bring so I can make sure we don’t end up with just sausage rolls…. (email Siobhan – jonezfamily658@virginmedia.com)

Many thanks!

Dear all

If you can snatch an hour or two away from your feverish study of the Creation on either or both of the next two Sunday evenings, there are a couple of concerts in Putney that I would commend to your attention – not least because I have a starring role in both…

This coming Sunday, June 11th, I’m giving a piano recital at 6pm at All Saints’ Church, Putney Common. Music by Schumann, Janacek and Liszt. Free admission and free wine with a retiring collection to try and recoup some of the bar bill. This is a “knitting concert” so feel free to bring something (preferably silent) to do whilst you listen, if you want to.

And a week later on Sunday 18th at 7.30, also at All Saints’ Church, I’ll be joining the 1885 Singers under the baton of Alison Hunka for one of their final concerts before Alison retires at the end of this year. They will be singing Puccini’s Messa di Gloria, which SGC performed a couple of years ago, along with a piece that Howard Goodall wrote for the choir back in 2005. I will be joining them for Constant Lambert’s riotous Rio Grande, a mini-concerto for piano, percussion and choir, to a wonderful text by Sacheverell Sitwell – think a fusion of Walton’s Facade and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and you’re in the zone. Also in the programme is Mendelssohn’s Richte mich, Gott and Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto. Quite a bonanza evening.

Robert Bridge

It’s Tuesday evening, and with no rehearsal tonight I am certain you are missing the sound of my voice…

I was thinking of suggesting that those who have not yet marked up their scores might meet for a fun* session of page turning and pencil note making. But as an alternative, here is a 15-minute video going through the Haydn, getting it annotated not just for “sit/stand” and “skip to here” but also key musical notes that you will want in there. I’d recommend having the post from a couple of weeks ago alongside as you go over the video – https://sheengatechoir.co.uk/choir-updates/haydn-score-markings/

If you are an avid marker of your score on Tuesdays and you already did your sit/stands from the post, you won’t need this. But if your score is pristine enough to return to the store for a refund, you might well find this 15 minutes well spent!

* used loosely.

Enjoy your week off and see you next Tuesday

CH

Well, today is May 24 so that means that exactly one month from now we will be ironing blouses and polishing shoes ready for the big night. Three more rehearsals to go.

The good news is that things are coming together. Last night we sang through everything in the program apart from Zorongo. The recordings are at the bottom of the post. Recognise that the piano is rather loud and recording on a phone is very unforgiving, and makes us sound weedier than we are in real life, so don’t be too critical. But by all means listen closely and pick up things you can improve on! Sops, what do you notice in the first movement? Basses, happy with the entry at the start of 2? Everyone, how are the Ts of ‘eine neue Welt’ in that movement? Sops and Altos – do you see what I was saying about trying to be perfectly together in Habanera so you sound like one harmonised voice? Everyone, are the dynamic contrasts in Laudate Dominum up to your expectations or can we make the louds louder and the softs softer? Lots of things we can improve on, but also make sure you hearing all the nice things you are doing.

Remaining rehearsals – I said this wrong last night. The last three Tuesdays run like this –

Tues Jun 6 – Bernadette Lord will be joining us to put the soprano solos in and help us acclimatise to the distraction of a solo part.
Tues Jun 13 – Our one Tuesday evening with Stephen Hall.
Tues Jun 20 – Our final brush up to achieve perfection.

I hope it goes without saying that these are all vitally important and we want everybody at every one of these three if possible, please.

Seating plan: after considerable thought and experimentation, I think that the best plan for us is to revert to our old formation. The benefit of having the tenors up front was outweighed by the detriment of having the sopranos uncomfortable and less powerful. The basses don’t care where they stand, but others prefer them behind and tenors want them close. So the best available compromise is our old line up, laid out in three clean rows.

And I am hoping that we will be able to use the stage for the remaining three rehearsals, which means that we need bodies at CC at 7.30 to get us set up and ready to start at 7.45. If you can be one of the early birds, please liaise with Siobhan.

Keep going, it is going to be a great concert.

Chris

Practice – Entries and Endings

Word endings were markedly better last night, but still need to be improved to be at concert standard. A pencil is your best friend here. If you haven’t marked ‘Und eine neue Welt’ with vertical lines to denote “stop here” or horizontal arrows to show “sing through, no breath” you are making it hard on yourself. Remembering what you are supposed to do in the heat of the concert without visual prompts will inevitably mean you are the one person who holds the note too long or plops a big consonant down too early. Cue crimson blushing. And obviously it is not just that one movement, but everything. Given we have no rehearsal next week, it is an ideal chance to use the spare time to get that marking up done.

And every single entry needs to be 50% more assured. You cannot be thinking ‘hmmm, not sure if this is right so I’ll leave this one to someone else.’ We need everyone coming in together and proud on every entry, whether it’s a big noisy one or a soft, Brahmsy one. So again, mark your score to give you a bar or two of forewarning, and sing along to your favourite recording.

Last night’s recordings:

1. Im Anfang
2. Nun schwanden
3. Mit Staunen
4. Die Himmel Erzahlen
5. Von deiner Gut 1
6. Von deiner Gut 2
7. Laudate Dominum
8. Habanera Don Gil de Alcala

We are on the home stretch. Things are coming together well, but there is plenty of refinement that we can do – and want to do, to make it a special event.

This is our timetable from here –

Tuesday May 23 – normal rehearsal
Tuesday May 30 – no rehearsal, half term – but sectional brush-up rehearsals possible
Tuesday June 6 – normal rehearsal
Tuesday June 13 – rehearsal with guest conductor, Stephen Hall
Tuesday June 20 – final rehearsal
Saturday June 24 – Concert

The original plan was to have Stephen come to two rehearsals before the concert, but events have transpired to limit that to the one. Which does mean that attendance at the June 13 rehearsal is extra important, so that he hears us as we expect to be on the 24th. Please mark your calendar to make that date impossible to miss.

Which is not to say you should consider the other rehearsals missable!

Chris

Despite a number of us being unavailable due to illness and other things, last night was a fantastic step towards what is going to be a brilliant evening next month. We bounced through a lot of music, and we are close to being note perfect. Maybe not word perfect, the German is still a struggle in places, but the sound was excellent.

A chunk of credit for that goes to Sue, who suggested that we should pull the lower parts to the front. That definitely seemed to help and the balance from the podium was good, even with just two basses. We will experiment further with how we lay ourselves out, so please be as open to being moved and placed next to unfamiliar voices as you were last night.

Here is what we sang through this week:

Haydn – we covered 5 of the 8 choruses. In our scores, movements 2, 4, 13, 18 and 27. We spent the most time on 13, Die Himmel Erzahlen, ending up by rollicking through at concert speed, even with the step up in tempo midway through. The to do for this now, and for quite a few other movements too, is to work on being perfectly together. You know the notes. You mostly know the words. So where the music has parts, or sometimes all 4 parts and all 3 soloists singing exactly the same words in exactly the same rhythm, our goal is for every singer to hit those notes at the same precise moment.

Brahms – getting closer, but still more security on your notes when you come in. It’s the slight hesitancy that is holding this back from excellence.

Va Pensiero – just get familiar with the words. Knowing what you are singing will allow you to relax and enjoy it. And remember to keep the dotted rhythms sharp. As in, the first two syllables, Va pens-, hold the Va longer than you dare, and make the pens really late and short.

Habanera – just like for the Haydn, those punchy rhythms have to be simultaneous. The second and fourth lines of the chorus are especially relevant, but throughout the sound should be one voice with two or four harmonies.

Upcoming rehearsals – we have four more rehearsals. I will circulate a post with those details once I get confirmation from our guest conductor.

Have a good week, see you next Tuesday.

Chris

Practice Pack

Brahms – anything to get 100% confident on the lovely notes. Practice tracks or singing with the Youtube recording recommended.

Habanera, Va Pensiero, Zorongo, everything really – words, words, words. Say the words to yourself over and again to get them familiarised. Work on getting them in the rhythms. If you reach a point of feeling you know the words, and given you now know the notes, then we are close to being performance ready.

Creation – focus on being bang on the beat when you are practising. Any movements you like. The harder ones are 13 and parts of 29. The ‘angry’ entries in 2 are a great example of where everyone in each part needs to be spot on together.