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Dear all

Many thanks for a fantastic first rehearsal of the year. It felt great to be back!

We made a great start on the Mozart Requiem on Tuesday. We spent a good proportion of the rehearsal on the opening movement, which sounds very solid already. The key is making sure entries are in the right place, especially given how slow the movement is.

We then looked at the Sanctus and Hosanna, which is a short but difficult fugue (because it is fast). We handled this very well. My real bugbear is words in the Sanctus – ‘Dominus Deus Sabaoth’ (pronounce both ‘s’s between deus and sabaoth), ‘pleni sunt coeli’ (clearly pronounce all consonants, no ‘pleni sun coeli’!)

We finally looked at the Dies Irae. This section is pure operatic drama, so we need to bring out that character. We looked a lot at dynamics towards the end of the movement, which were sounding good.

As mentioned at the end, we will also be singing the complete set of Birthday Madrigals by Rutter in the concert, so please bring copies to future rehearsal. We may also include the Spirituals from A Child of Our Time by Tippett – to be confirmed!

Finally, I mentioned that I am singing in an opera in a couple of weeks. I am playing Don Jose in an amateur production of Carmen with the new London Opera Group on Thursday 23rd and Saturday 25th January in Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road, South Kensington (right by the Royal Albert Hall). More details and links to tickets on the Facebook event here – https://www.facebook.com/events/440053776689766/ – would be great to see some friendly faces in the audience!

All best

Dave

Reminder that we start the new term this coming Tuesday 7th Jan at our warm winter quarters – Tower House School, 188 Sheen Lane at 7.45pm sharp. Gate will be open – walk across the astroturf to the purple tiled wall on the other side, hall entrance in left corner. Please bring your Mozart Requiem score if you have one but we will be doing other things too. We will order more Mozart if there are enough to warrant a joint order. See you all there! Lesley

Final call for those who have not yet confirmed their attendance to this now traditional event. It’s this coming Monday December 16 at 8pm. The Annapurna Nepalese restaurant (199 Upper Richmond Rd West, East Sheen SW14 8QT) is offering us a fixed menu at £26 a head. (minuscule increase from previous note), with drinks separately.

If you haven’t already done so, please say if you’d like to reserve a place by leaving a comment to this post below or replying to info@sheengatechoir.co.uk. All previous comments and posts have been noted, so no need to repeat.

Looking forward to seeing many of you there on Monday

Cheers, Roger

The church where we normally rehearse (Christchurch, East Sheen) are having a carol concert on Sunday, 22nd December at 5.00 pm (meeting up at the church at 4.00 pm).  We would love some of you to join us to sing in the choir (there will be about four members of Sheengate singing already and all voice parts very welcome).  It will only be to sing carols which we all know.  If you would like to join us you can just turn up or let me (paula.frew@gmail.com) or Brenda ( brenda.morris@hotmail.co.uk) know.

Many thanks and a very happy Christmas to you all. 

Paula

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The long-awaited decision on the curry night venue is in!! And the winner, for the third year running, is the Annapurna Nepalese restaurant, 199 Upper Richmond Rd West,East Sheen SW14 8QT!!!

The date is Monday December 16, 8pm.We have a table provisionally booked for 20 – the restaurant is offering us a fixed menu of £25 a head. Please say if you’d like to reserve a place by replying to this post. Cheers, Roger

Looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible on Tuesday at usual time for some carols and drinks. If you have a Carols for Choirs book (Willcocks/Rutter) please bring. We will start singing 7.45pm as usual and stop for refreshments towards 9pm. Please bring some festive snacks. We will use the wine left from Saturday and ask for donations to cover this. If you are not a wine drinker please bring what you would like to drink. Suggest everyone brings their own drinking vessel or to save on waste, or paper cups. After 9.30pm we will move on to The Victoria pub round the corner. Lesley

Zadok the Priest (Handel)

Locus Iste (Bruckner)

Cantique de Jean Racine (Faure)

Ave Verum (Mozart)

Soloist (Victoria Mulley, Soprano)

Choral Dances from Gloriana (Britten)

Soloist (Charles McGlore, Tenor)

Selections from Birthday Madrigals (Rutter

Antiphon from Five Mystical Songs (Vaughan Williams)

Greetings all

I have 45 lovely springback folders ready for collection from 7pm tomorrow.  Please have £7.50 in cash – correct change appreciated.

The new folders do not have plastic inserts. (We can all feel proud about taking action on plastics!). If you are organised and get your music into order before Tuesday, you can simply drop your music into the folder and you’re ready to go. (I have copied the order of the concert below to help you out.) By way of a tutorial, watch this video of some young people using a Springback Binder.

Regarding the Britten choral dances – Simon has rented copies for the choir as we need to have copyright-paid music for the concert. You can use these, but you can only mark them in pencil and markings have to be rubbed out afterwards. If you prefer, you can simply use the photocopies you have used and marked over the rehearsals, and your official copy will just sit in a pew.

See you on Tuesday

Stephanie

Dear all

Many thanks for the rehearsal on Tuesday – just one more left before the concert!

We started with a sing through the Cantique de Jean Racine. This is a piece the choir knows well, but we must ensure we are not complacent with it – it relies on big shifts in dynamics to make it effective. Please pay particular attention to the crescendo on pages 2-3 (near the beginning, so sets the tone for the piece) and the ‘subito’ (sudden) pianos on page 5 (especially sopranos) and page 9. Basses – remember to sing through the note in the third bar of page 7 and breathe after ‘O Christ’.

We next looked at the two pieces from the Rutter, both of which are sounding very confident now. Number 3 needs a bit more tidying at the end, and number 4 needs more confidence during the loud bit (penultimate page) which we will work on next week.

Then we sang through the Mozart Ave Verum. This is a more simple piece and, again, one the choir knows well, but it’s the sort of music that can be dull if not performed well. Remember to breathe ANYWHERE except after the second ‘Ave’ at the beginning – I want to hear ‘Ave verum corpus’ as one phrase! Also remember that I will stop the music (briefly) before the last bar of singing (between ‘mortis’ and ‘examine’) – make sure you are not the one person who carries on through the silence!

We managed to sing through all 6 of the Choral Dances from Gloriana very effectively. As I said last week, wee need to be ready for the very different character of each movement before we start. Movement 2 is very difficult to keep in tune and I would like to do it without piano if possible – we will work on this next week, as well as movement 3 which needs more tidying.

Finally, we sang through the Antiphon by Vaughan Williams, which is now a very exciting and accurate performance! Be ready for the slightly different timings at the end – it will surprise you if you are not prepared!

Have lovely weekends all round,

Dave

Using Twitter to promote our concert

Donald Trump has 55 million Twitter followers of which about 60% have recently been identified as fake.  Sheen Gate Choir (@sheengatechoir) has 4 followers, one of which is me and none of which have been called fake.   

Now we could do better.   I’m sure most of you are heavy users of Twitter so come on, follow @sheengatechoir and retweet Roger’s shiny new tweet about our upcoming concert.

If you are not a user of Twitter, but you know someone who is, particularly with a large number of followers, direct them to our account @sheengatechoir and encourage them to follow us and to retweet Roger’s tweet, perhaps with some encouraging comment to attend.

Let’s see our follower number soar to the dizzy heights of Trump’s