Hello Everyone,
Woohoo! We made such great progress on A Stór and Now Let Me Fly as we move toward our performance – great effort everyone! After last week’s rehearsal, those were the two pieces in most need of our attention and we accomplished what was needed to bring them up to speed (well, almost with A Stór!).
We have enough singers signed up for the June 8th Community Sing festival for WVC to sing one of our pieces for the afternoon performance. I am thinking through which one we will sing and will let you know what I have decided closer to time. I will also let you know what to do about registration – waiting to hear back from Rodney. Hopefully, everyone who responded yes will be able to participate because we have 24 singers committed right now. If any of you who remained a ‘maybe’ up to last night are able to change to YES (no pressure!!!!), then please let me know.
Next Monday is our final rehearsal before our tech week. My plan for rehearsal is to move through our pieces in concert order, address a few polishing details for each one, sing through it, and move on to the next piece. Please take a few minutes this week to circle/take note of dynamic markings and who has the melody. In general, those are aspects that need our attention. We also need to unify some of our vowels and more clearly articulate consonants. So many musical details to think about!
For A Stór I would love it if we could sing (without too much stress) at a steady 126 beats per minute (the piece is marked 136bpm). For our final run through last night we were about 112-120, but the beat was not steady (thus the tempo range) and that diminished the energy of the piece. We need to keep it quick and light – playful! We have come soooooooo far on this piece – it is evident the work that you have put in on the Irish text. We are very close if everyone can give it just a bit more attention this week. We won’t have time in rehearsal to spend much time on it so individual work will be key to success. We definitely need to sing the dynamics that are written – so much to think about!
I have attached my draft of program notes if you would like to read about these pieces before having the actual program in your hands.
Can’t say it too loudly or too often…a very heartfelt thank you to Deb for her artistic and expert collaborative work at the piano!
Thank you to each and every one for your dedicated commitment to our music-making. It is so much FUN to be with you all at rehearsal and to have a ‘front row seat’ to our music-making!
See you Monday,
Laura