Hello Everyone,
I had such fun with everyone at rehearsal last night. Thank you for all of your hard work and attention to detail. Once we have our “nuts and bolts” accomplished we can really dig in – and we are already well on our way. I think of “nut and bolts” as all of the information in our written music – but then we have all of the interpretive and expressive work to look forward to.
Great job looking up from your music when we repeated our tuning exercises. The cruise ship analogy is one that I often think of when conducting a chorus. I have never actually steered a cruise ship (surprise!) but I can imagine that it takes more time and distance to make a change in course when compared to steering a speedboat (or Andrew’s little fishing boat!). Really, it’s how well we are communicating with one another. if you look up, I will do my best to give you something worth seeing! A well-known choral conductor, Rodney Eichenberger, gave this advice during a workshop I attended many years ago, “What they see is what you get!”
Swing Low: A Spiritual Medley
- Only breathe where there is a rest or a breath mark indicated in your score. Otherwise, stagger breathing.
- Take note in your score when you have the melody but then your part has an unexpected twist or turn. For example, in mm. 7-8 the top staff has the melody until “ot” of “chariot” and then the middle staff takes it for those two beats. A similar situation happens in mm. 11-12. I love how Rosephanye Powell has intertwined the melody in all three parts. We will make sure to bring this out as we continue our work.
- In mm. 25, the pronunciation of “don’t you” should not sound like “don’t chew.” Rather, keep the T of “don’t” separate from the Y of “you.”
- We will work through the score to discover who has the part that should be heard out of the harmonic texture and then I think we will really hear the interweaving of melodies that is integral to the intention of this piece.
- Forgot to mention in rehearsal (sorry!), in mm. 30-31, we can move some on the singers on the middle staff to the alto staff “where all is.” We can experiment with this.
Faith is the bird – Elizabeth Alexander
- You might want to begin thinking about the solos in this piece. Each one of the phrases will perhaps be sung by a different soloist:
- mm. 1-4
- mm. 33-34
- mm. 35-36
- mm. 37-38
- We need to put this one in super slow-motion and tune these chords vertically. This piece is a lot trickier than it appears (or sounds). The harmonic shifts are rapid and the accidentals give us an additional challenge. When we are ready, we will rehearse this staccato – a true test of our pitch and rhythmic accuracy.
1941 – Andrea Ramsey
- If you have a chance, work on the transitions in thematic material from mm. 27-47. One of the biggest challenges is just getting the page turned from 5-6 because all of a sudden you have an entirely new musical thought on the top of page 6.
- We will rehearse the tempo changes…Andrea Ramsey takes great care with her score markings so we will do our best to follow her intentions.
- If you have time to sing through this with your practice track to check pitch and rhythmic accuracy in your part, that would be helpful.
The Imaginary Garden – Marie-Claire Saindon
- We have been through this entire piece together except for the first and last pages. If you have time, sing through the first and last pages with your practice track.
- This piece has an especially thick texture. We will work on bringing out the part that needs to be most heard at any given moment.
The Tree of Peace – Gwyneth Walker
- It is almost always true in this piece that we will only breathe together on the rests and as indicated by the phrase markings. If you are practicing on your own, work for long phrases – but know that we will stagger breathing to accomplish most.
- Our consonants will be so very important in this piece. It would be helpful for you to look for those consonants that are more difficult to project – F, unvoiced TH, K, P, D, V, FT…and more…we will work on this together. Individually, it would be helpful for you to speak the text aloud, concentrating on clearly articulating all of the consonant sounds.
- Anytime we begin a phrase with a vowel, we will breathe in the shape of that vowel. (A breath that is DOWN-OUT-OPEN!).
Now Let Me Fly – Stacey V. Gibbs
- Please review the verses that we flew through last night: mm. 37-44 and mm. 53-60.
Looking Ahead to 10-21-19 and our Fall Retreat
I will send an additional email later this week with this information. I needed to hear our rehearsal last night to know how to best finalize music rehearsal plans for our retreat on Saturday (and then Monday’s rehearsal) so stay tuned (pun intended!).
Thanks, one and all, and especially Debbie for her wonderful accompaniment and collaboration!
Looking forward to our retreat,
Laura