Hello Everyone,
As always, I enjoyed making music with everyone. It was wonderful to meet beautiful Lily tonight – congratulations and welcome back, Rebecca!
Two recordings made by Amy’s friend, Lana are on the Recordings/Links tab on the practice files page.. One recording is the list of words under the IPA Pronunciation Guide and the other recording is the list of words under Foreign Terms included at the front of our scores for My People Are Rising. I asked Lana about Alawite since you can find examples on the Internet that indicate the last syllable sounds like “wheat” and others that indicate that it sounds like “white.” Lana advised that we use “white.” The performance recording in our practice tracks uses the “wheat” pronunciation – but we will use “white.”
Below are additional links to share with you:
My People Are Rising
Interview with Composer Carol Barnett – My People Are Rising
Mohja Kahf Reading My People Are Rising (Carol Barnett does not use the whole poem)
The Valley
Jane Siberry Sings The Valley Very free-flowing!
The Imaginary Garden
Imprisonment Ends for Mahvash Sabet
Prison Poetry of Mahvash Sabet
The Tree of Peace
Gwyneth Walker: In Her Own Words
The Tree of Peace – Gwyneth Walker
- Please work with your practice tracks or a metronome to sing at the correct tempos. When we sing softer we can’t sing slower!
- Also using your practice tracks, please check your notes/rhythms in mm. 56-63 and mm. 73-91.
- The final Z of “ashes” should always connect to plant.
- Practice speaking the text aloud with clear consonants – note which consonants fall on a rest.
The Peace of Wild Things – Sean Ivory
- Review mm. 1-59, pitches and rhythms.
1941- Andrea Ramsey
- Review all.
- Make note of all tempo changes.
- Make note of all dynamic markings.
The Valley – arr. Beth Hanson
Hooray for everyone’s hard work on all of these tricky rhythms!
- Using your practice tracks, review your part and make a note where you still may have questions regarding pitch/rhythm. We will get these!
Let Me Fly – Stacey V. Gibbs
It was very exciting to sing this piece all the way through! Hooray! We will most definitely sing this faster once we are confident of all of the parts. There are still a few chords that are not settling in so we will need to check those the next time that we rehearse this piece. We have a lot of articulation work to do on this piece to fully tell the story and to bring it to life.
It is my goal (and hopefully yours, too!) that we are able to confidently sing all of our pitches and rhythms on all of our repertoire by Nov. 25th, our last rehearsal in November. That will leave us four rehearsals to polish and two tech rehearsals to work on logistics, add our instrumentalists, and collaborate with our visiting chorus as we prepare for our performance.
With that in mind, I have divided our repertoire in half and would like for us to work on these pieces over the next two weeks. If space allows, we may have sectional rehearsals as part of our Monday rehearsals. Until I know for sure, I will hold off sending detailed plans.
Looking ahead to 11-4-19
A Path To Each Other
Faith is the Bird
The Peace of Wild Things
My People Are Rising
The Tree of Peace
Looking Ahead to 11-11-19
1941
I Sing That My Voice May Be Heard
The Imaginary Garden
Swing Low: A Spiritual Medley
Now Let Me Fly
The Valley
I hope that everyone has a wonderful week! Please let me know how I can be of help and I will be happy to support our mission in any way possible.
Cheers!
Laura