Hello Everyone,
I have missed us this week!
Thank you, Kay for our announcements last night. We are planning for the future and that is a great feeling.
Want to sing in harmony? I recorded a 4-part canon for us. The challenge is to sing it 4 times, trying a different part each time. It’s called A Child of Song by Derryl Herring and Andy Beck. It’s in 5/4 and is in the key of e-minor.
The text is:
Sing me a song when I wake in the morning.
Play me a tune in the cool of the night.
Enjoy!
Want to be totally silly for a few minutes? Here is a fun little warm up called The Witch Doctor by Ross Bagdasarian arr. Roger Emerson. It’s in 4/4 and begins in F-Major.
The “text” is:
Oo ee oo ah ah
Ting tang walla walla bing bang
Oo ee oo ah ah
Ting tang walla walla bing bang.Hmm. (modulate up a half step with each repetition)
This warm up book came with a CD so enjoy the band…and don’t forget to dance around!
Have you been singing this week with Jodie O’Regen? Let’s keep our voices moving!
Don’t forget Six Feet Away led by Cheryl Porter.
Here is a preview of our January angel repertoire:
Angels, Ever Fair and Bright from Theodora – G. F. Handel, arr. Robert Sieving
SSA, piano (or string quartet)
(I had fun playing with my a cappella app).
Angels, ever fair and bright,
Guard our slumber through the night.
In the radiant morn so fair,
Keep us all within your care.
Angels, ever fair and bright,
Guard our slumber through the night.
Snow Angel – Sarah Quartel
SSAA, piano, cello, djembe
Text: Sarah Quartel (lyrics), Lisa Helps (narration)
- Prologue
All his angels, all his heavenly armies, ah.
Open your eyes, sweet child.
Narration 1:
First Angel
On a rock, head in hand, I sit. Long, white hair falls now to my lap and my old, tired wings rest now at my side. Peaceful. Still.
Dawn. I watch the day come into being: the gentle approach of the sun, the world above, the world below, graced with light. And I, witness of thousands of dawns, can’t help but remember, this morning near my passing, a time long ago when for a moment these wings, which define my very angelhood, become invisible.
There was a long spring festival in the countryside where I had been sent. Adults and children alike danced and celebrated the end of winter’s shelter, the bountiful green beginnings, the harvests to come. My task was very unique, you see, for I was sent to gather light. Our world then – our world now – both bleak and bright, always on the brink of night. So as the townspeople danced and sang, I opened my magic leather sack and let their light flow in. I went from town to town in this way, and in each town I passed through people greeted me with a generosity of spirit and gentle kindness. Yet, seeking light, I had little time to respond in kind. When I arrived in the last village, just when I had almost enough light, I was stopped.
“I’ve heard about you,” said a young man, close to the age I was then. “You are the angel gathering light to save us all from the world’s night.”
“That’s right,” I said, a little too proudly for an angel.
“But if you truly are an angel then where are your wings?”
I was puzzled for a moment, sure that my wings were where they had always been – strapped onto my back with heartstrings. But I tried to flap, nothing. I looked behind me, nothing. Then, panicking, I looked into my magic bag…nothing. Where is the light?
- Creatures of Light
Creatures of light, such as still play, like motes in the sunshine, round the Lord,
And through their infinite array, transmit each moment, night and day,
The echo of His luminous word!
Creatures of light,
When earth lay nearer to the skies than in these days of crime and woe,
And mortals saw, without surprise, in midair,
Angelic eyes gazing upon the earth below.
Creatures of light.
Narration 2:
Second Angel – I’m Grace. That’s what my father calls me anyway, although most days I’m not sure why. My friends call me Gray, ‘cause I’m somewhere in the middle, between black and white, boy and girl, angel and human. I do have wings, though, and I’m seventeen and hip so they’re tattooed, and I’ve even got a piercing in my nose. So this is how it goes. We’ve been hanging around up here for a while now. Waiting for heaven to fall. Waiting for a call. Every day we look out across the sky, across the city – the urban playground for earthbound teenage angels. And every day we look: we see the city spread, we watch with dread the trees disappear, the rivers run dry – we anticipate the end of thousands of harvests.
We watch with fascination angels in human form look without seeing, hear without listening, touch without feeling. I watch compassion disappear as if it were simply going out of fashion. Compassion. Out of fashion as I suppose my own wings might be, tattooed, when I’m old and wise.
So in a flurry I transcend the borderland of the sky between you and me. I swoop down into the heart of New York City, of Montreal, of Moscow. I creep quietly through graffiti-covered alleyways, looking for a message. Looking for direction. I look into the eyes of the people passing by for a message, for direction. And on one corner sits a woman, with a boy child. She looks at me with innocent eyes. I touch her gently. She smiles, then cries. Around the bend near the end of yet another shop-lined street lies a man. I help him to his feet.
And then I come to you.
You look at me as if I were anything but heaven-sent. You cannot see past my tattoos, my piercings, past all of me that is different from all of you. Yet I am also the same, you see, and so you let me take your hand. “Let me show you compassion,” I say. I lead you to what used to be a garden; it was your Father’s when you were a child. But you had forgotten, you see, and in the meantime it became a parking lot. “But look,” I pointed. And there, pushing up through the pavement, a solitary red flower, unselfconsciously perfect. “I remember,” you assure me, and so I leave you graced, an adult child in the garden of your Father.
- God will give orders/4. Sweet child
God will give orders to his angels about you,
And all his angels,
All his armies sing: “ah!”
Do not think poorly of these little children.
All of them have an angel in heav’n,
And all of the angels can see the face of the Father.Sweet child, o sweet child!
Faith, like a child, can hear the song,
A song that falls on ears of those who wait,
Like a child, for peace to come.
And trust that we will learn to show them love,
Like a child, who knows no wrong from being loved by those who’ve taught them.
Faith, like a child, forever strong.
The circle goes on.
Sweet child!
Sweet child, hear my song.
I will show you how to love!
Narration 3:
Third Angel – I am a small angel. Eight years old to be exact. I have a crooked nose and tiny wings. I like them because they make me a little bit different from everyone else, and that makes me special. I know I’m a special angel for other reasons, too – because I’m one of the only angels my age who has a human friend. She’s like me – eight. Where she lives it’s almost springtime, and the flowers in her mother’s garden are poking their heads up through the snow. But she’s sad. At first I thought it was because she couldn’t see her own wings, but I learned the other day it’s because her best friend moved away and she doesn’t know who to love anymore. She is what adults call ‘lonely.’ But I am a young angel with a big heart and tiny wings, and I know how to love. So I went to visit her before bedtime the other night as she sat at her window looking out at winter’s end. She smiled as I danced and sang my song, and she giggled, hiding her face in her hands, when I threw myself into the snow and flapped my wings. And when I got up there was a picture of me left behind in the snow. And I felt happy because the little girl had laughed. And I felt happy because she could see love, like a picture in the show.
(pause)
First Angel – “Sweet child,” I say, here at dawn from the rock of my old age. Sweet children. What do we do when the snow melts, when love remains although love’s imprint is gone? Once upon a time I told you I couldn’t see my wings. Not because they weren’t there, but because in seeking light I had forgotten how to give it. The energy of generosity, of compassion, of love, is circular. Inside we know no differently.
Look and see.
Hear and listen.
Touch and feel.
Each of us, inside, a child in the garden.
A flower pushing through the pavement.
An angel in the snow.
Go.
- Snow Angel
I went to my window one bright winter’s morn and gazed at the new fallen snow.
The world overtaken by flurries of white had set my surroundings aglow.
I looked to the heavens seeking the source of this wonderland newly appeared.
When there I spied a snow angel holding the flakes and spreading them near.
She sang: “Even though the snow may blow, there’s not a wind can stop my music.
For I know that winter shelters life.”
On silver blue wingtips she soared through the air ensuring the flow’rs were warm.
She knew that her snowflakes would blanket the earth and keep all its friends safe from harm.
I thought for a moment she must be a dream, this angel with silvery wings.
But then I discovered she was heaven sent as her icy lips opened to sing.
She sang: “even though the wind may blow there’s not a wind can stop my music.
For I know that winter shelters life.”
When she knew that the flow’rs were asleep she beat her wings faster to go.
But soon, looking back on the work she had done,
She let herself fall to the snow.
I saw for a moment the smile on her face ‘fore she launched herself back in the air.
I’m sure there are many snow angels in heav’n,
But now I have one down here.
I sing: “Even though the snow may blow there’s not a wind can stop my music.
For I know that winter shelters life!”
I will continue to send weekly emails but please know that I think of us everyday.
Love and Hugs (from afar),
Laura