Hello Everyone,
Happy 2/22/22 Twos-day!
Lots of progress on our repertoire – thanks to everyone for your great effort! I sure do have fun making music with such wonderful musicians (and humans!).
Thanks for the fun rhythm activity, Kay, and for the treats, Wendy. We all appreciate you both!
The last warm-up we sang is attached if you would like to put your eyes on it. It’s one of Cheryl Porter’s ‘cool down’ warm-ups. I think it is an excellent exercise for tuning intervals around the solfege syllable ‘SO’ while paying attention to keeping a stable larynx (not pulling up when the pitch jumps higher or pressing down when the pitch jumps lower).
Rehearsal Focus:
Be Like the Bird
– focused on intonation – work yet to do! Please write the solfege in your music or print out the attachment.
Storm Comin’
– definitely gaining confidence on this piece. If you want to perform the body percussion, please go ahead and get this memorized (I noticed a few of you already have it – yay!). The percussion rehearsal video is on our website. Again, we have tuning challenges on this piece – we will focus on tuning and body percussion at our retreat.
Sing My Child
– we used the tonic drone to work on our tuning and did pretty well!
– sopranos worked on clear ending consonants
– the lower three parts cleaned up the phrasing at mm. 62-74 – place the final consonant of ‘peace’ on the rest and if there is no rest, connect it to the second ‘peace.’
– note the combination of musical ideas in mm. 54-61!
The Imaginary Garden
– worked on all voice parts mm. 10-72.
– I contacted the composer, Marie-Claire Saindon, about the pronunciation for ‘dum’ and she said to rhyme it with bum. I should have emailed her last year!
Song of Miriam
– extensive work on tempos mm. 31-54
– keep the vowel for ‘ground,’ ‘mouth’ and any other like sounding words (pun intended) open and tall.
– emphasize the F of ‘falter’ and ‘fall.’ The alliteration in that phrase is integral to the poetry.
What the Heart Cannot Forget
– when you have a chance, please review your pitches and rhythms on this one – what our hearts remember, our voices have forgotten! We will also continue to review in rehearsal, of course!
Looking Ahead to 2/28/22
Storm Comin’ review all
The Imaginary Garden mm. 91-end and review all
Song of Miriam mm. 55-end and review all
What the Heart Cannot Forget review all
As time allows we will work on any of our other pieces, working on expressive elements such as dynamics, phrasing, articulation, etc.
I will be at the American Choral Directors Association Southern Division Conference for the rest of this week. As a ‘local’ (the conference is in Raleigh), I volunteered to work backstage during all of the performance choirs. I am SURE my ears will be filled with glorious choral music – can’t wait!
Hope you have a wonderful week ahead!
Hugs,
Laura