Hello Everyone,
What a wonderful time I had with you last night at rehearsal – everything felt so solid and strong (despite my wanky music stand!). I was so happy that we were in the ‘green’ and could move to 3′ spacing – what a joy to hear everyone so clearly.
Please consider auditioning this week for The Imaginary Garden solo – deadline for solo recording submission is Saturday, 3/19/22. Here are the instructions:
- Give yourself the correct starting pitch – you need to sing the solo in the key that it is written (E Major).
- Please sing at the tempo marked: eighth note=120
- Please breathe at the breath marks and on the rest.
- Record yourself singing – you can use your phone’s voice memo app, or record a video using your phone if you are not sure how to access your voice app.
- Email the file to me…or if the file is too large to send and you need to text it, that is fine, too (336-263-7754). You can also upload your file to a Google folder and send me the link – whatever works for you. Normally Laura D. would organize this, but since she is on LoA please send your recording directly to me.
Rehearsal Focus:
Be Like the Bird
We sang with La and Mi drones (A and E) to provide guideposts for our intonation work which is coming along nicely!
Prayer for Ukraine
Use the updated music I emailed yesterday and passed out at rehearsal last night. The YouTube recording is a great resource if you would like to work on the Ukrainian pronunciation.
We worked on pitches, rhythms, and text from m. 24-end.
Sing My Child
We worked on dynamics throughout while singing with tall, rounded vowels. Deb pointed out that sopranos should be more legato and altos more percussive m. 54-61 – very helpful suggestion – thank you.
Intonation is much improved on this piece. It can still go a tad faster – we will sing with the metronome for a bit next time we rehearse to help us settle into a tempo that will make everyone happy!
Continue to put those ending consonants on the rests – it really sparkles when we do. I will see what Sarah Quartel says about our singing of ‘child’ – one syllable or two!
Richer for Her
We worked on our diction for the repeated phrase ‘For the love of the’ – the resonant Vs were especially beautiful! We also worked on the phrase releases after singing ‘worth,’ mm. 64-68. This piece sounds lovely!
The Imaginary Garden
We rehearsed the solo together and then cleaned up rhythms in m. 27, m. 39, and m. 44. We worked on bringing out the melody. Our biggest remaining challenge is to tighten up our ensemble with everyone feeling the subdivision of the beat. The pick ups into measures lack rhythmic clarity – we will work on this next time we rehearse this piece. This is also a great one to practice with a metronome! We also have some pitch inaccuracies on page 3 – we will work on those, too.
Song of Miriam
We have made great progress on this amazing piece – it is really coming together. The tempo transitions are much improved. We will continue to work on expressive details.
Mezzo Sectional
We focused primarily on Storm Comin’ and greatly improved our intonation by singing to an F# drone (I used my tuner set to ‘sustain.’). The mezzos are the backbone of this piece and they sounded awesome in sectional rehearsal!
Looking Ahead to 3/21/22
Prayer for Ukraine (we will work on mm. 1-23 and review the ending, as well)
Be Like the Bird
Rise Up
Nothing Short of Grace
Storm Comin’
We will have our last sectional on 3/21/22 with the sopranos. We will focus on She Who Makes Her Meaning Clear, especially when the sopranos are divided into P1, P2 and P3. Bring any other questions you have!
Hope everyone has a lovely rest of the week and that everyone can enjoy the beautiful spring weather.
Hugs,
Laura