AD Music Notes

Dear Singers,

CONCERT WEEK!  VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION BELOW – PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO READ CAREFULLY. 

Due to space constraints, Laura has made a new seating chart for the tech rehearsals and the concert.  Please see the attached document to find your placement. 

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Hello Everyone,

Thanks for a super productive and fun rehearsal last night. We are one giant step closer to a wonderful concert.

Remember, the next rehearsal is at University UMC – Janet has (and will) provide all the necessary details. See you at 7PM.

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Hello Everyone,

Thank you for a beautiful rehearsal last night and for your additional 11 minutes at the end.

I just finished listening to our rehearsal recording and it was a very solid run through of our repertoire – congratulations all for the work we have accomplished together on our music.

I noticed a big improvement in people looking up from their music. When I looked at you, you were almost always looking back at me. 🙂

We have areas of improvement (won’t we always!?!) and we will address these at our next rehearsal.

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Hello Everyone,

Happy New Year!

Attached is the seating chart (revised, as in follow-up e-mail) for tomorrow’s rehearsal. I heard from some of you that you would appreciate the support of being able to better hear your part so that you could sing out with more confidence so I have arranged us in small groups of like parts across the rows. I wasn’t always able to achieve neighbors on the 8-part upper/lower divisi but did the best I could. We will still have an overall mixed formation so that hopefully, everyone will still be able to enjoy hearing all of the parts.

In listening to the recording I made of our last rehearsal, I am definitely hearing continued ‘mystery notes’ and I hope that this semi-mixed formation will help get everyone consistently on correct pitches.

I am looking forward to our final rehearsals as we lead up to our concert and plan to focus primarily on expressive elements. Hope everyone has their translations written in their scores!

Thanks for all of your hard work thus far and the work (FUN!) yet to come this month.

Cheers!
Laura

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for your attention and energy at last night’s rehearsal! I enjoyed making music with you (as always).

Please work on LOOKING UP from your music – our ensemble cohesiveness really improves. And please enjoy the voices around you and work to actively listen to your neighbors for tuning, balance, and blend.

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Hello Everyone,

Please remember that audition recordings are due to me by Saturday, December 10th (send them via email). I look forward to hearing you sing!

I thought that our rehearsal last night was lovely. I hope our music sounded as beautiful from where you were sitting as it did to me up front. We have made great progress on our repertoire and continue to sing more musically each week. Thank you for your attention to detail, for your concentrated efforts, and for your positive spirits. It is a joy to make music with you all. I look forward to digging deeper in the coming weeks.

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Hello Everyone,

Thanks for your work at rehearsal last night. I loved hearing you sing (as always).
Special thanks to Kay and Deb for helping lead our November sectionals. You are greatly appreciated. We have a sectional scheduled for December 5th from 6:45-7:25. Please let your section leader know if you have specific areas of concern, or bring your questions to the sectional and we will answer them next Monday. I need to think about that sectional a bit more and will send another email later this week with what I plan to cover.

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Hello Everyone,

Thanks for a fun and productive rehearsal last night. I really enjoyed making music with you all.
Our intonation singing a chromatic scale during warm ups was much improved this week – great job with that!
We did some work singing in circles to reinforce everyone’s understanding of their own part and then some mixed formations to help everyone better hear each other’s parts and how their part fit into the whole.

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Hello Everyone,

Woohoo! Tonight’s rehearsal was what I think of as a ‘cram and jam!’ We didn’t cover many expressive elements but we did make progress on pitches and rhythms, understanding the relationship of one part to another, and working through some intonation challenges. I know it was a bit of a slog, but thank you for hanging in there as we laid the groundwork for all of the expressive singing we will accomplish together in the months to come.

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Hello Everyone!

Great work at rehearsal everyone! It is thrilling that we are making such great progress on our repertoire so early in our season and that our intonation work is helping us to listen more effectively as we sing (avoiding the dreaded ‘pitch drift’!)

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Hello Everyone,

Thanks for a lovely rehearsal last night!

We will continue to work on finding our optimum seating arrangement so that everyone can hear, see, and enjoy the rehearsal. Just look for your seat by finding the card with the part that you sing. I hope that you can hear the other parts well enough to tune while still hearing your own part as needed while we learn pitches and rhythms. I think I discovered the source of our sound system issue (short in the mic cord) and we are working on solutions.

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Hello Everyone,

This email will be longer than usual – thanks in advance for reading to the end! Subsequent AD emails following rehearsals will not be this lengthy – but there is a fair amount to cover at the beginning. So I recommend that you pour a beverage and read on!

Thanks for a wonderful rehearsal last night! It was so much fun to dig into our music and wow – what a gorgeous sound we have to work with as our starting off point!!! I am so looking forward to the musical journey we will experience together this season and am beyond grateful to be a part of our music-making!

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Hello Everyone,

It was wonderful to see you at our first rehearsal. I am only sorry that I have to wait two weeks to see you and hear you sing again!

I really enjoyed singing through our Songs of Celestial Spheres repertoire and look forward to digging into each one of these wonderful pieces with all of you. There were already moments of beauty even though we have just begun!

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Hello Everyone,

I did not want to turn in tonight before telling you all how very much I loved making music with you this afternoon. I cherished every single second of our concert and hope that you did, too.

I also hope that you feel accomplished and fulfilled by our shared experience. I think it was a grand re-entry into in-person performances! It was truly a lovely concert and the people who spoke to me felt very moved and connected to what we were sharing.

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Hello Everyone,

Happy Spring Concert Eve!

I had a fabulous two days in Charlotte at NC All State Chorus – I learned so much and had a wonderful time listening to and being inspired by the music-making of over 500 high school singers and their super smart/talented clinicians. I was choir manager for the SATB chorus led by Dr. Andrew Minear from Orlando, Florida with Gwen Hall accompanying – I absorbed all of it like a sponge…(a masked and distanced sponge!)

Preparing for our concert tomorrow, when I got home this evening I listened to the recording of our Thursday night rehearsal. I felt really great on my drive home on Thursday but after listening carefully I feel even better about tomorrow. I might be too excited to sleep tonight!

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Hello Everyone,

Wow! We sure did work hard tonight – I had a fabulous time with you all. We have wonderful music to share on Sunday and I am so looking forward to our concert.

Thanks to everyone for all you have contributed to help us get where we are.

I’m headed out to Charlotte in the wee hours tomorrow morning for NC High School All State Chorus so probably won’t have time to listen to our rehearsal recording before i get home on Saturday night. But, don’t expect extensive notes. There will be a few things we can turn our attention to when we meet on Sunday at 1:30 but we are ready for our concert (and I am VERY happy and hope that you are, too)!

Hugs all around,
Laura

P.S.  Sorry I caused confusion! Our call is 2:30 not 1:30 on Sunday. Clearly, I just wanted to hang out with you for an extra hour! I will look forward to seeing you at 2:30.
Thanks again for a beautiful rehearsal last night.
Thanks also to those who alerted me to my mistake…takes a village!

🙂 Laura

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for all of your wonderful work at our rehearsal tonight. 3 hours is a loooooooong rehearsal and I appreciate all of your effort. I know your arms got a workout holding your folders.

We have just a few polishing details to go – guest musicians will join us on Thursday – looking forward to hearing them! After rehearsal, we decided that the guest musicians will be on the same side as Deb…so soloists and body percussionists, you will have all of the space to my right.

Please thank Karla for our beautiful program layout and printing and Amy for her proofreading.The program looks gorgeous – THANK YOU! Feels fabulous to hold it in my hand! Karla also posted the color version on our website. 🙂

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Hello Everyone,

Such an exciting time for WVC with 2 more rehearsals to work out performance logistics and polish before we have our Concert. I look forward to seeing everyone at First Presbyterian Church in Durham for our rehearsals on Monday 4/25 and Thursday 4/28.

Regarding our May 9th picnic:
Information from Wendy:
Here is the sign up genius link for the picnic:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4EAFAB2EA2F9C07-listening

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Hello Everyone,

We accomplished a lot of really good work last night – it is a pleasure to make music with you all. I left rehearsal very happy and I hope that you did, too. Yay us!

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Hello Everyone,

Great work tonight! We really made a lot of progress (and gave Deb goose bumps!) Woo hoo!

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