AD Music Notes

Hello Everyone,

I hope that you are and your families are all doing well.

I am sorry that we were not able to share our music with the community yesterday. I do look forward to the day when we are singing all of our amazing music again. One day we will! I spent the day with “I Started Out Singing” running through my mind. Luckily, it wasn’t “Joy” or I probably would have had to run up and down the street a zillion times yelling “I am wild, I am wild!” That might have caused a neighborhood stir!

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Hello Everyone,

I have missed us (again) this week! I hope that you all are as well as can be in these challenging times.

I admit that I am sad that this is our tech week for our canceled concert on Saturday and that we are not together. But, then I remind myself that on that happy day when we are singing together again, our connection will be powerful, our music beautiful, our laughter sweet, and our sisterhood strong.

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Hello Everyone,

I forgot to include in yesterday’s email this virtual choir opportunity so here it is, if you are interested – Musical Solidarity Project/Covid-19.

https://www.nofaryacobi.com/virtualverdichoir-covid-19

I plan to submit a recording. I had the good fortune of singing Va Pensiero in the Verona Arena as part of the mass choir sing at the closing of the Verona International Days of Choral Music Festival….a glorious experience. On the closing day of the festival, choir singers from all over the world gathered and paraded through town and then sang Va Pensiero together once we were inside the arena. Magical!

The deadline for video submissions is April 30th.

Hope today is a good one for you.

Hugs (from afar),
Laura

Hello Everyone,

I have missed us (again) this week! I hope that you all are as well as can be in these challenging times.

Hooray for our slate of newly elected board members – Kay, Marsha, Brenda, and Jasmine I know that we will all benefit greatly from their leadership and dedication and that we are all looking forward to everything that they will offer WVC. Yay us!

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Hello Everyone,

I have missed us this week!

Thank you, Kay for our announcements last night. What a wonderful slate of board candidates! Thank you for all of the work you continue to do, even as we face these challenging times.

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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.

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Hello Everyone,

I hope that you are all weathering this storm and the challenges that face us daily. I think about WVC and miss you all so much. I have been using my time at home to research repertoire and plan our future concerts so your voices have been in my ears all this past week – a very pleasant sound!

I do want to let you know that I made the decision to delay the repertoire I had planned for our January 2021 concert and have pushed it to January 2022. I know that personally I will need to fill my soul with music that will lift my spirits – and the same might be true for you, as well. The multi-movement anchor piece I had planned for that concert, Anne Frank: A Living Voice, is emotionally challenging in even the easiest of times. It is undoubtedly an extraordinary piece but, at least for me, I would like some distance from our present circumstances before undertaking it. The other pieces I have planned for that concert are also uniquely compelling and I look forward to working on them with you. Several weeks ago I had a long phone conversation Linda Tutas Haugen (composer of the Anne Frank piece) and she is excited and ready to meet with us (probably via Skype or Zoom) when the time comes. If you haven’t already met Linda, she is really interesting and fun and it will be a treat for us to hear from her.

So then what are we going to sing in the fall? I have chosen a delightful program (at least I think so!) of angel music. It will challenge, uplift, and engage us…and I can’t wait for us to sing together again! When I am closer to finalizing the program, I will share it with you so that we will all have something musical to look forward to in the fall. Finalizing repertoire takes time – but I did enough work already so that we could reword/update our grant proposals with the new concert theme in mind (thanks to Rah for leading the grant writing and to Amy G. for her editing work, along with insightful advice and help from Kay and Karla).

I guess all of this is to say that while we are regretfully on hold for now in regard to our music rehearsals, WVC continues to move forward with the anticipation of better times ahead. We continue to work and to plan so that we will be ready to sing when the time comes.

Meanwhile, have you been singing with Jodie O’Regen? Let’s keep our voices moving! http://www.songaweekbyjodie.com

The most fun I have had singing this week has been with Cheryl Porter. She is one of my absolute favorite vocal coaches. If you have not already, please, please, please, learn this exercise and sing it, and then sing it some more. It is so much fun! I can’t help but smile the whole time I am singing. And please don’t sit/stand still! Throw in some choreography! https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1432019343647482

I will continue to send weekly emails but please know that I think of us everyday.

Love and Hugs (from afar),
Laura

Hello Everyone,

It’s a Monday night and I am missing you and our music already. I hope that everyone is managing in these challenging times.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 8 PM there is an EPIC Social Distan-Sing event hosted by Choir! Choir! Choir! I plan to sing my heart out. Have fun!

https://www.facebook.com/events/249447186075694/

I found a wonderful resource of vocal exercises, songs, and sight reading shared by Jodie O’Regen. I had a great time perusing her site this afternoon. There is enough material there to keep us singing and having fun for 10 weeks and beyond. Be sure to explore all of her projects. She offers everything for free.

http://www.songaweekbyjodie.com

Rachel shared a fun link to Chrome Music Lab on our Sisters of WVC Facebook page – check it out! My personal favorite was the Kandinsky exercise.

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments

There is always the old standby https://www.musictheory.net for anyone who wants to learn more about the structure of music. This website is challenging and fun with lessons and exercises.

Be well, my sisters in song.

LJ

Hello Everyone,

I know that I speak for everyone in sending the love of our sisterhood to Elisabeth, Meg, and their family. Please know that we are with you with our whole hearts and spirits.

I am deeply grateful for the leadership of the WVC board. I know that in canceling our season, we are making the best decision possible in doing our part for one another and for our community as we do all that we can to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

I grieve the loss of our music making and face-to-face sisterhood as we navigate these uncharted waters. We choose to be choral musicians because our souls are filled when we join our voices with one another, bringing meaning to our lives and beauty to our world. We will lose this for a time, but not forever. I look forward to the day when we can freely embrace and luxuriate in the sound our communal singing. Won’t that be a wonderful day?

In the meantime, my head is filled with all of the ways that we can stay connected to one another, keep our voices moving, and keep our musical growth nourished. Even though our season has officially ended, our sisterhood is strong and our need for connection and music in our lives is greater than ever.

I will need a bit of time to wrap my head around things, but be on the lookout for emails from me regarding activities I hope to organize via online platforms. The choral world is buzzing with ideas of how to keep our art alive without face-to-face meetings. I am avidly reading blogs and Facebook threads on this subject and ACDA has already posted some resources to consider.

Please know that I absolutely plan on us rehearsing and performing the repertoire on which we are currently working for a future season. We had just arrived at the wonderful place of mastering the basics and moving into the realm of emotional connection which is such a fulfilling aspect of our music making. We can’t give that up! It won’t be our fall semester, but will potentially be our rep for spring 2021 or spring 2022.

Please know that WVC has become a very special part of my life and that I will do all in my power to offer us musical sustenance in the days ahead.

Be well, my musical friends.

With love and hugs (from afar),
Laura

Hello Everyone,

I enjoyed being back with you last night – I missed you last week, but as I said, I know that you were in very capable hands.

Last night was a good indication of the considerable work we have accomplished and of our musical path forward. If you missed rehearsal (we missed you!) we sang all of our repertoire in concert order. I hope that if at this point you feel insecure about pitches or rhythms, you will work individually (practice files are on our website), with your section leader, or ask Deb or me for help. At this point, we need to focus our rehearsal time together on expressive elements and aspects of ensemble as much as possible. It is difficult to do that if singers (you OR your neighbor) are struggling with pitch and/or rhythm. Several of you specifically spoke with me about Song of Miriam m. 55 – we will tackle that together. Please realize that we will not sing through pieces for the next several weeks as we will need to prioritize our work on specific sections in order for us to make musical progress. I encourage you to individually sing with our practice file recordings if singing through pieces multiples times is helpful for you.

Please send your The Imaginary Garden solo audition recordings to Laura D. by 3/16. She will organize them by assigning each recording a number and then will send those recordings to me so that I can choose a soloist. If you need help recording your audition, please let Laura D, know and she will help you. Thanks, Laura!

Also, please have The Birds’ Lullaby memorized by 3/23/20, if at all possible. It is the only piece that you will need to memorize for this concert.

Here is a link to our Found Poems and other information from our retreat. WVC Spring 2020

Virginia shared a link with me regarding intervals that you might find useful. Thanks, Virginia!

https://www.earmaster.com/products/free-tools/interval-song-chart-generator.html

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Hello Everyone,

Thanks for a wonderful rehearsal tonight. I think of these rehearsals as accomplishing all of the whats and whens…what is my note and when do I sing it?!? I do think that with the pieces we rehearsed tonight we are ready to continue on our artistic journey, answering the hows and whys. It is in answering how and why questions we are able to tap into our creative selves, which I think can be deeply fulfilling. This is where we really think about the meaning of the text and how it is communicated with the musical phrase through diction (vowels and consonants!), articulation, phrasing, and dynamics. We also work on balance and blend, always mindful of our intonation. We can explore different tone colors according to what is asked of us for each piece or section of a piece. So much to look forward to!

If you feel unsure about any of your pitches and rhythms of the pieces we rehearsed tonight, please take a few moments to listen to your practice tracks (on our website). Also, I especially recommend listening to performance recordings (on our website) of the pieces where the accompaniment is quite complex – Moon Goddess and In the Lavender Stillness of Dawn both fit that description.

Jasmine asked about the vowel for “fury.” If you are familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet, here is the IPA spelling of fury: [fjˈʊ͡əɹɪ]. If you are not, no worries. We will work on it together. We need to work on lots of vowels!

Just a reminder – upcoming 6:45-7:25 PM sectional rehearsals are 3/9/20 for S1 and S2 and 3/16/20 for A1 and A2.

If you missed tonight’s rehearsal or need to take specific notes in your score, below is what I had in my notes for tonight. Obviously, we only scratched the surface with diction, acticulation, and dynamics but we made great progress on pitches and rhythms. Yay us! read more…

Hello Everyone,

Good work last night! Thank you again for my beautiful birthday flowers (and birds!) and thoughtful card (I loved reading your messages) and birthday singing (so happy to share with my February sisters).

Below are my rehearsal notes. In addition, here are a few things to think about:

• Each time we begin a phrase, it is important to audiate the pitch (hear it in your head) before phonating. This will definitely improve the clarity of our sound. Using a tuner is a helpful tool in developing accuracy.
• Some consonants have pitch – voiced consonants – and they should sound on the pitch of the following vowel. As Deb noted, the inaccurate pitch at the beginning of one of the phrases was due to singers phonating the W on a pitch below the target pitch and then sliding up. We definitely want to avoid that. Here is a fun link – check it out! Lawless English.
• Joy is so far our biggest challenge. I recommend that you listen to the performance recording of this piece (on our website!) and the practice files (on our website!) so that you can hear all of the parts. It will be a joyous sound when we have this one polished.
• Know where the melody is and how your part relates – if your part supports the melody, make sure that you (and others!) can always hear the melody. This is especially true in The Imaginary Garden. 
• I encourage you to vocally lead “without proving or provoking.” Choral director Dave Fryling says this a lot – I agree.
• Take stock of how loudly you sing. If you are naturally blessed with a robust voice, listen to yourself such that you know that you are not oversinging your neighbors and that you can hear the other parts. In a chorus, we should all bring our voices to the ensemble – otherwise, we are a room full of soloists – not an optimal choral sound.
• Sing in front of a mirror. Are your vowels round? Are you overextending your jaw on open vowels (overextending can cause tension in the tongue and jaw and should be avoided)? Does your face reflect the meaning of the text? You can also use our concert videos to see how you are doing.
• Speaking of videos, keep sharing on social media!

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Hello Everyone,

Such fun at rehearsal! Thank you for the beautiful flowers and birthday song – it was the loveliest rendition I heard, for sure!

I think our sectionals paid off – we accomplished a great deal tonight. I did want to pass on Gwen Hall’s compliments. She said that she was thrilled when she watched our video of I Sing That My Voice May Be Heard. Gwen really appreciated our phrasing, dynamics, intonation…all of it. Sean Ivory, composer of The Peace of Wild Things, was the first to write us a nice compliment regarding our Youtube post. Also, people wrote very nice comments on the concert videos I shared on social media. Some of my friends who couldn’t travel to see the concert in person were thrilled with the opportunity to hear us sing (especially my sister and my mother). I hope that if you are on social media, you will also consider sharing – it helps us to share with a wider audience the music we are making.

Below is information on tuners. Let me know if you have questions.

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Hello Everyone,

What an exciting evening, sight reading our music together! I really enjoyed hearing where we are now and imagining (joyfully!) where we will be in April. I am looking forward to us growing together through the musical (and poetic) challenges before us. Hooray to Deb who played a zillion notes last night. Hooray to our altos who are our beautiful and strong foundation (even when singing on top of the staff), hooray to our mezzos who are our gorgeous glue, and hooray to our sopranos who soar and sparkle in the stratosphere.

A few points of review from last night (and for those who were absent):

• Everyone received a sheet indicating the part divisi for each piece. Please double check to make sure that you are learning the correct part. If you were absent, I have attached it. If you are unsure of what part to sing in the divisi, please ask your section leader.
• Karla has posted practice files (and recordings!) on the WVC website for all music except the Chamber Choir pieces (recordings only). Especially helpful are the recordings of the pieces for which there are additional instruments – specifically Moon Goddess because no matter how wonderful Deb is, she cannot play all of the 4-hand piano accompaniment, much less the percussion parts.
• Chamber Choir auditions will be at 9:30 PM on 2/3/20. The audition PDF (please print it for auditions) is posted under our practice tracks and links to recordings of the three movements we are singing are also on the website. As I said last night, the audition will call for singers who can independently sing close harmonies with accuracy and minimal vibrato. Each of the three movements is unique and I encourage you to listen to all three, although we will only sing a section of the second movement for our audition. Please be prepared to sing in small ensembles, one voice to a part.
• I encourage you to read the poems when you practice each piece or to review them during rehearsal. This concert repertoire is unique in that all of the music is set to preexisting poems – none of the composers also wrote the lyrics. And although this concert celebrates music and poems composed by women, that is not our theme. Before I share my thoughts in regard to the theme, however, I want to give you the chance to discover and create your own thematic journey. We’ll dive more deeply into this at our retreat as well as do a ton of singing (and eating…and sisterhood).
• For the next few rehearsals we will begin at our regular time – 7:30 PM – working in sectionals before coming together in our regular space at the midpoint of our rehearsal to work on expressive details. Because we are challenged with five fewer rehearsals this spring, we need to work efficiently to accomplish our pitches and rhythms so that we can move forward with bringing our music to life with expressive details. We will meet in 3-part divisi this coming week – altos (LJ and Deb) in our regular space, mezzos (Kay) in the choir room across the street, and sopranos (Laura D) in the sanctuary across the street.
• I spoke last night about individual musical accountability, an essential aspect of our sisterhood. All singers need to sing accurate pitches and rhythms (after a reasonable amount of time to get it learned!) and also sing at a volume level that allows for dynamic contrasts and that blends with the chorus, allowing other singers to hear themselves and the rest of the chorus. If you need help, please ask! There are practice tracks and recordings on our website, and our section leaders, Deb, and I are all ready and eager to assist. I suggest that during rehearsal, if you experience a challenge, mark it in your music and make your section leader aware.
• I am hopeful that we will sing the majority of April’s concert in mixed formation – we will spend some time rehearsing in sections so that we can most efficiently accomplish pitches and rhythms.

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Dear All,

I look forward to seeing those of you who can make it to the listening party tomorrow evening at Shelley’s. In case I don’t see you, I wanted you to know how much I loved our concert yesterday and am ever grateful for the opportunity to make music with WVC. I heard many positive remarks afterward (I hope that you did, too!) but several I especially wanted to share:

“I felt joy coming from everywhere – it made me happy to see how much they were enjoying singing.”

“This was my first WVC concert and I never want to miss another.”

“I needed this music today. I cried almost the whole concert at the beauty and wonder of it all.”

I hope that we will all remember to celebrate the many wonderfully musical aspects of our performance without dwelling unduly on any little mud puddles we may have experienced.

I am most definitely celebrating our music and US!

Cheers!

LJ

Hello All,

It’s concert week! Our inboxes are busy with ALL the things. Please forgive one more email.

I spent most of today listening to the rehearsal recording that I made at our tech rehearsal last night. If you would like to listen, the files are here: WVC Rehearsal Recordings. We did not have a single run through of Nada Te Turbe so I included two snapshots. I hope that if you listen, you will find as many moments to celebrate as did I! We will tighten a few loose ends on Thursday. I will have a prioritized list ready for us to work through.

We are ready to share a very beautiful and compelling concert on Saturday and I am so looking forward to it. We will polish up details on Thursday but I want you to know that I feel excited and ready and Thursday night will not be a cram and jam session. Rather, we will have fun working out those few last details. At the end of rehearsal we will know that we are as ready as humanly possible. At the end of our rehearsal on Thursday, I know that we will leave feeling proud and accomplished – ready to share all the music we have together brought to life.

You already received notes earlier today from Ann (thank you!). Below are notes from Deb, Laura D. and Kay – I asked them to help with some feedback and they have given us details that we can think about and rehearse on Thursday. Thank you for your insight!

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Hello All,

I am so looking forward to our rehearsal tomorrow evening. I wish us ALL the best as I know we are ready to have a productive, enjoyable, and exciting rehearsal. All of our guest musicians will be with us and we will be in our performance venue…all of our dedicated efforts coming together to create beautiful and compelling music with one another as we prepare to share with our family, friends, and community.

Below are the repertoire connections that were shared with me. If I missed yours in the email chains, – apologies! Send it to me and I will forward it on to everyone (let me know if you want to share with your name attached or prefer to share anonymously). If you still want to share after tomorrow evening’s rehearsal, that’s fine, too. I will keep collecting and keep sharing.

See you tomorrow. Three hours is a very long rehearsal so please know that I already appreciate the dedication you will bring. I hope that we will have so much fun that the time will fly…fly…fly away….

LJ

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Hello Everyone,

Happy New Year!

I have missed you/us and I am very much looking forward to our Monday rehearsal.

Reflecting on our last rehearsal, we accomplished the musical flow of our concert with many wonderfully artistic moments. Our biggest challenge was that our intonation was not as good as it had been for our two earlier December rehearsals. I decided to not stress over it because it could have been due to any number of factors including fatigue, illness, or members absent. I’m hoping that we return to WVC with spirits and bodies renewed!

On a logistical note, please let Meg or me know if you are not planning to return to WVC after our concert as we are planning auditions now. Thank you to those who have already shared this information.

While we may sing through all of our repertoire on Monday evening, please do not be distressed if we do not have time to cover it all. We will sing through all of it on our two upcoming technical rehearsals. Please remember the very helpful notes that Deb gave us to think about and review those if you have not already.

Our priorities for Monday night will be:

• My People Are Rising – Carol Barnett: review all
• The Peace of Wild Things – Sean Ivory: review all, especially singing mm. 13-24 without pitch drift. We will tune to the Bs, Ds, and F#s, especially occuring in the S2 and A1 parts. (S2s, please review m. 21, Bb to G). We will also focus on reviewing mm. 51-74.
• Faith is the Bird – Elizabeth Alexander: mm. 22-43. S1s, please note the Ab and A in mm. 27 and 40.
• Now Let Me Fly – Stacey V. Gibbs: review all
• The Valley – arr. Beth Hanson: review all

Our other consideration, as we have time, will be to see if we are able to successfully sing in mixed formation for:
A Path to Each Other (We know that we can!)
I Sing That My Voice May Be Heard
1941
Swing Low
Faith is the Bird

I look forward to greeting you all with a joyous Happy New Year in person on Monday!

Cheers!
Laura

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for a wonderful rehearsal Monday evening. Our ongoing challenge is intonation but, with that said, there were many beautiful aspects of our rehearsal. We sang through our repertoire with a high level of attention to expressive details – dynamics, phrasing, articulation, tempos – much to celebrate! There were few missteps in terms of entrances and releases and we can clarify those at our next rehearsal in case I am not being clear.

When I left rehearsal I received news about the sudden passing of a friend, so Andrew and I are traveling to be with his family and attend his funeral.

I will send detailed notes when I return from my travels. In the meantime, Deb took wonderful notes while we were singing our a cappella pieces. Thanks, Deb!!

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Hello Everyone,

Hooray! What a marvelous rehearsal tonight. I loved it! I hope that you did, too. Our detailed work is coming together in a very musically powerful way.

Optional homework: I would love to know a particular place in our music to which you feel deeply connected. You can also tell me why it is meaningful to you, but it is fine if you prefer to keep that private. I would like to note your name in my score so that I can feel that connection during our performance. If you want to share this with me, please email. I have attached my program notes that I shared with you in rehearsal.

Thank you, Laura D., for playing your drum and for organizing the solo auditions. After I hear the recordings I will make a decision as quickly as possible and Laura D. and I will notify those auditioning with the results.

Thanks to everyone working on all of the very important details as we approach our performance. I am looking forward to sharing our music with our friends, family, and community.

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