Welcome


Welcome to Renate's Baton. This blog is mostly for and about my choir, The York Region Community Choir.

But, While I'm holding the baton, I'm in charge. So, if I want to talk about other parts of my life, I will. :)

The choir itself is a community and I'm discovering that we have a lot in common with one another besides our love of music and singing.

When I go off on a tangent, there is always a crowd coming along. Join us!

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Feb.9 Rehearsal Review- Family Day we're meeting.

At break, we listened to 2 of the recordings made by the sound guy, Doug Jarvie, at our concert in December. Some people didn't think Welcome, Welcome Winter was us! It was so, so good! You'll Never Walk Alone was spectacular! There will be links to these recordings on our website soon. Be sure to listen to them! There's something special about hearing us without any distractions. The blending is awesome. We sound crazy good!

6:30 Musical Medley was successful, went through Razzle Dazzle (watch out for little rests that make the preceding words short, kind of clipped and crisp- in fact/ you're just/) and started Dancing Queen -fun for the first sopranos!

We warmed up with Monday, Monday. We discovered that a number of us didn't know it and some had forgotten, so we worked on it quite a bit. Now it's better! I love when you sing Fine-Fine-Fine Yeah! Magic wand. Maybe go over the words in the every other day of the week section, you can find me...tongue twisters

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows is  one of my favourites. I love how Sapphire's Fantaisie Impromptu has the melody in it! Wait 'till you hear her play that one! Wow! We will also wow the audience with this song. It's really cool. We just got to the really cool part. We went through all the parts on pages 3 &4. I wonder if we can snap, or if we can have someone snap? Kevin Jaques?

Do Wah Diddy Diddy was better this time. My plan went really well, and the back-and-forth on pages 8 and 9 works even better with the back-and-forth in the other sections. (I forgot to post the plan! Here it is: Page 6, 31-39 is Women only and Page 8, 51-59 is Men only) There's clapping marked at the end on Page 11. I wonder if we can do it, pass your binder to someone or tuck it under your arm? Something to think about.

All I Have to Do is Dream is so pretty and sweet! This will be one of those tunes that lots of audience members will be humming all the way home. Maybe you find yourself singing it during the week? Very catchy. The key is to keep it smooth and easy and we'll work some more on dynamics. The ending is soft.

We had an interesting experience with Hallelujah. It didn't download onto my iPad, or sync, or something. So we didn't have the accompaniment. Trix eventually found it on her phone, when we were done. We know this song so well, we did it beautifully without accompaniment! It sounded good, too! Now we're thinking of how to incorporate an a cappella bit into the song!

I also messed up with the recording of You Raise Me Up, but Trix found a version on her phone. We did great! Stanley's solo was partly a duet, with Anne Marie's voice singing the soprano part on the recording! It was fine.

We'll be very, very happy when Sapphire is back, but we're doing really well without her thanks to all the recordings and Anne Marie's help on the keyboard!

Next Monday is Family Day. If you have plans for the evening, that's understandable. We'll be working on our stuff, and I'll be sure to write down everything we do so you can catch up. There are lots of good recordings up of your parts of many of our songs. They really help!

We won't start at 6:30, but can the Musical Medley people come at 7:00 so we can do some more of Dancing Queen?

  1. Another Op'nin'
  2. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows (the doo-doo section)
  3. On Eagle's Wings
  4. Shenandoah
  5. This Little Light of Mine






No comments:

Post a Comment