I'm invigorated, exhilarated, and excited! Last night was so good!
We did a lot of work but also had a lot of fun. The men's section is getting nice and strong, so much that Melinda's thinking of moving back to Alto.
We started with a physical warm-up focused on relaxing, and enhanced by some relaxing music (Jim Brickman's cover of Sailing from his album, Soothe Sailing). I think I'll continue to play a piece like that for the physical warm-up, because a bonus is that it keeps it to 3 minutes or so. Then we did the same vocal exercises as we did last week. Warm-ups are important but sometimes I get carried away.
1. In Our Town in December is going to be strong this year. In the past, we've had solos in several places. It was a soft, story-telling piece. But, this year I want it to be one of the bigger songs, and people will recognize it from past concerts. We'll have everyone singing most of the time. But, I'm thinking of having men only sing at 24 and then women only at 32, SA. Everyone would be together again at the pick-up to bar 40 (Singing "Peace on Earth"). Remember Sopranos are on Part 1 and all others are on Part 2. The ending is wishy-washy, so we're adding an extra "in our town", which we will improvise.
2. One Voice: We sang from 31 to the end, learning the ba-ba section and the special "one, one, one, one voice section. It was a little challenging getting from there to 39. Donna has a solution, to add a ritardando on the accompaniment before "Just". I can cut you off for a clear "s" sound on voice too. We have one more page to learn, and then there are the solos to work out. We're doing really well on this!
3. Shine Hanukkah fits our theme of Holiday Lights beautifully and it's fun too. On the sheet music, at bar 5, it says that the first verse should be SA and second verse SAB. But, I want to have the tenors and basses on verse one, especially strong on the words "You must bow to only me.". Then, when all the Israelites speak, in the second verse, everybody sings. There's a special top line on the last page, called Descant, for a small group. We had the first row Sopranos on that, firsts and seconds dividing the two parts. It's got to be strong on beat one, because everyone else comes in on the and of one. You've got to push that.
4. Winter Song We've got a big chunk of this under our belts too. We can sing from 43 to 66. I love how we ended on my favourite part "inside my arms" (you're not where you belong: inside my arms.). Next time, you'll see we can sing from the beginning to 66. We'll review those oohs. You get to sing them twice, so it'll be worth it. We had to identify 3 people for the treble group, which sings three times, actually. We saw 59 and 69, but they first show up at 35. At bar 70, the treble group does a fancy bit that's a lot like the fancy repeat bit of Walking on Sunshine. Only, this time, it's going to be super easy for everyone, and only the treble group has to worry about when to start and when to stop. Lauren, Kit, and Marlene have volunteered for this special part. (the word I was searching for last night was "Tribute", like Katniss) It looks like we have recordings for all the parts, including those solos. If anyone has a violinist and a cellist in their family or circle of friends, the sheet music includes parts for those. How cool would that be? We've had a cellist play with us before.
5. Christmas Waltz: We just sang through once as an introduction. This is new to everyone except Blair, who has sung it with another choir. It's quite a new feel for us, this jazzy waltzing. It's not a very common Christmas melody, but some of us know it from the Carpenters' version. A number of crooners have sung it. Here's Frank Sinatra:
We have parts recorded for this and they're on the website. Thank you to Tabatha!
There's also this video that Blair mentioned, from Alfred Music, that has a choir singing and follows the score.
- Shine Hanukkah
- Winter Song
- Christmas Waltz
- One Voice
- Breath of Heaven
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