It's Valentine's Day today, but yesterday, I celebrated love with my choir. I love my choir! Every Tuesday is heaven with you. My warm-up was Elvis's Can't Help Falling in Love and then All Shook Up for us to twist and sing with. We swayed and stretched, loosened up our bodies, and sang along with Elvis. Any time you're feeling a little down, put on some Elvis and sing and dance until you're feeling better.
The Wishin' and Hopin' small group met at 6:30 and did great! Loosen up and have fun with this song. It's funny and sweet and has a serious side too. Don't feel embarrassed to sing those words. Here's the message: Make your dreams come true; don't just lie there wishing and praying for things to happen.
1. City of Stars: There's an optional solo, but I'm not choosing that option. I love how our tenor and bass sections sound together. We haven't had such a big, beautiful group in a long time. Start of soft and mysterious, wistful. We get strong on pages 6 and 7. Bottom of page 7 where it says Freely: this means you need to watch me. I will conduct each word, each note. We slow down and it's the whole group, so you need to move with me. Same thing happens on page 8 for the Sopranos and Altos under Freely. It's easier for you because it's an ending too, and you're used to doing that for me with endings, watch for each note.
2. Rewrite the Stars: I love this one so much! And, we had a goosebump moment. We got a perfect sound at 19, page 3. Tenors and Basses came in perfectly on "What if we" and the sound of those chords when everyone sings in "Re-write" OMG. It was beautiful. Let's just do that pefectly each time we sing the beginning of the chorurs: What if we rewrite the stars (19)? and No one can rewrite the stars (57) and then How do we rewrite the stars (84)? Everything else will fall into place. We do need soloists for this. Blair and Melinda each tried both of them and I need backups for them too. These solos are in the same range, so can be done by women or men in any combination. Please consider singing one of these solos. Also, the last page, the ending is a little duet, a soft ending. This is such a hopeful piece, but the ending suggests that some dreams don't come true, no matter how much we wish for them.
3. Joseph: One More Angel and Song of the King! So, I hope my Elvis warm-ups inspired us. Song of the King is a little crazy. There's a big solo, and I hope we have an Elvis hiding in the tenor and bass section. There is an option for a small group to sing it, though, if that works. The bop-shu-wa-du-wa's are easier than they look! So good! Tenors, watch out: SAT is written all together in the treble clef. The section at 155 is also pretty easy, so nice to sing! We reveiewed One More Angel from last week and then we sang the whole thing from the beginning to page 20! Go, go Joseph! My favourite line comes in One More Angel "Joseph, the things that you stood for, like love and peace, never die" and we sing it three times :-)
4. Star Canon: New song! This is super-sweet and should be pretty easy too. This will be our opening song. There's Pachelbel's Canon, and there's the children's rhyme, Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. Have you ever wished on a star? Wish Upon a Star is our theme. This arrangement is written in two parts in the treble clef. So, we'll need to add in the tenors and basses down an octave here and there. Basically, Part l is Soprano with Tenors sometimes, and Part ll is Alto with Basses sometimes. At the end, there's an extra line on top. That will be Tenors and Basses.
We talked about:
My birthday and Lauren's birthday. We both turned 60 this year! Jane had cakes for us. Yum! Thank you!
Chinese (Lunar) New Year. Happy New Year to all who celebrate! Stanley and Mona brought sweets for us. Year of the Dragon is supposed to be very good, lucky. It's funny, my year 1964 was a year of the dragon, but my birthday fell before the new year, so I'm technically a rabbit but I have a lot of dragon qualities. This should be a good year for me and Lauren, so for the choir too.
Nella Fantasia: The first section is coming up next week, and all the sopranos will sing in Italian, and everyone else sings ooos. There's a cheat sheet with help on the Italian pronunciation on the website.
Choir!Choir!Choir! concert at RHCPA on March 7th. We have 12 tickets, of which 9 are available. Please bring $50 to give to Melinda in the next two weeks. I've set up an Event on the website where you can sign up. We will plan to get together for dinner before the show, so set aside the whole evening. It's a Thursday, so I'll have to miss My Singing Night.
Next week, Tuesday, February 20th:
6:30 Night of Stars Small Group
- Joseph: Song of the King and Close Every Door
- Nella Fantasia
- Rewrite the Stars
- Star Canon
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| Year of the Dragon: Lucky for us! |
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