YRCC 2024 Rehearsal Review September 17th

September 17, the moon was full, beautiful. It was in fact a special moon, because it was the moon of the Mid Autumn Festival, also called the Moon Festival. It's a big harvest festival, like Thanksgiving, in China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Philippines. I want to wish our friends Stanley and Mona and their families a very happy Mid Autumn Festival and days as sweet as moon cakes and as bright as the full moon. And, of course, I extend my wishes to everyone celebrating.

We had a very successful and satisfying rehearsal! 

We started with another fun warm-up, stretching, moving, clapping and singing along to a recording of the Mamas and the Papas' Monday, Monday.  It's a song we sang a lot when we were meeting on Mondays. There are easy harmonies in the ba-das so anyone can sing along. (btw, on Thursday, My Sing-along Café theme will be days of the week, so we will singing this song for sure! Remember to come at our new early start time: 7 o'clock)

1. Peace on This Silent Night: I thought this would be a fast review, but in fact lots of you hadn't sung this before. Still, you learned it very quickly! There are 2 parts and Soprano and Tenor are on Part l and Alto and Bass are Part ll. However, only the Basses start at the beginning at bar 11 and only Sopranos start at bar 19. Everybody is in at bar 23. At 67, it's soft and only Sopranos on Part l, so Tenors can join Part ll there singing Silent Night softly. Tenors go back to Part l at bar 91, strongly. Everyone needs to watch me to stay together. Pay close attention to beat 1 especially, but watch for every beat on page 11. 

2. Song for a Winter's Night: We spent time on pages 9, 10, and 11 and 12 which are the only pages the whole choir sings. Pages 1-9 are 2 solos and we're dropping all of the oohs. Starting from the very end, the mm on page 12, we learned parts, including the top of page 10 where we used those ooh notes to sing the words that only the Altos were given. We added a note to create an ending, so we move on the word drif-ting. It's going to be so beautiful! 

3. When You Belive: We walked through the song looking at the theme and noticing that we will be singing in Hebrew! I especially love that we get to sing very loudly: "I will sing! I will sing! I will sing!" a couple of times. Singing is our expression of joy and gratitude for all of the wonders in our lives. "Who knows what miracles you can achieve? When you believe, somehow you will." We make our own dreams come true, believing in ourselves and in the support we get from our families and communities. Expressing our wishes through prayer or song or wish lists (letters to Santa) helps us to manifest them. This is going to be a big, beautiful, powerful song. If you have some time, please work on this at home. There are links to recordings of your parts on the website. 

Here's a screenshot of the recordings page of our website. You can see that When You Belive has links for each part and then a recording of a choir singing our arrangement beautifully. The only difference will be that Mona and Stanley will sing solos at the beginning (will need back-up soloists). 

4. Your Song: Last tweek we learned the Segno (pg 5/6) and this time we learned the Coda (pg 10/11) so we can sing through from the Segno to the end for the second time through. I love the Coda! It's so dramatic. Remember to always watch at the endings of any song we sing. This one has changes in tempo and dynamics, so you'll definitely have to watch me. I found a recording of an excellent choir singing our arrangement and I want to emulate what they've done with the dynamics. Please listen to/watch this video. It's so good! There's a link to this video on our website on the recordings page. We also have the accompaniment, but not the parts yet. You can see that the SATB are still in black font, meaning there's no link yet. 

My YouTube Playlist for this season of YRCC songs. I've collected a bunch of videos that I think will help to inspire you and help you learn your parts. 

We had some sad news. 

Jack West passed away. He sang with us for a while and he was Pat McCurdy's brother. He also played saxophone in the Newmarket Citizen's Band.  Here is a link to the obituary and details of the visitations and funeral service and reception, Thursday and Friday at Roadhouse & Rose in Newmarket. 

Next week: Tuesday, September 24th (sorry, we're starting Christmas)

• All That Holiday Stuff
• Song for a Winter's Night
• We Wish You a Merry Madrigal
• When You Belive
• Your Song

Small Group: 7:00 Twelve Pains of Christmas (please sign up on the Events Page)

YRCC 2024 Rehearsal Review Tues Sep 10

I’m so happy to be back to choir and this season is going to be great! We have so much good music to sing every week, and our concert will be festive, fun, meaningful and satisfying.

We started with a brief physical warm-up, stretches and shakes, and then with more vigorous movement (twisting) and singing as a vocal warm-up with a recording of Do Wha Diddy Diddy! Fun! Many of us knew the words from a past YRCC season, but there’s a lot of repetition so it was pretty easy for everyone. 

Star Canon, which we sang last season, was our first song. It’s our continued theme. We’ll do it the same way. It was excellent. Remember Part l is Soprano/Tenor and Part ll is Alto/Bass, but the 'Small Group' is Tenor/Bass, and the beginning is just Soprano and Alto. 

Your Song: Many of us remember this, and we started learning/reviewing parts on the segno, pages 5 and 6. We walked through how the repeat works. There’s a DS al Coda on page 10. We sing all the way to page 10 there, go back to page 5 at the segno, but skip to the Coda where marked at the bottom of page 6. The Coda starts on page 10 where we left off. It’s the big ending. It’s big, and I love it! We sang through the whole song sight-reading and so we got to sing the segno that we learned twice. 

Song for a Winter’s Night will be a little different from the way it’s written. For one, we’re skipping the first page. There’s a nice piano intro at bar 25 that will be perfect. There will be a soprano or alto solo and then a tenor or bass solo with no oohs to take us all the way to page 9. We learned page 9! I’m going to change the top of page 10 so that we all have words, no oohs. It’s not hard and will be gorgeous.

I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing is fun and easy. We might sing it with the audience as an encore, in which case, we’d have only sopranos on part 1 and everyone else leading the audience eon part 2, which is mostly melody. Or, we'll figure out where the melody is at all times and have all but one section on melody. We sang it with Soprano and Tenor on part 1 and Alto and Bass on part 2. It’s so good!

Why We Sing is always so satisfying, I love it. We’ve had solos at the beginning in the past. We all sang the whole beginning but I might change how we do it this time. We’ll see. I'm also hearing other versions without the descant at the end and it sounds stronger somehow. We'll try it without next time. (ultimately: dream, wish, pray, fine but, it's singing together that provides the best gifts)

We went through the whole binder, looking at all the song selections and how they fit the theme: Wishes and Dreams, what we want at Christmas and throughout the seasons of our lives.

1. All that Holiday Stuff was a small group song last Winter. We’re all singing it. It’s fun and funny, about the joys of the holidays, excitement, happiness of stuff, memories, pop culture and traditional. 

2. Christmas Auld Lang Syne is about all the songs of the season, that we expect and enjoy from year to year. 

3. For Unto Us A Child Is Born: serious, classical, traditional, Prince of Peace is the ultimate Christmas present. 

4. Grown-up Christmas List: Childhood fantasies change to adult wishes for peace above all, right winning over wrong, and love never-ending.

5. I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing: my wish, my thing: the path the way to peace is singing in community.

6. Peace on This Silent Night: “Sing out with gladness: love, peace and joy, goodwill to all” 

7. Song for a Winter’s Night: Canadian content and so beautiful! Our biggest wishes are for togetherness, love, family, not things. The warmth of gathering in the winter. 

8. Star Canon is the theme. 

9. The Twelve Groovy Days of Christmas was also a small group offering in the past. Now we’re all going to sing this song of gifts/things/stuff that people might have wished for in another era. And a message to enjoy the eras as they pass, and treasure the memories.

10. We Wish You a Merry Madrigal is an a cappella song so it has a unique sound in our repertoire and it’s a simple wish for happiness and an invitation to sing along with all the fa-la-las you hear. 

11. When You Believe is a big musical theatre number which was sung as a duet by Stanley and Mona for us in the past. I love the Hebrew section, which is “I will sing, I will sing, I will sing” mostly. I like how it says you can “achieve” miracles when you dream, suggesting that the dream is the spark that you use to inspire your actions. Like Power of the Dream of last season.

12. Why We Sing: obviously for world peace, right?

13. Your Song reminds us that what we can give to our loves, our world, is not a thing, not stuff, but appreciation, to express “how wonderful life is while you’re in the world” in a song. 

I’m also working on an arrangement of Santa’s Wish by the Tenors. It’s a lot of music to learn, so I hope some of you will make time to learn some of it at home so you can help to lead your sections. 

Please go to the Recordings page on the website to find a lot of good recordings to listen to to help you learn your parts. 

For small groups, I have Christmas Lullaby (Rutter) and the Twelve Pains of Christmas (contrast All that Holiday Stuff, pains, stuff that’s annoying).

I’d like to have a couple solos or small groups. What would you like to sing that fits into this season’s theme? 

Next week: 

• Song for a Winter’s Night
• Your Song
• When You Believe
• Peace on this Silent Night