YRCC 2024 Rehearsal Review September 24

We mostly sang other things, but we did start Christmas. While our winter concert is not a Christmas concert per se, there is so much good music to sing and an expectation that we will be singing some Christmas music, so we do. And, I love Christmas.

The first small group started: The 12 Pains of Christmas. So much fun! There’s still room in this group so you can join next week. Please register on the Events page on our website. (The next small group is already there, so you can sign up for that too. Christmas Lullaby needs people from all sections SATB)

Everyone was happy to see Donna back. "so happy together" We talked a little about how the choir supports people who are going through stuff. Michele very graciously sends cards and flowers when appropriate and Donna was very happy to receive her bouquet and words of support and encouragement when she was recovering from her surgery. You know how to contact your choir friends? You can find their email addresses in the members listing on the website. You'll need to sign in, of course. A brief email message is sometimes the perfect balm. If the person sitting next to you has been missing, you could send a message to ask if they're okay. Let us know if they're not. 

Donna's bouquet

1. All That Holiday Stuff: We will have lots of fun with this. It's pretty easy and charming too. It's the opposite of the 12 Pains of Christmas, where there's a lot of complaining. Here, we're all loving the holiday traditions: candy canes, carollers, Hallmark movies, and even ugly sweaters, all that stuff.  We learned up to page 6. It helps that a whole bunch of people sang this just last Christmas, however, this arrangement is slightly different. The parts are distributed differently in SAB from the 2-part version. And, here we have 3-part harmony in spots. 

2. When You Believe: I decided to attack this one like Your Song, and start at the end. We learned the ending, right after the Hebrew section, at bar 66. But, we started with the big ending "Ah-ah ah!" It's my kind of ending, full of drama and a big piano tremolo. We need to add a high soprano note to get good and loud. (wait till we get to the ending of Holiday Stuff-big and loud and the piano part-wooo!) I love the tenor and bass line in this big "broad and majestic" ending section. If you have some time for homework, please listen to your part. There are videos of parts linked on the website. Look ahead to the Hebrew part if you have time, listening to a recording while reading the words is best. Remember that the ch is like a sh but in the position of an H. Maybe try hissing like a cat, then kind of sneezing: aah chhhh. Then aah chhhh ahh. Then the syllable cha, then meecha, mocha, then meecha-mocha. Start there and we'll work on more next week.

3. Your Song: You're going to be so tired of my "it's a little bit funny" comments. I hope you don't mind (wink). But, it is a little bit funny, the way the timing is different from the Elton John version of this song. You're doing great, though. We learned the section from 62 to the DS al Coda. So, we were able to sing the Segno (page5/6) through to the DS al Coda on page 10, then go back to the Segno and continue to the Coda, the end! It was excellent! I love the Coda! You need to watch on page 11, because the timing is special. At the top of the page, there's a fermata in bar 101. I'll give you a big beat 4 (arm moves up and you sing when it's up in beat 4 position). The piano accompaniment will come in after the sopranos and altos sing beat 4 "how" on beat one "wonderful" of bar 102. Then, bar104 is marked "rit. e dim." which means slow down and get softer. It will be quite slow on "you-ou're in" and then we'll observe that rest like a cut // and the quarter note "the" will come in like a beat 4, like the beat 4 of 101. Watch for the timing of world and the oohs; watch me. It will sound like "wer-er-erl doo-ooh-ooh" and then I think I want a sfz on the final ooh, not p/soft. Sforzando piano (or fp?) then crescendo. We'll do it next week.

4. Song for a Winter's Night: We sang it with soloists: Lauren and Robyn on the first and Blair and Bill on the second. It's going to be so nice! We reviewed page 9, and sang to the end. I found parts videos! You can find them on my YouTube playlist or on the webite. Remember, we're not singing the first page oohs, and we're not singing the oohs under the solos. Everyone starts at page 9, so you can skip over to that on the videos. Also, at the top of page 10, use your notes to sing the words, and on the word "drift-ing", go down to resolve that phrase like an ending. Please spend a few minutes reviewing your part with a video. 

5. We Wish You a Merry Madrigal: Fun! Donna made up accompaniments for us and used a special setting on the keyboard. Love that! I'm hoping to sing that a cappella, without accompaniment, at the concert. Don't worry, we can do it. Many of us have sung this one before, so it will be easy and excellent. At the end, there's a "rit." ritardando, a slow-down, which I will conduct with 4 beats and slow down so that the different timing betweeen the bass clef and treble clef parts will be more effective. Watch me, as usual, at the ending. Observe the dynamics (f/p).

Next week: Tuesday, October 1st

Twelve Pains of Christmas 6:30

• All That Holiday Stuff
• For Unto Us a Child is Born (!!!)
• When You Believe
• Your Song

Opportunity to hear a Steelband in Newmarket

Music lovers, here's an opportunity you don't get every day. 

Mark your calendars. Buy your tickets. 

Saturday, October 26th at Trinity United Church in Newmarket

Caribbean Dinner 6:00 and Concert 7:30

$50 for a Caribbean Dinner Buffet and the Gemini Pan Groove Steelband concert. Tickets are available on Eventbrite (Trinity United Church Steel Pan Concert), or on Sundays at Trinity United Church, or from the church office. There are options to buy tickets for only the concert, and discounts for children and students. 

Gemini Pan Groove will be performing in the beautiful historical Trinity United Church sanctuary. This is their second performance here. Their last one had the audience sometimes blissfully entranced and other times joyfully dancing in the aisles. 

Here's what is said about the band/orchestra on their YouTube page:

Gemini Pan Groove is a program that uses the steel pan as a medium for community development and as a foundation to advance the artform. Our program offers both educational and social components for our musicians. The concept, "each one teach one" gives everyone the opportunity to contribute towards the success of our program. We are a performance-based band that hosts several events per year in partnership with many community groups and individuals. Notable performances include St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2007, Montreal in 2013, Washington D.C. in 2014, Philadelphia and Montreal in 2015, New York in 2016, Pittsburgh in 2017 and Chicago in 2018. Our wide ranging repertoire gives us the versatility to perform at any type of event, with a mix of calypso, classical, reggae, soca and jazz. Gemini also hosts multiple recitals featuring individual performers, calypsonians and small ensembles.

Learn more about steel pans here.

The Caribbean Dinner will be enjoyed in Trinity Hall ("the gym") before the concert. 

Jerk Chicken, Peas and Rice, Curried Goat, Curried Ckickpea, Roti, Green Salad and Mixed Vegetables

Wine and Beer will be available for purchase.

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