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!

Thursday, October 1, 2015

YRCC rehearsal review Sept. 28 and preview to Oct. 5

September 28th - We had a social time coffee break! Lauren and I baked and Mary Ellen did her first coffee time perfectly.

Breath of Heaven small group met early and already sound excellent. Next week, you'll have the accompaniment recording to sing with!

Warm-ups included exercises to open our airways and tongue and lip stretches so we can enunciate better.

1. Little Tree: I had forgotten that we needed to finish learning Little Tree, so we did it first thing. Did I say that I love this song? I so do! Don't forget that we're saying gentle little Ts and not soft Ds in the word Little. Enunciate.

2. O Holy Night:We fixed our timing issue on page 8. O Holy night. O night divine and And glory ever more proclaim. We could perform this now. It's magnificent.

3. Shine Hanukkah: We learned the whole song! It's fun and pretty easy. The first sopranos have to work on the ending. They have a descant part with different timing.

4. Come Emmanuel: We sang it through once and it was already pretty good. Quite a few people remember this one from 2 years ago. This is a really cool Christmas song! It features the tenors and basses, so they should spend some time looking at their music to get really strong on their parts.

Remember to think about whether you can take on the role of Music Librarian. You'd have to have space for 4 or 5 filing cabinets and some boxes and bags and a table, ... a fair amount of space. You'd get help with preparing the binders and filing the music after each season, but it's a big thing to coordinate- there are 65 binders with 20 or so pieces of music that get filed away and another 20 that get put in. Some days you'll have a lot of stuff in your car, but people are very good at helping out with the carrying in and out.

Trix will continue to be our Webmaster, but doing both jobs has become impossible now that she has much  more responsibility at work. Maybe you've retired or you've found yourself with more time and space because your kids are grown up? Please help us out.

The men are going to have a small group song! They will be singing The Little Drummer Boy/ Peace on Earth, the Bing Crosby and David Bowie song! Gentlemen: the music is in 4 parts, but you'll be singing it mostly in 2, whatever parts have the melodies. Don't worry, it's not complicated. If you listen to a recording of it, it will be clear. There will be a few places where you can easily split into 3 or 4 parts.

Roxanne has started booking our seniors home visits. You will want to look out for the sign-up 'Events' on the website.

Next Week, October 5th

Breath of Heaven is meeting at 6:45 again.

  1. 12 Days After Christmas
  2. Come Emmanuel
  3. In The Bleak Midwinter
  4. Shine Hanukkah
  5. 3 Christmas Folk Carols (intro)
Don't forget: 


We are meeting on Thanksgiving Monday. Don't stress it if you have dinner plans. The recordings will be up by then so you can catch up.

We are meeting on Election Day Monday. Be sure to vote! Voting at the Advance Polls is so easy and convenient, you'll never want to vote on Election night again.


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