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!

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

YRCC Rehearsal Review 21-Mar-2022


Happy Dance

    










Monday, March 21st was WONDERFUL!

1. You Raise Me Up

When I am down and oh my soul’s so weary: pandemic, all the time!  So grateful for those who came and sat a while with us, on the phone, by zoom, in person, to raise us up out of the loneliness. Big love to our besties!

When we sang this, it felt heavenly. We’re back. Donna was fabulous, the choir sounds great! I was so happy! We sat side-by-side, not distanced, but sang with masks. It worked. We could hear each other and sing out with confidence.

For the first two verses, make sure you are holding notes as written, observe rests as they are, just a short breath maybe, and after the second ending, more legato, link the words together without a rest, especially mountains you and middle of page 6 : “You raise me up to more than I can be” all linked and lush and loud, not soft (ignore the “a little less” notation). This time we’re singing it as a big hug, soothing and lush- mark your music, erase notations to cut short, erase notation/notes to sing softly in the middle of page 6!

Thinking about adding an extra verse with an audience, having the audience sing a third verse, repeating the first, with the choir singing only mmm or soft doo-doos. We tried it out and it could work.

2.     I Can See Clearly Now

This is such a fun piece! I love it. We’re doing great so far. We sang all the way to the segno (@25). There are tricky bits: Basically, the whole section from @16 is hard for the sopranos and altos. The hardest, I think, is “It’s what I’ve been praying for.” We’ll have to review that whole section, but it’s pretty cool, and the tenors and basses get the melody, which is a nice change. We “walked through” the whole piece, taking note of the segno, and the coda, and how the repeat happens.

We sang along with a recording that Blair found for us. It’s from the Alfred Music site Alfred.com. It was quite a bit faster than what Donna and I like. We’ll do it slower. Here’s a link to that recording.

My YouTube channel has two choir versions. Here’s a link to my playlists. Click on the POST COVID Playlist and you’ll find all kinds of treasures.

3.     Sunshine Medley

Here comes the sun, and I say, it’s alright, let the sun in, don’t you worry bout a thing. It’s often difficult to relax and open up to good things after going through bad things. 

We reviewed the beginning, Here Comes the Sun, and continued with the transition to Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a thing. We walked through the whole thing, and even sight-read the Here Comes the Sun ending!

I had some blank stares during the Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing part. I recommend that you take a look at the video on my Post COVID Playlist (Here’s a link)  to get a feel for what I’ve got in my medley. I borrowed heavily from that version. There’s also a Here Comes the Sun and the Aquarius/Let The Sunshine video there for you. Here’s a link if you want to go straight to Don’t You Worry.

4.     Hallelujah

All TB on first solo All SA on second solo, we stood, some physically distanced without masks and it was so good!!! 

5.     Why We Sing

We had a couple more minutes and decided to sing this. Same idea with the solos: all TB all SA. We remained standing. Donna was sight-reading. It was awesome! What a talent! The choir was fantastic too! I felt a wonderful high that I haven’t felt in such a long time!

Take Note:

During break, we talked about moving to Tuesdays to keep Donna, and we all agreed that it was the best plan, and Lauren and Jane are working to make it happen.

We also talked about working toward seniors’ visits and maybe a park concert instead of our usual big formal concert. With the small numbers and pandemic stress, along with all the transitions happening, we decided it would be best not to have a formal concert.

We’ll have more details on performance plans as they get booked. Seniors concerts are only an hour, from 7 to 8 and we’ll look at Tuesday evenings in June.

Next week, Monday, March 28

6:30:  Good Morning, Starshine Small Group

1.     On Eagle’s Wings

2.     I Can See Clearly Now

3.     Sunshine Medley

4.     We Rise Again

5.     You’ll Never Walk Alone


 

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