What a fun rehearsal! Ending with the whole Joseph Medley was so good, and the choir sounded so good that I was dancing on my riser/platform thing. (I want to day dais or pedestal, but that's too grand)
And the elation started right away with the small group singing Anthem so beautifully. It took some work, but in the end it sounded excellent. Second Tenors, watch out for those As.
We started off before warm-ups listening to The Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre (that's a link to the video with the sheet music). It's so special and lovely, and we're going to sing it with the Newmarket Citizens Band! Yay! I've been listening to it on repeat. I can imagine that it will be very powerful to sing it with a band. And, I think we'll want to sing it ourselves in the future. I have videos of the parts in my YouTube playlist. (There's a link to that playlist on the website so you can find it any time.) It's a piece that lends itself to many themes: childhood, parenthood, home, safety and love, diversity (empathy with others living in other climates, dangerous environments, animals), etc. And, it's a big "Choral" piece, unlike mosot of our stuff. Eric Whitacre is a big name in modern choral music.
1. City of Stars is ready to perform, we just have to get more consistently confident. There's a little bit of messiness on page 5 that we reviewed in the bass clef: "there in the bars and the crowded restaurants". Tenors and basses, please review that.
2. You'll Never Walk Alone. I absolutely love this. I love it from the very beginning where Donna has that powerful gospel intro, to the very end which is my kind of really big ending! We spent time on this for all the newer folks who have been patiently following along. We reviewed the swing notation and the different feel of the eighth notes in the triplets and the regular eighth notes, in pairs and alone (at 65, for example). We looked at the second soprano part at bar 31, the special "though your dreams be tossed" and noticed that it helps if you start thinking about staying on the C for "your dreams" at the C on the word "rain". Try that. We divided the sopranos instead of the altos because we always had more sopranos than altos. We maybe could have looked at dividing the altos this time? We also looked at page 7 for everyone. Observe your rests; this is key. Look at all the parts, how they go back and forth. Your part needs to be clear and tight so that the other parts come in at your rests. Look at the accent marks on "never". Punch those.
3. Power of the Dream. I love this song, but it's not very lovable yet, is it. Have patience. We haven't tackled a piece like this in a long time. We studied page 8 and page 11 and half of page 12. It will come together soon. At the top of page 8, because of the revision of the words, we're going to keep only the B in the pick-up to bar 48. "It's time that we began." So, "it's" will be one syllable. But, we can keep the two syllable "we" in the treble clef (where child had two syllables). Page 11 is cool! The alto line finishes the thought "It's the power of the dream that brings us here" while the rest go on to next section at 66. Interesting transition. We left the ending because I'm writing in notes for the tenors and basses. I need a bigger ending there. It won't be pp, LOL.
4. Joseph Medley: from Close Every Door to the end, but we didn't review any parts. It was good! And, we sang the whole thing from the beginning, and it was exhilirating. Lauren sang Carol's solo wonderfully, Winston is an awesome Jamaican, and Blair and Winston both sang Colby's King solo. Fantastic. This piece is so much fun and such a great variety of songs! I'm sure our audience will love it too.
We talked about:
Posters and ticket sales! Lauren and Jane had posters for us to take and post wherever we have space to do so, and we can buy tickets starting now! $20 each and you can pay by cash, cheque (to York Region Community Choir), or credit card (tap, Square). Get your friends and family tickets and if you like, we can hold them at the door for you, as long as they're paid for, otherwise, there will be ticket sales at the door too.
I had posters for the Sunday, May 19th Piano Recital at Trinity United Church in Newmarket (my church) at 3:00, pefect for an uplifting concert followed by a nice dinner on Main Street. The award-winning Austrian pianst, Cornelia Herrmann will be playing Bach, Mozart, and Schubert. The church recently was gifted a beautiful new piano, so this will be the first of many ways that this piano in this beautiful building will be shared with the community. You can buy tickets at Eventbrite here.
Next week, Tuesday, April 2nd
6:30 Rainbow Connection Small Group
- Nella Fantasia
- Power of the Dream
- Rewrite the Stars
- Hallelujah
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