We enjoyed another successful and satisfying rehearsal, ending off with lots of Christmas! It was a cold day that started with frost, and it was a perfect time to start singing more Christmas music.
The Christmas Lullaby small group met for the first time and were able to get through so much of this beautiful choral piece. It's so beautiful, and the chorus is really very sticky; it sticks in your head. You'll find yourself singing the ave Marias all week long.
We had a fun warm-up stretching, dancing, and singing along to Lollipop by The Chordettes. We did some rollercoasters and noticed how our range is much wider when we are doing raspberries, lip trills.
1. When You Believe was beautiful. We sang it with Mona and Stanley singing the solos and the duet. Everyone comes in at bar 11. We reviewed parts throughout, especially the Hebrew section, which we slowed down to get the sounds and the rhythms right. Please do a little homework on this if you find you're having a hard time. There are lots of recordings to sing along with, and there's a video to help with pronunciation too.
2. Grownup Christmas List sounds very good with a solo on the first verse. We'll do it that way. Cathy and Melinda went for a test drive on that solo, which starts at the beginning, and then ends on bar 14, just before the key change. Everyone comes in at bar 15 "No more lives torn apart..." Don't come in too strong after that first verse. When we go back to the segno, at the top of page 5, everyone starts on page one on the second verse on bar 7, "As children we believe" and there's an ooh for the Baritones right on beat one. The second time we sing "no more lives", it's louder. We spent some time on the bottom of page 5 at that bridge, especiallly bars 28-31. Another tricky spot was at the bottom of page 7, bar 41 with the triplets, and the big ending. So good!
3. Santa's Wish: This is a new thing that I adapted for choir from a piano solo. I couldn't find a choral version but I really love this song. So, we tested out my arrangement. Notice that a lot of it is focused on two soloists, a storyteller and Santa. The choir joins Santa singing I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing. And there are some pretty ah ah ohs. We just walked through and took some time to think about who would like to sing those solos. Please listen to the song in the video at the bottom of this post. I'd like to keep that slowish, ballad feel, nostalgic and just a little whimsical.
4. Christmas Auld Lang Syne: A new Christmas medley, well, actually an old one, but it's so old that very few of you have performed it before. It won't be hard. We sang through sight reading it twice! The Sopranos are very lucky and have melody throughout, I think. Altos and Baritones have lots of sections with only 3 or 4 notes. This is energetic and jazzy (swing notation)! The Christmas Waltz which we learned last year is one of the songs. It won't take long to get this performance-ready.
5. We didn't rehearse For Unto Us a Child is Born, but we talked about how useful the recordings are. Winston suggested that you might be able to play with the settings of YouTube to slow down the tempo. Try it out! You can also try out some of the many rehearsal recordings that people have uploaded to YouTube. I've got a couple in my playlist, but there are many more.
Colby brought a box of the book that he had published! Quite a number of us bought one, and Colby even signed some. So exciting, and I'm so proud of our Colby.
Here's a link to my YouTube playlist again, and a link to the page on the website with recordings. You'll need to sign in to the website. The recordings of parts for Your Song are there!
Next Tuesday, October 22nd
6:30 Christmas Lullaby Small Group
- Christmas Auld Lang Syne
- For Unto Us
- Grownup Christmas List
- Santa's Wish
- Twelve Groovy Days of Christmas
- Your Song
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