Thursday Thoughts

First of all, my sincerest congratulations for two great concerts this past weekend. There were many musical moments, which thrilled our listeners not to mention ourselves throughout the two concerts. As you have no doubt read, the review was very complimentary. You can read about it here: http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1235639.html.  You are all good enough musicians to realize that by now, you take a review with a grain of salt - the truth lies somewhere in the middle. However it is thrilling to realize that in print, our work is being validated in spades. Again, ccongratulations to you all!

So on to the next project - Musica Mystica will include our guests,  the SNS Chorus. The chorus will be a little smaller than some concerts in the past and we will have about 60 singers total on stage for the second half. The repertore is influenced by composers who have captured the essence of texts of mystic writers and music which had embodies the same. Musica Mystica will sound sensational in St Patrick's!

Please hear this: the number of rehearsals HCS has for their rep alone is 8 Tuesdays including concert week - that is if you don't miss any Tuesdays. I am expecting that every single one of you prepare your rehearsal assignments each week and come with the scores learned. If this doesn't happen we will not get this program learned and I, for one, don't want to be reading our next review. In addition to our rep, there are also the pieces with SNSC - not difficult but have to be learned. We will begin the SNSC rep with both choirs together and I will decide how many of these Saturday rehearsals we need with both choirs to make sure everything is coming together.

We begin this Saturday at Bethany from 10 am -12:30 pm on the SNSC repertoire. I will try to get through everything so you will have phrasings, articulations, dynamics, etc in your scores. You have the SNSC scores in the envelopes of music I gave you last Friday night.

Beginning next Tuesday, April 5 we begin an exciting partnership with First Baptist Church, Halifax whereby we will begin to rehearse Tuesday nights at First Baptist Church, Oxford St., Halifax (opposite Sheriff Hall). Next season, we will sing all of our concerts at First Baptist and finally, it will be wonderful to rehearse in the venue where we will sing our concerts. This partnership has fabulous possibilities and I am excited to be able to make music in this beautiful space. Please allow yourself enough time to get to the new venue, find a parking place (on Oxford St. opposite the church) and get your scores in order. The main church doors will be open at 6:30 pm on Tuesday nights.

Next Tuesday please prepare the following:

Agneau de Dieu - Lang
i thank you God....- Whitacre
Nunc Dimittis - Part
Then Shall I Leap Into Love - Enman
Rosa Mystica - Balfour

Please use the following reference recordings to help in your prep work:
Camerata rep:

Agneau de Dieu – Lang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8BZ_YwppXY  (musica intima)

i thank You God – Whitacre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u94zGAy0YMM (Polyphony)

Nunc dimittis – Part   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5NO07gmQWo

Lay A Garland – Pearsall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U9Ap2A_2BY&feature=fvwrel

SNSC rep:

Kyrie – Palestrina
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIcrgNtyX0U (Tallis Scholars)

Agnus Dei – Barber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbCskHojyM (New College Oxford – excerpt))

Agnus Dei (from the Gospel Mass) – Robert Ray
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMDxSyp2lfM&feature=related

Dona Nobis Pacem (fr the Mass in b minor) – J. S. Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkvZAVO1nPY (John Nelson)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnrHhYSGzd4  (Robert Shaw)

Good luck everyone, as this will be a fast ride until the concert.  However I am supremely confident that we have the ability to learn this rep in the next 8 weeks.

See you Saturday!

Thursday Thoughts but on Wednesday!

I has a little time today so I thought I'd get these thoughts to you a little earlier in the week when everything was fresh in my head. 

Great work folks - you are making some really wonderful music. Most of the program is in order and really flying now.  You have taken this music so far and most of it is glorious. What has to happen between now and next week (trans: concert week!) is fairly simple: get out of the scores and watch more. I know I'm sounding like a broken record, most things which went wrong last night can be attributed to your not watching: things like not beginning together, tempi slowing down, singing rhythmically together, dynamics, etc.  Please take individual responsibility to know all the scores better - not just the pieces you have grown to love. Dynamics need to be part of your overall understanding of the piece. Some of you still are looking down for the first 4 measures of the piece. We all need to connect all of the time. With musicians of this level, it is not an unreasonable request and this is where the improvements need to be made for next week.

Next week we're at St. Patrick's. Geoff will have the doors open at 6:30 pm and please allow time to park, etc. Dress in layers in case it is cooler in the church.  We will not use risers for Tuesday night (to see if it will work ok) as you will be in a single line.  I want the downbeat to be at 7pm sharp and I will allow 3 full hours for the rehearsal. Friday night will be a 2.5 hour call, but I want to allow the extra time on Tuesday to play with the acoustics.  So next Tuesday will be from 7-10 pm. (I would go earlier but some find it difficult to get here at 6:30 pm.) and the dress on Friday will be from 7-9:30 pm.

We will run all pieces next Tuesday so prepare accordingly.

There will be rehearsal on Tuesday March 29 - I wish I could give you the night off but we have another concert in relatively short order - May 28.  You will receive repertoire for the next concert then.  Please do not take scores from the SNSC box at the MCPA as I will have the librarian put your SNSC scores in with the Camerata rep you will receive on March 29.

Thanks to everyone who worked so hard behind the scenes in making this concert happen. Thanks as well to Sheena and Joe last night for terrific solos.

Please continue to talk up this concert, email your friends, your fellow church choir singers, colleagues at work, etc. Invite people to come personally. Our success will be word of mouth and you are our best advertising.  You might be surprised at who would like to hear this repertoire.

Have a great weekend. See you next Tuesday at St. Patrick's.

Thursday Thoughts

This is going to be brief, as I have way too many irons in the fire today to be even somewhat creative! Some good work on Tuesday so please keep your individual standards up there. There still needs to be significant work done on a number of pieces, specifically the Raminsh Slavic Folksongs.  As well please take careful note of the rep list for Tuesday as I will bring back some pieces which have not been rehearsed for a while, and if you fall into the trap of "oh, I know that" I will waste time I don't have on Tuesday reviewing and reminding.

For Tuesday:

Ave Verum - Raminsh
     Women be able to sing the opening 13 bars with shape and feeling -      listening to the other parts as much as your own.  This has been problematic as some of you are still unsure how to shape the long notes.  Know your functions in the chord and tune  accordingly.

O Crux - Nysted (performing run through)

Great Wide World - Raminsh (Some sopranos had trouble with these pieces again on Tuesday so please spend extra time going over your parts. PLEASE check the tempi especially of the last piece: if you don't have a metronome, use 120 = a quarter note as a guide.  that's close enough for Tuesday.

O Sacrum Convivium - Miskinis (performing run through)

Northern Lights - Gjeilo (performing run through)

Totus Tuus - Gorecki (performing run through)

Psalm of Invocation - Rautavaara (review)

Please everyone, let's get most of this program performance ready before concert week. Here's wishing you all speedy recoveries and/or continued good health.

Have a good weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

It is great to be finally back with you all again. I have missed our rehearsals together and Tuesday night was like coming home!  I want to thank all of you for working hard on this program while I was away, but especially I want to thank Tristan and Christina for taking over for me and giving me the opportunity to go away and take some time off. As I mentioned on Tuesday, it is a really good feeling to be able to go away and have complete confidence that he repertoire will be learned and rehearsed.  Thanks to you all.

We have three reherasals until the concert.  That isn't much time and now we need to begin perfoming this repertoire instead of rehearsing it. Of course that means that you will have a complete command of the texts and understand the musical structure of each piece we are performing. And memorization needs to come into play now - being able to sing at least the first 4 bars of each piece from memory, memorizing page turns and really feeling in the bones how the metre changes within the piece (like the 6/8 - 9/8 - 5/4 in the Rautavaara ) and so on. More and more you will be expected to get out of the scores and as we get closer to the concert, you should feel more and more confident in communicating these languages.  Please make this a priority in your prep work.

For next week please concentrate on:
- the three Raminsh Slaivic Folksongs : I wanted to work on both #s 2 &3 on Tuesday but spent so much time on # 2 that we ran out of time. So next week make these 3 pieces a priority.
- Ave Verum - Raminsh
- O Sacrum Convivium - Miskinis (run through if I have time)
- Psalm of Invocation - Rautavaara
- review of 3  Finnish folksongs
- Benedicto - Sisask (performing run through. Work on the areas Tristan mentioned)

Again thanks for Tuesday night. I had so much fun.  But if you missed, remember it is your responsibility to know what we accomplished and keep up on your own.  This "semester" has been plagued with absences and it is very diffucult to develop a cohesive, uniform choral sound in rep as difficult as this with different personnel each reheasal. That puts more responsibility on you as individuals.

So lets all work even harder to do what it takes to get this music off the page. See you all next Tuesday.

IPA for last two Russian texts (Raminsh)

Hi everyone,

In case there is any confusion about the pronunciation of the Russian texts for the Raminsh pieces, below please find the IPA for the last two.

What a glorious day after the big snow. Looking out of my office window it is so peaceful and the sun is trying to peek through the clouds. Life is good and I hope wherever your are: work or home having an unexpected holiday, that you are having a great day as well.

A few notes re last Tuesday: if you were one of the nine people who missed the rehearsal, the choir did some good work on the two Rautavaara pieces, the Raminsh "Ave Verum",  "First Snow" ,  "O Sacrum Convivium" and the second of the three Slavic Songs of Raminsh.  I can't say it was a great rehearsal, as in some cases it was one to a part and that's not fun with these complex harmonies, trying to balance the surrounding parts. However the people who were there did a great job and worked hard.

I appreciate the notification when you are absent, even if it is late. I check my email right before rehearsal and always appreciate knowing if you are going to be late or worse, absent, so thank you for notifying.

But one of my pet peeves is when the message ends with something like "don't worry , I'll practice my music."  I realize that it is meant to put a positive spin on an otherwise not so positive situation, however  I know you will practice your music. You don't need to remind me as I take that for granted -  that you will practice your music, learn your Russian and Finnish texts, and do whatever it takes to arrive prepared.  How else will you get your head inside these scores and learn them?  Certainly not in the 20 or so minutes I spend on them each week. But Camerata is not a choir in which you can practice your music at home and everything somehow magically comes together. You are a more sophisticated ensemble that that. If someone in the line up is missing they will not hear how much the choir is pushing a crescendo, or how much to sing the third note of a cluster,  or when the diminuendo begins and ends.  That only happens in knowing (and trusting) the people you are singing beside you. And in order to do that it takes confidence and experience by singing it, feeling it over and over...in the 20 or so minutes I spend on the piece.

I understand all of the good reasons people miss - illness, inclement weather, job responsibilities, etc., etc., etc but make no mistake about it, in a choir like Camerata the magic will not happen until everyone is there.  That all being said,  I appreciate sincerely how hard everyone worked on Tuesday night.  There were some really lovely work done on "First Snow", the Miskinis, Raminsh "Ave Verum" etc.

Oh...and by the way....I will miss the two weeks of February 15 & 22 :)
However you will be in very experienced hands as Tristan and Christina already know which pieces need the work.

For this Tuesday, we will push hard on the following:
The three Raminsh Slavic Songs - there is a fun,  inebriated tenor solo on the last song of the set - "Along the Peterskaya" - complete with basses whistling (in a drunken sort of Russian whistling-style) and ...wait for it...sleigh bells.  Does anyone know where we can get sleigh bells?  And a slap stick (where can I get a slap stick - and that doesn't mean Greg at his... hmm, "best")
Rautavaara - both pieces
First Snow - final review
Amulla varhain - notes are easy - listen to text on the website.

Before signing off, I want to wish Camerata Xara the best in their fundraising concert "Sweet On You" this Saturday, February 5, 7:30 pm at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Tickets are still available and if you are able to go contact Tenille (tenille.goodspeed@gmail.com) or go to http://www.xara.ca/.  I regret very much that I am going to miss this one, but wish the Xara girls and Christina all the best as they raise money for Xara's participation at Festival 500 this summer.

Finally, congratulations to former NSYC and National YC singer and pianist/composer Edward Enman (see the separate post) in winning the HCS Young Composer's Competition. Lovely piece. 

Have a great weekend folks.

PS.  Keep looking for Christina's text pronunciations of the Raminsh Slavic folksongs #s 2 & 3.  They will be on the Choir only page of the website tonight or tomorrow.  More Russian!

Nova Scotia does it again!

Kentville musician wins Camerata composer’s competition

Edward Enman, a versatile and accomplished musician from Kentville, has won the 2010 Halifax Camerata Singers Young Composer’s Competition.

His winning composition, Then Shall I Leap Into Love, uses text from a poem by medieval mystic Mechthild de Magdeburg. The choral work will be premiered by the Halifax Camerata Singers at a concert May 28.

Enman began studying piano with Jane Murphy at age four. The son of Jennie and Steven Enman, he attended Northeast Kings Education Centre and in 2009 graduated from Acadia University with a Bachelor of Music degree.

Now 23, he is enrolled in the Master of Music program at the University of Ottawa where he studies piano performance with David Jalbert. Enman also accompanies the university’s Calixa Lavallée Chamber Choir.

Enman worked with Nova Scotia choirs as a singer and pianist for many years. A member of the Nova Scotia Youth Choir (2004–08), he was Nova Scotia’s tenor representative with the National Youth Choir of Canada in 2008 and 2010. While a student at Acadia he took part in the Halifax Camerata Singers’ Youth Mentoring program and worked with both the Annapolis Valley Honour Choir and Acadia University Chorus.

He also has been successful as a composer. His piece Good Times (Yellow) won the high school category in the Vancouver Chamber Choir 2005 Young Composers Competition, and in 2009 his piece Music was a finalist in competitions sponsored by VCC and the Canadian Chamber Choir. His choral works have been performed by Annapolis Valley Honour Choir, the choir of the Nova Scotia Choral Federation’s Youth Choir Camp, and Novus Chamber Choir. He is currently working collaboratively with the Capital Chamber Choir on a new piece, we want to smile, which will be premiered in Ottawa in April 2011.

Enman is the second Nova Scotian to win Camerata’s national Young Composers Competition. The jury comprised composer and 2011 Juno Award nominee Peter Togni, Halifax; Acadia University School of Music Director Jeff Hennessy, Wolfville; Camerata Artistic Director Jeff Joudrey, Truro; and Camerata Xara conductor Christina Murray, Halifax.

Halifax Camerata Singers is Atlantic Canada’s leading chamber choir. The choir frequently commissions choral music from Canadian and international composers, and encourages young singers through its Youth Mentoring Program, Nova Scotia Youth Choir bursaries, the Young Composer’s Competition, and Camerata Xara Young Women’s Choir.