Thursday Thoughts

Thanks for great work Tuesday night. My intention on Tuesday was to work on specific section of the various pieces and for the most part much was accomplished. You all know the areas which need work both collectively and specific you your own parts, so I'll not dwell on that.  Next week Tristan will introduce the "Taaveti laul No. 104 (Kreek) so please look over that before rehearsal. If you are interested in hearing a performance, you can click on this link and hear our own Vancouver Cantata Singers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfLUVdAXoXI
 
I would like to also really dig into the Glick "Sing Unto The Lord" so do some hard work on the text, and rhythms of that piece as well.

The rehearsal list for Tuesday will look as follows:
Sing Unto The Lord - Glick
Chichester Psalms - Mvts 1 & 2 - men will please begin to memorize the 56 measures of "choral hell!"
Second-storey Sun - Enns - now that pages 2-5 are in place we will complete the piece.
Mendelssohn Psalms - text needs to be reviewed and we need to finish these pieces next week.
Taaveti laul No. 10- Kreek - Tristan will introduce & teach
Chantez a Dieu- Sweelinck - much better work last night; basses please be certain of notes and phrase shapes.

 This will keep us all very busy. I really appreciate your all taking ownership of this music, your committment to the scores, and to these timeless texts. This is a really fabulous program and I, for one, can't wait to share it with our audience. Have a great week!

Thursday Thoughts

Tough night. Usually the second rehearsal of a new program is rough - the first night everything is new, we begin from nothing and at some level,  make music. But often for the second rehearsal, some choristers neglect to put in the work needed to take the music further. It is the human condition, but I don't have the time, nor do I build the time in my planning, to teach notes. That's your job and couple that with difficult texts and the mountain seems high.

So please read my "thoughts"  today carefully as I am trying my best to equip you with the tools you need to give an exciting performance of this program. Budget your "home practice time"  and guard that time in your schedules carefully. 

For next Tuesday:

Chantez a Dieu - Sweelinck:  Practice singing your part slowly and centre all the vowels. Pay attention to strong-light syllables. Know the text intimately. Think of it as  a madrigal and always feel the dance. I said last week sing as if you are preparing a solo - not many of you heard me,  as there was a lot of fumbling around. Finally sing it at tempo.

Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen - Mendelssohn
Richte mich, Gott - Mendelssohn
Text and melody. Know the German. Go online and listen to good recordings of these pieces to get the feel. As I mentioned in rehearsal, stop trying to sing in such a legato style when the text dictates that the consonants separate the notes.

Chichester Psalms mvt I:  This all comes down to you not only being able to speak the text in rhythm at tempo, but buying into the notion that Bernstein knows what he is doing by writing ma molto marcato for each of the men's entrances (beginning at m. 14) and then marcato for the women (m. 22)  I asked you to carefully mark the 18 measure theme beginning at m. 14 and for those of you who were away or need a review. I have attached it here:

 
If your scores are marked and you memorize the "order" of the thematic material, you will be able to see Bernstein's working through the A section via the various voicings of the choir. For those of you who are still having trouble with the text, I have attached a link to a Hebrew speaker speaking the text. He speaks rather quickly but you can get the word stress of the rhythm. Play it over and over if necessary. Please copy the following link and paste it in your browser.:

  http://paysonchorale.org/audio/virtualchoir-index.html


Chichester Psalms mvt II: This movement is the soloist singing a lovely,  lyrical, floating setting of Psalm 23 The composer's directions suggest a young boy strumming his harp and almost idly improvising on the melody. The sopranos pick up on this melody at m. 32 and then in canon with the altos at m. 48. Then all hell breaks loose when the sublime SA duet is interrupted by the thunderous voice of the Almighty and asks the repeated question: Why do the nations rage?  M. 64-120 contains the most difficult material of the Chichester Psalms and it is said that men who were forced to memorize the Allegro feroce sections will be able to recall it at will 20 yearls later as it stays with you for life. NB:  The words of this entire section must be memorized by all of the choir and that memory work must take place at home. We will begin it next week. so again, listen to the sound clip  (Mvt II) of the text.
   
Sing Unto The Lord  (only mvt IV) - Glick:  We will begin this next week. Learn the notes. 

Second-Storey Sun - Enns: m. 1-33 needs work. Please prepare. 

Final thoughts: For some of you this is the toughest rep you have ever sung while for others it is all in a day's work. Most of you are somewhere in the middle. This will be a brilliant concert but I'm not waiting for people to catch up. Please be prepared every rehearsal. 

Thursday Thoughts

Good beginnings Tuesday night.  We made headway on a program spanning seven centuries and cracked the notes on a commission which promises to be a significant part of this program's landscape. We welcomed 4 out of the 6 new YMP singers, introduced new alto Erin MacIntyre, and welcomed back Danielle, Garth, and Bill after their "sabbatical. "  Not a bad way to begin 2012.

For the time being we're going to learn notes as quickly as possible and each week try to get out of the scores along the way. It is going to take a little time to jell as a new choir but with everyone listening and concentrating it will happen.  My New Year's resolution is to take care of more of the details and get more from the score and that is my expectation for you as well.  You, in turn, need to expect more from your colleagues and depend on them to "have your back" musically. I love the quote I read to you last night in reference to performing Renaissance polyphony: It applies to all of choral music and is you get serious about it, this is going to pay big dividends in performances: " What the musician needs is a listening ear, an open and critical mind and a feeling for group unity. It is this continuous group dynamic that really brings polyphonic compositions to life. Every member of an ensemble is creatively involved in the development and realization of polyphonic works." 

On to next week. Please prepare the following:

Psalm 96 - Sweelinck
Sicut Cervus - Palestrina (review)
Laudate pueri Dominum - Monteverdi 
Second-storey Sun - Enns
Chichester Psalms  - work on text and notes of mvt 1.
Two Mendelssohn Psalms

Note: Everyone please check the program order. If you are missing any of the scores (except the Rachmaninoff which so one has) email me so I can put them in my briefcase and bring them to you for next Tuesday.  

For help with the Chichester Psalms you might find the following links helpful. Use them as needed. There are also good recordings of the Mendelssohn Psalms on You Tube if you want to search them out.

Have a great week!

Cyber Bass - help learning notes for Chichester Psalms:

http://www.cyberbass.com/Major_Works/Bernstein/bernstein_chichester_psalms.htm

Good recording on YouTube:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEnYf_aQUnc

Thursday Thoughts

Thank you all so much - for a wonderful concert last Sunday afternoon at First Baptist. I have had so many compliments which I accepted on your behalf.  People really had a good time and came away with a new appreciation of what we do.  And in addition to your singing, John Hancock's spellbinding delivery of "A Child's Christmas In Wales,"  having Xara join us on stage - it was a concert which truly touched the record audience we had jammed into First Baptist. You are to be congratulated.

To all the people who worked behind the scenes to make the concert a success - and frankly there are way too many to list here - thank you!  Every spoke in this giant wheel contributes to its success and you all are important. However it is important on your behalf to say thank you to three singers who were replacing Camerata regulars on temporary leave: Shannon Lawson, Shannon Snelgrove and Leander Mendoza will not be with us in January and I'd like to say publically how much I appreciated getting to know each of you and working with you this last little while. Who knows when our paths will cross again.

To those of you who are singing Messiah - thank you for finding the energy on Tuesday night after a very busy weekend.  It was so much fun for me to dust this piece off again and to look at it with fresh eyes. For those I will not see until our next Camerata rehearsal on Tuesday, January 10, I wish you a safe and happy Christmas, full of great times with family and friends.

Thursday Thoughts

A few reminders for the weekend concert:

• the dress rehearsal Saturday begins at 10 am and Camerata will warm up and work our solo rep  until 11 am. During that time we will put together the piece with organ. Time will be precious.
• Camerata and Xara will work joint rep from 11am-12:30 pm This includes the audience carols.
• Camerata's Call on Sunday is 2:30 pm
• March repertoire will be available on Saturday - please remember to pick up your music envelopes.

It's crunch time for tickets. Please make a last minute call, send an email, talk to your friends. This is going to be a wonderful concert. Thank you all.

Thursday Thoughts

How appropriate - sitting here by the woodstove in the middle of a snowstorm (so now you know that I often begin Thursday Thoughts on Wednesday evening!) and thinking of Christmas music. It is getting to that time and as some point or another,  we are all going to have to accept that Christmas is coming whether or not we are ready. Of course those of you with little kids are already aware of that!

Good rehearsal last night. The music is coming and though we sing it in concert next week, it is not quite ready. Most pieces are pretty close. "There Is No Rose" (Enns) is not ....yet, but we are getting there. The secret of preparing the Enns is not to think melodically but harmonically - play the chords and sing your part against the other parts. Then you will be aware how well you know it. We will go at it again next Tuesday and by then it should be in your ears, and by the dress rehearsal on Saturday, you will be confident with it. The rest of the rep needs to be performed and we have time to do that. Next Tuesday we will sing through the program in standing formation. It will be a good test.

A few reminders:

• remember to deposit your travel donation cheques on Thursday (today) as your own cheque to Camerata will be cashed on Thursday. 
• this concert is selling very well and we need to all pitch in to sell it out. Please talk it up everywhere - your office colleagues, church choir singers, church bulletins, friends, relatives. There is a Event Announcement on Facebook  and you can say "you're attending" and share it to give it more profile.
• please get as much of this program in your head so that you can be out of the scores and engaging the audience as much as possible.

Thanks again for making great music on Tuesday night. Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

Choirs are wonderful instruments. It is the only musical genre whereby we can take the collective - a group of good musicians and make a really wonderful instrument. It is what makes the whole process so exciting for me. It is what still, after all these years, still really gets my blood going for both rehearsals and concerts.

But humanity being just that, human - sometimes everyone isn't on the same page. What I consider an intensively musical performance might not be that for you or,  conversely, what you may think is our best work, might not cut it for me.

I think the luxury of  having a lot of time to prepare (as in our November concert)  followed by a very short time to prepare (the December concert) is catching some of us off guard. And if this isn't recognized and fixed right away, the music won't ever come off the page.

As of yet, the music for this concert isn't coming off the page. As hard as you are working in rehearsal, by necessity, we are moving so quickly that in many cases you are forgetting the technical things we worked at so hard to achieve the "sound " for the last concert. Things like the unanimity of vowels, singing through all the notes, singing the text, being sensitive to dynamic shading, and getting out of the score - I"m tired of looking at your hair parts!  When I ask you to note a particular vowel colour on a word,  I noticed on Tuesday that few of you automatically mark the word with your pencils, rather trying to remember that detail the next time we sing the phrase. Mark your scores more - it really is a sign of musical maturity.

I'd like us to do better - specifically next Tuesday  and from now on. My expectations of each of you are high and although I genuinely care for each one of you - as people and as colleagues, when I am conducting the repertoire my only focus is the composers intent and the highest possible level of music we can make together.  I do try to be sensitive to each of your personal situations and realize that there are times that families, work, life gets in the way of everything from arriving for a 7pm downbeat to attention spans wandering during the last 20 minutes of rehearsal.  

For Tuesday the scores which everyone needs to spend time on include: There Is No Rose (Enns); Magnificat (RW Henderson).  Some of you need to work more on Dormi Jesu (Daley) and Huron Carol (Anderson). We will also review Christmas Angel (Hanney) so if this is new to you, learn it for Tuesday. It is dead dog easy however I don't have a lot of time to spend on it. (Sheena already knows and has been working on the solo so we are in good hands in that department). Warmup will consist of the a capella verses of the carols: Once In Royal David's City and I Saw Three Ships (spend time on the latter - it moves quickly and there is a lot of text)  Judith will sing the soprano solos.

I truly appreciate everything each one of you gives to this choir and I know you do it because you love to sing at the level we are singing. The difference we are making to choral music is being recognized - across the country. As the result of the Vinyl Cafe program where they played two cuts from the SOLACE CD,  we sold over 37 CDs. I, myself had three emails from listeners across the country who heard the recording and loved it and some of you told me of emails and phone calls you received. I had an email from a composer in Australia, visiting Canada who heard us and wants to write for the choir  - so make no mistake,  we are making a difference. So my expectations will continue to be high - for myself and for each of you because I we need to continue to make a difference and contribute to the choral art.