NOTES for Week of April 2 (and BOOT CAMP)

Dear friends,

I look forward to seeing you on Saturday and continuing our music making.

Regarding Boot Camp

Where:  Rancho de Calistoga Mobile Home Park Clubhouse, 2412 Foothill Blvd., Calistoga

When:   9:00 am to 1:00 pm

What to know:

• We will not be taking a lunch break. We will instead take a couple of shorter (15 minute) breaks during the rehearsal time. This will be be more efficient use of our time.
• Bring snacks and beverages (water) for breaks.
• Bring music, pencil, and your enthusiasm.
• Those interested in auditioning for the solos, plan to stay a little later.
• We will be working in sections and in mixed formations.

For Newer Members (and reminder for all)

Our concert dress:

• MEN: black suit/tuxedo, white dress shirt, black bow-tie, black shoes and sox
• WOMEN: formal full-length black dress or skirt and top. Black dressy pants are acceptable. Best if arms are covered. 

Black choral folders are used (I have an extra one if needed). 

Starting Tuesday:

We will begin working through the music in concert order. Please see attached Program

We're a month away from our concerts. Keep working on precision, musicality, and expressiveness. And tell your friends to get their tickets. It's going to be a stunning program.

NOTES for Week of March 26, 2023

Dear friends,

We're a little over a month away from our concerts. You have been doing some great work learning and beginning to perform the repertoire. These next few weeks, I really want to concentrate on precision, musicality, and expression.

1. Review all your parts at least once during the week. More, if you can. 
2. Sing along with the performance recordings to get a sense of how your part corresponds with the others.
3. Highlight every expression mark (dynamic, tempo, and articulation) and practice performing it expressively.
4. Practice getting your eyes out of your music. Two pieces (There is a Pleasure and My Soul's Been Anchored) need to be memorized, but the others need to be so well learned that you can look up and sing to the audience. Remember, I'll be cuing you, cutting you off, and showing expression in my conducting gestures if you'll look at me.

Please continue to reach out to your acquaintances and let them know about the concert. Encourage everyone to come. Not only is it going to be a beautiful concert, but it is for a very worthy cause. Let's fill (and possibly) sell out the houses.

FOR TUESDAY: All meet at 6:30 to 8:00. Tenors will have a sectional 8:00 to 8:30

Trees - Brinsmead

• Highlight every slur in your line. A slur means to sing the pitches (2 or more) very legato. 
• Add the word rit. to mm. 2, 5, 10, 19, 31, 42, 45
• Note that at m. 40, everyone closes to m individually

The Birds' Lullaby

• Highlight every slur, especially sopranos and tenors
• If you are singing the melody - sing stretch the vowels on swing, sing, drowse delaying second part of diphthong.
• Sopranos and tenors work on a light, gentle, semi-popular style on the solo sections with an ear to blend and intonation.

The Willow Song

• CHANGES: Do not breathe in mm. 11 and 25. Do breathe at end of mm. 12 and 26
• Think in terms of phrases for breaths and entrances in mm. 4 and 18. 
• Put crescendo in m. 11 and 25

Evening Gale

• Again, highlight your slurs.

FOR TENORS:

O Schone Nachts

Away in the Woods

My Soul's Been Anchored

NOTES for Week of March 12, 2023

Dear friends,

I hope you are staying safe, warm, and dry this weekend. Great time to stay in and review you music. 😉

1. Tickets are now available online. Please let your friends and family know.
2. We're getting to the place where we shouldn't be "reading" any music. Notes, rhythms, and words should be solid. 
3. Boot Camp is coming up in three weeks on April 1 from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. I've booked the clubhouse in the Calistoga community where I live. It is spacious, fairly live, and has a large kitchen attached. There are tables and chairs we can set up for breaks and lunch. My goal is to have you ready to seriously begin shaping the music. No drilling notes or rhythms.
4. As I've said in rehearsals, please go through your music as if performing it, meaning singing with nuance, attention to tone color, vowel uniformity, and where appropriate, non-vibrato. As a general rule, minimize vibrato, especially in the soprano section. 
5. Tenors, be aware of intonation. Some of you are occasionally riding a bit low on pitch. 

Brahms

• As noted above. Make sure all your pitches and rhythms are solid. 
• Also, work on the German diction. remember that unaccented syllables are often pronounced like English with a schwa, regardless of whether or not it is elongated.
• Sing very expressively using the slur markings to cre
• And for the record, I stand corrected. Lebhaft means lively, not lightly, which makes much more sense. 😊

Woodpecker  from Due North

• Work on getting this up to speed. 

FOR TUESDAY

Due North (all pieces)

Evening Gale (all pieces) - I received two more originals if anyone still doesn't have this.

Away in the Woods

My Soul's Been Anchored

NOTES for Week of March 5, 2023

Dear Friends,

We had a good and productive rehearsal this last Tuesday. I was hearing some really lovely singing. Keep up the good work!

A few housekeeping items.

1. Like we did for our holiday concert, please get out there and really encourage your friends, family, and acquaintances to purchase tickets. Although it's customary to have a lull in attendance for the spring concert, I think this is a concert people will really enjoy with the piano, cello, and percussion added. PLUS, it's a benefit concert to help out Napa Land Trust. Their webpage states: Celebrating 47 years of preservation in Napa. All these trees, woodlands, birds, and mosquitoes we're singing about (well, maybe not mosquitoes) are being helped through the NLT. Chuck will be setting up the online ticket sales this weekend.
2. Start thinking about sending out handwritten invitation poster cards. When Hunter is able to get posters and poster cards printed, we can begin getting those out into the community.

From last Tuesday's rehearsal:

The Bird's Lullaby

• Make sure the rhythm in the syncopated sections (pp. 5-7) are precise.
• Sopranos and Tenors really make sure that your solo sections are rhythmically clean, in tune, and enunciated. They need to sound smooth and effortless.

Due North - Trees and Mosquitoes

• These pieces (along with Woodpecker) are meant to be vocally evocative of nature. Trees is  reminiscent of the rhythm of wind in the branches of trees. The 1st 14 measures are pianissimo. The words need to be a unified tone and timbre sung on the breath.
• Mosquitoes is to be playful. Practice the staccato section (pp. 41 43) with initial b on bz. However, I'm much more interested in the pitch accuracy and vocal flexibility than each note sounding a distinct b, particularly when the pitches are high.
• Slowly, practice the portamento/glissandos on pp. 44 - 46, so that we hear a real slide to the pitches.

Away in the Woods

• Practice going through the key changes so you really hear where you've been and where you're going (ex. mm. 26-27, 48-49)
• Express the words, i.e., make love, death, fragrant sound meaningful.

My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord 

• WOMEN: As you're learning and memorizing, practice the difference between the even entrance after an 8th-rest and the syncopation after a 16th-rest (starting mm. 70). 
• TENORS practice your solo entrances starting at m. 91 and following. Make them clean, clear, and rhythmically accurate. 
• I want to sing this with spirit, but don't over sing.

For TUESDAY, MARCH 8

Woodpecker

Brahms

The Willow Song