Winter Festival

Rehearsal for tomorrow night is planned. It is mid-November and crunch time is right about to hit. We have two rehearsals left before our dress rehearsal week for Winter Festival. Tomorrow evening our guitar accompanist is coming to rehearsal. The school currently does not have a harpist, so we are using a nylon string guitar. The women sing from one of the balconies and the piano is on the floor, which would make me a little nervous in the rhythmically demanding "This Little Babe". After the guitarist practices with the women, the mens chorus is coming to join us so we can sing through the mass pieces. It will be a full rehearsal.

I am excited about the music that I programmed for Winter Festival. The women will begin with a song entitled "Ma Navu", based on Isaiah 57:2. It's melody is based on an Israeli folk tune. The woman who arranged this piece, Barbara Wolfman, is a former colleague of mine. It has been a real blessing to hear her thoughts on the piece, certain things to focus on, and have explained clearly the textual ideas. We have been loosely singing this song for three, but really spent some time on it the past two weeks. Tomorrow the big focus will be to solidify dynamics (specifically when it is piano), be intentional about articulation, and listening to vowels.

The second piece the ladies will sing is actually a combination of two pieces from Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols. They will sing "As Dew in Aprille", followed by "This Little Babe". The ladies have been working on this for about four or five weeks. "This Little Babe" has created a bit of an obstacle with verses two and three, but last week the ladies did an excellent job on this. Tomorrow night the demand will be on dynamics (again, specifically when it is piano) and getting the crescendos to be paced in the most effective manner. Every once in awhile someone will still breath in the wrong place or end the song by closing their mouth (cutting out the potential for the ending to ring). Actually, it is normally just one person that forgets, but we're working on it.

The last piece is a song entitled "Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy" by Stephen Hatfield. We will spend quite a bit of time on this tomorrow evening. The third section in this piece asks for varying rhythm and text for all four parts. Intense counting and focus were required last week to begin learning this section and I suspect we'll have to relearn parts of it- but it will not be entirely unfamiliar. Since this piece is the newest, the focus tomorrow will be to correct stray notes (especially in that third section), implement some of the easy dynamics (and again, I will focus on the piano), and the warmth of sound.

I have been thinking a lot about dynamics. Not forte (loud or "strong", rather)... but piano (quiet). Many choirs (including all my choirs from the past five years) can do forte very well. Mezzo-forte, forte range... great. Mezzo-piano was normally the quietest I would demand. But listening to my teacher talk and being inspired by a guest conductor we had one time, I have come to appreciate the difficulty of singing a true piano with good support and energized sound. It is very easy to sing something piano but with no energy. And I am finally working with a group that can, with some effort, get to a beautiful and energized piano sound. It takes a lot of work to get there. It takes a lot of determined focus and demands from me as well.

If anyone is interested in seeing the YouTube channel for the music school, let me know and I can give you a link. None of the things I have conducted are up yet, but they will be eventually.