there’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line… (Indigo Girls)
Well, we just returned home from a terrific weekend in Los Angeles with family! As soon as we got home, we dialed in to the theater casting line to hear the final selections for the Oliver! cast – and both girls were in the final children’s ensemble! Our fall will be as full as we can handle; they’re both super-excited and can’t wait for the first cast meeting this Saturday…
Back to the unpacking!
Last night I enjoyed a night on the town while my much-appreciated partner Jeff held the home-fort down with the kids. (This in the middle of a very busy work stretch – he’s not been getting much sleep lately, but the karaoke has been scheduled for a while!)
I drove a couple of towns over to rendezvous with friends from chorus at a bar, which is not the sort of place I have frequented under usual circumstances, not even in college or pre-kids. But it is fun with friends, and in this day and age there is a better understanding of people who don’t drink – when I ordered my first soda I immediately got the comment, “That’s great, you’re the designated driver!” (Not that that’s why I wasn’t drinking…)
Anyway, I had to swallow some butterflies – somehow standing up and performing in front of your friends can be more anxiety-producing than performing in front of strangers! But I had fun, and got to get up there three times on my own and once with a friend. On my own, I sang “Please Mr. Postman”, “There’s Your Trouble” (Dixie Chicks), and “Something to Talk About” (Bonnie Raitt). The duet was “500 Miles” (by various folk artists); that friend had wanted an opportunity to hear what our voices sounded like in close singing, as opposed to ensemble singing which we have done together several times now in chorus.
When we weren’t singing we had lots of fun conversation about life and, of course, about singing. Everyone is planning their ensembles for the new concert, and we’re getting ready to start again in just over a week. Yay!!
I forgot to share something that happened at the concerts! Jeff, the kids and my parents came to the show on Saturday night. As I came out of the wings in the second half for Mockingbird, Jamie piped up quite loudly with “Mama!” The whole crowd sighed, “Awwwwww!” I waved up at him, and the conductor asked, “Was that for real?” as if it were someone else’s kid saying “Mama” to me. (He doesn’t have any kids himself and doesn’t plan to that I know of, he’s over 50 and has girlfriends rather than wives.) Anyway, it was very very sweet 
All last week was nightly three-hour practices, with concerts on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon. It was a rough week, with things like laundry and home-cooking falling to the wayside as we tried to keep Jeff’s work efforts up during the day so that he was free all evening to be with the kids, do bedtime, etc. I think he’ll agree with me that all of this is worth it – MORE than worth it. I am never so happy with my life as when I am getting to do the music regularly, rehearsing ensembles with friends, and keeping my brain popping with challenging harmonies and rhythms.
The concerts were fantastic, by the chorus’s judgment and by the audience’s. I think the audience really enjoyed this particular concert because it was packed with well-known pieces; even the two classical pieces were recognizable (Wagner’s Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin, aka The Wedding March, and the Anvil Chorus from Il Travatore by Verdi, the refrain of which is like a drinking song and I think felt familiar even if it wasn’t).
My Mockingbird duet with Bill was a terrific hit! When we’d go out front after the show, strangers from the audience would snag us to tell us how great it was; one gentleman even told me, “The Foxxes would be proud!” (They are the writers/composers of the piece.) We did some jitterbugging on Sunday during the 16-bar guitar and piano riffs and that was fun.
Handful of Keys (Fats Waller, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”) went really well after a rocky start at the ensemble tech night last Monday. Our director (who does the keyboard for the ensemble pieces but not the choral pieces) really took off with the rhythm and we totally lost our groove. I had to screw up my courage to speak with him on Tuesday (because he doesn’t take criticism at all – you have to make it “mea culpa, it was my mistake”) and after that we were able to settle in. On Monday, nothing about the piece sounded right except for the notes – we were lost in the many words, our dynamics were nonexistent, and so forth. “Finesse” became our byword after that, to remember to stroke the piece into being and not jump on it.
Other pieces were fabulous as well. We finally found our space on the MGM movie medley – medleys can be really difficult to pull off even when the music is simple and familiar, because you’re transitioning between all sorts of styles in short order and if you carry over a boisterous style into a ballad it’s not going to sound right! Our “torch” singer wowed them every night with Stormy Weather, and the Take Me out to the Ball Game/Oh How I Love a Football Game partner song was another big hit.
Now that I’ve been in the group for several years, another really enjoyable part of the action for me is the camaraderie. After the show on Friday a large group (20?) heads to a restaurant/bar for a late dinner. (I think most of us don’t eat before the show; I personally don’t eat after 4pm for an 8pm show…) I didn’t get home until 12:30! And on Sunday after the show is a potluck cast party with lots of socializing, some karaoke and sometimes the game Encore! It’s a nice opportunity to chill with the gang, and I usually visit more closely with three or four different people before the karaoke starts and learn more about them personally.
Now that the concerts are done, everyone is right back into the music selection for the summer season. Actually, many of us had already taken care of that business during the interlude between auditions and the ensemble results, because the evening ensemble rehearsals are stopped for a while. The concert season is announced in January when the season tickets go on sale, so we knew (or thought we did) that it was going to be a world music concert. I’d concentrated on the Pacific, assembling a group for Waltzing Matilda (with instruments) and finding some Asian pieces for smaller groups too. Unfortunately for us, the director announced this weekend that there was no way he was going to do that program because of the unique challenges of the summer session (fewer people overall, and people in and out with vacations). His opinion is that world music requires at least four languages, which really are our biggest challenge as a group. So the program is going to be limited to music of the Americas, sort of a semi-world approach. A lot of people’s pieces had to get tossed aside for another time…
BUT, it gives me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to assemble a group to do Sweet Honey in the Rock’s piece On Children. That’s an a cappella piece, so I wanted to wait until I knew some of the other voices better and could build a strong group for the piece. It’s just four voices! And I think I’ll be doing a Caribbean piece for a larger group as well. I’ve been invited to be others’ groups as well (including Motown, Americana and French Canadian) so I’ll be nice and busy with great music during May and June.
I’m worried that I’ll have auditions on the Saturday of Katie’s sleep-away camp concert, but I’ll cross that bridge later!
The audition results for my community chorus came out yesterday morning; in fact, they came right to my mailbox, because the director is on a trip to Germany for a few weeks and we arranged to have him email the results to me, and I would post them on Chessmetrics for everyone to have access to.
I am in three pieces – but more importantly to me, BOTH of the pieces I coordinated were picked!! That’s a milestone I’ve been waiting for; actually managing a piece takes extra skill, both in the selection of a good piece and in the direction of the group of singers. Of course, I manage in a very democratic way, but in the end someone has to be the final authority and that’s the organizer.
Our concerts are on March 30-31 and April 1, and the program is Broadway and Pops (popular music). I organized an eight-person SATB group doing the ragtime piece Handful of Keys from Ain’t Misbehavin’ (by Fats Waller). I also mostly organized a duet (there’s a lot less organizing with just two people), doing the James Taylor/Carly Simon version of Mockingbird. Finally, I will be in a nine-person SAB group doing Put on a Happy Face from Bye Bye Birdie.
Since I am pretty computer-literate, I used a free trial of PrintMusic 2007 (by Finale) to actually do a scanning recognition process on my music. (I bought a paid version after the 30 day trial was done.) Although the recognition process definitely requires clean-up, it enabled me to make rehearsal CDs for my groups which everyone appreciated and which I think really made for great groups. Once I had the music cleaned up, I could record a variety of tracks: practice tracks for each individual part (with the other parts turned off, since they were on different staves); a group practice track with just the piano part; and tracks at different tempos for learning and performance. I figured out how to change the tempo for different sections (for Handful of Keys) and then made new CDs for that group with the final performance accompaniment.
For Mockingbird, I needed to transpose the music down because Bill is not a tenor but a baritone; fortunately I’m a second alto so lower was fine for me! Once we picked our key I had to adapt the music in a few places, building the instrumental bridge in the middle (8 bars for guitar, 8 for piano) and making a new ending with more emphasis on the singers (the original ending said “instrumental fade” which is okay for a recording artist!). I also transposed Don’t Rain on My Parade (from Funny Girl) which I auditioned as a solo piece, for practice!
I’m disappointed that Chattanooga Choo Choo didn’t get in. I was more part of the management committee on that piece, and I did CDs for it as well (it was nine-person SSA). We really had the piece nailed, with one exception; there was a naked harmony part that never sounded consistently good, sometimes it was shrill and unfortunately it was a bit shrill in audition. But I think the real killer for that group is blend; there are two voices that have a hard time blending and I think that is an automatic knockout for the director.
It’s that time of year for me – happens three times annually – time to prepare for auditions for my community chorus! A lot of rehearsals get crunched into a 4-6 week period; this time it’s only four, as the director is going out of the country for 2.5 weeks in February and the auditions need to be accomplished before that time. This spring’s concert is “Pops”. The chorus is doing pieces almost exclusively from stage and screen: West Side Story medley; Steam Heat (from Pajama Game); an MGM medley with songs from Singin’ in the Rain and other films; Lady’s Maid from the musical Titanic; Climb Every Mountain (from Sound of Music); Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin (Wagner, the famous wedding march); Anvil Chorus from Verdi’s Il Travatore, another widely recognizable classical piece; and one non-entertainment piece, Worthy to be Praised (gospel).
I try to manage an ensemble piece myself each time; I greatly enjoy doing it, it hones my musicianship, and the sociable angle is nice too. This time I chose Handful of Keys from the musical about Fats Waller and ragtime, Ain’t Misbehavin’. I just finished preparing the piece using PrintMusic 2007 to creat mp3 files of each part and of the accompaniment. PrintMusic has added an awesome scan recognition feature that made my job much easier, though I suppose I could just become a better piano player… Anyway, this is an SATB piece with a nice piano part (our director doesn’t like to be bored while he’s playing…), and I think I’ve got a solid group of folks to bring it together.
I was invited to participate in two other pieces as well, that others are managing. One is Put on a Happy Face from Bye Bye Birdie, an SAB arrangement; the other is a big band arrangment of Chattanooga Choo Choo. Our director said that although he chose a choral program from primarily stage and screen, we should feel free to bring in pieces from other genres that are widely known. I’d already built my ragtime group at that point and I did consider whether the piece might be too far outside “pops”, but I decided that while the title is not going to be widely recognized, Fats Waller and ragtime certainly are and it could fill a niche that way. The director is generally open to considering pieces of all types as long as they are well-performed!
It looks like I’ll also be doing a duet with Bill – we were selected for last month’s concert with our duet about Ebeneezer Scrooge from the eponymous musical – probably High Hopes if the arrangement is good (it’s not here yet). And I’m kicking around a solo audition this time; I ordered Que Sera Sera (performed by Doris Day in the Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much) and Don’t Rain on My Parade (Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl).
The next four weeks are going to be busy!!