Hi, people
Lots of feedback from people who enjoyed singing through the Faure last Tuesday. Please hold on to your copies – we’ll worry about getting them back in the New Year when we retrieve the red folders. It might be that you’d like another Faure evening before we gather them in....
In view of what we’re hearing from Dr Bonnie, I’ve made the decision that we won’t even think about caroling outside unless the COVID numbers take a downward turn. I do think that singing outside and separated is possible, and safe – but I am also more coming to a place where I feel that we all have to do more to NOT push the boundaries, and to model safe behaviour. Who knows, it may happen that we can flatten the curve again... And we all desperately want for things to be normal again, and for Christmas to be “traditional”. But the most important thing right now is to stay safe. So much as we’d like the promo, and to be singing publicly, I’m putting the brakes on. We’ll get as much carol-singing as we can in our Tuesday sessions.
Emily, from Phoenix Chamber Choir, has just sent me the video with score of “Silent Night”.- https://youtu.be/BVTLAJaGyjE I have put a pdf of the score in the music files as well, but singing off the screen gets your heads up and your faces more engaged! Sopranos barely need to rehearse, but you might find it a good challenge to sing alto or tenor, for rehearsal, anyway. Notice the staggered breathing, which will feel very odd, singing on your own. Brad (the sound engineer) says that the most important thing is that you don't leave out a whole note, but rather start the note and then drop out. He can extend your note to fill the space, but he can't create a note out of nothing. That means that you should try to stagger on the longer notes so that you can start the note, breathe, and then get back in for the next note. Final consonants on a syllable will actually belong to the beginning of the next syllable.
We’ll plan for some sectional time on Tuesday.
So (crossed fingers) Tuesday 17th will be something like
• warmup and vocal reminders
• let’s fish out the Back To Zoom Choir round
• we’ll do some rhythmic work on Woodsmoke & Oranges, and see if we can get the rest of this sorted – notes are not difficult. Perhaps sing against recording....
• I’m going to suggest we take some breakout room time in random groups to talk about the fact that the Food Bank has been a beneficiary of ROCA for the last few years, but we can’t do a concert for them this year – is there anything we can do?
• Break
• sectionals on Silent Night
• bring it together with Phoenix recording
• reminders about what’s needed if you decide to do the Virtual Choir thing
We talked a bit at St Mary’s staff meeting last week about the difference between online ritual and ritual online – that we can’t expect to pick up a pattern and have it transfer into a different format. It’s very much what I’m trying to do with ROCA rehearsals – we can’t expect to have things continue the same, but what we do need to do is use the online resources in a way that we couldn’t have done in an in-person format (like last week!). I’ve heard from a few choirs recently who are on hiatus because “online doesn’t work for us”... I feel sorry for them, because I suspect that they’ve just tried to move their usual patterns into Zoom, and it’s not worked. I’m grateful to all of you for moving outside your comfort zones and trying new things and new ways of being at this difficult time.
See you Tuesday
Brigid
