Jenny
To those choir members currently working from home or indeed able to go to work, home schooling or looking after the more vulnerable, the current situation must be challenging. So choir is possibly a way down your list of priorities. So I thought I would do a personal review of some of the on line groups if you fancy a sing.
No two choirs are the same - thank goodness. Without wanting to sound disloyal I have been singing with other groups in recent weeks.
I followed Charlie’s link to the Stayathomechoir. I was lucky enough to get onto their latest project with The Swingle Singers and attend a webinar. The webinar was great. A mixture of learning about the piece “You’re all I need to get by”, warm up exercises, rehearsing (with us all muted!) and as it was the Swingles, of course, a bit of Beat boxing. I can now do a passable Snare Drum! Practicing off line is also easy with recordings of your part with or without the accompaniment.
Next, I tried Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir of thousands. I am not not sure if my upload of the piece he wrote specially for the moment reached him. That wasn’t my reason for doing it. It just got my vocal cords moving. .
I also noticed Gareth Malone was rehearsing Vivaldi’s Gloria with his Great British Chorus. When I really wanted to blow way the cobwebs the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship’s singalong to the accompaniment to the Hallelujah Chorus was just the thing.
Finally, I should point you towards Ex Cathedra. It combines films, contributions and an online workshop. Worth a look?
None of these compare with singing together, but as a means to keep the voice in trim they are varied and I can fit them in as I feel like it. I watched Mary Beard’s Lockdown culture - Music week on BBC 2. She interviewed Gareth and he admitted if you haven’t already been in a choir then these virtual groups do not give anything like the true choir experience. However, he believed if you have sung in a choir then the act of singing in this way triggered positive memories in the brain of being in the choir. John Rutter talks eloquently on the benefits of singing on YouTube. But we all know that don’t we!
The physical effort of singing referenced in many of these videos reminded me of my annual health check when asked what exercise I did. I delighted in explaining to the GPs I saw, that whilst it was never on any of their list of sports, perhaps, they should add singing. Who knows maybe they will now.
Other things you might like to look at, with many thanks to Kate Hill.
https://voces8.foundation/events (Voces Cantabiles Music’s #livefromhome series)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQsAbLmzVK4 (a lovely show off piece you’ll enjoy)
I reflect on the positive things to come out of this period. I see more families out for walks, hear louder birdsong and see clearer skies. We’ve also done some decorating, and cleared rubbish from end of the garden into its holding bay awaiting the opening of the local tip)! I have had to learn to slow down - ask Richard how that is going..
He has got it sussed and had already taken out a subscription to “The Idler” magazine a few months ago. I have been caught having a sneaky read and learning from it. So much so I am looking forward to the live concerts from The Wigmore at 1pm on BBC R3 starting in June.
Finally, my go to piece of non choral music which many of you may know is Sir Peter Maxwell Davies “Farewell to Stromness” whilst revisiting recent holiday photos. Enjoy!
Take care, keep well and carry on singing… Jenny
Maestro’s Musings
Charlie’s Fortnightly Spotlight
Freudian team slip...?
I hope you are all keeping safe and all your families are well still. I don’t know how many people are in the position of needing to go out to work versus working from home etc. but I know that in our house neither of us is currently expecting to leave the house for work until Autumn at the earliest (Cat’s office is next door to the ward where they’re treating Covid patients, so for obvious reasons they don’t want anyone in for the foreseeable future!). My work continues to be online, and it seems slightly strange to be sat in my office regularly working with school teachers (and some of my piano students) who are now preparing for a return of some kind next week, without any great change in my work life for some time yet I suspect.
I was very generously treated to a PS4 last week, including the newest FIFA football game - something both my brothers are very big on and which provides us another way of interacting online in a more normal way than the rest of life allows for at the moment. It’s only now as I write this I realise the significance of starting my managerial career with Leicester City! You may (or may not) be pleased to know that we had a wonderful pre-season tournament, winning the final 5-0 and have high hopes for the season ahead...!
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I don’t know if anyone has tried any of the online singing initiatives so far. You might have noticed that apart from this one namecheck, I’m refusing to say anything more about Gareth Malone’s Great British Home Chorus... but do let me know if you’ve had a go at any of the things out there (things I’ve suggested or others), and especially if you think they’d be worth me sharing with the rest of the choir.
Following on from lots of positive feedback about some of the pieces which were originally slated for our spring/summer concerts this season, I thought I’d point you in the direction of one or two others, perhaps similar in style, but more because they happen to have been in my head a lot in the last few months (for no particular reason...I think!). Indeed, I found the first one playing rather loudly in my mind whilst traipsing up and down the aisles of Tesco this week - I have to be careful not to let the soaring soprano descant in the last verse escape from my mouth otherwise people give you very strange looks...especially when you’re stood in the alcohol section of the store!
The Water is Wide (arr. Craig Hella Johnson)
Loch Lomond (arr. Vaughan Williams)
Incidentally, the Loch Lomond recording comes from a CD by Trinity College, Melbourne called “Mystical Songs” and also has a brilliant recording of the Five Mystical Songs (we were doing Antiphon for Worcester) - it’s the best recording of the piano and strings version I know of. Annoyingly it’s hard/impossible to stream in the UK but you can buy the album from the iTunes store, and I really recommend it.