TR-North

This week's rehearsal in Dunwoody went well. We started rehearsal with a decent amount of solfege work, focusing particular on singing with unified, pure vowels. It generally takes our singers a few minutes to settle into choral--as opposed to solo--singing, so as a group we've been spending a lot of time talking about the impact listening has on blend and intonation. Singing the major arpeggios on solfege has been great for this group; we've noticed that once we've run through them, the students are able to sing parallel harmonies with much more accuracy.

After warming up, we jumped immediately into Dove and Maple Tree. The students are able to sing through the first two pages with some degree of confidence, though there are certain areas that still catch them off guard. We asked the singers to identify areas in which the notes are the same and areas in which the notes change. While they understand the movement of the notes conceptually, they are still guessing a bit when singing through the piece. Using Dove and Maple Tree as an introduction to marking up scores would probably serve the North students quite well. Sound the Trumpet went fairly well this week, too.

It took us a bit of time to get the holiday music handed out and accounted for (A special shout-out goes to Meaghan for a job well done!). That said, we were still able to dive into the meat of a few of the songs. The entire group learned the melody for Brahms' Lullaby. Afterwards, they took turns reading the text in German (with a few corrections made by Meaghan). Their instincts were spot on, and they seem to have a good handle on the pronunciation. We look forward to combining the German with the melody next rehearsal. In addition to learning the melody for the Brahms, we learned both the melody and harmony for Ocho Kandelikas. We also talked about Ladino and the ways in which the pronunciation of the text differs from Spanish. This is already a group favorite! Next week, we will begin to work through Polar Express.

We are going to begin our next rehearsal with a big heart-to-heart about respectful rehearsal etiquette. Our talk should tie in nicely with a review of the rubrics. The group may or may not have to do a bit more standing than usual, too ;). We're on the right path for an incredibly successful holiday performance, and with a little more attention, the singers will look as wonderful as they sound!

Week of OCT 11-13 and 18-20

Our International Dinner was a great success and the kids sang well. Still have a lot of work to do on basic performance rituals: riser behavior, what to do with hands, feet etc., taking direction during a performance. Overall, though, they did well with lining up during warm-up and pulling things together in a short warm-up time allotment.

Last week was Holiday music distribution week. All groups, except for North and East checked out music. Those groups got a nice introduction to the music by rote and a general overview, and will check out music this coming week (OCT 24).

Tried a new thing with the West choir this week to motivate them to memorize music faster. There's a poster that has a pocket for each child. When they memorize a piece of music and sing it for me or an "experienced" singer (could be someone who already knows the piece--Tomorrow or S'Vivon, for example) to hear them. Challenged them each to memorize one piece the first day. It was interesting hearing what they thought was memorized! ...very telling about the kids' overall perception of what it means to "know" a piece.

Part distribution for Holiday Music--

Sound the Trumpet - AB/CD

Dove and Maple Tree – AB/CD

Brahms Lullaby – CD/AB

Fum, Fum, Fum – unison

Ocho Kandelikas – CD/AB

S’Vivon - IMMs on melody all the way through; then A B/C D = S1, S2, A2

Wassail – Unison

Deck the Hall – CD/AB

Christmas Time is Here – Unison

Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day – Unison. Choose singers to do descant

Polar Express – AB/CD

Housekeeping: Still wrapping up odds and ends of Informal Uniform pieces distributed to singers. Sing-a-thon packets going out this week (OCT 24). Remind kids to register practice time on Charms.

Week of OCT 4-6

This week, International Dinner preparation took center stage. We have done lots of drill on recognizing basic rhythmic patterns at sight and singing them with names that sound like the rhythm (strawberry for triplet, etc), and basic audiation exercises for Do-Sol.

Music for Int'l Dinner: Kitty, Sally, Sesere, Give us Hope. We also assigned each singer a letter ABCD for part distribution. Tuesday choir also got through Sound the Trumpet on the sop part. I gave them an extra group check for writing in all the solfege. We aslo sang the Wanderer and reviewed the first hand movements of Saman.

This week Meaghan came down to do the Central rehearsal on Wednesday and Paige went to North. North Choir worked on all the music for Int'l Dinner plus Dove and Maple Tree and IMM learned Son Macaron for maintaining a steady rhythm. They also did basic rhythm patterning with colors, fruits, etc. but instead of seeing the patterns, they made up movements for each pattern.

Thursday got through all the music for International, but since there are so many new students there, it's still slow-going.

All sections started work on the Singer Progress Chart and Rubric (1st and 2nd column for AUG-OCT) that should be completed and turned in the following week.

Housekeeping: First round of Informal Uniforms have been distributed. The trying-on and returning/keeping process will continue until OCT 16. All Int'l Dinner forms are available on Charms: member log-in> Files and Handouts> International Dinner>info and dessert donation forms