Back-to-Rehearsal Update-- North and East

Caroline and Meaghan have had a really great first two rehearsals back! I know it's early, but we are really feeling like the remainder of this season's training performances have the potential to be really spectacular. The repertoire is already coming along so smoothly, and the tone of rehearsals has been set at a higher level from the start of last week's rehearsal. We have high hopes that the singers will continue to meet and exceed our expectations as Young Singers.

We've used solfege to teach most of Birch Tree, and even did it in two part canon on our first sing-through.

We were also able to use solfege to learn Ton The. First they learned the "catchy ending" of the melody, and the entire melody fell into place soon after. Last week we learned the harmony that starts on p. 9, and we heard no complaints, only beautiful high notes :)

Only one of our singers was at summer camp, so Hamisha is pretty new to most of them. So we started with the meter, then jumped right into the text, using the monotone treble I part in the last verse to practice. Then it was no problem for them to go back and put the same text with the melody.

We've learned the melody and some of the harmony to the Wanderer. Our biggest challenge on that one will be making those phrases musical!

We're working on rhythms with IMMs, and using the syncopation the Hussar to practice.

We are continuing work on Sound the Trumpet and Dove and the Maple Tree, of course. We have introduced the concept of Songcatching. We talked about Ton The and Birch Tree, showing the singers where they could look in the front of their octavos to find out information about the song and why it fits the theme of songcatching. They seem to grasp the concept of songcatching, but don't seem to have many ideas so far of what that means for them.

On an informal note... We ended rehearsal with a runthrough of Kitty Alone. They were basically shouting, and after stopping and re-starting one or two times, we continued on. They immediately changed into the most beautiful, pure tone, and I turned to Caroline and said "I could listen to this all day." So we are glad to be working with these singers, and looking forward to seeing where they go musically over the next 4 months or so.

November Report

Things are crashing right along for Callanwolde and West groups. I will have to say that our Wednesday group is the furthest along in terms of memorization of the program. However, as you know, we need to cut bait with these groups on Dove and the Maple Tree. New plan--feature AYS-N and East on Dove since they have it learned, and feature AYS-C and West on Sound the Trumpet. Along those same lines, we have also spent very little time on the Brahms Lullaby. First verse will be solo or small group, and second verse will be everyone. Sorry for over-programming! Doggone Polar Express...

Last week, we did a "No Paper" week just to see where we were with memorization. Wed and Thurs groups seemed to do OK, but Tuesday group seemed behind.

Our biggest trouble spots memorization-wise were:
Tomorrow Shall Be, Deck the Hall (words)
Sound the Trumpet and S'Vivon (melodic/harmonic material)
Fum Fum Fum (Only Tuesday had major difficulty) - Do verse 1, 2, and repeat v. 1. No verse 3 for the Recital

The new plan is below, same concert order as before:

Sound the Trumpet Henry Purcell AYS-C and W; sit after singing

Dove and the Maple Tree Antonin Dvorak AYS-N and E enter and perform in front of seated singers

Lullaby Johannes Brahms soloists come down front

Fum, Fum, Fum Spanish Traditional

Ocho Kandelikas arr. Joshua Jacobson

S’Vivon Betty Bertaux

Deck the Hall arr. Stephen J. Ortlip

Wassail Song from Folksongs of the Four Seasons Ralph Vaughan Williams

Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day John Gardner

Christmas Time is Here Vince Guaraldi

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

North/East September Update

An update from the North TR/IMM group:

Repertoire:

• We did a lot with Sally Gardens the first two weeks, then put it aside. Pulled it out this last week in September and it was beautiful! They have it well-learned and memorization should be no problem. ---What worked as far as phrasing was "painting" the phrase in the air. I have tried various ways of getting them to sing the phrases, and this was the first that got immediate results.

• The North kids know Kitty Alone really well. It's a big group-- and a very consistent group-- which means we were able to get into two parts really quickly. They maintain their parts well. But we are having a hard time with musical details such as cutoffs because they won't read it in their scores and they won't respond when we give it to them in our conducting. It makes it especially tricky in the verses where the two parts are in canon, if they aren't counting how long to hold a note. I did finally get them to hold out some of the long-duration notes yesterday, but only when I had them put down their music and watch me. With a bit of focus, this is a really solid piece for them.
  
• Give Us Hope-- we have done each section, and done the alto part. They just need to experience the song in its full form. They all want to sing melody on this anyway, so no problem for int'l dinner.
• Sesere Yeye-- They can sing it well, but we haven't added any movement. (I can do the movement, but I need to clarify if what I know is the mirrored version or the correct version, so I don't teach them left/right incorrectly.) I actually did introduce the soprano part on Wednesday, which they picked up immediately and sang well.
  
• Caroline and I had great success teaching the Dvorak melody at camp, using count singing. So we went ahead and started it with these kids; so far they have made it through the first two pages, soprano, count-singing. We figured that even though the IMMs aren't singing it, it doesn't hurt for them to learn the melody.

Other:

• We've worked a lot in warm-ups on breathing and vowel shape, and it has really showed during rehearsals.
• Lots of solfege practice. Learning arpeggios and intervals with hand signs, and mystery tunes at the beginning of rehearsal and after break.
• Again, the size of the group and their good attendance has really benefited us. We're making a lot of progress. Looking forward to getting them part assignments: the consistency will help some of our youngest new friends, and some old friends with talking problems!

East:
We're making good progress on the repertoire, but we are having to spend a lot of time on the basics of theory. Solfege and intervals are a real struggle, as is reading simple rhythms. The ability is there, we just need continued work and persistence!

Fall Kick-off

Well, September is about to bid a hasty farewell and the Young Singers are off and running. Repertoire-wise, we've got a good start from work done at Camp and Mini-camp.

Sally Gardens is in good shape and it's time to get everyone memorized on the piece and really work phrasing.
Kitty Alone is moving along pretty well on the S1 part, and kids have been introduced to the Alto, but not trained on it.
Camp kids also learned Give Us Hope and Sesere Eeye pretty well--again, parts introduced, but not trained.
Bist Du Bei Mir and Sound the Trumpet and Pergolesi Amen were worked at Camp Woodmont, but only limited work by Mini Camp kids
Saman had one or two introductory lessons--basic move and chant--and one ensemble performance of it at Woodmont
Hamisha Asar had an introduction at Camp
Polar Express was rehearsed daily at Camp but not at all at Mini-Camp

So the September report to date for Callanwolde/Mable House rehearsals:
Lot of work on audiation to get the choir, particularly IMMs to start solidifying basic intervals (Sol Mi) and diatonic steps within the scale. We've done the Name Game song/Luriala Le as an intro to Mi Re Do patterns and basic harmony. Also a little "simon says style" drill on Mi-re-do patterns. Have done some training on score-reading with Sound the Trumpet score--measure, bar, measure numbers, system, beat numbers. All TR/IMM singers should be able to look at a score and find a measure number for a particular spot. Also with Sound the Trumpet, we've been memorizing the solfeggio for m.29 to the end. TR Singers have been asked to write this in and sing it individually. about half have mastered it so far.

For rhythm skills, we've been doing some patterns and giving them fruit or color names and them reading them off the board, then identifying them in the score.

Last week, we did a lesson with improvisation during the warm-up and used the Brahms lullaby as an example of how to use ostinato.

More on solfeggio...
Sally Gardens scavenger hunt for sol-mi was OK. Tried it only by ear rather than by sight. I'd like to try it again at another time once the audiation for that particular interval is more developed, but for now, it was a good way for new kids to pick up on the melody.

Kitty Alone is still a favorite piece and the kids are on the way to having the S1 part memorized. And now for the Alto part...

The last two weeks, we've done The Wanderer--introducing the idea of syncopation--and have gotten though 2 out of 3 melodic themes. Tried to do a little of the canon last week, but rushed into into it and they got lost.

We've been hitting Give Us Hope, Saman, Sesere Eeye as we have time, but not consistently. The next big priority for Training Choir will be Dove and Maple Tree for the December Recital. Holiday folders will be distributed the week of OCT 17--7 weeks before the recital.

Now that auditions are over and rosters set, we'll be assigning each chorister a letter. Assignments will be a little different this year. We need each chorister to be assigned a letter A-D with more A's and D's than b's and c's. E.g: the combined number of b/c should equal the number of A's or D's. Thus, in 2 parts the configuration is A/b c/D; in 3 parts is A b/c D. since we don't do 4-part music in Training and IMM, the only other division we have to worry about is a four-pt round and we can always borrow singers to balance it.

Housekeeping-a-thon: tis the season for paperwork and uniform.

• INT’L Dinner rep: Sally Gardens, Kitty (A/b high c/D low), Sesere Eeye (unison on melody), Give Us Hope (no parts)
• ANNOUNCEMENTS: Turn in Yellow sheet (Scheduling), Uniform Order forms—turn in if you haven’t done so already, International Dinner coming up OCT 16—families look for dessert donation forms via email, extra hard copies of available at rehearsal next week.