Rehearsal Summary 4 Nov 2010

Dear Choir,

Here are my notes from choir tonight. As always please add your version in the comments.

We started with sectionals for the women together and the men together. In the men's rehearsal we did the men's verse of "How Can I Keep From Singing". I gather that the women did the women's verse. We also sight read through "Sing We Now of Christmas" and auditioned for the solos on "African Noel". On "Carols of the Night" we rehearsed measures 130 to 145. We also worked on "Carol of the Magi" where I learned that legato and dolce mean smoothly and sweetly respectively. We were scheduled to work on "Go Where I Send Thee" but we ran out of time. Perhaps the women got to it in their sectional.

In the combined rehearsal we worked on adding the Bells (and chimes) to the last part of "Come Thou Fount". On 'Witness" the women worked on sliding into measure 69 and singing "tall and dark" [and hansom?] at 77. We were reminded that my (as in my soul is a witness, pick-up to measure 85) should be pronounced mah. And witness is pronounced witnuss. We worked on "How Can I Keep From Singing". My only notes were that every time we sang past measures 42 and 43, Erin asked for better consonants and we should sing very "shaped" phrases. In fact phrasing and shaping was the main thing we worked on in "How Can I Keep From Singing". We spent the last few minutes on "Jingle Bells", which Chuck asked us to memorize.

The rehearsal list also had us rehearsing "African Noel", "The First Noel", "The 12 Days of Christmas", and "Sing We Now of Christmas". We didn't get to any of these today.

Ron Young pointed out a web site that can convert YouTube videos into MP3s and other formats so you can listen to them away from your computer. The site is dirpy.com.

The MOA has offered us the opportunity to sing on Saturday December 18th at 11am. We will be deciding next week if we will accept, so please review your plans and be prepared next week to give your input.

Albin Dittli