Rudsamblog

I agreed to take notes last night, tell Jenny if you could help out another week, as the list seems to have gone AWOL!

All the men here [well except Angus, hope to see you soon!] but 3 sops away, Helen came then departed quickly [hope it wasn't anything we said?! No, we know you have a lot on!] and poor Kay's throat was suffering, so Elaine and AnnaLauren had to hold the fort! Anyway we had a good rehearsal and got to grips with some of those tricky moments!

1. Dance to th' daddy

And remember it's th' for the and thoo not thou for pronunciation.

We focused on the last 2 pages.

• Stay crisp, light and staccato especially 1st line of page 32.
• Make sure we're together on entries [we practised that with Ollie during the warm-up].
• Follow the dynamics. ie ff, p and crescendo in 1st line, cresc and getting faster 2nd line.
• Last word on 1st line page 32 is si-ngngng, ie a long ng not a long vowel!
• Tenors page 33, count carefully the rest in 2nd line 1st bar , ie "in" , 2 , "have it"
  
• Everyone: very last bar is p, crisp, staccato [don't hang on to "comes" but keep it short] and supported, not a breathy p.

2. Lullaby to Lucy

• Again, quiet bits not breathy but well-supported and good tone. From "Rowan and lamb" it should be legato, well-phrased. Men listen to the women's line and women breathe after "lamb" then straight through "salt and sweet", keeping the final "t" tidy and together on salt and sweet.
• All breathe before "Entreat", and there should be more tone and cresc from here as marked. All breathe again before "A pledge and a promise".
• In "Lonely they were" no breath after were, and cresc to the word "long", then dim.
  "Rackwick" is crisp but only a gentle staccato, ie we should hear the 2 "ks" but no break between the 2 syllables.
• Sops watch your tuning on the top E in "pledge", page 3, and "light"on page 4, you were a bit under.

3. By Falshood

Our favourite! We bashed this out with the piano and Ollie was very encouraged! He said we should all be really chuffed. [But did he notice the very well-suppressed near hysteria from some people??!!] No, we counted carefully and focused mainly from bar 13.

• Lower 3 parts need to make sure you keep with the sops, as it should flow they may not sing it absolutely in perfect rhythm [I don't mean because they get it wrong!] so we need to make sure our entries match where they are.
• Count quavers to start and remember that a triplet = 3 notes sung in the space of 2 quavers so "triplets are a bit faster than quavers", as he said! So bar 16, sops, is 8 quavers long with 2 triplets. Write 1,2,1,2 if that helps or whatever, but LOOK at it this week, especially if you weren't at the rehearsal.
• From bar 21 think in crotchets or it gets too disjointed.
• Bar 25, think of the first word "Not" as being 2 notes in a 3-note triplet, so mentally think of 3 beats = "rest, no-ot". And bar 26 starts really with a triplet, just a break between the end of "sham-ed" and "with".. the light. With the light is a cresc, especially for basses.
  
• Everyone try to play your notes from bar 25 to the end as there are some real crunches, bass and tenor had a few problems. Sops and bass sing the same notes in bar 27 so mark that then one of you might be right!

4. Komitas Set

We ran through the set to keep it well-rehearsed.

• Stay bouncy, look at the words.
• Ollie will beat at least 123 after Shogher Jan and Cheenar Es, so men watch Ollie at that point.
• In Im Chinari Yare, poor Kay's voice nearly gave out but being a real trouper she kept going.
• We agreed that the final chorus [C] needed to be loud, so again watch Ollie.

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Ollie will email a list of music for the 15 April concert soon. We have to know the Komitas set and Une Puce FROM MEMORY so start learning now.

Tell all your friends/family about the concert, John has forwarded the email to you that's gone out to our mailing-list.

I'll try and have a look at the Gallery tonight on my way in to the Queens Hall concert so I know roughly where we'll be singing. Helen Monaghan from the Gallery suggested the 3rd Bay/Room on the Left.

We'll use the North Meeting Room for rehearsal from 5pm. Concert starts at 6 and lasts about 30 minutes.