Conductor’s Notes – 18.05.22

As short as this term is, and as few rehearsals as we’ve had, I feel as though the progress has been fantastic so far! I’m so excited to be putting on this concert with you all in a few weeks.

We had a great rehearsal on Wednesday in St Mary’s Church (thank you all for bearing with as we adjusted to new seating positions and different acoustics) and we were joined by Peter, who told me afterwards how impressed he was with the sound of the choir – and rightly so, you sounded fab!

What we did on 18.05.22

Brilliant work on the Parry; I realise now it was a slight shock to the system – I thought that warming up with the slow, slushy section would be good, but didn’t take into account the top B-flat at the end (sorry Sopranos!). But, we did some really good, detailed work on the latter half of the Parry.
We remembered the Stanford Jubilate well, and continued to do some really detailed work on the whole thing. Notes were perfect, and we were able to put some great musicality throughout the work, especially with the “Gloria” at the end.
The rehearsal finished with a sing through and a bit of work on the National Anthem.

What we will do on 25.05.22

We’ll warm up with Old Hundredth, before doing some really good work on Stanford’s Te Deum. We’ll then finish with Rutter’s The Lord Bless You.

More details for the concert coming soon.

Online Learning Tracks

As before, there are some useful resources out there to help with learning the music. Choralia, the same website as last term, has some of the repertoire we’re doing – you just need to search their catalogue here.

Eric has very kindly shared another website that he finds useful for learning the music: John Fletcher’s Files. If you have any more questions about it, please do email Eric and I’m sure he’d be happy to chat about it.

Spotify Link

The Spotify playlist for the term is HERE. I hope it also helps in learning the music for this term.

Marked Scores

Here’s the marked booklet for this term. Please do put the markings in as it’s SO helpful for in making rehearsals run more efficiently. I’m sure it won’t take you much time at all.

See you all on Wednesday!
– Ben