Wednesday 23rd October – Conductor’s Notes

Hello friends, I hope you’re all well and have had a good start to the week. A little bit in these notes, both for this week and future weeks, so thank you very much for reading through carefully.

I want to start with an apology for the lack of Conductor’s Notes – I know people find them really helpful, especially in knowing what’s coming up in rehearsals, as well as finding out what we’ve done. With the various bereavements we’ve had over the past couple of weeks, focus has had to be diverted elsewhere, which I’m sure you all understand. Focus will continue to be diverted when the baby arrives, but I’ll do my best to stay in touch as life (hopefully) settles again – I wonder how many comments I’ll get from people saying “Your life will never settle again!” haha! Either way, please do keep checking notes, and I’ll try to get at least something out in advance of rehearsals so you all know what we’ll be doing. Thank you for understanding!

What we’ve been doing

We’ve obviously spent a lot of good time so far on our new music for our Christmas concert on the 14th December. I think there are already some pieces which are coming together nicely, given it’s the first month of rehearsals. A brief overview of what we’ve done:

  • In the first week we read through almost everything, and then completed this in week 2.
  • We’ve done some good sectional rehearsals on various bits, including the SA bits in A Ceremony of Carols.
  • We’ve spent a bit of time getting to grips with Ben Parry’s Dashing Through the Snow (Jingle Bells) which will be a cracking encore in the concert, as well as a few other tricky pieces.
  • It’s been great to introduce you to the three works by German composer Jan Wilke, and start working on those.

To catch up: If you’ve missed any of the rehearsals so far, please familiarise yourselves with the music by listening to the recordings, putting the markings in, and singing through them as best as possible, especially Dashing Through the Snow which is tricky.

What we’ll do – Wednesday 30th October

A REMINDER THAT THERE IS A REHEARSAL THIS WEEK!

We’ll be continuing our great work so far with the below:

Good King Wenceslas; Jingle Bells (bars 87 – end); Sans Day Carol; In a Dream; Sectionals on Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (SA with Ro) & Lullay, Mine Liking (TB with Callum & Ben); Lullay Mine Liking (Tutti); In Freezing Winter Night; and we’ll end (ironically) with Wolcum Yole.

When I’m on paternity leave, Callum Salisbury will very kindly be taking the rehearsals. To help him with his planning, I’ve put together the music I’d like covered in the next 4 weeks. You can see that below. Please be nice to Callum, we’re very grateful for his help!

Here are some important dates to mark in your diary – most are in the document outlining the dates for the year, on the ‘Members’ tab and on previous Conductor’s Notes tabs.

Saturday 2nd November – 2pm at St Mary’s Church, Chipping Norton – Eric Clubley’s Memorial

Wednesday 27th November – normal rehearsal time – AGM (please attend!)

Thursday 28th November – 5:30-6:30pm at Chipping Norton Town Hall – Christmas Lights Switch On – I’ll be mentioning this on Wednesday as I’ll need to know numbers soon.

Friday 13th December – 7:30pm St Mary’s Church, Chipping Norton – Cotswold Youth Choir concert, please support!

Saturday 14th December – Our Christmas concert at St Mary’s Chipping Norton.

You can find all my markings for the music below. Over the next couple of weeks, as the weather gets even colder in the evenings, wrap up warm with a mug of hot chocolate/glass of wine and PLEASE PUT THE MARKINGS IN!

The editions are in copyright and we’re using the marked scores for reference only, the document is password protected – Annabel sent round the password a few weeks ago, but we’ll share it again on Wednesday.

A Ceremony of Carols has two sources for learning guides:
If you subscribe to John Fletcher, you can find his learning guides HERE.
The free learning guide is available via Choralia – check it out HERE.

Susannah has very kindly shared a link to the learning guides for pieces in 100 Carols for Choirs – please make use of it HERE.

Most of the music is on YouTube, in one version of another. However, if you use Spotify, my playlist for the term is HERE.

Future Events

Do go along and support the forthcoming CRAG concerts!

This Week’s listening

One of the pieces that’s being sung at Eric’s memorial on Saturday is Rani Arbo’s setting of Alfred Tennyson’s poem Crossing the Bar. A few composers have taken this beautiful text and set it to music, and arguably the most well-known is by Hubert Parry. It’s only a few minutes long, so well worth the listen. Check it out HERE.

See you all on Wednesday 30th October!
Ben