A New Season Begins!

Well, it's been a great summer. There are still a few weeks to go and lots of sailing ahead so I am not calling it quits yet! However I am thinking about the coming year. Blue of a Kind just started preparing for the coming season. Like a professional sports team, a choir has to return to camp and reconnect with how they do what they do. Choirs like us also have to begin learning their Holiday music long before the snow starts flying. There's work to do!!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

The summer began with a 10 day trip to Cuba to sing with the Yale Alumni Chorus. It was the experience of a lifetime. Many non-US travelers have enjoyed visiting Cuba since 1980, but for US citizens you need to jump through a lot of hoops to do it legally. Luckily, YAC managed all this hard work for us, and the choir only had to sing and prepare to share friendship.

We have a phenomenal group of singers of all ages, and one of the best directors you could ever sing under, Jeffrey Douma. The singers work independently to learn the music for months. They gather for a couple of regional rehearsals under Jeff to put it all together. Once in Cuba, we rehearsed a couple of times a day for the first few days to get the spit and polish we needed. After Jeffrey shapes the output of 200+ voices, the results can be quite intoxicating! We were able to sing joint concerts in Matanzas and Havana with professional choirs and perform at a very exceptional level.

The Cuban people were thrilled that we wanted to come sing for them, put all our hearts and souls into it, and meet them as friends. It was a wonderful experience and we made many friends.

Summer Arranging

I also did more arranging this summer, focusing on classics from the American Songbook, and produced these new works for men:

Getting Some Fun Out Of Life

Lil' Darlin'

I Hadn't Anyone Till You

And I reworked a couple of SATB arrangements for men. These two were taken from the YAC Cantemos! repertoire:

El Bodeguero

MLK

Topics for the Coming Year

What shall we talk about this season? I'm developing an agenda for Blue of a Kind so we can continue developing and having fun. I have also developed a list of blog topics for the coming season. Last year, I got into a groove of producing an arrangement a week for 6 months and wrote about each one. This took me on a very single-minded journey which was quite productive, but requiring many hours of work before I wrote the first word of my blog entry. It also changed the course of this discussion, which is aimed at all things a cappella, rather than arranging tips and techniques.

If these are of interest (or not) I hope you'll post a comment with your thoughts:

• Becoming a better ensemble singer
• Developing a structure to support learning and development
• Section leadership, rehearsals
• Personal practice time
• Amazing singing - CDs, groups, new releases
• Your voice - approaches to producing better sound\
• Choral vocal production
• Balancing chords
• Consistent tone
• Singing parts as lines
• Vowels
• Forte consonants
• Romancing the lyric
• Singing softly


• Singing in tune
• Going flat
• Going sharp


• Ensemble singing topics
• Singing on auto-pilot: eye contact and engagement
• Dynamics
• Color
• Legatto, staccato, marcato...
• Exact attack and exact pitch
• Releases
• Shouting, bellowing
• Trusting your sound


• Performing
• Movement in performance
• Dealing with nerves in performance
• Translating rehearsal success into standing ovations


• Marketing, Increasing audience, getting more gigs - web, local media, PR
• Music selection
• Ordering songs in performance or on your CD
• Working with Finale, Sibelius
• Tips and techniques
• Archival concerns


• The joys of directing
• Rehearsal strategies
• Vocal Percussion and imitating bands
• Arranging music - tips and techniques

And What Else?

Do you have any other ideas or things you'd like to hear about or discuss? Post a comment and let me know!