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Thanks everyone for a good rehearsal last night despite the holiday weekend for some of you. How fun to sing MLK on MLK day! I trust you received my message about the solos, etc. that will help fill in and provide variety to the program. We will figure out our double choir format next week, so be sure to attend. We will also assess where we stand on the music by singing as much of the program as possible. Don't forget to look through your music before next week and identify passages that are still difficult for you. You could even email those to me in advance so we could be better prepared to rehearse them. Keep up the good work! In the meantime, below is more background information, this time about "The Blue Bird," from the program notes. Enjoy, and see you Monday!



The quiet, a cappella part song, “The Blue Bird,” is the third in a set of eight published in 1910 by Charles Stanford with words by the nineteenth century poet Mary Coleridge, whose father was the founder of the London Bach Choir in 1875. It is a wonderful expression of the tranquility and beauty of the scene as described in the words. Stanford distances the sopranos in this piece, treating them as a solo line accompanied by the lower parts. The shape of the melody represents the flight of the bird, and the haunting repeated use of the word “blue” illustrates the timelessness of the moment and the blue suspended sky.