Concert weekend

I will keep my blog short this weekend as we are in the home stretch both for our concert and our 73rd season. You all are singing so well, and this concert may just be the best of all. I know we will have fun with the Seasonings, and the others so are musically done. Thanks for all your hard work, musicianship and energy. Soloists and ensemble members should rehearse their parts a bit more to add the finishing touches on those passages and pieces. It will all come together as we offer our best efforts in concert! Take time to thank those who are singing for Relay for Life this Friday at 7:30 pm at Old Milton HS in Alpharetta. For all the rest, see you at St. John's at 2 pm on Saturday.
Cheers!

Final rehearsal

Wow - we have a lot going on to put this final concert together! Thank you to each of you, especially those who are learning additional parts for the ensemble and solo music. It's great to have so many talented and devoted singers in the group. Last night left me feeling fractured at the end of rehearsal, and I missed seeing many of you before you left. I hope you felt as I did, that our pieces for the full chorus are going very well and are quite musical and expressive. With that in mind, here is what I am proposing for our final rehearsal together.
7:00 - I will work with individuals on particular parts and ask those people personally to arrive early.
7:30 - We will rehearse the five-part madrigals, Ecco and Primavera. Those singers should come warmed up and ready to sing together.
7:50 - We will rehearse the Mikado and Curry quartet pieces.
8:00 - This will be the official start of the main rehearsal for all singers. We will first sing through the entire Seasonings piece. Then, we will rehearse all the remaining music.
It is my plan to rehearse the piece for Relay for Life at the end of rehearsal as we did last night. My hope is to not go too much past the 9:30 hour, but we may run over slightly as happened last night. This is an important outreach for us and the community, and I appreciate those singers who are volunteering their time to attend this event and put in the extra rehearsal time.
So, let's plan on the above for next week. Let me know if you have any questions about the schedule.
Finally, if you know of anyone involved in the Boston tragedy, know that our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected. The quote by Leonard Bernstein, if you have not now already seen it, is poignant, I believe, at this time.
"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
May it be so. See you on Monday.

Rehearsal plan

Hi singers -
Good to hear all the music last night. As Sheila mentioned, this will be a fun concert. Consider it a requirement to have at least ONE person in the audience for our final program of the season. Let's go out with a BANG!
That said, I think we should follow the same rehearsal plan for next Monday. We will rehearse together for the first hour or so and definitely include the Banquet Fugue as part of that rehearsal. Then, we will rehearse the small group/solo music. I think the 7:00 rehearsal time for quintets has been a bit problematic, so let's not plan on those groups rehearsing early. If anyone would like to have an extra rehearsal on their music with me at that hour, let me know. Everyone come prepared to put all these pieces together. If you are participating in the Relay for Life on April 26, let's plan on having a brief rehearsal immediately following our regular rehearsal on Monday. Bring your copy of In Remembrance if you have one.
Jean will be emailing the schedule for both our concert weekend including the Relay for Life event as well as a reminder about the extra rehearsals on Mondays following the concert for our upcoming recording session.
Thanks for all your extra effort as concert time nears. See you all next week!