ZOOM meeting - February 1, 2022 - Boston Skyline Chorus

ZOOM meeting — February 1, 2022

There was another full house for Zoom tonight. There were 25 attendees,
including guests Katherine (Kate) and Pam. Lois joined again from Florida
and did her usual excellent job as cohost.

Vocal warm-ups were with Wendy:
    • Bubbling to Twinkle twinkle little star
    • Bubbling — up high, to down low
    • Sing it round it round it round it, sing it nice and round
    • Sing it ring it ring it ring it, ring it nice and round
    • Ha-ha…etc. on a triad
    • Ya-ya…etc. on 5-4-3-2-1
    • No-na-no-na-no-na-no-na-nu on 5-4-3-2-1
    • Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, etc.

Our next exercise was to sing the following pattern straight through in uni-
son. Then Wendy started and we came in on “mi”. Finally, we started and
Wendy came in on “mi”. This was a nice practice in dueting.

We all remember Name That Tune, don’t we? Well, this exercise was
     Name That Interval! Wendy played “do” and then another note. We were
     to name the interval. This was a fun way to do interval training.

     Next we talked about “sound reading” and how non-verbal signals fore-
     cast the expected sounds. Just take a look at these postures:

     By their postures, they are indicating their feelings. The same can be said
     about singers on a stage. We watched a brief video of a high school choir
     from Bernardsville, NJ — rst without sound, and then with sound. While
     their voices were lovely, and the sound was pretty, they were motionless
     and sti .
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It was time for repertoire review:   rst up, Route 66.

      Continuing with the posture theme, we watched two videos of choruses,
      and critiqued their movements.
          • Gateway Spotlight Chorus — their movements did not enhance
            their performance. There was no uidity, and some stood there
            rather sti y. While there were nice facial expressions on some,
            many looked nervous — and this made the audience nervous on
            their behalf.
          • Scottsdale Chorus — they were in a comfortable yet powerful
            stance. They all sang freely; they were separate, yet together. The
            song was anthem-like, and though there was no movement to
            speak of, their posture conveyed reverence and power.

      This brought us to our next repertoire review: My Foolish Heart. How
      should be stand? We must draw our audience into the story.

      For This is Me, our next review, we should stand strong, grounded, and
      powerful.

      Another video had us hone our critical listening skills. The Young Women
      in Harmony quartet, Ultraviolet, sang Time After Time.
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Our advice and comments to these lovely young ladies:
    • Hold out phrases
    • Bass needs to come out more
    • Expression needs to be more consistent
    • It looks like they performed by rote — but with experience, this will
      be improved
    • Unlock your knees
    • Match vowels more
    • Work on blending
    • Be less screechy
    • BUT — these young ladies did a wonderful job and have a great fu-
      ture ahead of them!

Next we sang After You’ve Gone.

We did a drumming exercise with our right and left hands, paying attention
to the metronome playing in the background.

Fun fact: see those doohickeys where the treble and bass clefs should
     be? What are they??? Well, they are just indicators that the rhythms no-
     tated are unpitched! (Thank you, Wendy, for the explanation.

     Our breakout room exercise (who doesn’t love breakout rooms?) was a
     tonality exercise. We were to create a song in 4 measures starting and
     ending on “do”, with quarter and/or eighth notes. All 5 groups came up
     with di erent songs. Here is an example, courtesy of Group 2:
                 do-sol-ti-do
                 ti-la-sol-fa
                 mi-mi-do-re
                 do-sol-do-do

     Announcements:
         • We will rehearse via ZOOM again on Feb. 8th.
         • Michele is missing the vaccination statuses of eight members;
           please send the info to Michele ASAP so we can get back to rehear-
           ing in person!
         • This year’s contest packet was emailed by International to each
           member; please read, and go to Donna if you have questions.
         • Your dues MUST be up-to-date in order to compete! If you are con-
           fused as to where you stand, please contact Joyce or Susan K.

     And here’s a photo from Saigon in 2017: Happy Lunar New Year!!!!! Let
     the Year of the Tiger (symbolizing courage, bravery, resilience and
     strength) be a terri c one for all of us in BSC!!!! Let’s use our power stance
     to its best advantage!
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