My last post got deleted accidentally so sorry to those who's comments were deleted along with it. Just for my own record I have tried to re-create some of what I wrote before.
For my own sake of keeping my journal straight, I'm going to back up a couple weeks to before the flood. I think the last thing I wrote about before our disaster was the SLCA concert weekend. The next Tuesday morning I had my Singers midterm that I mentioned before. My group was the first to go. We pretty much had to sing through everything a cappella while he scrutinized and graded each of us. I felt it went well. Later that week, my friend Ashley and I stayed late at the school working on some things for Dr. Allred. Well, there sitting on the piano in his office were the scores from all the midterms. OF COURSE I looked!! I had the highest score in my group. :) I was pretty pleased, and generally relieved to have it over with.
Last weekend, Kim came up again and Layne and I took her out to dinner for a late birthday celebration. Saturday morning Layne and I went to the temple (which as it turns out was the best possible thing we could have done considering what happened on Tuesday). Saturday night Kim and I met some of my friends from Singers at the U Philharmonia Halloween concert which was a lot of fun! They decorated the whole hall with elaborate Halloween decorations and lights and the entire symphony went all out to dress up. My favorite was the bassoon player who dressed up like a surgeon and put a rubber glove over the top of her bassoon so that it would inflate every time she played. They played music from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Jaws, The Chronicles of Narnia and a bunch of other Halloween appropriate orchestral music. It was a lot of fun!
Sunday night was my Singers concert. While the concert didn't start until 7:30, I had to be there at 5 for a photo shoot. Below are a bunch of pictures from the shoot, interspersed with commentary and some music files from the concert. I didn't include them all because we sang several pieces that we sang that the last concert, and we also did several previews of our new Christmas CD (which I'll post about separately). The concert went relatively well. We certainly weren't at our very best, but all things considered, it went well. Kim and Layne had a great time laughing at me during certain parts of the concert.
I Can Tell The World - Moses Hogan Admittedly, we need to work on our "spiritual" singing. They're so fun to sing but we're such a bunch of white squares sometimes! :)
Sure on This Shining Night - Morten LauridsenThis was the piece that the concert was titled after. As far as I'm concerned, Morten Lauridsen can compose no wrong.
The following 6 pictures were taken during Peace Like a River - Ronald Staheli. For this piece we got in a big circle on stage facing inward. Whichever section had the melody at any given time would turn outward and face the audience. Well, I was placed at the front of the circle with my back to the audience, which was all fine and dandy until half way through the piece when the altos take over the melody and I had to turn around. Then it was naked solo time! You can see me right in the front center! It was more than a little intimidating with a full house!
The recording isn't the greatest because of the positioning. The microphone picked up individual voices and because half the time those of us in front couldn't see the conductor, we weren't always together. It'll take some more practice to get it down. Its too bad we didn't perform it perfectly because its a special piece.
I didn't know this until right before the concert, but Dr. Ronald Staheli (conductor of the BYU choirs) arranged this during a very difficult time in his life. His son was serving a mission in South Africa when he was hit by a car on his bike and nearly killed. He ended up surviving and came home to recover. He eventually got to return and finish his mission. Shortly after returning home, he was killed in a car accident with 2 other returned missionaries. His parents were reading through his journal after his death and read that he knew he should have died on his mission. Shortly after the funeral, Dr. Staheli arranged this piece.
Dr. Allred became very emotional while telling us that story before the concert. I was glad he told us because it is always so much more fulfilling to have an emotional connection to the music you sing. So here I am "emoting". This is a super embarrassing picture. :) Oh well!
I love all the faces in this picture! Looks like Dave is trying to sell me a fauxlex or something.
The Immortal Bach This was an interesting piece. It's just a simple Bach chorale, but we divided into a bunch of octets and stood in one big line against the back wall of the stage. We sang it through 4 beats per quarter note with each group starting at a different time, but all ending together. It creates an interesting effect with a lot of dissonance.
The picture above was taken during a run through of Oklahoma to which there was a LOT of "choralography". Layne and Kim had a good laugh at this one. We cheesed it up royally. In Europe we'll be doing it in jeans with hats and bandannas. Oh boy. You can tell from this recording that we were much more concerned with the dancing and the acting than the singing! You can see me on the outside there hustling like a woman on a mission. I had 2 measures to get from the back to sitting position on the edge of the stage.
For this piece, The Singing Heart - Bob Chilcott, Dr. Allred asked me to play the hand bells which I was less than thrilled about doing. Its hard enough to play the bells without singing, but to memorize both my voice part and my bell part, sing and play opposing rhythms at the same time...not an easy thing! Even though I happened to have the 2 busiest bells of the whole piece, I survived. Sweaty palms and all.
My very good friend Kiersten, Dr. Allred and I at the reception after the concert. Dr. Allred self titled this photo "A Rose Between Two Thorns".
Some of the girls.
So there's the concert for you mom! Lets see what else happened since I posted last? Oh, yeah, I got a very interesting message on facebook last week from my former conductor at ECU and friend Dan Bara. He had just gotten a call from the CEO of Gothic Records who we recorded our CD Greater Love with in May '07. Dan was informed that our CD had just passed the screenings for a Grammy nomination in Best Choral Performance! I know what you're thinking, "there is a Grammy for choir?". The answer is YES! The official nominations will not be announced until December, but it is a big deal to even be nominated! I don't think there is any chance on earth that we'd win, but if you know anyone in the Recording Academy, tell them to vote for us!!
Ok now for an update on the house. IT STINKS!!!! ...and I don't mean the situation. It literally SMELLS AWFUL in our house!! The construction guys said its because they removed the p-trap in our bathroom which normally blocks that odor from the pipe, so now the pipe is exposed and its filling our entire house with the smell of rotten gas. Ugh. On a better note, the house is dry now and we came home yesterday to half a floor! They had put down half the floor boards and some baseboards! YAY! It will probably still be a couple weeks before we're completely put back together, but its a start!
One last thing. Today was a big day in our nation's history and I wanted to say something about how blessed I feel to have the privilege of casting my vote. I know it is something that often gets taken for granted, but I am just so grateful that I have the opportunity to make my voice heard. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I went to the Elementary school this morning and saw my fellow citizens doing their civic duty in spite of the freezing rain turning to snow while we all ran to and from our cars. No matter how the election turns out, I am happy that I was able to contribute and will wear my sticker with pride!
If you go ...
