Whitacre to Debussy

How versatile are we? From the former to the latter in 90 minutes. As usual though we opened with a warm up. Jen led which is always jolly (see last week's wee game) and we attempted to sing some really quite straight forward ditties. However, we struggled slightly quite a bit, which I put down to either being tired after a hard day at the office/making jam/lounging around music departments/concocting peculiar experiments (that one's for you Robin, in your absence) or else just being very stoopid. I will leave you to make up your own minds, blog fans. Poor Jenny looked a bit miffed at how rubbish we were. Sorry Jen! We'll try harder, honest.

Anyways we spent most of the evening (as last week) on Cloudburst and I must say that, after A-L's brief language class, our Spanish (sorry, Mexican) is really starting to sound quite good. I may buy a sombrero to celebrate. Actually, we had managed to remember much of what we had learned the week before which was fairly impressive. Comment of the night certainly went to Maestro Boy who suggested that the Tenors "come out of the ladies". What he meant of course was that, since the women have a beautiful floaty passage to sing, the gentlemen should be equally ethereal (great word) on their entry (oo-er). I, however, had an image reminiscent of the Alien films (which I haven't seen BTW so I may well be making the next bit up) where the, well, alien comes straight out of a lady's tummy. Nice image for you there, hope you are all enjoying your supper! Suffice to say that by the end of the evening it was all starting to sound rather lovely. I think a lot of us are very excited about the prospect of singing this fabulous piece.

We moved on to Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder!, our new bit of Debussy [Wow, he looks like he should be one of our Tenors there!] which Maestro Boy thought was going to be hard but actually, after the pyrotechnics (not literally, sadly) of Cloudburst, it proved to be a straightforward and beautiful piece. The only thing you have to watch is the rhythms. Oh, and the amount of incidentals accidentals [cheeky editor] but that is by the by (incidentally - ha ha - I'm not sure if I have used the term incidentals in the right way here... what I mean is sharps and flats and stuff but as I only passed my music theory exam on my second attempt - and that only because the paper included some choral music much to the relief of yours truly - I am never quite sure what I am talking about. And that could probably go for most areas of my life...). I must hereby apologise for the grammar of the previous sentence; even I lost the gist halfway through.

On a couple of final notes, welcome to Kay2 who is filling in for Nat while she is on sabbatical. Hope you can stick it out. And big hugs to Tom who came back to visit. We have missed you man but are glad to see you looking so well.

Anyways, Guitar Hero World Tour beckons for a quick game. I have progressed to hard but am struggling slightly with the orange one, if you know what I mean. For another week.

CSW

"Is this not boring for anyone?"

This was the question from Maestro Boy to conclude tonight's festivities. The answer, my musically-adept friends, is certainly not. A little scared, yes; a little blown away, certainly; but bored? most definitely not. Indeed, how could one be bored when confronted with the behemoth (a little used and underrated word) that is Cloudburst.

After a jolly beginning when we played In my grandmother's basket (a Jennified version of 'I went to the shops') using only vowels (I know, I know!), we spent the rest of the rehearsal on 'Cloudburst'. Last week we discussed the usefulness of 'Twinkle Twinkle' in finding a fifth. This week it's the classic Blue Danube that came in handy. The opening chord is basically the beginning 4 notes of the Strauss (don't ask me which of this impressive dynasty wrote it) piece.

It was a really exciting evening of chanting, learning Spanish (sorry Mexican), clashing chords and the prospect of handbells. Actually an even scarier prospect was brought to our attention this evening. In bar 75, ladies and gentlemen, the sopranos split into 7 - yes that's right, 7. Count how many sopranos there are? By a happy and handy coincidence, there are 7. As Alison put it, this is the piece we were born to do! Perhaps, however, Maestro Boy has been retaining all 7 of us purely to do this piece. Perhaps after our June performance he will do a Soprano cull, like a fox or badger (warning: noisy link!) cull but with, well, Sopranos. We are watching out backs.

Anyways, after last week's incredible linkage by Editor extraordinaire Christopher, I am hoping for similar excitement this week, though, as we agreed, if the linkage takes longer to do than the actual writing of the piece then we are probably overdoing it.

Hoping you all have a marvellous week.

CSW

Twinkle twinkle little star / We started 'Cloudburst', we got quite far...

So that is as poetic as I get on a Thursday evening and you may well be thinking, 'what does said children's nursery rhyme have to do with Eric Whitacre's epic little number?' Well, good question. Much of Cloudburst is in fifths and Twinkle twinkle is perhaps the easiest way to find this interval in a hurry. All that to say, we began 'Cloudburst' in earnest (or rather in humour as always with Rudsambee) last night and were blown away by Whitacre's piece. We've adapted to piano, violin and even clarsach over the past year but now, fans (wait for it), we have reached the giddy heights of handbells. I, for one, was looking forward to seeing us attempt to sing complex music, in Spanish (sorry, to be precise, Mexican Spanish), and play the bells. Sadly we will be doing only two of the three as we have managed to find some professional handbell players (professional in the sense that they are really good rather than make a load of money from it - I'm not sure that such musical skills earn much in today's credit crunch world... although the legends of the rock world liked a good cowbell) to play for us. We are very excited to be singing this fantastic work. Look out for a live performance later in the year.



Actually it was modern music all the way (I was beginning to have pangs for some Carver. Actually, on second thoughts...) with a bit of Tormis too. We are becoming extremely proficient in our Estonian/Vespian but nevertheless to improve our linguistic prowess we have a real Estonian person coming to teach us in the next few weeks. You can hear some Tormis on our CD (that is a shameless plug by the way but if you haven't heard about it by now, where have you been hiding, a cockerel's boot? That is a Boosh reference, BTW, for those who suspect I have lost it entirely. And how come this page is already in that set of search results? Scary.) and it is pretty, erm, interesting stuff. Each piece is a different challenge and we are enjoying them a lot. We spent a good half hour getting one completely right. We are particularly working on coming in together and confidently.

Anyways, that's all for now folks. Hope you have a very jolly week one and all.

CSW

p.s. I do hope the editor-in-chief gives this a read and puts in some links. Last week was link crazy, n'est pas? I mean who in today's multicultural, multiculinary (Ooo that is good) world doesn't comprehend the tasty deliciousness of a tortilla chip? Keep it up Christopher, your wiki-links make me laugh out loud!

Welcome back!

Apologies for the delay in posting this week folks - the busy life of a Diva! Well, last night we returned to the Wexler's for the first Rudsambee rehearsal of 2009. As usual we were greeted with left over Christmas chocolates and a glass of wine (or Guava juice, of all things, for us non-drinkers) and, rather brilliantly, the largest bag of cheesy wotsits I have ever seen (though I am fairly inexperienced in the world of crunchy snacks). It must be noted that rather than the Walkers variety, these were M&S cheesy wotsits - yes, just like the advert... A brief singsong of the now legendary Cheesy Wotsit song and just so you know, I didn't start it.

The first week back is always a night of jolly chat, a recap of the year and a discussion of all things Rudsambee. We began, as the Roses did the rounds, with (if you could believe it) a chat about Christmas! I think someone even worked out how many shopping days we had left - I almost felt compelled to run down to Thorntons and buy up their chocolate Santas. General consensus of opinion was that we had a great Christmas with some fab music, lovely audiences and (see a previous post) the world's most scrummy (a word I don't use often these days) mince pies. There are always things we'd like to improve but overall we had a very jolly time.

As the Roses went round again (and Rufus nearly helped himself to a tortilla chip or two) we went on to discuss things like the website (watch out for the new improved homepage coming in the new year and created by our very own webmaster John - stand aside Bill Gates), potential venues for the future and, most excitingly, music for the new year! We have a number of concerts coming up at the Portrait Gallery, St Giles, and down in York with Soon Amore, who we last visited in, oooooh, 2004? Experienced members described the venue in York as a cemetery and Jen suggested that actually the choir sang in a crematorium. Rudsambee have already branched out this year with instruments so I hope that venues such as this would allow for some pyrotechnics a la Pink Floyd. Nice! Anyways, the most exciting moment of the night was not talking about uniform (although I think the boys decided to buy some new shirts that were actually red rather than faded pink).

Anyways, as you can see by the time, it is late and I am tired out. Just a couple of final things to mention: welcome back to Rach who left wee Bel at home (with Granny I hasten to add) for the first time. It was great to have you back, lady. And lots of hugs to Natalie who is taking a little time out of the choir to concentrate on other things. We'll miss you until your return in the spring. Hugs also go to Alison who isn't too well - we missed your chairing though Anne did a valiant job.

Enjoy the rest of your weeks folks. Oh a wee recommendation for you - I am into Flight of the Conchords currently. Check it out! Musical genius.

CSW