Playlist 2017 4th commentary

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Friday 26th May 2017
-
:

And it’s time for some notes on the additions to 2017's Playlist since my last post about it.

  • Morfydd Llwyn Owen, Nocturne for orchestra in D-flat major (1913). Starting the next tranche of playlist items with the same ‘why did I not know this?’ sentiment from my last commentary. This piece is in some ways so exactly of its time, whilst being a distinct compositional voice I’ve never heard before.
  • Charlotte Bray, At the Speed of Stillness (2012). And a century later than Owen’s piece, an ex-student of mine making her mark
  • Fanny Mendelssohn, Quartet in E-flat (1834). If I had a criticism of this quartet, it would be that I would have liked the first movement in particular to be longer. When it ended, I thought, ‘No, don’t stop, I was enjoying that’.

Rehearsing Efficently with Bristol A Cappella Music Team

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Monday 22nd May 2017
-
:

As I reported a while back, as well as spending two days coaching the full chorus at Bristol A Cappella at the end of April, I also had a two-hour session with their music team in the evening.

In some ways this was a rather over-ambitious programme of activities. We had an hour between finishing one session and starting the next, and a change of venue also probably helped refresh our attention, but we were nonetheless all pretty tired when we reconvened.

But notwithstanding these hurdles, the timing offered advantages that wouldn’t have been available on a stand-alone session. We had a shared experience during the day we could point back to for examples, and we made explicit use of this at the start by going through a structured reflection process based on my conductors’ four questions.

Northward to Norwich

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Thursday 18th May 2017
-
:

norwichmay17Usually when I go to Norwich it involves going Eastwards, but as I was travelling there straight after my day with Capital Connection, I got a bonus alliteration for my title. Never say I fail to be pleased by small things.

I am also pleased to witness excellent rehearsal technique when I see it. And, having recently both run a workshop on efficient rehearsal techniques and published a blog post that extolled the value of a director minimising their speaking time in favour of the choir’s singing time, I enjoyed watching Norwich Harmony’s director Alison Thompson lead an almost-textbook session of warm-up/vocal craft at the start of the day. The continuity of musical attention she generated gave a very fertile ground for brief, precise spoken interventions as well as gestural enforcements and facial acknowledgements within the flow of the singing. She gently but systematically pushed the singers up the greasy pole of choral skill.

Coaching Micro and Macro with Capital Connection

Published by Liz Garnett at Helping You Harmonise on Sunday 14th May 2017
-
:

CapCon17The weekend after my visit to Bristol A Cappella took me, first, down to London to work with my friends at Capital Connection. (The second part of my tour, to Norwich, follows in a subsequent post.) We were working on a contest package that they had originally planned for LABBS Convention 2016, but which they had subsequently decided needed a longer development phase, so they will be taking it to this year’s European Convention instead.

One of my hopes for this convention is that all our international visitors will think, ‘Gosh, they’re doing interesting music in LABBS,’ and Capital are contributing to this ambition with the contest premiere of an arrangement by their director Debi Cox. Coaching an arrangement directed by its arranger is strangely very like coaching any other arrangement – the same process of music analysis and performance diagnosis – except that when you point out to the singers, ‘That’s a nice bit of arranging there,’ the person you are praising actually gets to hear and appreciate the compliment.

Syndicate content