Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Voices United

Greetings readers!

The weekend has come and past and with it was my second performance with Pro Coro. I have to say, my anxiety has greatly decreased performing with them for a second time. It's a good and bad thing. Good in that my shoulders are no longer tense from holding my music up, but also bad and that I wasn't singing as cleanly as I would have liked. However, it was a successful concert nonetheless.

In the concert the ladies performed a unpublished piece called "Voices of the Tenth Muse" by Patricia Van Ness. Initially, I wasn't a big fan of the music but it really challenged my perceptions of what kind of choral music can be beautiful. It merged ancient Greek text with dissonant 20th C writing. Many of the parts only deviated by one semitone so there were many crunchy chords and textures through the 3 movements we sang. The men of Pro Coro also sang some lovely Holst and male voice pieces. By far the highlight was performing with saxophonist, P.J. Perry for the Swedish pieces in our concert. That part of the program was like "traditional choir concert" meets "night time jazz club". He would play improv sax lines on top of the choral parts and the double bass would establish this amazing groove with the percussionist. We ended off with Lars Jansson's percussively show-stopping "To the Mother in Brazil." I think one of the most exciting things about singing with Pro Coro is the diverse repertoire and collaboration with other musicians. Normally, I never get the opportunity to perform music like this.

Now that the "Voices United" concert is finished it is time to look forward to the Christmas season! Also, you may be interested to know that my first video submission for the Virtual Choir is now on Youtube. Remember, you have until December 31, 2010 to join in on the action. See my previous post for details!

I may be kicking myself later for posting this video, however, maybe it'll give some of you confidence to make an entry for yourself, but here is my submission:



In all honesty, I wish I had the range to do what this guy did. He sang all 8 parts to Eric Whitacre "Sleep"!

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