Singing it's a wonderful Christmas

Nearly a hundred years ago, my grandparents met when singing in their church choir. I never heard my grandmother, Mary (said Marie) singing because she died before I was born. But her sister. Bess, taught her daughter, my aunt, to sing Irish folk songs, remembering all the verses. Her brother, Charles, was once approached to train as a tenor in the States because his voice was so good. My parents enjoyed music, my father in an amateur operatic society, and at home my mother playing the piano and the family singing, but I didn't know this history of singing in the family, until decades later. Like my grandparents I joined a chapel choir accompanying on guitar. I discovered how much fun singing is, and sang for my own pleasure throughout my twenties and thirties. Sadness and pain in my mid-forties stopped me singing.

Next Stage Choir: It's a wonderful Christmas

Some years ago, on a short acting school week (blogged at Itch scratched)  I rediscovered the joy of singing, and singing with others. I looked for singing lessons locally and tried a couple of choirs, but nothing worked until in February 2018 a new local community choir, Next Stage Choir started in our town. And loved its ambiance.
I love singing. I like the enthusiastic people I sing with. I enjoy the female friendship (not so many women in my work or tae kwon do), and the projects we have done and lined up to do. Our latest project has been to produce an album of Christmas songs. Here's a photo of the CD when it was released at midnight at the start of December.
We sound good. You'll enjoy listening and perhaps sing along when you download it (Amazon, Spotify, iTunes). If you want a CD, let me know and I'll get you one.
I wish I could share this news with my family - my mother who played the piano, my aunt who sang Irish tunes, and those grandparents who passed me the passion for singing when they married nearly a hundred years ago.

Choir recording project

Angel studios welcomes NSC

Our choir made a recording at Angel Studios, London. Most of us had never been in a recording studio before, never recorded before, and indeed, our local choir didn't exist a year ago.
The building looks old from the outside, but inside you have no natural light, no idea what’s happening outside and most of the inside is sound proofed, padded and stripped of its originality. You can still see character in the stair banisters, and the old gas fire at the end of the ladies’ loo. We were about 80 people to fit in our studio, of which there are at least three.

We recorded only six songs, about 20 minutes worth, but those took all day, doing takes and retakes, as well as the director reminding us of parts or to be quiet, and freeze at the end of a take, not claim, cough or shuffle. We finished with a minute to spare at one minute to six, time enough to take some more photos of the choir to go with the CD.

A few of us stayed after recording to watch the mixing. I walked into the mixing lab as they were playing one of our songs and was stunned to hear what we sound like. You usually hear only your own part, concentrate on that and can't hear the blend. We're good!
The technology was fascinatingly powerful; look at this speaker on the wall. It's as big as quadraphonic speakers, so you can imagine the quality of sound that it produces..

Speaker

Mixer board with two choir acolytes 

Look out for the Next Stage Choirs Christmas recording in the autumn. This is going to be amazing.

Memories of music: the Hallelujah chorus

The Hallelujah chorus comes from Handel's Messiah. My dead husband introduced me to this music when he used to sit of an evening on our brown sofa, his one long leg resting on the other, his arms conducting enthusiastically, and me playing ignorant pleb. When they sang, "Oh! We like sheep..." one day I responded, "and I like lamb!" causing husband to choke a chortle at the impiety. With practice, I grew to like that magnificent music.
Years later, would-become-new husband took me on our first real date to hear The Messiah. He was, unbeknownst to him, onto a winner that brought me happy memories.
This year The Next Stage Choir performs the Hallelujah chorus. I sing with the sopranos. The high notes challenge me and the long holding of breath challenges even more but the choir master and fellow sopranos say it will come with practice, so I'll practice. With practice, I'll get to sing it.

A view from the pew

Singing makes you happy. Singing brings joy to the heart. Singing heartily is like a work out and warms you up. So when my daughter inveigled me into joining our church choir, I agreed. Do you sing?
 Ours is a small choir, usually only three or four of us plus the organist. Our organist organises us, suggests pieces, and she gets us to rehearse. We learn to sing in parts: bass, alto, soprano. Our organist has a lovely clear alto voice that you can hear every week at the Saturday evening mass. We also sing at special masses.
We've sung some special masses in the last year, such as our parish priest's anniversary of his ordination. For these special masses, we've practised what seem to me quite difficult pieces, like Bruckner's Locus Iste, The Deer's Cry and Mozart's Ave Maria. This week we sang at the November mass for the dead. After the communion, the choir sang two pieces: The Deer's Cry and Jesu, lover of my soul. They sounded beautiful. The Jesu has four verses, which we harmonised.  The Deer's Cry  requires a solo voice with a choir later in the piece.  Listen to Rita Connolly sing it, or come to our church and hear our organist sing it.
If you came to that mass for the dead you heard and saw us light candles for and read the names of those dead of the parish. You heard and saw our parish priest's blessings over us at the end of mass, and you heard some of the loveliest singing. You'd have felt at peace, blessed and happy.