This week's project: Choral concert time!

...also recovering from Covid vaccine

This week has been kind of a lot, mostly because I got my Covid and flu shots on Tuesday evening, sank almost immediately into lethargy, then lost most of the subsequent day to rubberlegs and floatybrain. I did manage to sort all of my photos, however.

As I’m trying to keep a running tally here, though, of what I’m up to in the art department, this week is concert week for my first foray with the Aeolian Singers.

While singing with the Aeolians is not much like singing with the Back Bay Chorale — much smaller ensemble, treble voices only, more contemporary music rather than the choral sacred repertoire — I’ve been really enjoying the experience so far. I came to the choir at the same time as a new director, Dr. Frances Farrell, and I’m finding her to be lovely. She has some similar vibes to Scott Jarrett, my beloved conductor from the Chorale, who retired from it at the end of the last season I sang with them. (He and I left at the same time, I guess you could say.) Like Scott, Fran is skillful, precise, playful, sensitive to musicality, and kind to us. Like Scott, too, she is exacting and can be impatient, but also like him she strives not to be mean or sharp with us. (Her way of getting us to be quiet when we’ve started chattering is to say “Thank you, thank you!” which is perhaps the most Canadian thing ever.) She’s still getting used to the group and what they’re willing to give, and I think the group is also taking a little time to warm to her. But as a new member, I have the advantage of seeing everything fresh, and I liked her immediately.

Mostly I’m just so glad to be back singing with a group again. There’s something about it that is essential to my well-being, that I’ve never been able to fully define, but I’ve definitely written about it before. In fact, the below post also refers back to an older post from ten years prior, about how very crucial it is that I be able to sing (well) in a group of (capable) singers with a (kind, respectful) leader.

This program should be a lot of fun, and it’s neat we get to do it twice in the coming weekend. It’s all Canadian music, including a Joni Mitchell tune (‘River,’ which starts with a melancholy piano meditation on Jingle Bells and the lyric “It’s comin’ on Christmas”), and zero percent traditional Christmas music. I picked up a tiny solo line in one of the more contemporary tunes, which is fun. We’re even doing a take on the Magnificat, so I get my Latin-language, sacred-music thing in. (Some year I might try for the Collegium Cantorum at Dalhousie, just to get my Bach fix.) And we’re singing the marvelous short song-cycle Winter Proverbs by Fran herself, which is such a fun thing and hits the right difficulty-notes for me. (As long as we can stay in tune, jeez!)

Here’s the Exultate Chamber Singers doing the SATB version last year. We’ll be premiering the SSAA version at this concert. Personally, I think a lot of the really juicy dissonances sound better mashed closer together in frequency.

That’s me this week, folks. Sorry not to do a bunch of deep writing about this, but then again, I’m working on forgiving myself for trying to do one big creative project at a time.

What are you working on right now?