a few transcendent
In the first place, The Universe and More currently features a lovely elegant electrostatic pong game, on which I can't seem to get past the level with the charge mines.
In the second place,
ccommack and areyououtthere and I went to a concert last night and it was lavishly gorgeous. Harmonies like jewel tones hanging in the air. A church friend who hasn't been able to make it to my roundsings on Saturdays or Sundays replied to my latest invitation with an invitation of her own - to the Northern Harmony concert at USG. And it was sufficiently transcendent that I think she really gets it - I should try to have my next roundsing at a time when she can come!
For those people who are not obsessed with participatory music like me, Northern Harmony is the audition-based concert choir that rises out of Village Harmony's traditional music workshops and camps. So they are breathtaking. Singing in a variety of traditional styles, from the hard, bright tones of Bulgarian folk music and sacred harp to the softer ones of gospel jubilee songs or traditional Corsican music. Village Harmony actually did a workshop at Swat when I was an undergrad, and it was one of the best things ever - I think we sang mostly Georgian music, and did I mention that the "dissonant harmonies" of Georgian music are one of my favorite things in the world?
The best part of a concert by people in a participatory tradition is the dynamic between the performers. They aren't looking at the audience with the kind of intensity you tend to get in performances: they're looking at each other. They're singing to each other, focused on each other, blending with each other. Tremendous energy and playfulness there. And trust. Giving weight to each other, leaning into each other's notes, pulling back against the dissonances. And you're included in it, but it's not the way you expect in a performance. You're being included, performing with, not being performed at. There was a song with a line dance where we got up and danced. There was a call-and-response with the whole audience singing.
The best part was the last song, which I didn't even recognize, but
ccommack was singing along softly to. And the guy behind us - who'd sung with Northern Harmony last summer - stood up and sang along to, strongly and perfectly, bringing the concert right to us. Almost as good as singing it ourselves, being truly immersed in it.
The best part was the song the director composed himself, a setting of Dylan Thomas's poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". So after the concert I went back to the table where I had suffered the paradox of choice at the intermission, and picked a CD I could maybe decide to buy, and then picked up their new book of modern shape-note tunes (some of them composed by people I've sung with frequently in New York). It fell open immediately to the score for Larry Gordon's Dylan Thomas setting with its beautiful Rage fugue. I had really wanted to find a recording of that, but there won't be one until this year's tour is over. At any rate, I bought the book. It is possible I have too many songbooks now.
The best part was as I waited for them to get the book from the van, when I mentioned that I host singing parties at my house, and the two people I was with - the Northern Harmony girl who was selling me the book, and the random guy who'd been sitting next to us for the concert - were truly interested and enthusiastic. And we broke into "Jubilate Deo" right there, in the narthex of USG, and it was beautiful. Then she tried to sing "I Pray For Rain" with us, which another Northern Harmony member (a music student named Linnea who writes rounds) had taught her. but none of us quite knew it all the way - I'd only sung it once, at Sol's, something like five years ago. And we tried to sing "My Heart is Like a Singing Bird", but then the guy showed up with my book and everyone wanted to go home. So needless to say, random guy (who just finished recording a shape-note CD funded by Kickstarter) is now on the roundsing mailing list.
As always, it made me want to audition for (and get rejected from) Svitanya, but I don't actually have time. It always makes me want to go do things with Village Harmony, but they are expensive and far away. And expensive. It takes a lot of privilege to be able to do all the preliminaries to join up with a choir like this, to get deep enough into it. Privilege, or living in Vermont where they have community choirs, not just week-long workshops. Even going to NEFFA, or doing stuff with the Philadelphia folk music society is expensive, and not nearly concentrated enough on the kind of participatory vocal music I love. I wish there was some kind of harmony unconference I could go to. Free, relaxed, no hotel, no overhead except renting or taking over a space. Maybe more like a shape-note convention than a folk festival. People teaching each other awesome things in a minimally-structured way, but enough diversity of people that it's really rewarding. I wish it was something I could make happen here, but I don't have the connections to pull it off. Yet. I guess the thing to do is keep having house sings, keep going to things, keep connecting with people. Until that network of connections is robust enough to support it.
In other news,
ccommack is slowly becoming an internet celebrity with his recently launched blog, Sic Transit Philadelphia, and it's awesome. Except for the part where all he ever does is refresh Wordpress obsessively. Teasing him about it is also awesome.
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In the second place,
ccommack and areyououtthere and I went to a concert last night and it was lavishly gorgeous. Harmonies like jewel tones hanging in the air. A church friend who hasn't been able to make it to my roundsings on Saturdays or Sundays replied to my latest invitation with an invitation of her own - to the Northern Harmony concert at USG. And it was sufficiently transcendent that I think she really gets it - I should try to have my next roundsing at a time when she can come!
For those people who are not obsessed with participatory music like me, Northern Harmony is the audition-based concert choir that rises out of Village Harmony's traditional music workshops and camps. So they are breathtaking. Singing in a variety of traditional styles, from the hard, bright tones of Bulgarian folk music and sacred harp to the softer ones of gospel jubilee songs or traditional Corsican music. Village Harmony actually did a workshop at Swat when I was an undergrad, and it was one of the best things ever - I think we sang mostly Georgian music, and did I mention that the "dissonant harmonies" of Georgian music are one of my favorite things in the world?
The best part of a concert by people in a participatory tradition is the dynamic between the performers. They aren't looking at the audience with the kind of intensity you tend to get in performances: they're looking at each other. They're singing to each other, focused on each other, blending with each other. Tremendous energy and playfulness there. And trust. Giving weight to each other, leaning into each other's notes, pulling back against the dissonances. And you're included in it, but it's not the way you expect in a performance. You're being included, performing with, not being performed at. There was a song with a line dance where we got up and danced. There was a call-and-response with the whole audience singing.
The best part was the last song, which I didn't even recognize, but
ccommack was singing along softly to. And the guy behind us - who'd sung with Northern Harmony last summer - stood up and sang along to, strongly and perfectly, bringing the concert right to us. Almost as good as singing it ourselves, being truly immersed in it.
The best part was the song the director composed himself, a setting of Dylan Thomas's poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". So after the concert I went back to the table where I had suffered the paradox of choice at the intermission, and picked a CD I could maybe decide to buy, and then picked up their new book of modern shape-note tunes (some of them composed by people I've sung with frequently in New York). It fell open immediately to the score for Larry Gordon's Dylan Thomas setting with its beautiful Rage fugue. I had really wanted to find a recording of that, but there won't be one until this year's tour is over. At any rate, I bought the book. It is possible I have too many songbooks now.
The best part was as I waited for them to get the book from the van, when I mentioned that I host singing parties at my house, and the two people I was with - the Northern Harmony girl who was selling me the book, and the random guy who'd been sitting next to us for the concert - were truly interested and enthusiastic. And we broke into "Jubilate Deo" right there, in the narthex of USG, and it was beautiful. Then she tried to sing "I Pray For Rain" with us, which another Northern Harmony member (a music student named Linnea who writes rounds) had taught her. but none of us quite knew it all the way - I'd only sung it once, at Sol's, something like five years ago. And we tried to sing "My Heart is Like a Singing Bird", but then the guy showed up with my book and everyone wanted to go home. So needless to say, random guy (who just finished recording a shape-note CD funded by Kickstarter) is now on the roundsing mailing list.
As always, it made me want to audition for (and get rejected from) Svitanya, but I don't actually have time. It always makes me want to go do things with Village Harmony, but they are expensive and far away. And expensive. It takes a lot of privilege to be able to do all the preliminaries to join up with a choir like this, to get deep enough into it. Privilege, or living in Vermont where they have community choirs, not just week-long workshops. Even going to NEFFA, or doing stuff with the Philadelphia folk music society is expensive, and not nearly concentrated enough on the kind of participatory vocal music I love. I wish there was some kind of harmony unconference I could go to. Free, relaxed, no hotel, no overhead except renting or taking over a space. Maybe more like a shape-note convention than a folk festival. People teaching each other awesome things in a minimally-structured way, but enough diversity of people that it's really rewarding. I wish it was something I could make happen here, but I don't have the connections to pull it off. Yet. I guess the thing to do is keep having house sings, keep going to things, keep connecting with people. Until that network of connections is robust enough to support it.
In other news,
ccommack is slowly becoming an internet celebrity with his recently launched blog, Sic Transit Philadelphia, and it's awesome. Except for the part where all he ever does is refresh Wordpress obsessively. Teasing him about it is also awesome.
This entry has
comments. Leave a comment? (Click "Log in with OpenID?", top right corner.)