St. Cecilia at the Tower (Part 3)
Dinner and Concert
Dinner was pretty uneventful. I actually got to go to a restaurant, which was a novel idea for me. At Terpsichore we never go out because we have to prepare for the ball, and in any case ever since that one time at the Fox-Something-Or-Other restaurant in Hamilton, ON, we never go out to sit-down restaurants at events where we’re in charge of evening activities. But for this we made an exception, and it turned out alright. We had a great waitress who was able to handle our large party well, and got us out of there in a reasonable amount of time.
The concert, MC-ed by ermenrich, went well too, although by that time I was exhausted. The Cynnabar Singers were the opening act, and I had the hardest time giving pitches. I kept forgetting what C-instrument fingering is on the recorder. On top of that we transposed pieces, and because I was not on top of my game, when I was asked to play an F scale before playing one song I did without remembering that we were singing the piece in Bb not F. Oh my goodness fail. We sang in tune, but it was not what we intended. We stopped and decided to start over, but before that akitrom did a wonderful impression of aelkiss singing the words “Have no daughters aside from me”. And I died. Not literally, but I wasn’t able to hold myself during the piece. Luckily magda-vogelsang held it together. On the bright side, it took the pressure off of the other groups and was entertaining. :P
Many other groups performed during the concert. It was great to hear everyone show off their stuff. Special kudos to Martin’s Bane who practiced their non-trivial piece in the car on the way to the event. Good times guys.
Psallite, our quartet, was the last act. We stepped out at the second before last act to stop and start our pieces, which was unfortunate since it was Robyyan and Amelie playing cantigas. Rawr. We came back for the last few and they were great. Le sigh. I wish we got to see/hear them all.
Psallite performed not terribly. Sicut Cervus was stupid shaky probably because Kasha and I changed parts a couple weeks ago. I still stand by that decision, but I wish we’d had more time to make that arrangement work. Gyuri's intro to the piece was great: "How a stag does it." I think the rest of us may have looked at him funny. The audience laughed though.
The Perotin was OK. Some parts will still stupid shaky. The end though, was great. The cadence at the end of the piece is the BEST THING EVAR which is to say it’s just a dissonance. Usually the penultimate chord in the song tells you what chord you want to end on. V wants to go to I. In this piece, it just wants you to move somewhere... anywhere, I don’t care but please get off of me. And in this performance we milked that note. Especially after the Master Class, no one in the audience would mistake that for a mistake. Hee!
The Romance Suite went well. I’d had problems getting into Todo Quanto when we had our outdoor start and stop session, but I had no trouble at concert. That piece is still weird to me. I know I’m coming in at the right time, but it is not intuitive. I wonder if those rhythms ever will be.
The Tomkins, i.e. the love is bipolar song, was superb. Was it the best it could ever be, no of course not, but it felt competent. In the intro I mentioned a couple things for the audience to listen for: Elizabethan Pronunciation and Word Painting. Gyuri taught a word painting class that morning, and the term had been floating around the event. I told people that in this piece it would hit them over the head. What people don’t know is that we tacked on an earlier part of the piece as a coda. The real ending was “Tihi cry” but we decided it felt too much like a choke ending, so we decided to end with the “Ay me I die” from part one. When we went to that ending in the concert the audience started laughing. Totally didn’t expect that. So great. Not sure if it was the bipolar-ness or the word-painting that did it.
I’m happy with how the concert went this year, but I fear that it isn’t scalable. This was the first year and it went somewhere between 1.5 - 2 hours. There are at least 3 other local groups I can think of off the top of my head who might want to perform, and almost certainly more SCA groups if I look a bit further out. I liked that Court and Country, Los Cantigueros and Psallite could each have a 20 - 30 minute sets, and my fear is that if we limit everyone to 2 songs or something we will limit the awesome. There exist more entry-level groups than kick-you-in-the-butt groups, and of the latter many of them want to be paid to perform.
It’s something I’ll have to think about.
My Dreams Come True or Evening Vocal Activities
What I have pretty much always wanted in the SCA is a place for period solo singing without modern sca filk. Once upon a time I thought about reforming bardic from within, but now I think the right thing to do is to just make a place for what I want rather than try to convince people to stop doing what they do and start doing what I do. Also this way I don’t actually have to go to bardic circles with modern sca filk. Yes, I am aware of my snobbery. But I have no intentions of raining on anyone else’s parade. And I like harmonizing so if people start singing filk with nice tunes I will probably join in. :P
Anyway, at St. Cecilia I led the evening Vocal activities, where we alternated between solo songs (which people signed up for) and sight reading. This turned out to be a better thing than I’d originally anticipated. People liked having both. Alternating meant no one had to go very long without singing, and yet there was also something to do when I went to make copies of the next thing we were about to sing. And I had my period solo singing! Yay!
Luckily after the concert I got my second wind. Leading the evening activities was a breeze. Granted I’m not the most competent person ever at such things, but I’m not terrible and it felt familiar. Good times.
To be continued...
Dinner was pretty uneventful. I actually got to go to a restaurant, which was a novel idea for me. At Terpsichore we never go out because we have to prepare for the ball, and in any case ever since that one time at the Fox-Something-Or-Other restaurant in Hamilton, ON, we never go out to sit-down restaurants at events where we’re in charge of evening activities. But for this we made an exception, and it turned out alright. We had a great waitress who was able to handle our large party well, and got us out of there in a reasonable amount of time.
The concert, MC-ed by ermenrich, went well too, although by that time I was exhausted. The Cynnabar Singers were the opening act, and I had the hardest time giving pitches. I kept forgetting what C-instrument fingering is on the recorder. On top of that we transposed pieces, and because I was not on top of my game, when I was asked to play an F scale before playing one song I did without remembering that we were singing the piece in Bb not F. Oh my goodness fail. We sang in tune, but it was not what we intended. We stopped and decided to start over, but before that akitrom did a wonderful impression of aelkiss singing the words “Have no daughters aside from me”. And I died. Not literally, but I wasn’t able to hold myself during the piece. Luckily magda-vogelsang held it together. On the bright side, it took the pressure off of the other groups and was entertaining. :P
Many other groups performed during the concert. It was great to hear everyone show off their stuff. Special kudos to Martin’s Bane who practiced their non-trivial piece in the car on the way to the event. Good times guys.
Psallite, our quartet, was the last act. We stepped out at the second before last act to stop and start our pieces, which was unfortunate since it was Robyyan and Amelie playing cantigas. Rawr. We came back for the last few and they were great. Le sigh. I wish we got to see/hear them all.
Psallite performed not terribly. Sicut Cervus was stupid shaky probably because Kasha and I changed parts a couple weeks ago. I still stand by that decision, but I wish we’d had more time to make that arrangement work. Gyuri's intro to the piece was great: "How a stag does it." I think the rest of us may have looked at him funny. The audience laughed though.
The Perotin was OK. Some parts will still stupid shaky. The end though, was great. The cadence at the end of the piece is the BEST THING EVAR which is to say it’s just a dissonance. Usually the penultimate chord in the song tells you what chord you want to end on. V wants to go to I. In this piece, it just wants you to move somewhere... anywhere, I don’t care but please get off of me. And in this performance we milked that note. Especially after the Master Class, no one in the audience would mistake that for a mistake. Hee!
The Romance Suite went well. I’d had problems getting into Todo Quanto when we had our outdoor start and stop session, but I had no trouble at concert. That piece is still weird to me. I know I’m coming in at the right time, but it is not intuitive. I wonder if those rhythms ever will be.
The Tomkins, i.e. the love is bipolar song, was superb. Was it the best it could ever be, no of course not, but it felt competent. In the intro I mentioned a couple things for the audience to listen for: Elizabethan Pronunciation and Word Painting. Gyuri taught a word painting class that morning, and the term had been floating around the event. I told people that in this piece it would hit them over the head. What people don’t know is that we tacked on an earlier part of the piece as a coda. The real ending was “Tihi cry” but we decided it felt too much like a choke ending, so we decided to end with the “Ay me I die” from part one. When we went to that ending in the concert the audience started laughing. Totally didn’t expect that. So great. Not sure if it was the bipolar-ness or the word-painting that did it.
I’m happy with how the concert went this year, but I fear that it isn’t scalable. This was the first year and it went somewhere between 1.5 - 2 hours. There are at least 3 other local groups I can think of off the top of my head who might want to perform, and almost certainly more SCA groups if I look a bit further out. I liked that Court and Country, Los Cantigueros and Psallite could each have a 20 - 30 minute sets, and my fear is that if we limit everyone to 2 songs or something we will limit the awesome. There exist more entry-level groups than kick-you-in-the-butt groups, and of the latter many of them want to be paid to perform.
It’s something I’ll have to think about.
My Dreams Come True or Evening Vocal Activities
What I have pretty much always wanted in the SCA is a place for period solo singing without modern sca filk. Once upon a time I thought about reforming bardic from within, but now I think the right thing to do is to just make a place for what I want rather than try to convince people to stop doing what they do and start doing what I do. Also this way I don’t actually have to go to bardic circles with modern sca filk. Yes, I am aware of my snobbery. But I have no intentions of raining on anyone else’s parade. And I like harmonizing so if people start singing filk with nice tunes I will probably join in. :P
Anyway, at St. Cecilia I led the evening Vocal activities, where we alternated between solo songs (which people signed up for) and sight reading. This turned out to be a better thing than I’d originally anticipated. People liked having both. Alternating meant no one had to go very long without singing, and yet there was also something to do when I went to make copies of the next thing we were about to sing. And I had my period solo singing! Yay!
Luckily after the concert I got my second wind. Leading the evening activities was a breeze. Granted I’m not the most competent person ever at such things, but I’m not terrible and it felt familiar. Good times.
To be continued...