The Big Sing

[frenchpony]

One of the things that I loved about living in the Midwest was that, every so often, there were these pickup choir events. I got to go to the singalong Messiah at the Lyric Opera once, and to KAMII's singalong Judas Maccabaeus the last year that they did it. lcohen and rhobike and I had many lovely June evenings in Oak Park tearing through their pickup choir

Comments

[dot_o_choillmor]

That sounds so amazing. You must have been on some high afterwards.

[frenchpony]

Absolutely! I began the day at shul, where we had a fabulous service led by Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who is the Senior Rabbi of the Movement for Reform Judaism here and someone I'm definitely going to have to get to know better. I was also on the mild adrenaline high of being the Machine of Unstoppable Courage by biking all the way out to the shul (not the most bike-friendly route that Cambridge has to offer).

And then comes the chance to go into GSM and start singing through this fantastic piece of music that I haven't sung for ages. And you know how much I love singing, and how much I love big, meaty kinds of singing, and what a head rush all that music and all the deep breathing is.

Is it any wonder that I ended up sleeping for eleven hours last night? I just completely wore myself out!

[dawtheminstrel]

How great that music is making all these links for you. I guess when people all care about something, you can take that anywhere.

[frenchpony]

That's one of the things that I love about having music be my job. Musicians love music, and they jump at places and chances to make music, and they're usually eager to share their musical experiences with other people. If you want to make friends, and also if you want to learn about musical communities, it just takes one way in. And then, you just say "yes" when people invite you places. And then magic happens!

It was no accident that my first friends in Chicago, lo these many years ago, were shape-note singers.

[elliska]

Plus, I got to revisit my old score

That is one of my favorite things, finding old sets of notes of any kind and remembering the events around them and pondering the indecipherable parts. :-)

I'm glad you are finding 'home' there, along with the activities that you love.

So, FP, tell us a bit about the classes you are teaching (or point me towards the post you already made on that topic--I am so off and on with LJ recently that I probably just missed it). I'm curious to how you would compare your classes there to the ones you taught in the US.

[frenchpony]

The one thing that I miss having easy access to is shape-note singing. The closest singers are in London. While London isn't prohibitively far away, it does take some planning and costs money, so I'm going to have to sit down and plan a singing trip soon. But there is still singing, along with plenty of dancing and lots of new friends

[lcohen]

well the mozart wouldn't be a repeat for me but i miss our evenings in oak park!

did you hear us thinking of you last wednesday? it was the first time with the peculiar four with cathryn. but we still miss you! i'll be posting about it at some point, here.

[frenchpony]

I did hear you thinking of me! That must be why I dreamed of shape-note singing on Thursday night.

How did the P4 singing with Cathryn work out? (And how's Cathryn doing? The grapevine says that Cathryn Senior isn't doing too well.)

[lcohen]

it went pretty well. cathryn felt insecure about her sight reading which surprised me because i think of her as a very strong sight reader. but we got through a bunch of songs and it felt good to sing. cathryn is almost done selling the condo (hallelujah) and heading down to VA this week, i think, so i think you are right about cathryn senior.

[frenchpony]

I wonder if it was the bass clef getting to Cathryn? I know that altos tend to go a bit wibbly when a part shows up written in bass clef, so maybe that was making her insecure. But I'm glad that things worked out, and I'm glad that the group will continue. I'd hate to think that I'd be completely breaking up the band by moving away.

[fafojoy]

Your college experiences have been so interesting and i love how music plays such a large part of your social life. And then must expand Upon Elliska's question - if your fellowship is not around teaching, what do you do?

[frenchpony]

Now that I think of it, music has always played a big part of my social life. That seems to be how I meet people, by either making music with them or dancing with them. Not a bad lifestyle, when you think about it.

My fellowship is a research fellowship. Teaching is optional, but my main job is to work on my research. It really is a gem of a fellowship, and I'm amazingly happy about it.

[fafojoy]

What kind of research? Or have you already posted about it elsewhere?

[frenchpony]

I don't remember if I've ever mentioned it here before. The project is one that I had the idea for while writing my dissertation, but I couldn't do anything about it until La Dissertation was finished. This one has the tentative working title of "Musical Lives of British Synagogues," and it's about the ways that music works in British progressive Jewish worship. Who sings, why they sing, what they sing, why they sing what they sing, that sort of thing.