Thank you

Corey and Christy were at Spencerville church this morning. Seeing them there really made my day. Thanks!

Practice Report: jda

Quick update: I snuck in 10 minutes each on tuba, trombone and trumpet this afternoon.

Der Chor Frequency

Another good question:

How often would Der Chor perform per month?

The more churches we represent (i.e. we have core members from those churches) the more places we'll have an obvious reason to sing. Bluntly: I don't know. It depends on what the core members are willing and eager to do. I'd like to see the program grow large enough to handle two or more churches on the same Sabbath. As a place to start, I feel like we should aim to have 16 singers at each gig, and hope to have 32 on the roster, so not everyone is required at every opportunity.

Brass with Band May 15

Reminder: Jan Wall from Spencerville Academy has asked us to play with her band for church at Triadelphia on May 15. As I understand it, all of us are interested, but Corey anticipates dental agony over that weekend.

Weekend Plans - Ashton Family

Here's what I'm aware of, at the moment, in case anyone wants to co-ordinate with us this weekend.

• Sabbath morning, Washington Community Brass are at Spencerville
• Sabbath afternoon (tentative), bicycling with Sharon, possibly at Rock Creek Park
• Sunday afternoon (tentative), 4:00 PM Sligo Atrium, Senior Recital of Dan Hall, euphonium and trombone player, musician extraordinaire, a.k.a. The Black Mozart

As I'm posting this info I'm hoping that it increases the odds of being at the same place at the same time as any of you.

Jamey, what's left for King-n-I performances?

Low Brass Warm-Ups

• French Horn
• Trombone
• Euphonium
• Tuba

Witnessed

Corey, your pledge has been heard (received? read?) and witnessed. More power to you!

Male Chorus: I'm not averse to the idea, although I'm cautious, given who's choosing the repertoire. (There's that R word again.) If it's all as good as Tschesnokoff, I'm with you all the way.

Brass: One thing that would make me happier is a better fit between our players and our parts. Guys, please take some time to search for music sources and find out what we can buy that fits our five players. I'll give you two stores to start with: Robert King Music and Hickey's Music Online. If we had one more trumpet player we could get into some standard brass quintet music.

Summer Music Options

David asked earlier about people's summer plans, musically. Don't overlook Chamber Music Weekend, July 14-18.

Brass break? There are times when it seems difficult to face another rehearsal. But I'm feeling (like Corey) encouraged with where we see ourselves going. I'm not sure we're organized, yet, or that we have the right repertoire. But my feeling is that we're just getting rolling, so a break now would be detrimental.

Recorders? Given De De and Jamey's recent acquisitions, we need to pursue some basic recorder ensemble opportunities; perhaps something like the afternoon of Corey and Christy's wedding. Just get together and play and play . . . Repertoire is the tricky bit, and I'm hoping Geri proves to have a large supply.

Strings? Same thing, basically. We're short staffed, somewhat: we need another violin or viola who can manage to read music as well as Jamey can. (Kudos, Jamey: your cello playing is showing excellent progress. It's obvious that you're not having to learn music as you learn technique. Very impressive!) Repertoire is, again, a potential roadblock. I have some Haydn quartets, but not much else. Personally, I'm not crazy about music with fewer than four parts. Five is better, etc. But it's better to play a duet than to miss a chance to play chamber music!

We need more music that calls for strings and chic flutes. (Hi Jamie!)

Impromptu chamber music? Call me! My number is . . .

Practice Report: Step by step

David, it sounds like a good beginning. Be encouraged.

Wednesday night was, for me, a wash for practicing: we sat at the local CompUSA for about 2 hours waiting to get Vicki's Mac laptop swapped out.

Tonight I had a 90-minute (about) rehearsal with WCB, playing mostly tuba. I did get to play trombone on one Gabrielli: Canzon Primi Toni, or something like, I think. It was high: it started on high F and stayed there much more than I liked. I got little reaction from the guys, so I'm not sure how well I did.

Der Chor Concepts

In this post Corey asked some fundamental questions. (Great questions, Corey. Thanks for the springboard!) Here are the answers I've been contemplating, as a place to begin discussion:

What sort of music would Der Chor sing? Would it be standard fair or high church?

You can get a feel for the kind of repertoire I like by looking at what I selected for the church service last October 25. Those pages are still online here and here.

What sort of denominations of churches, if any, are in mind?

Well, it's not the denomination that's as interesting as the motivated singers. Given the people involved in this discussion today, we'd be focused on Sabbath morning SDA services. As our core choir began to have members from other denominations, if their home churches wanted the music we offered, we should be willing to sing for them.

What would the frequency of guest spots be for Der Chor?

I'm picturing a core Chor of perhaps 32 people, with hopes that about half of those people would be able to show up for any given gig. Suppose we had a chance to sing at Triadelphia. We would arrange to rehearse with interested singers at their church once or twice before that Sabbath. Because we would already know our music cold, those rehearsals would be very beneficial as we could interleave the local "guests" into our own ranks. The purpose of this choir is not to build a reputation as a solo ensemble, (oxymoron?) but to provide the foundation, the core, so that every constituent church could feel as if it had its own church choir.

What would a typical service look like that included Der Chor?

A typical service would look like any other service with a standard, in-house choir. I'd expect us to sing an introit, prayer responses, anthem and benediction, or something like that.

Would there be a collection of appropriate responses?

The SDA hymnal has a surprisingly useful collection of responses. However, additonal response collections are available on the market.

Would this be purely vocal or a musical combo?

I'm picturing this as a vocal core ensemble, actually incomplete (too small) without local singers. It might help to have a couple of organists on staff, for rehearsals and in case the local church organist was not available.

Practice Report: First steps

Progress on practice is slow but steady: two 5-minute sessions Wednesday evening and a 10-minute session Thursday morning. A significant portion of that time was spent trying the warmup exercise Daniel encouraged. Result so far: EXCELLENT pedal tones, with reduced higher range. We'll see what more practice provides.

Was ist Der Chor?

Der Chor is a choir concept. Within one congregation (especially Triadelphia) we don't have enough experienced, talented, dedicated singers to maintain a church choir. This may be true in other churches as well. The idea is to pull together singers from all the local congregations, potentially even from other denominations.

Der Chor would run one or two rehearsals at each church during the week or two previous to singing there, giving the local church members a chance to join up and sing with a "big choir" in their own church. Der Chor would provide the core people, skills and knowledge of the repertoire.

I like the name because it's a play on the homonyms core and Chor (German for Choir).

What is Something Else?

I don't know yet, but I know that it calls for at least two flutes. Suggestions?

Kudos and Question

I enjoy Daniel's philosophy of getting things done. Kudos to him for setting this up!

Since rehearsal was last night I'm as yet unable to brag about practice time, but I do have a question.

What's happening musically this summer in our community? The Baroque Consort will of course be taking a break, as it is tied to the school schedule and Geri is most likely going on furlough. How about the brass? My hope is that we don't break. Does anyone in the Baroque Consort want to get something together during the summer months? Do we need a goal for the choir this quarter? Is there a time we just want to invite our out-of-town friends and have a musical jam session?

How does it work?

I'm still trying to figure that out myself. Here's what I've picked up so far.

Each of us can write and publish entries here. Entries appear with the newest at the top. (This one is the third that I've written.) We each have the ability to go back and change what we've written after it's published.

When you get to the blogger.com home page, you'll find our blog, Maryland Music, listed on the right. As soon as you click on that link you'll be looking at the form you use to write and publish.

To read what's been published, hit the View Blog button, or open a browser directly to MDMusic.blogspot.com.

My suggestion: Bookmark this page. Check it every so often. Read down until you hit old material. (Look that over briefly, because it may have been edited since you last read it.) Then scroll to the bottom and click the "Powered by Blogger" link, which will bring you to the forms for logging in and adding your own commentary.

I'm still trying to figure out the RSS options. I'll post a new article when I understand more.

Initial members

What we write can be seen by anyone who visits our site, http://MDMusic.blogspot.com. However, I've marked this as a private blog, so we won't get included in the directory and won't be considered for blog-of-the-week or whatnot. I've also marked the blog so that most search engines will ignore it.

The people I've invited at first include the members of Triadelphia Low Brass and their spice, and the adult members of Geri's Baroque Consort. Let me know as we discover other people who should be involved in this discussion.

Let's get started!

I'm starting this web-log after discussions at our Triadelphia Low Brass rehearsal this evening. We talked about our thoughts and hopes for the future, what we could become and how we would like to grow. One member challenged another to practice a certain number of minutes a certain number of days this week. Someone suggested that we should start a blog to help encourage each other. So here it is!