Singing Sundays

Hello music lovers!

I am scheduled to direct the choir at Rockville UMC for the next two Sundays, April 2 and April 9. The music will be as follows:

• April 2 - Farrant - Hide Not Thou Thy Face From Us, Oh Lord
• April 9 - Randall Thompson - Alleluia

If you know either of these pieces, I invite you to join the choir.

• April 2 - 11 AM service, arrive around 10:15
• April 9 - 9:15 & 11 AM services, arrive around 8:30

There's no pay involved; just an opportunity to sing some great music. I hope to see you there!

Community Service by Voice

Our rehearsals need more singers.

Even if you expect to be out of town Easter weekend, you can help your fellow musicians by coming to choir practice and supporting (dare I say leading?) your section as we study the choruses of Handel's Messiah Parts The Second and The Third.

We need voices in all sections (SATB) to help us learn this awesome music, even if you cannot sing in the performances.

Choir practice is Wednesday night at 8:15 in Bowie, and Sunday night at 6:30 at Triadelphia. We need your help at both.

Send me a note if you have any questions, or visit MDMusic.org for more information.

Chance to Sing Thompson Alleluia

I know of a church choir looking for a few extra singers for Palm Sunday, two morning services, modest pay, main anthem the Randall Thompson Alleluia. Let me know if this sounds like fun to you.

Choral Competition

My father wrote a setting of Oh Love that Wilt Not Let Me Go, and his composition is a finalist in a choral competition. (Sorry, I'm not sure exactly which competition, but it would appear to be one of the competitions described on this page.)

The final judging will be Sabbath afternoon, February 25 at a Presbyterian church in Wayne, PA. (Not all of the compositions are certain to be sacred.) The winning composition will be performed again that evening.

My folks will be visiting Triadelphia with us Sabbath morning, and we'll have lunch together before driving up to the event.

Would you like to meet us for lunch? (or for any other part of the weekend?) As we make plans, we need to know how many people would like to get together so that we can plan appropriately. If you're interested, please send me an RSVP.

Maryland Choral Exchange

This is an idea that developed over this weekend, and before acting on it, I'd like to bat it around with all of you here in the Maryland Music weblog and mailing list.

I would like a way to unify the church-choir community in our area. As you all know, we're working on a fairly significant performance opportunity right around tax time. (April 15 & 16) I've seen a few other big performance opportunities go by. I would like a way to get the word out quickly to many other church choir directors and singers about what we're doing, and the fact that a) we would welcome more singers and b) we would welcome additional churches that wanted to participate and host a performance.

Similarly, when some other churches are cooperating to present, say, the Brahms' German Requiem, as happened recently in Silver Spring, I want to know about it early enough so that I can get involved.

My idea is to start a weblog and calendar for exactly this purpose. One possible title for the site would be Maryland Choral Exchange, and it might be worth registering a domain like MDCE.org for these purposes.

The calendar and weblog would provide a place for any choir to list the major performances they are proposing, along with comments and links to further information, including rehearsal schedules and locations. Choir directors and singers could watch the site (or subscribe via RSS) to see what opportunities are coming up.

How does this idea strike you? Can you imagine this becoming a useful resource? How would you reformulate or restate the idea to make it more appealing or useful to all church choirs? How would you get the word out to all these singers and directors after the site is up and operational?

As always, your comments will have a longer shelf-life if you post them directly to the weblog.

Two Invitations

1. As was mentioned in the previous post, we're planning two performances of Handel's Messiah (parts II and III) around Easter time. You are invited to sing or play in these performances. Further information is available. If you are interested, please subscribe to the mailing list on that page.
   
2. Chamber Music Weekend is an event focused on playing string quartets, piano quintets and other chamber works. We would like to send occasional (monthly? bi-monthly?) reminders and updates to you so that you can plan to participate. If that's OK with you, you are invited to subscribe to the mailing list using the form found on our contact page.

Messiah at Easter Time

You are invited to join the choir or orchestra to perform the 2nd and 3rd parts of Handel's oratorio Messiah Sabbath and Sunday evenings, April 15 and 16. (We hope that the evening performances will not collide with your regular Easter plans.)

If you are interested in singing or playing, please visit this page and subscribe to the mailing list. Please also drop me a note reminding me which instrument(s) you play or which part you sing.

Thanks!

January 28: Further Details

As was mentioned in this post, this Sabbath we celebrate the baptisms of both William and Beth. We want to share this celebration in your company.

Here is some more information:

Sabbath Schedule
  9:00 AM Brunch at Triadelphia (breakfast potluck)
  9:30 AM Sabbath School
 10:45 AM Divine Worship, including baptisms
Lunch: potluck at our house

Most of the company will be vegetarian: you may wish to plan any potluck dishes with this in mind.

Addresses:

Triadelphia SDA
12950 Brighton Dam Rd
Clarksville, MD 21029

Ashton Family
11726 Zebrawood Ct
Germantown, MD 20876

Here are directions from Triadelphia SDA to our home.

See you there!

Baptism January 28

Vicki and I are delighted to announce that both of our children, William and Beth, are planning to be baptized at the end of this month. The ceremony will be part of the regular Sabbath-morning church service on January 28 at the Triadelphia SDA church.

We have not finalized plans for the rest of the day, but it seems likely that we may augment the regular potluck. We invite you to share this special occasion with our family.

Manhasset Voyager Music Stands

Through a curious twist of fate (ask me sometime) I wound up with one of these stands and, for a portable stand, I like it very much. I have suggested that the brass ensemble standardize on these, and a handful of players have already ordered both the stand and the carrying case. These links should take you to the Woodwind & Brasswind site. If you purchase there, a small percentage of your purchase should eventually come back to help our ensemble buy more music and equipment.

Please suggest name for brass group

Hello Everyone, (including non-brass-group-members: I'd like your opinions too.)

The Triadelphia Brass has consisted, until quite recently, of musicians from the Triadelphia SDA church. Now we are beginning to expand our membership and, I hope, becoming capable of performing, without significant embarrasment, in churches where our members are not already known and loved individually. <grin>

There are two reasons that I feel it would be wise to distance ourselves from association with any particular congregation.

1. In the past we have been refused use of GC space for practice purposes because we were associated with one congregation. They wanted to avoid the appearance of favoritism.
2. I'm concerned that association with one congregation will dissuade members of other congregations from joining our group.

The Southeast Asia church, where we will be playing January 7, would like to list us as a group with a name. Do we have one? A couple of options come to mind, but I'm not sure that either is spot-on:

1. The brass group I conducted in Atlanta was and is known as Zephyr Brass. Zephyr is a name for the west wind, which was appropriate because that group originated on the west side of Atlanta. There was talk of extending the Zephyr organization to embrace additional ensembles, potentially including brass ensembles in other cities, so I would feel comfortable using this name, at least on a temporary basis.
2. The name Adventist Community Brass was abandonded by David Workman in favor of Washington Community Brass, which has fallen into disuse as that group has remained in hibernation. I think we could lay legitimate claim to ACB if we wanted to.

Association with a larger organization might be appropriate: the Columbia Union Conference encompasses a wide enough area that we would not need to fear excluding any potential members, I think. However, this would require agreement from whatever organization we wanted to associate ourselves with.

What do you suggest?

As always, your comments will have a longer shelf-life if you post them directly to the weblog.

Update: Here are the options I have observed so far.

• Triadelphia Brass
• Zephyr Brass
• Adventist Community Brass
• Sounds of Brass
• Triadelphia Regional Brass
• TriBrass
• TriBrass.org (If Amazon.com can do it, I suppose we can too.)
• Maryland Music Brass
• Maryland Chamber Orchestra Brass

TriBrass Performance Dates

Hello brass players,

I just received a call asking if we can assist, January 7, with the dedication of the new Southeast Asian church near the GC offices. We would be responsible for playing with two hymns and one number as an offertory.

Are we available on January 7?


Also, can we provide service music at Triadelphia February 11 or 25? or another date?

Thanks,

Daniel

TriBrass at CU Office

Hello brass players,

Please remember that we have rehearsal this week, Wednesday evening at 6:00 PM at the Columbia Union office. Be 15 minutes early to unpack and warm up, please. We will probably rehearse for an hour and a half or somewhat less.

Please bring a music stand.

See you there!

TriBrass Rehearsal Before Thanksgiving

I have heard that some brass players are interested in meeting this week even though we know the group will not be complete. I concur.

However, I expect to be working in Germantown tomorrow: meeting at the church would be significantly better for me than meeting at a house on the I-95 corridor.

What is your pleasure? Six o'clock? Where?

Calling All Singers

. . . Vocalists . . . Choristers

Triadelphia SDA plans to present a Christmas Concert, a.k.a Choral Evensong, December 17 at 4 PM. We could use you in the choir.

Group rehearsals will be at Triadelphia at 8 or 8:30 Wednesday evenings (or whenever prayer-meeting finishes). If you can't make the group practices, contact me anyway: I'm willing to meet at another time to help you learn your part.

We will be singing well-known selections such as Still, Still, Still, and Carol of the Bells.

TriBrass Rehearsal Changes

I am delighted to announce that Harold and Christine Greene are interested in joining the brass ensemble at Triadelphia. We will meet with them on Wednesday evenings (at 6 PM) at the Union office(?) near the intersection of Highways 29 and 175. (Will we need to bring music stands?)

This will give us an ensemble with the following configuration:

• 2 Trumpets
• 1 French Horn
• 2 Trombones
• 2 Baritones
• 1 Tuba

(The trumpet players can also double on low-brass instruments: perhaps we can handle some 8-part music in a few months.)

The above configuration doesn't look perfect for standard quintet music: I have a strange belief that standard quintet music (especially Canadian Brass) is intended for exactly five players.

However, the Salvation Army numbers are clearly intended for multiple players on a part. I have a few of these (five or six, I think) but I hope we can buy more in the near future.

Please think over what these changes may mean for us. Let me know what sounds interesting to you. And if you know more brass players, this might be a good time to invite them to join us.

TriBrass Rehearsal Schedule Update

Hello brass players,

We have a new schedule conflict making Tuesday and Thursday nights undesireable for the duration of this month, plus a week or two. We agreed to meet on Wednesday evenings (at 6:00?) until further notice. I would like to have a second rehearsal every week. Mondays are out. Perhaps Sundays? Comment here in the weblog, please.

P.S. We're still on for Thursday night this week, 10/6/05, at 5:00 PM.

TriBrass Postlude 10/29

Hello brass players,

By means that are murky at best, we have been listed to play the postlude at Triadelphia on Sabbath, October 29. Please let me know if this is possible, given your schedule.

TriBrass Rehearsals Update

Hello brass players,

This week we decided to hold Thursday night rehearsal at Triadelphia, beginning at five o'clock. See you there!

TriBrass Rehearsal Update

Hello brass players,

Our discussion last night left us with the following arrangements:

We'll meet Tuesday evenings at six o'clock (call time 5:45 PM) at Triadelphia. We'll meet Thursday evenings at six o'clock (call time 5:45 PM) at Rockville United Methodist Church in Rockville. That address is

112 W Montgomery Ave
Rockville, MD 20850-4213

Meeting in Rockville is a tentative arrangement, subject to change as we learn more about travel times, et cetera.

Please let me know whether this is in agreement with your recollection.