Choir Madness!!!

[Sean]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you this important announcement.

One of the audience members was kind enough to record This Friday's concert at the Church of the Holy Trinity and upload it to his YouTube Page. I owe that man a cookie.

First up, Sing a Mighty Song
[youtube]TkZ0vXxJiAI[/youtube]

Sweetheart of the Sun
[youtube]abmKedsCOr0[/youtube]

Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?
[youtube]ZeRb8_Gqgi0[/youtube]

I Am Not Yours
[youtube]pfKCSP_zdww[/youtube]

And, a fantastic song to end a concert with,
I Thank You God
[youtube]zEMQmK15GHs[/youtube]

Finding these certainly made my day. I'll need to hear a crisper recording (although that is pretty damn good for a digicam or iPhone), but I think we sound friggin' awesome. Now I just hope they make CDs available.

[RJDiogenes]

Good stuff. And that guy has a pretty steady hand, whoever he is.

[Sean]

My latest posting from last May's concert with Dr. Thomas. I need to catch up! Soon enough I'll have a new CD to work with.

Anyway, Ubi Caritas, by Maurice Duruflé. It's meant to sound similar to the chant of Dominican Monks.

[youtube]M5Hw13o6Oe8[/youtube]

[RJDiogenes]

Nice and soothing. And, as always, some beautiful pictures to go along with it.

[Madeliaette]

I played the Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:30 am
& Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:30 am
& Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:30 pm
ones - cool!

[RJDiogenes]

Great stuff, huh?

[Sean]

Yee gads! Took me long enough. Continuing the Guest Artist Concert, (going on...oh, 1 and a half years ago now), with Dr. Andre Thomas, is Sing Unto God, by G.F. Handel. I'm sure that Handel, if not the piece, is familiar to at least some people. He's one of those famous composers from the before the time of Mozart and Beethoven.

[youtube]-bScLbQnfp4&playnext=1&videos=C5t6Agb5IKE&feature=mfu_in_order[/youtube]

Since I'm now operating a Mac instead of a PC, I have access to iMovie instead of Windows Movie Maker. I certainly like iMovie better...but I still have a few bugs to work out. Any input on the editing style would be appreciated.

[Sean]

In a rare bout of productivity, I have completed yet another video for your listening pleasure. This one is in German...a language I was quite attracted to at the time...
Frohlocket ihr Volker auf Erden, by Felix Mendelssohn
[youtube]Oyp0FDpdlA0[/youtube]

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Ausgezeichnet. I don't suppose everybody in Concert Chorale speaks German; how do they learn the words to a song in a foreign language?

Since I'm now operating a Mac instead of a PC, I have access to iMovie instead of Windows Movie Maker. I certainly like iMovie better...but I still have a few bugs to work out. Any input on the editing style would be appreciated.

Well, the second transition seemed a little abrupt after the nice ripply effect on the first, but other than that it looked and sounded great.

[Sean]

^^ Ausgezeichnet. I don't suppose everybody in Concert Chorale speaks German; how do they learn the words to a song in a foreign language?

No one spoke German, actually. He used the song as our "audition piece" for next year. Not really much of an audition, because he hardly lets anyone go, but he saved this piece until about a week and a half before the concert to learn. We learned the notes on our own, and then he taught us the words less than a week before our workshop with Dr Thomas. It was intense...but it's really an easy piece. Just goes to show how much we can do in a short space of time. Our 'audition' consisted of singing this song in a quartet on solfege syllables (do-re-mi-fa-sol etc). That was a good year..probably the best year, actually.

I will probably have another video up tomorrow...one of my absolute favorite songs.

[RJDiogenes]

That's pretty cool.

[Sean]

In honor of today being exactly 1 year since this amazing performance, I wanted to repost the videos. This concert can probably be considered the hight of my singing career up to this point. We were the first choir from NY to be invited to this conference (American Choral Directors Association conference) in over 25 years. It was quite an honor...and I think we kicked some ass. In the year since this...I have not experienced a better sounding, or more emotional concert. Hopefully that changes sometime soon...I don't like to hav to wait that long in between fantastic musical experiences.

Sing a Mighty Song
[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZ0vXxJiAI[/BBvideo]

Sweetheart of the Sun
[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abmKedsCOr0[/BBvideo]

Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel
[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeRb8_Gqgi0[/BBvideo]

I Am Not Yours
[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfKCSP_zdww[/BBvideo]

I Thank You God
[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEMQmK15GHs[/BBvideo]

[RJDiogenes]

Nice and relaxing. I especially liked "Sweetheart of the Sun."

[Sean]

After 2 years of singing with BCAS, I finally have something to share here, and I'm quite proud to do so!

I spent all afternoon at my director's house (at her request) setting up a YouTube Channel for the choir, and creating a few videos from recordings of our most recent performance. Had I done it at home it would have taken all of an hour instead of 6, but Microsoft decided to change Moviemaker when they upgraded to Windows 7...and my director is (rightfully) picky, so we had to listen to each song to decide which we would upload and which we wouldn't. So far only two songs have made the cut from the most recent concert that we have an audio recording of. I've been given a DVD of that same program performed a week later to see if I can rip it into a digital format...apparently that was a slightly better performance. She has absolutely no idea what a comment is, or how to respond to one...so try not to surprise her (I may actually suggest that she disable comments since she'll probably forget to moderate them...same with ratings...) but I figured I'd share them here for your listening pleasure.

Here is the channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/BuffaloChoralArts

And here are the pieces that made the cut.

Sure on This Shining Night, by Morten Lauridsen
[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxepauro ... zRg7BvzzQ=[/BBvideo]

We were lucky enough to give the World Premier of this next piece, which we commissioned directly from Dr Thomas himself. He's a fine composer (you may remember that he came to Hamburg a few years ago to do a guest artist concert with us). He's worked extensively with BCAS as well.

Someday is Today, by Andre Thomas
[BBvideo 425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sku8tyOq ... yYQRCue_0=[/BBvideo]

I hope she chooses to upload a few more of my favorites from this concert. We actually performed my #2 favorite song of all time, and another piece that made it on to my Top 10 list...it takes a lot to make it up there...

[RJDiogenes]

Nice. That's pretty impressive having a world premiere song on your page. You should use one of the templates in the customization section to highlight it (so far they have four templates available-- you can click on the link in my sig for an example of what one looks like).