Alexandria Harmonizers Invitation

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Some videos of our concert music

Here's the Bowling Green State University Men's Chorus singing Heleluyan. Their conductor wrote the arrangement just for them.



Here's a high school men's chorus from Iowa singing He Never Failed Me Yet with orchestra. They're a little drowned out...



Here's a (mostly) men's chorus with a great soloist.



Here's a version for mixed choir. The soloist is great!



And here's a small church men's ensemble from Illinois.

Choir of the World 2009

Here's the video of the winning performance of the Westminster Chorus from Southern California at the 2009 Choir of the World festival in Llangollen, Wales. The first piece is Eric Whitacre's "Lux Aurumque," which we're singing this Christmas. After that, they sing less traditional barbershop versions of "Shenandoah" and "Didn't my Lord Deliver Daniel." Enjoy!

Directions to rehearsal

Here's a map of St. Alban's, in case you're new to the space (click on the map to enlarge it):


Hi guys,

There are several ways to enter the grounds by car:

From Massachusetts Ave., just to the SE of Wisconsin Ave., via Pilgrim Rd.

From Wisconsin Ave., either through the St. Alban's Church gates on Lyon Gate Rd.,

or

on South Rd., just South of the main Cathedral lawn.

The main parking is on Pilgrim Rd., where it widens, north of the Amphitheater.

The outside staircase to access the choir room is just off Senior Circle, at the bottom of the orange part of the circle, just above the new Marriott Hall (#10 on the map). Just follow the white line (the outside stairs and path) down, around the library (#11) and straight into Steuart (#12).

If you're parking the Senior Circle and want to take the elevator, enter Marriott Hall through the big glass doors right off Senior Circle. Walk down the hall until you reach the elevator on the right. Go down to the first floor (I think) and walk straight out towards the "join" between Marriott Hall and Steuart. Continue walking down the hall in Steuart and the choir room will be at the end of the hall on the right.

CBS Sunday Morning promotes choral singing in North America

Here's a great piece that appeared on the venerable CBS show in conjunction with Chorus America's national conference in Philadelphia in June. The story talks about statistics gleaned from Chorus America's study on choral singing in the U.S. and Canada. The Camerata is a proud member of Chorus America. To read more about the study, visit www.chorusamerica.org.

More Daemon clips...

...courtesy of Tim Cashin and YouTube. This is a pretty fast performance. They can go that fast because they sing lightly and there aren't many of them.



Here's a choirmaster singing the tenor line (of the SATB version, but it's pretty close) to help his choir boys learn the piece:



And here he is on the bass part:

Alas for those who never sing

The Voiceless
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
1858

We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them:--
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,--
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.

O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine
Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,--
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!

Blue Tail Fly

Here's some interesting history (courtesy of Wikepedia) about the origins and performance practices of Blue Tail Fly:

"Blue Tail Fly", "De Blue Tail Fly", or "Jimmy Crack Corn" is a blackface minstrel song, first performed in the United States in the 1840s, which remains a popular children's song today.

Over the years, many variants of text have appeared, but the basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his master's death. The song, however, has a subtext of rejoicing over that death, and possibly having caused it by deliberate negligence. Most versions at least nod to idiomatic African American English, though sanitized, grammatically "correct" versions predominate today.

The blue-tail fly of the song is probably a Southern variant of the horsefly, which feeds on the blood of animals such as horses and cattle, as well as humans, and thus constitutes a prevalent pest in agricultural regions. Some horseflies have a blue-black abdomen, hence the name.

It has been conjectured that it might not have been originally a blackface minstrel song, and might have genuine African American origins. Unlike many minstrel songs, "Blue Tail Fly" was long popular among African Americans, and was recorded by, among others, Big Bill Broonzy. A celebrated live version was recorded by Burl Ives. Another popularizer was the folk singer Pete Seeger. At the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 1993, Ives and Seeger performed the song together in what turned out to be Ives' last public performance. The song was also repeated almost in its entirety by Bugs Bunny in the Warner Bros. cartoon short Lumber Jack-Rabbit, though it is done in Bugs' trademark Brooklyn-Bronx accent.

There has been much conjecture over the meaning of "Jimmy Crack Corn and I don't care." However, in the oldest version it is "jim crack corn", and "jim crack" has always meant something cheap or shoddily built, and "corn" is an American euphemism for "corn whiskey".

Abraham Lincoln was an admirer calling it "that buzzing song" and it was likely he played it on his harmonica. When he was at Gettysburg he was said to have asked for it to be played.

When performing their version of the song on their album The Two Sides of the Smothers Brothers, Tom Smothers continually sings, "I don't care, and I don't care...", and when Dick Smothers tells him those aren't the lyrics, Tom replies, "I don't care."

Tom Lehrer's satirical "The Folk Song Army" contains this lyric:

There are innocuous folk songs
But we regard 'em with scorn
The folks who sing 'em have no social conscience,
Why they don't even care if Jimmy crack corn

Allan Sherman included a parody version of the song as the first entry in "Shticks and Stones" on his album "My Son, the Folk Singer":

Oh, salesmen come and salesmen go,
And my best one has gone, I know;
And if he don't come back to me,
I'll have to close the factory!
Gimme Jack Cohn, and I don't care,
Gimme Jack Cohn, and I don't care;
Gimme Jack Cohn, and I don't care,
But at best he's gone away!

June 6th Program

Washington Men’s Camerata
Frank Albinder, Music Director
Mark Vogel, Accompanist

Thanks for the Memories
A 25th Anniversary Celebration
Saturday, June 6, 2009 Terrace Theater 7:30 p.m.
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

I. Brothers, Sing On! Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
arr. Howard D. McKinney
Spaseniye Sodelal (Salvation is Created) Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944)

II. Cantique de Jean Racine Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
arr. K. Lee Scott
Daemon Irrepit Callidus György Orbán (b. 1947)

III. On Great Lone Hills (Finlandia) Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
arr. H. Alexander Matthews
Dostoyno yest (It Is Truly Fitting) Nikolai Golovanov (1891-1953)
Not heat flames up and consumes (We Two) Steven Sametz (b.1954)

IV. Nantucket Elliott Grabill (b. 1983)
Alas For Those Who Never Sing Christopher Marshall (b. 1956)

V. Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal arr. Alice Parker
Gentle Annie Stephen Foster (1826-1864)
arr. Alice Parker & Robert Shaw
Promised Land arr. Michael Richardson

INTERMISSION

VI. Ave Maria (Angelus Domini) Franz Biebl (1906-2001)

VII. The Pasture Randall Thompson (1899-1984)
Dirait-on Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943)

VIII. Song of Peace Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987)
Workin’ for the Dawn of Peace arr. Ron Jeffers

IX. Home on the Range arr. Greg Gilpin
Shenandoah arr. James Erb
Blue Tail Fly arr. Dwight Bigler

X. Danny Boy arr. Patrick Dupré Quigley
Loch Lomond arr. Jonathan Quick

XI. Zion’s Walls arr. Aaron Copland/Glenn Koponen
Away From the Roll of the Sea Allister MacGillivray, arr. Diane Loomer
Vive L’Amour arr. Alice Parker & Robert Shaw

Notes on Elliott's music

Here are some musings from Elliott Grabill on the two pieces he's written for us:

Young Sycamore

I must tell you
this young tree
whose round and firm trunk
between the wet

pavement and the gutter
(where water
is trickling) rises
bodily

into the air with
one undulant
thrust half its height—
and then

dividing and waning
sending out
young branches on
all sides—

hung with cocoons
it thins
till nothing is left of it
but two

eccentric knotted
twigs
bending forward
hornlike at the top

William Carlos Williams lived from 1883 to 1963. Although he spent some time abroad, he lived most of his life in Rutherford, New Jersey, a suburb very close to New York City. He worked a full career as a pediatrician. Not surprisingly, his poetry is quite observational. I also suspect he was a people person, judging from both his day job and some of his poems.

His poetry contrasts the Romantic Movement that came before him. While I think Whitman, Byron, Wilde, and other Romantic poets directly address broad emotional issues like love and grief, Williams captures beauty and subtly in physical objects and mundane, everyday things.

Also different is the way the poetry appears on the page. Notice the complexity of the language in “Not Heat Flames up and Consumes,” (from “We two,” which we are also singing), compared with Zen-like appearance of Williams’ “Young Sycamore.”

from “Not Heat Flames up and Consumes”
O none, more than I, hurrying in and out:
--Does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up? O I the same;

Due to Williams’ text layout, I get an experience much different from when I read Whitman. With so many line breaks in “Young Sycamore,” I focus more on the words themselves. While it may take several words to create an image in my mind in a Whitman poem, it takes me only one word in a Williams poem.

This affected the way I set this poem to music, because I wanted to do justice to each word. In his poem, Williams shows the reader how many beautiful things can be found in a single tree. Note how he jumps around from image to image, and theme to theme: “pavement and the gutter,” “one undulant thrust,” “young branches,” “eccentric twigs.” Because of this, I wanted to write a piece that shifts in tempo, style, and emotion. I chose a recitative format to allow me this flexibility.

Diction is important in the performance of this piece. The audience needs to hear the poetry speak—and not just hear it as a nice piece of music. Dynamics are also important for this piece and need to be exaggerated (but not over the top). This is so listeners can distinguish different sections of the poetry. I find youth a major theme in this poem, so feel free to have a sense of humor when performing it.


Nantucket

Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow

changed by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—

Sunshine of a late afternoon—
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying—And the
immaculate white bed


A number of personal experiences came to mind when reading this poem. First of all, look at the title: “Nantucket.” I’ve never been to Nantucket, but I know America’s wealthy elite—people who have been made legendary by authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald, owns much of it. For those of us not “old money,” it’s a tourist destination. Since the whaling industry would have died down by Williams’ time, I’m assuming that the narrator of this poem is probably a visitor—either of a bed and breakfast, or a private estate. The “smell of cleanliness,” “flowers through the window,” and “tumbler turned down” are all images that I’ve personally experienced either by the sea, or at a bed and breakfast. There’s a certain luxury to the images in this poem, with subtle hints of romance that I find intriguing.

I decided to write this piece in the form of a song. The nostalgia and luxury in this poem reminded me of old standards like “The Shadow of your Smile” and “All the Things You Are.” This piece should be sung with the same warmth and sentimentality as these songs.

Composer Kudos

Here are a couple of thank you notes from composers whose music we recorded on our new CD. First, a note from Lee Hoiby (click the note to enlarge it, click the name to go to the composer's web site):

And here's one from Joe Gregorio:

New music on the spring concert

Hi guys,

Here are a few YouTube videos of choirs singing the new/newer pieces on our spring concert. First up, the excellent Amabile Choirs of London, Ontario singing Jonathan Quick's arrangement of "Loch Lomond." For some reason, the Amabile video was removed, so here's the Southern California Vocal Association 2007 Men's Honor Choir instead. No, we're not going to do the beat box stuff at the end.



Here's a little-known collegiate group, the Cornell Glee Club under the direction of assistant conductor John Rowehl, singing Steven Sametz's "Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes."



Here's an unidentified high school district honor choir singing Dwight Bigler's challenging arrangement of "Blue Tail Fly." I'm guessing the video was shot by Zachary B. Krause's mother...



Here's the Massillon, Washington High School Men's Chorus singing "Daemon Irrepit Callidus." It was the only clip I could find of a men's choir singing it. If you can find another one, let me know and I'll post it.



And finally, here's "Away From the Roll of the Sea" sung by the MMEA All-State Men's Chorus. I don't know which "M" it is, though. It could be Missouri, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota or Maine.



Enjoy!

Post-Concert Soiree

The reason for the celebration!
Party coordinator Chris Ritthaler makes
some last-minute preparations while
blurry singers try to focus on the concert.

Yum...cake

Kasi mans the Camerata's
Center for Commerce and Merchandising
(the CD table)

Is it the champagne, or are they naturally blurry?

Frank tries to find a polite way to tell David Petrou
that he has schmutz on his arm.

A good time was had by all!

Sacred & Profane Program Notes

Franz Liszt, flamboyant pianist, renowned conductor, enthusiastic teacher and cerebral composer, had a soap opera-worthy life. From humble beginnings in a small Hungarian village, he eventually experienced musical triumphs in many of the world’s greatest cities. Yet he would also suffer personal tragedies that led him to seek semi-retirement in a monastery near Rome. As a composer, he’s best remembered for his technically demanding piano works, some of them only playable by Liszt himself. As a pianist, he was the toast of Europe. Some consider him to be the greatest pianist of all time. Liszt’s wild piano music and evocative symphonic works were his most popular, but he also composed music for the voice, writing more than 70 solo songs, five Mass settings and one Requiem. Three of these six large-scale choral works are for men’s chorus: The Requiem, the Male-Voice Mass (1848) and the Szekszárd Mass (1869).

The Male-Voice Mass and the Szekszárd Mass are essentially the same piece. Liszt composed his first mass in 1848, not long after he gave up his career as a touring virtuoso (at the age of 35!) to concentrate on composing. Liszt wrote the Mass in Weimar, and the first performance took place there on August 15, 1852 in a Catholic church in celebration of the birthday of Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic.

In 1857, Liszt wrote to a conductor about performing the Mass:

“I fear that the preparation of this work will cost you and your singers some trouble. Before all else it requires the utmost certainty in intonation, which can only be attained by practicing the parts singly (especially the middle parts, second tenor and first bass)—and then, above all, religious absorption, meditation, expansion, ecstasy, shadow, light, soaring—in a word, Catholic devotion and inspiration. The Credo, as if built on a rock, should sound as steadfast as the dogma itself; a mystic and ecstatic joy should pervade the Sanctus; the Agnus Dei (as well as the Miserere in the Gloria) should be accentuated, in tender and deeply elegiac manner, by the most fervent sympathy with the Passion of Christ; and the Dona nobis pacem, expressive of reconciliation and full of faith, should float away like sweet-smelling incense.”

At around this same, Liszt suggested that some wind and brass instruments could be added to the performing forces in order to double and reinforce the voice parts. While Liszt had originally intended the Mass to be essentially a cappella, the chorus had difficulties with intonation, so he added a simple organ part to double and provide support for the voices. Liszt was going to write the additional instrumental parts himself, but when presented with sketches by Johann Herbeck, a Vienna church musician, Liszt expressed delight with the work and urged him to complete the orchestration. This version of the Mass has never been published, though it was performed in Jena in 1858.

In 1865, Liszt visited the Hungarian town of Szekszárd and promised a new Mass to Baron Antal Augusz for a new church then under construction. Liszt found he was unable to complete a new work, so he revised his earlier Male-Voice Mass into what is now known as the Szekszárd Mass. This version of the Mass was given a public rehearsal in Buda on September 23, 1870, but for reasons that remain a mystery, the subsequent performance was cancelled. The premiere finally occurred in Jena, in 1872.

Stylistically, the Szekszárd Mass looks both backwards and forwards. The harmoic language and partwriting owe an enormous debt to the great Italian Renaissance master, Palestrina. But there are also a number of Listzian touches, including a harmonic language that presages the works of both Brahms and Wagner. There’s a passage in the Mass that sounds as if it’s been lifted wholesale from the Brahms Requiem, except for the fact that Brahms wrote his masterpiece almost 20 years after Liszt wrote the Mass! And Wagner borrowed the most prominent Leitmotiv in Tristan und Isolde directly from a Liszt piano piece. Liszt also quotes medieval plainchant in both the Gloria and the Agnus Dei movements of the Mass. Interestingly, the chant quoted in the Agnus Dei is actually the ancient melody for the invocation at the beginning of the Credo.

The Szekszárd Mass is filled with lush harmonies that exemplify Liszt’s mastery of the male chorus genre. He fully understands and exploits the ranges of the different vocal sections and creates a large-scale work that is both grand and meditative. All of Liszt’s Mass settings were intended for use in actual church services, to today’s performance in the historic Church of the Epiphany is a fitting tribute to this long-neglected masterwork by one of western music’s most interesting and innovative composers.


Damian Močnik is a young Slovenian composer who lives in Cerklje, where he teaches music and conducts two adult choirs. The bulk of his compositional output is for chorus, and this setting of a text by Ovid is meant to be a choral salutation. The fanfare-like vocal line beautifully reflects the text’s invocation to sing and love music.

Leos Janáček is best known today as the composer of popular operas and orchestral works. But from his youth spent as a choirboy in an Augustinian monastery to his adult careers as organist and choir director, sacred music played an important role in Janácek’s musical life. The Ave Maria is an intriguing work. Instead of setting the traditional text of the prayer to Mary, Janácek uses the opening phrase of that text as a recurring theme throughout the piece. The majority of the text is a Czech translation of a portion of Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” talking about the love of nature. The music is in a folk style, with frequent changes of tempo, duets between the different parts, and the unusual harmonies typical of much of Janácek’s music.

Ambrož Čopi is another young Slovenian composer/conductor/educator whose music has won many awards in his native land and received performances around the world. Čopi conducts the Obala mixed choir and Komorni Zbor Nova Gorica, the Chamber Choir of Nova Gorica, a small town in western Slovenia on the Italian border. His setting of the Marian prayer Totus Tuus is lushly neo-Romantic, with rich harmonies and frequently-changing meters. The piece is dedicated to the Chamber Male Choir Celje.

Močnik’s setting of a passage from Isaiah (translated back into English from a Slovenian translation by the composer’s wife) is strongly related to plainchant in terms of both structure and a free sense of meter. There are also elements of folk music in some of the harmonies and rhythms, though the writing is most strongly influenced by the meaning and structure of the text.

Janáček was an avid collector of folk songs and was active in the promotion and preservation of folk music from various ethnic and geographical populations of central Europe. Therefore, it’s not surprising that he wrote a number of folk song arrangements for chorus. The two on today’s program actually come from different sets, but were grouped together as a pair by editor Antonin Tučapsk´y. True Love is a simple love song that juxtaposes elegiac, free-meter direct exclamations of love with more descriptive, metrical passages about the nature of love itself. The Soldier’s Lot also juxtaposes two different musical ideas. The first, quite martial, speaks of the nature of war and the second, more lyrical, invokes the emotions surrounding a soldier’s service in battle.

The Hungarian composer Béla Bártok was also a champion of folk music and one of the fathers of the modern ethnomusicology movement. He was one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century, and his orchestral works are considered part of the standard repertoire and are widely-performed today. All of his music is infused with a strong sense of nationalism, best exemplified by his frequent use of folk melodies. Bártok settings of Five Slovak Folk Songs incorporate many of his standard compositional techniques, including the use of modes (instead of the normal major-minor scales of western music) and alternating meters that mimic the rhythmic instability of some of the original folk melodies and texts.

Another pioneer in the field of ethnomusicology, Zoltán Kodály was a composer, educator and composer. Though he was born in Hungary, he spent most of his childhood in Slovakia, and was imbued with a deep sense of native folk music from the earliest age. Kodály was a mentor and life-long friend to Bártok, with whom he worked to catalog and preserve folk music. Kodály received a PhD in philosophy and linguistics, but he also studied music at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. In addition to the influences of his native folk music, he also spent time in Paris studying with Charles Widor and delighting in the music of Claude Debussy. Eventually, he returned to Budapest and became a professor at the Liszt Academy. Kodály is also remembered for developing a philosophy of music education and composing a great deal of music for children. Though these principles are often referred to as the Kodály Method, Kodály didn’t actually develop a comprehensive teaching curriculum. Nevertheless, the principles he espoused remain important in music education around the world. Just last week, the Camerata gave the opening night concert for the National Conference of the Organization of American Kodály Educators here in Washington, DC.

The three works by Kodály on today’s program are actual choral songs, not simply folk song arrangements. Evening Song is one of Kodály’s most popular choral works. The beautiful, lyrical tenor melody is supported by rich, warm harmonies from the other voice parts. The Peacocks is an excellent illustration of the pitfalls of performing music in translation. Indeed, most of the editions of the songs on the second half of today’s program contain only English translations of the original Hungarian, Slovakian and Czech texts. While the fullest character of the music comes through when sung in the original languages, the translations do capture the essences of the originals, while also providing some amusing accidents of misplaced syllabic emphasis. The Soldier’s Song is a tour-de-force about the pains of love and loss suffered by a soldier going off to war. Kodály’s use of the snare drum and trumpet provide just the right martial touch to drive home the point of the text.

Our new CD!

Hi guys,

Here's the CD booklet art for our new recording. Click on it to enlarge it. We'll have them sometime next week. Enjoy!

Frank

Thursday night's concert details

Hi guys,

Our opening night featured performance for the national conference of the Organization of American Kodaly Educators is nearly upon us! This is a huge opportunity for us on a number of levels: we'll be singing for a national audience of music educators (someone at the ACDA convention told me that OAKE has never featured a men's chorus before), we'll get to singing some of the music for our March 22nd concert in public beforehand, and we'll be paid a fee, which is vital for the continued financial health of the Camerata.

I know there are a lot of questions about Thursday's performance, so here are some details:

Time: We need to be there to warm-up and practice at 6:45. The concert could start as early as 7:30 or as late as 8:00. We follow the presidential address (the president of OAKE, not Barack), so they can't give us an exact time.

Locations: The Marriott Wardman Park, 2660 Woodley Rd. NW, WDC, 20008.

Meet in the Harding Room. It's on the Mezzanine level of the main hotel building on Woodley Rd.

The performance will take place in the Thurgood Marshall Ballroom, also on the Mezzanine level. Here's a map. If you click on it, it'll get bigger.



A full fact sheet about the Marriott Wardman Park can be found by clicking here.

You can certainly find somewhere to change at the hotel, but please do it before the warm-up. We'll keep singing right up until it's time to do the concert, so there won't be time to change after the warm-up. If you can, come dressed in your tux.

The hotel is right near the Woodley Park Metro Station and I strongly urge you to take public transportation or a cab. Parking is available at the hotel, but it's $31.36 to self-park. Valet parking is available for $36.96. The entrance to the garage is on the Woodley Rd. side of the hotel at the top of the main driveway. Continue to the right for the garage entrance.

In addition to your folder, you'll also need your song book and the pieces we saved from Christmas. Here's the program:

Brothers, Sing On! - Edvard Grieg
Spaseniye sodelal - Pavel Chesnokov
Halleluyah! - Louis Lewandowsky
My Gift - John Chorbajian
Totus Tuus - Ambroz Copi
Ave Maria - Franz Biebl
Evening Song - Zoltan Kodály
The Peacocks - Kodály
Shchedrik - arr. Mykola Leontovich
True Love - Leos Janácek
The Soldier’s Lot - Janácek
Workin’ for the Dawn of Peace - arr. Ron Jeffers
Homesick Blues - Anthony Donato
Danny Boy - arr. Patrick Dupré Quigley
Vive L’Amour - arr. Parker and Shaw

Need something more? Did I leave something out? Let me know and I'll update the post.

See you soon!

Frank

Chor Leoni in Oklahoma City

Hi Guys,

Yesterday was the last day of the ACDA convention, and Chor Leoni, our brother chorus from Vancouver, British Columbia, played a prominent role in the festivities. They were part of an international concert session that also featured groups from England, Venezuela and Korea. Their program featured some songs we know well, including Bob Chilcott's Five Ways to Kill a Man and Diane Loomer's own Ave Maris Stella. Both Diane and Bob were thrilled to hear that Five Ways is on our new CD, and since Chor Leoni was one of the commissioning choruses of the piece, it was great to hear them do it in person. Later in the day, Diane and the chorus did an interest session on Canadian music for men's chorus. Again, there were a number of pieces we know, including Away From the Roll of the Sea and Jing-ga-lye-ya. It was great to hear the men and visit with Diane, who thinks the Camerata is great! Notice their cool "casual" outfits. They're cust0m made Canadian hockey jerseys, with a special Chor Leoni logo on the front, along with their voice part. The back features their last name and their folder number. What sports team's jerseys should we adapt for the Camerata? :-)

A new way to stay connected

Hi guys,

Greetings from Oklahoma City, where it's 80 degrees and there are 3000 choral conductors assembled for the national convention of the American Choral Directors Association. Because I'm here, I wasn't there on Wednesday night, so thanks to Mark for filling in, and thanks in advance to you for spending some time with your music this weekend!

This morning, I attended a session on "Technology for the Choral Conductor" given by my pal Philip Copeland, the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He's a techno-whiz, and he shared lots of fascinating, cutting-edge things to help folks stay in better communication with their choirs. His biggest piece of advice was to establish a chorus blog as a central clearing house for information relating to the choir. So, since I do everything Philip tells me to when it comes to technology, here's our blog: http://washingtonmenscamerata.blogspot.com. Now, instead of your having to log in to the member section at camerata.com, you can visit our blog to read important communications from the conductor, download mp3 files to aid in your studies, read program notes, translations and other tidbits about our music, etc. If you'd like to see Philip's blog for the UAB choirs, you can visit here.

For those of us not on the cutting edge, perhaps a bit of explanation is in order. There are now more than 50,000,000 blogs! Blog is an abbreviation for web log--basically, an online journal. You can access blogs by visiting them directly, usually by creating a bookmark in your browser, just as you do for your other favorite web sites. But the really cool way to stay connected to a blog is by using an RSS reader. You've probably seen those little orange square icons on most web sites, and you might have wondered what they are. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it's a way for the content to come to you, rather for you to seek out the content. If you subscribe to the Camerata blog's RSS feed, then whenever the blog is updated, you'll receive an email message, telling you that there's something new. Confused? I was too, at first. Here's a short YouTube video that will explain how this all works.



We'll see how everyone like using a system like this, and if it seems to work better than email blasts and downloads from the member site, then we can use it more.

In the meantime, I send you greetings from Jim Marvin (Harvard Glee Club), Pat Gardner (Rutgers Glee Club) and Scott Tucker (Cornell Glee Club). I just attended a fantastic concert session that consisted entirely of male choirs--a first for an ACDA convention. The first group was technically a treble choir, from the American Boychoir School in Princeton. They were followed by the St. Mary's Varsity Ensemble, a 24-man high school group from Tokyo. After that, the Cornell Glee Club sang a great program, including the Hoiby "Last Letter Home" and the Biebl "Ave Maria." They were rewarded with an enthusiastic standing ovation. And to close out the afternoon, we heard the 120-voice Vocal Majority from Dallas, Texas, one of the finest barbershop choruses in the world. You haven't lived until you've experienced 120 barbershoppers leaping off the risers into a fully-choreographed barbershop version of "Luck be a Lady Tonight." 'Nuf said.

Please do take some time to review your music this weekend. Our performance for the Organization of American Kodaly Educators is this coming Thursday, and we have some work to do yet before we're reading to sing!

Enjoy the warm weather this weekend and I'll see you soon.

Frank