Still Life, With Cats

Tonight was the fourth and final concert, and the one I’ve been most looking forward to, because tonight we sang inside a planetarium.

The SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity is a fairly new center in Sacramento, and among its many features it includes a small planetarium. Somehow our director managed to reserve the space for us to sing, and it was fantastic.

Granted – there are some challenges to performing in this space. The walls are heavily insulated, which while great for dampening the sound of the motors which run the projection ceiling, meant that it was an extremely ‘dead’ space for singing in – we had to do some adjustments to how we stood so we had any chance of hearing each other. But it was *so* worth the very small extra effort, because we sang our entire concert in the dark (we had stand lights to see the music, of course), straight through without any pauses for intermission or even applause, while the projectionist had the night sky above our heads. The music we sang this year was inspired by the chants of Hildigard von Bingen, which was perfect for every one of the very different venues in which we performed – from the massive cavern underground to the cozy planetarium.

It was a lovely way to end our winter concert series, and here’s hoping we’re able to perform there again.

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Merry Christmas, let’s start a fire!

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

This being December, that means it’s concert season for those of us in musical groups. Last year the group in which I sing was invited to perform our winter concert in Moaning Caverns, which was a feat of planning and coordination since that meant we had to figure out how to schlep an electric piano 16 stories down into the space.

It was extremely successful, so this year they had us come back, for two nights in a row. That actually happened last weekend, although since the coordinator wanted to shrink the number of singers, two of us didn’t go (and instead she and I went out for dinner and a show last weekend). Tonight was concert #3 of the set, which instead of being in a cave 16 stories underground, was set in a more traditional location – an Episcopal cathedral.

I didn’t get much knitting done today as a result, but that’s okay; I’m making good progress.

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This one fills me with so many questions. Obviously this is a very poor family – you can see the silhouette of a woman holding a baby through the window, the guy is missing some teeth, and they’re living in a rundown trailer, and using a portapotty. But the guy has such an Evil Villain look on his face, so is he stealing the ticket? Was it supposed to be for the woman holding the baby? Did the elves screw up, yet again?

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Today I got up and made cookie dough for tomorrow’s cookie exchange, because last weekend’s baking attempt was not very successful (well, for the cookies meant for the exchange, that is). I also pulled the bag of successful cookies from the freezer (Apple Butter Snickerdoodles, which I made on a whim to use up some leftover apple butter from this year’s batch, but which turned out to be *extremely* tasty, and far better than the usual boring snickerdoodle so if you have apple butter lying around in need of using up, I highly recommend this recipe), and packed them into a cookie tin, and brought them with me to the recording session.

Ever since the pandemic started, we’ve been doing virtual versions of our concerts, even now that we’re back to performing in front of a live audience. It’s really nice, because that means family and friends who aren’t local now actually get to hear us perform, but on the down side, it also means a very long day.

So now it’s late and I’m exhausted from singing for roughly five hours straight, but the recording is done, and the cookies were all consumed, and it was a really good (albeit extremely tiring) day.

Tis the season for Holidailies.

Today was a lot of fun. It was also exhausting.

I got up early to do a little bit of tidying around the house – mainly just running a couple loads of laundry and packing up my back pack for the long day ahead. Alas, I left poor Richard to do the bulk of the cleaning for the TGIO party (for Nanowrimo) which was being held at our house, but it wasn’t all that much to begin with so I am not feeling *too* guilty. Much.

Anyway. The day started by meeting at one of the other singers’ house, and then we all carpooled up to the Harris Performing Arts Center up in Folsom for the Voices of California holiday concert. The performance consisted of a large men’s chorus, a smaller quartet, a brass quintet, a high school choir, and us. We did the big group number warm up first, and then our sound check, and then hung out in our green room and spent a couple hours running music in preparation for the two concerts.

It was a completely packed house, which is always a nice thing to perform for, and we all felt solid and happy with every piece we performed, and best of all, as we finished our last piece, you could hear one of the audience members say, very quietly, ‘wow!’

Back to the green room for more music run-through, then back to the stage for the final number, and then we all dashed back to the green room, grabbed our bags, and zipped out to our cars to head off to the next gig.

This one was very different. Where the first was definitely a concert, with people who paid specifically to come hear people perform, the evening’s thing was mainly us providing background music. We started things off by singing on the main porch as people entered the museum (I, by the way, was not the only one sporting a knitted hat), then moved inside and tucked ourselves into a smaller room to do one piece (where we did attract a small, but very appreciative crowd of partygoers), and then finally, we all tromped up to the third level and sang two more pieces downward to the crowd.

So. Fun, but completely exhausting, both from the hours and hours of singing, and the hours and hours of standing. Thankfully all the other performances for the month are scheduled at only one a day. And also thankfully no hats will be required.

*****

Today’s nifty thing is this recording from one of our recent rehearsals, because today has pretty much been 100% all about singing for me, so it seems only fitting I should share some of it with you.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Tonight was the final concert of our first set of the season, and oh, how I loved this concert. We changed up a lot of things this year – new venues for the performances, new practice space, and new practice method. For the first few weeks, we met in sectionals, so all the altos came to my house and we sat in the dining room and worked on the music together. Sherman and Rupert usually were involved (either by flopping on the music or just walking around and rubbing on people) and there would be laughter and singing, and it was clear when we got back together as a group that that format worked really well for us. The music itself was gorgeous – a mix of old world and modern, with only a tiny handful of the more recognizable carols to give us singers a break from the harder works.

We normally schedule it for the first weekend in December, so it was pretty late this year. We also usually perform at only at one venue, but this time we sang at 3 different venues. The first, on Friday night, was at a massive cathedral, where the sound echoed around us, but due to our placement and the acoustics, we could barely hear each other (although the audience could hear us just fine). The second, on Saturday night, was in another big space – still large, but slightly less echoy; narrower than the first venue, and with carpet to soak up the sound, so it had a completely different feel than the first night. Tonight’s venue was probably one half to one third the size of the other two, but I think we all liked it the best. There is nothing quite like the energy of singing in a smaller space, when it is packed with people and you feel as if you can actually connect with your audience.  It was a lovely way to end things for the year.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

*Resmiranda means ‘wondrous thing’, and is a phrase from my favorite song of this set – “There Is No Rose”, arranged by Don Macdonald.