i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I think I said something here about a Virtual Choir I sent a video in for, and I'm delighted to say the final product is now live!

From the early pandemic lockdown in March until who knows when, choirs have been unable to meet in person -- which is quite stressful for anyone like me who uses music to de-stress. Eric Whitacre, an American composer who has done "virtual choirs" in the past, where singers record individual performances and send in their video and all the separate videos get mushed together to form an ensemble, decided to do one for the pandemic and current social upheaval.

So he composed "Sing Gently", and put out a guide track video (himself conducting, and audio of the piano accompaniment plus a quartet of one person per voice part) as well as practice videos of each part separately, and we who participated practiced and then recorded and sent in a video of us singing (while watching the guide track and listening using headphones).  

When submissions closed two months ago, there were 17,572 singers from 129 different countries.  There's a wide range of ages and of nationalities -- truly a global community! -- and everything from experienced vocalists to first-time singers, and even several videos using sign language.

The end result is ... incredible. Beyond words. I don't take credit for any of it (I'm just 0.005% of the choir) but I'm glad I'm a part of it.

(And no, I haven't found myself anywhere, though I do have at least one doppelganger!)

Video for Sing Gently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InULYfJHKI0



Also... CBS Sunday Morning piece about it (from this morning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS0ioMnVdHw

NPR All Things Considered article from last night: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/18/892634271/singing-in-the-dark-times-eric-whitacres-virtual-choir-takes-on-new-meaning  

Okay, I still need to go back and do part two of the General updates, but this week has been ... er ... interesting.

Monday night after I went to bed, I had something that was probably a panic attack. (I'd had anxiety attacks before, but this was different.) Heart racing, hyperventilating, total feeling of doom and dread, and I couldn't stay still. Not that I was having a seizure or anything, it was voluntary movements, but just ... kicking and flapping my hands wildly, which is about all I can do, and I couldn't not move. Even what I could do didn't feel like enough. Eventually I got calmed down with the help of a few YouTube videos (one a guided anti anxiety meditation, which had me somewhat less flappy but then I started crying wildly, so I watched some google translate sings videos), but I was all adrenaline-y and didn't get to sleep until after 4.

And then the other choir started Thursday, and the repertoire looks ... interesting but not stunning? Spanish/Exican Christmas songs, basically. Some churchier, some folkier. Veni Veni Emanuel in Latin, Riu Riu Chiu, an O Magnum Mysterium that I've done before, and then a bunch of stuff I don't know. Fun, but not the most impressive program ever. And running VVE was weirdly dreadful -- doing the notes on "du" was fine, but when we did it with words it dragged like hell. Back to syllables, we were fine; back to words, molasses. Count singing (which i hatesssss, preciousss) at various speeds, fine. Words, molasses. It was frustrating.

...and I was wiped out beyond what I expected. I don't know what's up with the fatigue thing, aside from the thing where I can't move and to some extent moving generates energy, but it's driving me crazy. And I was still half dead today, plus my throat feels funny and I can't tell if I'm coming down with something. I don't wanna get sick, whiiiiiine

So after a lot of dithering I decided it would be better to not do choir this quarter -- in addition to fatigue stuff, November is always crazy busy, plus cold and flu -- and so I sent an email to the director explaining the issues and asking if I could sit fall quarter out and come back in January, and his response was so nice and understanding (including saying that if I wanted I could just come when I can) that I'm second guessing my decision. Argh. But I know I'm not good at self care and I need to be, and trying to do choir this quarter will just stress me out

Unrelatedly, my mom went all pouty at me because I ate all the honey cake (that I had been given for Rosh Hashanah) and so didn't have any available to share with her when we did our coffee date today. And apparently I had at one point said something about saving it for coffee (I suspect it was more me saying it would go well with coffee). I'm trying to resist the programming of feeling back because dammit it was my cake, and also I wanted to eat it before it molded. (I can't win with her; if I eat things (especially sweet things) it's the wrong choice, but if I have it sitting around it's the wrong choice, and if I waste it because it molds it's the wrong choice.)

also, back to the fatigue thing and how much this week has sucked, I feel like I am letting the library people down -- there's a thing I'm doing, mostly email based stuff, mostly stuff I can handle (I'm going to post about it at some point with more details) -- but Tuesday, after the panic attack thing, I sent an email to the person training me going "i cant deal with library stuff right now can you watch for sub requests for a few days" and I meant to go back to normal after I caught up on sleep but I'm still overwhelmed and flaily so I'm still not back and I feel like I suck but I also have no brain argh

and one of my iPad games is having a limited time event this weekend and I can't do much with it -- between my iPad being weird about charging and my utter exhaustion -- and I would be sad if I had the energy to

and I'm sick of being tired :(

Can't keep my eyes open. Sleep now.

So I don't know if you remember my choir dilemna from a bit ago (teal deer version: a combination of "do I have energy for choir at all" and "this other group is doing some pretty awesome stuff and my usual group is kind of blah") but I ended up going with the other group, which is doing fun stuff -- Mozart Requiem in November (in collaboration with an unaffiliated orchestra), a December concert that's some sort of collaboration with handbells, a spring concert that includes the Rutter requiem and Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna.

It's going to take some adjusting to get used to the evening rehearsals; luckily it's once a week, but it's 7-9:30, which means I'm up well past my bedtime, as opposed to the 4-6 rehearsals I'm used to), but I like the feel of the group way better. It was fun to sing again, even if we *did* take the kyrie at like quarter speed and did some of the movements on "da" instead of words. (I am very aware of the fact that I have done the Requiem multiple times, so have plenty of familiarity, and even if it were the first time I'm a damn good sightreader, but that not everyone is me, and not everyone has seen it before, and so I can be patient ... at least for a bit, lol)

I feel vaguely guilty not doing my usual chorus -- I suspect it's going to be low numbers, and it's quite possibly the conductor's last year, though he's been "close to retirement" for at least three or four years. But I don't have energy to do both, and the choir I'm not doing this year hasn't really been feeling fun lately, just more of an obligation. And I wasn't getting paid enough for that. The Chorale director is better about realizing that we're there to have fun -- by singing, yes, but the other director would sometimes get upset at the choir for not being professional level, and that kind of isn't fun to endure. (Not that the upset wasn't justified -- there were times that we'd be going over really basic stuff in the week before performance -- but it was a bit demoralizing.)

Anyway. Yay for being back singing -- and fucking yay for it being fun again.

Had choir concert today. Also two hours of rehearsal, but it went better than I thought it would (often we're over-rehearsed or just plain tired, when we rehearse a lot on the same day as the concert).

But more importantly, it is available on YouTube!

I don't know how long that will last -- it was advertised (sort of) as a livestream thing, and I don't know if they take those down or not. But:

...dammit, I forgot they don't like giving embed code to mobile users. Link for now, and I'll edit it tomorrow

https://youtu.be/itVYdYp1k9M

ETA got the embed code yay

Today is FOP Awareness Day, and I, well, kind of don't want to talk about FOP. Because it sucks. I wrote up something (filed under personal: about me, if you want to look it up) a few years back, but talking about FOP is just... I don't know. Depressing. Because FOP is more relentless than brainweasels, and there's still no cure and no treatment -- yes, the date is because of being the anniversary of when the relevant gene was discovered, and maybe knowing the gene will eventually be a useful step in treating or curing or preventing FOP, but for right now it really means fuck-all to my life as a person with FOP -- and I have lost so goddamn much, and it isn't going to get any better.

(I do have a habit of obsessively checking the feet on any babies I see, in person or in picture, because malformed big toes are a strongly linked first sign way before any flare-ups or bone growth start doing their fun, but I have no idea what I would actually do if I saw one, because "Um hi, I think your baby has this horrible untreatable genetic condition that will have lots and lots of bad effects on hir life, google IFOPA for more information" is awkward even with people I know, let alone strangers. "No, I'm not a doctor, but...")

(And for not wanting to talk about FOP, I just spent two paragraphs talking about FOP. Sigh.)

...so instead, I shall talk about music.

Like the fact that we're doing Eric Whitacre's Alleluia as one of the pieces this quarter, and I just adore it way too much. (It's probably on Youtube somewhere; I'm just too lazy to look it up right now.) It's -- well, the text isn't hard in the sense that there are precisely three words, two of which are variants (allelu, alleluia, amen), though there's complexity in when the syllables fall, because sometimes the first a- is held out and sometimes we rush through to the -lu, but ah and ooh are both fun to sing (unlike, say, 'e' vowels, either the eh sort or the ay sort ) and the harmonies are rich and deep without being aurally obnoxious, and it's fun.

It's also brain-breaking in places -- there's one bit where the tenors have this ugly-looking line with a lot of accidentals, except it sounds nice and straightforward, and then the conductor pointed out that those two measures were just *in the key of E* -- they *looked* horrible because the key signature was five flats and then there were additional flats thrown in to make things like F flat (which is really E natural) and B double flat (which is really A natural) and I have no idea why he chose to flat flats to get something that sounds like E major rather than naturalizing flats to bring it up but whatever, not my call.

Or like the fact that the TA we have this quarter is ... he's a very nice person as far as I can tell, and he's decent at accompaniment / piano playing, but he is utterly crap at teaching music or at leading groups. We sometimes split up into semi-sectionals, going into two rooms -- either SA in one and TB in the other, or ST and AB -- where the director takes one group and the TA takes the other. It saves some time in learning music (because if, say, the tenors have to go over their part alone, there's only one section that's twiddling thumbs while they work it out, rather than three) -- but only if both groups have at least somewhat competent leaders.

The choir director has my absolute loyalty. I would do just about anything he wanted, musically. Last quarter's TA was also amazing (and had the sort of quiet competence of Getting Stuff Done that is just impressive). This quarter's TA can't quite lead a choir out of a paper bag. I feel a little bad since I probably wouldn't do any better, but then again maybe I would, because I at least know that a) spending a lot of time on easy parts kind of screws the whole choir for working on the hard parts, and b) it's good to actually let people hear what their part is supposed to sound like. Also c) if someone in the choir says "can we please work on X" then maybe actually working on X would be nice.

...today, the division I was in (sopranos and tenors) had the choir director, which was awesome for the semi-sectionals but then things fell apart when we got back together because the TA doesn't really have what it takes to work on stuff in parallel.

(I know that leadership is a learned skill, and choir leadership is a learned skill, and knowing which parts are going to be hard is a learned skill that is imperfect in anyone even when they have tons of practice, and being able to hear where things are going wrong is a learned skill, and that a lot of that stuff can only be acquired by trying and doing, so it's a little unfair to take someone who is basically a grad student with no choral background and expect him to be stunning, especially coming on the heels of almost two years with the previous TA who was astoundingly good especially towards the end, but at the same time, ARGH.)

...hmm, music doesn't seem to be any less frustratingy to talk about. Perhaps I shall go crochet instead.

Had this quarter's chorus concert last night. Usually the spring concert is in June (the operating rule seems to be "the last possible Sunday (or sometimes Friday) before finals"; for whatever reason, this one was mid-May. (Which also has the amusing side effect that, chorus being a university class, we have rehearsals until the end of the quarter, never mind that it's post-performance.)

I still like the Requiem better than the Mass (we were doing Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor), but it was fun. And kind of exhausting. And I managed /not/ to have any coughing fits, go me.

The time dilation that comes with a performance is always interesting. We spend weeks learning and rehearsing and re-rehearsing and getting it learned in physical memory as well as mental memory ... and then the concert comes and it's all over in a split second.

...not really, but it feels that way.

The solo movements, even when they are shorter than the choral movements, always feel like they take forever, because we haven't rehearsed them to death (and because we aren't doing anything other than staring at the conductor and trying to catch our breath). The choral movements? Go by way too fast. And once they're over, they're gone.

In some ways it's a little bit anticlimactic.

(Now I am listening to Carmina Burana and other similar things to get the Mozart out of my head, because it always gets stuck on annoying six-measure loops.)

I actually manage to approximate a functional adult today :D

...by which I mean I went to the store, got everything I needed -- diapers protective underwear, of which I was down to two, excedrin store-brand painkiller with caffeine, of which I had consumed my last today to kill off a headache, echinacea, of which Firefox still does not approve the spelling, and cough drops -- without a) forgetting any of it, or b) getting sidetracked by candy or cute winter hats or anything similar. /and/ I managed to remember to ask for a raincheck (the echinacea was BOGO but they only had one in stock, so I now have a raincheck for a free echinacea yay)

also, I am in concert dress, an hour earlier than necessary and without any "omg where did I put my X" flailing, and with my music in the proper folder in concert order.

go me.

(hey, it's small victories in the grand scheme of things, but when I'm sick I'll take them however they come. ...when I'm not sick of course I demand superhuman perfection from myself, and sometimes I do even when I /am/ sick, but never mind that. right now I'm in the floaty wheeeee area of being sick -- er, the mental floaty wheeeee area, wherein I have no brain cells and also apparently not much of an internal censor, even though it's physically an oh crap area -- so um yeah.)

...it would probably be saner of me to stay the fuck home tonight, but dammit, I did not rehearse all quarter just to miss the concert. never mind that we are likely to be out of tune and uncertain in places because our conductor gave us a crazy amount of stuff to sing and not everyone is quick on the musical uptake. and chichester psalms, which is my favoritest thing ever (well, up there with mozart requiem), is likely to suck the hardest, which is saaaaaad, but MUST SING ZOMG.

...but nowayinhell am I actually singing the first piece, which has lots of loud high notes that will totally shred everything in my throat and also I don't like it all that much. Don't worry, I am v. good at looking like I'm singing even when I'm not! And I will be singing as much of the rest of it as my voice lasts.

getting sick right before choral performances = not the most fun. (but then tehre was that one time when I went to an orchestra rehearsal with a 104° fever from a kidney infection. talk about surreal.)

so. concert. and then if I have any voice left tomorrow, a performance with a different group. And /then/, if I have any voice left which I quite probably will not, a performance with yet a third. But the third is the one that matters the least overall [i.e. they can get by without me and I have no strong fondness tying me to the music] so that's okay.

yeeeee. I always remember that the saturday rehearsals (9:30-5, with a lunch break that is at least fairly relaxed) are exhausting. I just tend to forget /just how bad/ they are.

luckily, I have some really awesome roommates who understand ... whateverthehell stage that's below zombie brain and fire-bad-tree-pretty ... and also understand the need for tea. (lemon ginger green tea, in this case.)

there's an incredibly stupid mattress ad where the people come home from vacation, travel-dirty and obviously just in the door, and just kind of faceplant onto the mattress and mumble about how much they missed it. that sort of faceplant is so what I would be doing if I could.

*eyes cross*

I am bailing on church tomorrow. hopefully no one will kill me for that or anything.

*gulps down more tea*

So, the chorus concert last Friday?

Totally awesome.

Okay, so I still didn't particularly like the first three songs -- especially the middle one of the three, which had moments of beauty but moments of being way too modern, and the poems that were the lyrics were, I swear, written by someone with functional knowledge of English grammar and a very limited and dysfunctional vocabulary, because so much of it did not make any sense. Honestly, I find it easier to sing in Finnish (Aamulla varhain, kun aurinko nousi, kun minä unestani heräsin), which I don't know, than to sing something in English that is grammatical but bizarre (Nor change the Pasture, but the Place, to feed off Thee in Thine own Face wtf?)

... as an aside, I feel ... odd ... about the fact that so much of what we sing is Christian, or at best Judeo-Christian, in a choir affiliated with a university (rather than a church, and it isn't even a religious university). I know that a lot of good western-style music was written for churches, for masses, for a largely Christian-oriented society, but on the other hand, it's ... I don't even know. And I don't have a personal problem singing about Jesus, or about God, but I wonder if other people do.

But anyway, back to the concert. I had an urge, which of course went unexpressed, to tell the audience that the second half was going to be way better than the first half; I was worried that people might bail because the music was so weird. I don't know if anyone did, because while the first half was just us and an organ off to the side, the second half -- Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem -- had orchestra, so I couldn't see the audience at all.

(Where I sit -- where I have to sit, to the side of the main choir in the front because I can't really fit on the risers at all -- is, shall we say, entertaining, because in front of me are the french horns, and directly on my right is the percussion section. When everything's at full volume, I can't hear what I'm singing. At all.)

When we started the quarter, I wasn't sure about the VW piece, because it had some amount of clashy weirdness with shifting tonalities. It's not the soft gentle Dona Nobis Pacem round that most people are familiar with. It's a plea for peace, but it's also sounds of war, with a lot of lyrics coming from Walt Whitman poetry and from scripture (OT, not NT), and it's gorgeous and powerful and needless to say, over the course of the quarter, it grew on me. :)

It was kind of amusing at the end, though. As a performer, as a conductor, you are intensely aware of the timing of applause. With some pieces, the applause starts too soon, before the music has finished, or in the wrong place, regardless of the conductor's body language; the ideal, IMO, is a heartbeat or two of silence before the applause starts. Which we got with the first three songs.

But with the VW, which has a recurring theme of the change between dona nobis pacem and sounds of war, there's this wonderful climactic ending, loud and full-instrumented and full-voiced and gorgeous and glorious, that quiets down into dona nobis pacem, and at the end, just, pacem, alternating between the chorus and the soprano soloist, ever softer, pacem, pacem, with the soloist getting the last word in, ppp decrescing into nothing ... and then silence, for a long time. I didn't think to start counting seconds or heartbeats, but it seemed endless, us standing still and barely breathing, the orchestra still because it had been a capella for the last few pages, the conductor perfectly still with a look of satisfaction on his face. Forever silence, except not.

Granted, there were other points in the concert where dead silence didn't mean end-of-song, and other places where he wasn't conducting (when it was just the organist playing) or was conducting with minimal movement, so there were no obvious cues for the audience to follow.

It wasn't quite an awkward amount of silence, and it was appropriate for the piece; but from the perspective of a performer, it's just *strange* to have that much of a stretch of silence.