Yay for the Schütz!
Well, at least Mike and I didn't have to do our dialogue in German today! We really weren't quite ready....and Birgit somehow completely forgot about them until the end of class! We only had time for two groups to present.....in the very beginning of class we sang a carol of St. Nikolaus' day, which is the 6th or the 7th, and I honestly can't remember....(how embarrassing!!) But it was tons of fun.....I 'got' to play the piano, but it was easy enough to read from the chart....anyway, it was tons of fun, and she promised we'd do it again!
Classical Symphony was OK.....better than last class, certainly......and I got a freakin' 98% on my midterm for the class! What a riot......well that test was genuinely very easy, so I'm not as surprised......
After class I went to the Billa to buy water and oranges for everyone for the Schütz rehearsal, and then went back to save a room and practice. Strangely enough, all the rooms were taken, what with Greta giving a coaching and Carla and Nick practicing in one room and Jill practicing in the other.....I convinced Jill out of the kindness of her heart to take one for the team and relinquish her room, and passed on Nick and Carla's assurance that they would only be using their room for another 5 or 10 minutes....so we rehearsed the Schütz over in the strange small room with the mirror and the piano that faces the wall, so they all had to clump over to one side of the room so that I could even see them....it was ein bisschen ghetto-lich, but OK in the long run. I thought I ran the rehearsal quite well and efficiently, considering I had a little less than 50 minutes with everyone before Miriam had to leave.....it's coming along very nicely, and they respond very well to the comments I give them. It's great. They're one of the more responsive groups I've worked with, which is really good for me, as it is a more accurate representation of the effectiveness of the things I do and say to them. For instance, the time I told Jim not to close to the 'r' of 'erbarm' to soon, and I explained it in a weird enough way that he started to roll the the first 'r'. Also, their dynamic variation is so much more appreciable when I conduct, and yet not always in the ways that I want it to be.....so I've had to think more about fine-tuning the way I verbalize and articulate with gesture the phrase structure and phrasing that I want. It's been quite helpful, especially because I know the piece so well and have such clear ideas about what I want in it. Anyway, the rehearsal went very, very well.
I had told them last week that we were going to do it at the workshop, but that didn't end up working out. Instead we did it this week, and since Becky was sick we went first. This was good, as it sort of cleared the air (at least for me) and also it's so completely different than anything else anyone's doing that it was nice to get it over with. Greta was nice enough to play the continuo part so that I could conduct, which was good, but I felt really bad for her because I wasn't quite as clear for her sake as I should have been, especially with all the tempo changes. I'll have to mark up my book with all of that stuff so that next time she'll have a clearer understanding of what to do, and I can concentrate a bit more on helping the singers. Anyway, they sounded pretty good, and Russell had some helpful comments. They were mostly for them, though, and not directly for me, and frankly I was hoping to be critiqued a little more....oh well. Next time I'm sure. No one in the peanut gallery critiqued me either, but whatever. The rest of the workshop was OK.....it'll be the last one to go until 7:30, though, since Russell has some show that he's doing every night for which he has to leave early, so they'll only go until 6:30 every week now.
After workshop I went home, watched South Park with Mike and Becky, and then met Amanda to get the Hagen Quartet tickets....she had bought tickets for us to see the Hagen Quartet at the Konzerthaus in December, but since she's leaving early she gave me both the tickets so I could go with someone else. (I'm think I'll to take Gretchen there in lieu of Fledermaus as a belated b-day present.) We gabbed for while and then she went home, and I went to bed.
Classical Symphony was OK.....better than last class, certainly......and I got a freakin' 98% on my midterm for the class! What a riot......well that test was genuinely very easy, so I'm not as surprised......
After class I went to the Billa to buy water and oranges for everyone for the Schütz rehearsal, and then went back to save a room and practice. Strangely enough, all the rooms were taken, what with Greta giving a coaching and Carla and Nick practicing in one room and Jill practicing in the other.....I convinced Jill out of the kindness of her heart to take one for the team and relinquish her room, and passed on Nick and Carla's assurance that they would only be using their room for another 5 or 10 minutes....so we rehearsed the Schütz over in the strange small room with the mirror and the piano that faces the wall, so they all had to clump over to one side of the room so that I could even see them....it was ein bisschen ghetto-lich, but OK in the long run. I thought I ran the rehearsal quite well and efficiently, considering I had a little less than 50 minutes with everyone before Miriam had to leave.....it's coming along very nicely, and they respond very well to the comments I give them. It's great. They're one of the more responsive groups I've worked with, which is really good for me, as it is a more accurate representation of the effectiveness of the things I do and say to them. For instance, the time I told Jim not to close to the 'r' of 'erbarm' to soon, and I explained it in a weird enough way that he started to roll the the first 'r'. Also, their dynamic variation is so much more appreciable when I conduct, and yet not always in the ways that I want it to be.....so I've had to think more about fine-tuning the way I verbalize and articulate with gesture the phrase structure and phrasing that I want. It's been quite helpful, especially because I know the piece so well and have such clear ideas about what I want in it. Anyway, the rehearsal went very, very well.
I had told them last week that we were going to do it at the workshop, but that didn't end up working out. Instead we did it this week, and since Becky was sick we went first. This was good, as it sort of cleared the air (at least for me) and also it's so completely different than anything else anyone's doing that it was nice to get it over with. Greta was nice enough to play the continuo part so that I could conduct, which was good, but I felt really bad for her because I wasn't quite as clear for her sake as I should have been, especially with all the tempo changes. I'll have to mark up my book with all of that stuff so that next time she'll have a clearer understanding of what to do, and I can concentrate a bit more on helping the singers. Anyway, they sounded pretty good, and Russell had some helpful comments. They were mostly for them, though, and not directly for me, and frankly I was hoping to be critiqued a little more....oh well. Next time I'm sure. No one in the peanut gallery critiqued me either, but whatever. The rest of the workshop was OK.....it'll be the last one to go until 7:30, though, since Russell has some show that he's doing every night for which he has to leave early, so they'll only go until 6:30 every week now.
After workshop I went home, watched South Park with Mike and Becky, and then met Amanda to get the Hagen Quartet tickets....she had bought tickets for us to see the Hagen Quartet at the Konzerthaus in December, but since she's leaving early she gave me both the tickets so I could go with someone else. (I'm think I'll to take Gretchen there in lieu of Fledermaus as a belated b-day present.) We gabbed for while and then she went home, and I went to bed.
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