André's Rehearsal Notes for November 5th, 2025
Happy Halloween Choral Evolution!
Very productive rehearsal Wednesday evening. Thank you again for turning out in force, we had almost everyone and it really sounded great! A choir is a powerful musical experience and a joy to belong to. I listened to the recording and was pleased to hear things coming along well. We have sorted out Solstice Carol and Field behind the Plow. Please, do not stop singing these tunes regularly. It’s important that we not lose the momentum and hard work we have done.
The M word: Memorize:
There are certain sections we will begin to practice from memory. I will insist on every eyeball as we work on them. To practice this: Sing a passage, then back the recording up and sing it again from memory. It should not take you long to feel comfortable looking up from the music. You will be amazed at how much more you enjoy singing if you can get your eyes up, follow the conductor and engage with your audience.
With that in mind, this week we will work on:
Indian Summer section F to the end, all eyes front
All the Little Rivers Section E , a Capella will only work if we are all watching. Memorizing the whole tune is easy, most of it repeats again and again
Sing the Winter Away – Not from memory 😊
Un Canadien Errant – Not from memory 😊
We will also sing Carol of the bells from memory, but not this week
I will see you all at 7 pm Wednesday November 5th at Westshore Masonic Centre, 2832 Bryn Maur Road, Langford
André ♪
musictheory.net is a free resource that will teach you all about how written music works. There are theory lessons and ear training for every level of musician. Click on the word “lessons” at the top left and do at least one lesson a day. Each lesson takes just a few minutes to complete and they are fun!. Click on the sentences at the bottom of the page to advance through the lesson. Spending a few minutes a day here will help you become more comfortable with written music.
Reminders:
✓ We have Excellent New music, mark lightly with pencils only. You will have to erase it all at the end of the session when you return your music.
✓ Please bring a pencil to rehearsal ✓ Mark your parts, make lots of notes – the score is a road map to beautiful music but we have to all agree on how we will perform it.
✓ In long passages, decide where you will breathe, mark it down and practice it. For instance, the opening phrases of “Away from the roll of the Sea” should be sung in 9 bar blocks and you need to be sure where you will sneak a breath
✓ Practice – know your parts – use the practice tracks. While it’s great to listen to the tracks, it’s even better to follow them with the music in front of you. We will be stopping and starting a lot at rehearsals, and you’ll be able to follow better if you have been looking at the score as you sing.
✓ Sing out loud in a big room as often as you can. As you learn a tune practice singing as you would in a show. This will strengthen your voice and our choral sound.
News
We had a great rehearsal on Wednesday: singing in the round allows us to hear other sections and I know I appreciated it. Job well done everyone, as it shows that we are pulling this music together. Keep working on the rhythms, syncopation and patterns as there are some tricky ones. We have 4 regular rehearsals, the long retreat, the dress rehearsal and then the shows! As this is the cold and flu season, this is your reminder to get the flu shot if you are wanting it, to wash your hands frequently and to avoid those with colds. Hard to do sometimes, but we need to try and make all the remaining rehearsals so we sing as a choir. This is a reminder about the meeting together at Whitespot in Langford at 5:15 (941 Langford Parkway ). You can purchase food and/or drinks before we head over to the rehearsal at the Masonic Centre. Come join the fun! We have a new date for you to put into your calendars: Wednesday, 10 December, 7 pm. It is the Wednesday after the shows so we have a chance to 1)turn in our music, 2) register for the next session, 3) potentially pick up the new music, 4) rehearse for the sing-along and 5) relive exciting experiences from our last shows. The location is yet to be confirmed, but please mark your calendars! If you are joining us for the sing-along, please attend. Our sing-along will benefit two organizations this year: Sooke Food Bank and Sooke Transition House. Donations from choir members can be to either organization, and receipts will be available from both. Please share with friends so that we can bring in a crowd to laugh, sing and have some holiday fun together; and the more families the better! We will be at Edward Milne Community School for the event with the program starting at 7 pm. Details around when to arrive will be coming. Be sure to review Andre's notes. And I'll see everyone on Wednesday, to eat and make merry, then on to the rehearsal!!!
Some calculations: 5 regular rehearsals, 1 long rehearsal, 1 dress rehearsal; then the shows on Dec 5/6. How are you feeling about that timeline? Optimistic, panicked, calm and confident, unsure? We've made it through all the pieces, and now we can start on the perfecting of them. Andre will direct us over tricky spots, but make sure you mark your music on what you find as a tricky spot so you can review it on your own time and get it right. There are some very interesting patterns in the music, so I encourage everyone to listen to the "all voices" and to the music links that Andre has supplied, as it gives you a good feel for the pattern. I marked some of my tricky bits from last weeks rehearsal and took the time to review it until it is solid. As they say, practice makes perfect. Now is the start of the rush to get us to the end where we present wonderful music to an audience. Tickets will soon be made and printed, so we can start selling the show. Let's all try to find 2 new people to come see the show; we have our regulars, but would love to expand our audience. Consider this a challenge! If you can bring 2 or more, you win! Well ok, we all win as we will have a larger audience. With the start of the rush we need people to speak to businesses and friends with businesses to see if they want to place an ad in our program. The money from these ad placements supports the creation/printing of the program. No ads means potentially no program, and that would be unacceptable. If everyone spoke to someone they new or a business they frequent often, we would be able to accomplish this. Consider speaking to the vet, the pet store, the grocery store, chiropractor, etc. Any business! Diane has the details of the prices of the ads per size, so please see her for details. Thank you to everyone who signed up for a task. Your board is not only active in the management of the choir, but takes on most of the tasks to bring this show together, this includes Andre. Every little bit helps and as this is a volunteer organization, we hope everyone is knows they are expected to take on a task. Please share the load. Tasks that are not yet filled will be shared with the choir in email. Our Purdy's fundraiser is underway; the link is https://fundraising.purdys.com/1367940-130838. Please feel free to order and tell friends about it so they can get great chocolate too. As another fundraiser effort, if you have bottle or cans laying around, please consider cashing them in and sharing with the choir. Every dollar ads up, and as we weren't successful in our grants, we really need some inflow of cash to help even out the expense of the shows/venues/equipment rentals. Keep singing! And see you Wednesday in Sooke!
Director Notes
The rains have come Choral Evolution! As I write this the rain is pouring down in Victoria and I’m sure it’s the same wherever you are on South Vancouver Island. There is no better way to pass a rainy day than singing and working on your music. I will also have my scores on my lap as I follow the Blue Jays through the World Series. I mute the commercials and get in a few licks. I believe our new warm up regimen will pay great dividends. You sounded wonderful after we finished it on Wednesday. We will build on this base over the next few weeks and have a routine that we are comfortable with by the time we get to our concert venues. Sadly, I failed to record it so you can’t follow along yet. I’ll be sure and get it on record this week. Here is a clip of Robert Shaw going through some of his warm up. Listen very carefully to what he says, there is a lot packed into his words. He begins by saying you have done some singing before you arrive because you care about the sound! Take that as gospel✨ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCk5h8OlnL4&t=6s Here is another clip of Shaw rehearsing and talking about rhythm and diction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi0h_iBWJZs&t=7s I shared this with Sally who made some interesting observations: 1. NOBODY IS TALKING, 2. He moves along quickly and repeats quickly. Singers need to be focused because he goes fast. They are all paying attention. 3. He is extremely picky and worries about small details and they make a difference. 4. People are writing notes! (Experienced choral singers make copious notes so their practice is productive) Here are the arrangements we will work on Wednesday evening: 7:00 Warm up and O Canada – We will start singing the Anthem from memory. I checked: the Royals average over 3500 fans at each game. We need to be prepared! 7:20 Locus Iste – to help tune us up 7:30 Carol of the Bells – This will most likely be our concert Encore 750 Field behind the Plow – Little rhythm moments cleaned up 8:10 Break 8:20 Solstice Carol – We’ll start and the end and practice with our metronome 8:45 Christmas Trilogy – This will likely be the big finish our con cert 9:05 All the Little Rivers - Send us home with a snappy tune/ear worm 💕 I will see you all at Sooke Community Hall at 7 pm Wednesday Oct 29th s André ♪ musictheory.net is a free resource that will teach you all about how written music works. There are theory lessons and ear training for every level of musician. Click on the word “lessons” at the top left and do at least one lesson a day. Each lesson takes just a few minutes to complete and they are fun!. Click on the sentences at the bottom of the page to advance through the lesson. Spending a few minutes a day here will help you become more comfortable with written music. Reminders: ✓ We have Excellent New music, mark lightly with pencils only. You will have to erase it all at the end of the session when you return your music. ✓ Please bring a pencil to rehearsal ✓ Mark your parts, make lots of notes – the score is a road map to beautiful music but we have to all agree on how we will perform it. ✓ In long passages, decide where you will breathe, mark it down and practice it. For instance, the opening phrases of “Away from the roll of the Sea” should be sung in 9 bar blocks and you need to be sure where you will sneak a breath ✓ Practice – know your parts – use the practice tracks. While it’s great to listen to the tracks, it’s even better to follow them with the music in front of you. We will be stopping and starting a lot at rehearsals, and you’ll be able to follow better if you have been looking at the score as you sing. ✓ Sing out loud in a big room as often as you can. As you learn a tune practice singing as you would in a show. This will strengthen your voice and our choral sound.
You should be PROUD Choral Evolution! Not many Community Choirs attempt so much new music with such diversity of style. The SATB format makes the task even more impressive, adding complexity and removing a lot of repetition. You could be doing sing along arrangements of tunes you already know. Yet you choose to embrace growing as a group by working on significant arrangements that push us to our limits. Let’s be proud of that for a moment. We finished reading through all our December concert repertoire last night. We’ll now circle back and start rehearsing and polishing each piece. I added up all the timings today and our program is indeed too long by about 10 minutes. So I have decided to cut: Cantique de Jean Racine and Voices Arising. Hopefully we’ll do both at next year’s fall show. This will lighten our workload and give us more time on each piece. Please stop working on them :) This leaves us with almost exactly 45 mins of music. Here are the arrangements we will work on Saturday: 9:00 Warm-up and Locus Iste – I’m using this as a tuning, blend and dynamics exercise. Plus it’s very beautiful!! Bruckner: "Locus iste" (Stanford Chamber Chorale) for some inspiration 9:40 Solstice Carol – Please keep working at those rhythms and entrances. Antiphony sings "Solstice Carol" 10:10 All the Little Rivers – Keep this fresh by singing it daily. You can’t be reading all those words in a concert; you will have to know them by heart. Note this choir sings from memory 😊 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seGB6wwbwSE&list=RDseGB6wwbwSE&start_radio=1 10:40 Away from the roll of the Sea – Good practice for singing long lyrical lines, lovely tones A fine performance by an Australian choir! Away from the Roll of the Sea - Allister MacGillivray, arr. Diane Loomer | Concordis Chamber Choir 11:00 Break 11:30 Sing the Winter Away – Lots of tricky rhythms to master. This group reminded me of us! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jjgQULEyI&list=RDV9jjgQULEyI&start_radio=1 12:00 The Field Behind the Plow – Every line has slightly different rhythms, pickups you need to know. Get to know the original material: The Field Behind the Plow 12:30 Un Canadien Errant – This French Speaking choir from Edmonton will be visiting Victoria in May of 2026. They do a Beautiful Job of this arrangement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02j5sGbIoFw&list=RD02j5sGbIoFw&start_radio=1 I will see you all Saturday Oktober 18th at St Rose of Lima at 9 am. André ♪ musictheory.net is a free resource that will teach you all about how written music works. There are theory lessons and ear training for every level of musician. Click on the word “lessons” at the top left and do at least one lesson a day. Each lesson takes just a few minutes to complete and they are fun!. Click on the sentences at the bottom of the page to advance through the lesson. Spending a few minutes a day here will help you become more comfortable with written music. Reminders: ✓ We have Excellent New music, mark lightly with pencils only. You will have to erase it all at the end of the session when you return your music. ✓ Please bring a pencil to rehearsal ✓ Mark your parts, make lots of notes – the score is a road map to beautiful music but we have to all agree on how we will perform it. ✓ In long passages, decide where you will breathe, mark it down and practice it. For instance, the opening phrases of “Away from the roll of the Sea” should be sung in 9 bar blocks and you need to be sure where you will sneak a breath ✓ Practice – know your parts – use the practice tracks. While it’s great to listen to the tracks, it’s even better to follow them with the music in front of you. We will be stopping and starting a lot at rehearsals, and you’ll be able to follow better if you have been looking at the score as you sing. ✓ Sing out loud in a big room as often as you can. As you learn a tune practice singing as you would in a show. This will strengthen your voice and our choral sound.