Rehearsal Recap and Random Improv

Last week's rehearsals were very productive! The sextet made good progress on both Petite camusette and Baises moy. Incidentally, whenever I hear the Renaissance pronunciation of "moy" (moi - say mway instead of mwah) I immediately think of the few days I spent in Briançon, France, where the hip French people all pronounced "oui" with the same, laid back diction. ("way" instead of "wee"... but say it in a cool way. Perhaps while riding some kind of motorcycle on your way to go ski in the neighboring town of Montgenèvre) Two totally different words and two totally different time periods, I know. But same, awesome sound in my head!

Here are a few random pictures of Briançon.
I know, I know. It looks medieval. Because it is medieval!
But I swear the people were modern and hip and said "oway".

Although I had to be absent from the quartet rehearsal on Saturday due to the Winston Salem Symphony Chorale performance of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe (anybody see a French theme going on here?), all reports were positive. They sent a recording of Mille regretz that showed good progress and highlighted some difficulties that we will address together this week and mentioned rehearsing Tant vous aimme as well, which is a beautiful, lesser known chanson.

The full group tackled Gaude virgo by splitting into two rooms - one with the guys and the other with the gals - since there is a good amount of duetting voices and sectionalized writing. What a GREAT motet! We made some ficta choices by consulting the NJE and worked on the wicked syncopation in that piece. The altos rocked some three against two challenges and by the end we were able to work out way through the whole thing. After Amanda slipped off to French, we went ahead and ran the Ave Maria just to see how it felt. This was a GOOD DECISION given that we found some key points to rehearse this week. Namely, the entire end after the lovely triple section I posted last time. Whew!

I also began working with my University Chorale here at UNCG on some improvisation which was inspired by reading the work by Stephen Nachmanovitch. This carried over into the sextet rehearsal, where I had the group create improvisational pieces in the style of Josquin. It was really exciting and I plan to do this with the quartet as well as the full group. These improvisations have proven to be a very useful tool in learning to listen and interact as an ensemble. I'm looking forward to doing more and perhaps performing in this way as well!