NW Singers And Chamber Choir Essay

The most important activity I have done in my high school career is chorus. During school hours, we spend time preparing for concerts, and outside of school we have rehearsals, performances, extracurricular choirs, and concert tours in which we devote much of our time.

Dr. Howard Hanson enjoyed a celebrated international music career including becoming the first composer to enter the American Academy in Rome in 1921, an appointment as director of the Eastman School of Music in 1924, and winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his Symphony No. 4. Chorale and Alleluia was Dr. Hanson's first of five works for wind band, commissioned in 1954 by Edwin Franko Goldman for the American Bandmasters Association.

Every day millions of Americans turn on their radios, IPods, or some other device which allows them to listen to their favorite musicians and have no idea that there is a union standing guard to ensure the rights of those very musicians. The average American may think their favorite musicians are rolling “dough” and not realize that for the past hundred and fourteen years the American Federation of Musicians, aka AFM, has worked to improve the professional lives of musicians across North America. (American Federation of Musicians, 2010) AFM attracts its members with a mission to unite professional musicians which states, “We can live and work in dignity; Our work will be fulfilling and compensated fairly; We will have a meaningful voice

Show choir, a favorite activity among many high school students, requires preparation and practice to be a top-notch performer. Although some schools go for a more complicated look, there are also schools that go for a simpler way. Whether the preparation is over the top or simple, you must follow the steps of doing your makeup, fixing your hair, and getting dressed.

The first song the Evening choir performed was Michael Carter’s, djembe. The song had many different levels of intensity. At the beginning the song was soft, but gradually became darker. The diction and expression from the artists was excellent as they sang, and you could understand and feel every word they performed. The discipline from the

There’s a bigger song emerging from the music wing this year, but even though the women’s choir has more than doubled from the 36 girls in the fall of 2012 to the 82 girls enrolled this fall, choir director Elliot Kranz said that teaching that many girls at one time isn’t any different than teaching any other ensemble. There are just more girls.

The road to show choir nationals was a long struggle with many roadblocks. There were many times when I dreaded going to rehearsal, and when I got there, I just wanted it to be over so I could leave. Show choir started to feel like a chore to me and I didn’t enjoy it like I did last year. That is, until March 31st.

For my first concert report of this semester, I attended the Chamber Music Concert put on by the Bronx Arts Ensemble. The performance consisted of three chamber pieces from the classical and early romantic periods; “String Trio in B Flat Major, D. 471” by Franz Schubert, “Quartet in E Flat Major, Op. 2 No. 1” by Bernhard Henrik Crusell, and “Divertimento in E Flat Major, K. 563” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Each song was played in true historic fashion (although we only heard four of the six movements from Mozart’s composition), and it was very stimulating to be able to see the music we have been listening to in class being played live.

The town of Wendell has an Community Chorus with “between 15 and 20 members.” It been around for 6 years and Morningstar Chenven is the director of the chorus. Its featured women, men and their children. She said “We sing a lot of songs from a lot of different traditions.” At the holidays, We sing holiday songs from a lot of different traditions from around the world. Sometimes We sing popular songs, example one being called Happy. Others types being jazz and folk songs.

I had the privilege of going with the DBC High School choir on a mission trip for a week last month, and it was an experience I had never had before. There were almost 100 total people on the trip, and we had two buses that took us everywhere that week. This included 5 different hotels, fast food restaurants, two churches, one flash mob at a mall, and seven different juvenile detention centers or children’s homes. There were many hours of travel, lots of late nights doing bible study, and many times of putting up and breaking down risers, speakers, and microphones, whether we liked it or not. I have to say this was one of the most physically, spiritually, and mentally challenging weeks of my life.

We meet on designated Saturday afternoons from 2:00 to 4:00. We are all over the campus but we always start off in the church. This is a youth apostolate centered around the Franciscan order of prayer, service, and community. Yes we pray!! work on projects around the church campus, and then we play.

I feel that the fourteen members of chamber orchestra and the two vocalists did an outstanding job. This piece was well put together. I loved the harmony that was brought forth between the orchestra and the vocalists. The two vocalists a tenor known as Paul Groves and a soprano known as Anna Larson, did a beautiful job staying in tune. The way that their voices went back and forth in harmony was just beautiful.

Since my sophomore year, I have been a member of my high school’s coed a cappella group The Jewel Tones. That year we had begun working with a completely new music director, specifically one following in the footsteps of an innovative woman who just finished her 16 year career at the school. Everything was new and challenging. But, we decided to take on a new piece that was more daring than ever before.

One aspect of the concert that I observed was the disproportion between the number of male and female performers. The female performers outnumbered the male performers in each choir, making the performance more female led. Male voices are the key to any choir because they can hit the bass notes that are the foundation of all music. It would have been nice to hear more bass notes in the pieces, yet I understand how challenging that can be with such a few number of male performers. Nevertheless, the male participants did a fantastic job of trying their hardest to belt out the bass notes in order to help the music keep its foundation.

    When i wake up in the morning i use my voice to say goodmorning. When i eat my breakfast i use my voice to say yum. When i get to school i use my voice to breath as i run across the gym. During choir I use my voice to sing. When i eat my lunch i use my voice to  talk to my friends and say yum. When im sick i use my voie to cauph and sneeze. When i watch a movie i use my voice to laugh,cry, and scream. I use my voice to socialize with my friends and family.