Fine Arts in the Valley

Friday night I attended the High School's rendition of Thoroughly Modern Millie, which was awesome. I was excited to begin with, because I'd never seen Millie though I'd heard good things about it, so I was pumped to finally see a production in person. My joy was completed by the quality of the show. The leads were each perfectly suited to their part, and most of them were seniors, so it was fun to see them really enjoying this last turn on their high school stage, and fun to see how much they've all grown in their abilities since their freshman days in the chorus. "Millie" was the daughter of one of my ministerium colleagues, and she has just an incredible voice that I'm sure will take her places. The guy playing "Trevor Graydon" was cracking me up, his voice and comedic timing kept reminding me of Christopher Sieber (which is kind of funny since Chris was a replacement Trevor Graydon on Broadway)!

In other happenings, the next SVC concerts are this weekend. We're performing Bach's Mass in B Minor, the learning of which has been the bane of my existence lo these past two months. Tonight was our first rehearsal in the performance space, and everybody's hard work is finally paying off - it actually, miraculously, came together. Kind of makes me wish we had another week of rehearsal, just so we could have another week of it being fun (as opposed to frustrating) to sing. But all we have is Friday's dress rehearsal with the orchestra and soloists (I also always wish we had two rehearsals with the orchestra, but c'est la vie), then the concerts themselves on Saturday and Sunday. 3 pm at Zion Lutheran in Sunbury, if anyone local is interested.

Before I go, a BIG shout out to the genius who produces the crib note versions of choral masterworks (you can actually buy CDs that are mixed in such a way that your vocal part stands out distinctly among the other parts, which are still there so you have context, but are half the volume so you can learn your part). I've been listening to the alto for this piece incessantly over the past week, and that has been my salvation in learning this thing. Even though I was most often listening in the car and couldn't always sing along without the score in front of me, it reinforced my aural memory, and tonight my voice just knew where it needed to go. Take that, you stinking melismas! Ha!

'night,
C.