Do you hear what I hear?
We’re sounding good! And we still have five rehearsals to go…
OR
We’re getting there, but we only have five rehearsals to go.
Is your cup half full or half empty?
Either way, we have five more rehearsals and I know that I’ve got a lot of pencil marks on my music that tell me where I still need to work. And it’s no surprise to me that the languages that aren’t English still feel a little slippery on my tongue. Most of my pencil marks are telling me to speak these over and over again until they become so familiar I can sing them in the shower off book (hopefully not off key). Let’s see, we have Zulu in “Circle of Life,” we have French and Italian in the opera pieces, and “Jai Ho” apparently is a combination of Hindi, Urdu, and Punjab. To say nothing of the Gilbert and Sullivan which has a sped up English of its own. That’s a lot of showers. Smell that fresh out of the shower smell? It’s coming from the front row of the soprano section. Hopefully, that’s where some confidently sung Hindi is coming from, too.
Besides the variety of languages, one of the trickiest things about learning all of the fun and popular pieces we’re doing this spring is their familiarity. You think, oh, I know this, then blunder over the parts that were changed to make a pleasing choral arrangement. An eighth note where you think a quarter note should be, or a line that winds around the melody that another part is singing. A lot of gotcha moments, but we’re getting the hang of it.
And there are five more rehearsals to go.
– Martha Magane