Bloggress

What is Bloggress?  It's that newfangled thing one does to one's blog when one is trying to keep up with the ever-changing digital environment.  Sometimes it is good, and sometimes it is bad, but we must keep making blogress if we are to evolve into a real blog.  *wink*

Here are some new additions to the blog:

First---note the tabs under the title.  These will allow newcomers and visitors to easily access the more practical choir info at a click.  I will be adding a "FEATURED MUSIC" Tab which will have video and sound files from our best or most recent work.   There will be an UPCOMING events tab for all the special events the choir does on a semi-regular and sometimes spontaneous basis.

Additionally, I've updated the look of the blog, and will be culling old things soon to make room for next season.

Requests for additional features, articles, information, or ease of use are welcome, and I ask that you please leave a comment for me in the com box.  Thank you, and I will work this summer to figure out how to make our blog more user friendly!!!

Or Not! (also known as "...the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry....")

As usual, the inevitable "spanner in the works" has been tossed into our plans.

FALL REHEARSAL SCHEDULE, and this is FINAL.  I apologize profusely for the confusion, but when you see Tyler, you can frown in his general direction instead of mine, because it was his schedule that was in flux.  He's starting graduate school next fall, so we ARE going to support our wonderful Tyler, because he will be of great help to us next year, and hope his graduate studies go well, and we will WORK around his classes cheerfully, right??!?!?  All aboard the flexibility train....

TREBLES AND GUYS NOW ON SUNDAYS WITH A STAGGERED SCHEDULE (see below)

1. Advanced Trebles (level 2) will rehearse on SUNDAYS from 2:30 to 4:00. 
2. ALL BEGINNERS (guys and trebs) will rehearse on SUNDAYS from 3:15 to 4:30.
3. Advanced Guys (level 2) will rehearse from 3:45 to 5:15.

This will work better for Tyler and me, and will allow us to work with the beginners separately, thus maximizing efficiency and saving wasted rehearsal time.  This is a sleeker, more efficient way to be of the MOST help to the choir.  It's also the best of all possible compromises.

So, in a nutshell, everyone will rehearse on Sundays at slightly different times, and the weeknights will now be completely free.

NB:  I just realized this also means that we do not need so much pre-Mass rehearsal time on our Saturdays!  

• On the weeks when the entire choir is singing at Mass, call time is now 4:30 PM
• On the weeks when the advanced groups are singing, call time will be 4:45 PM.  Isn't that nice?

Thanks for the FLEXIBILITY and COOPERATION!!!



 

Confirmation (of many sorts)

Sean was confirmed last night, along with many people who have come and gone from the choir through the years.  It's a new beginning for the confirmees, a chance to live up to their new responsibilities in Christ.  It was another moment for this old choir director to engage in nostalgia and happy memories of children who are coming into their own, growing into their adult skins, testing their limits and expanding horizons.

I am delighted to note that Sean did NOT in fact burst into flames when the Bishop annointed him.  There was apparently some question in his mind about his destiny and spiritual nature beforehand that made the possibility of lightning strikes or spontaneous combustion possible, but it turns out, it's okay for Sean to be a fully confirmed Catholic after all.  *smile*

But I deliberately digress....

Other things have been confirmed, too:

1. There WILL be two Youth Choir Masses per month starting in fall, one with the FULL choir, and the second with a rotation of three small scholas.  Only twice a year will most people find themselves serving twice in a month.
2. The Parish is looking at the financials from Rome to see what they can contribute to help us.  Please pray for wisdom in the Parish Council and for Fr. Mike who will ultimately make the decision.  Ask for the intercession of St. Gregory and St. Cecilia in this matter. 

CONGRATULATIONS SEAN!

End of Year Blues

Even though we will be working through the summer, we won't be singing through the summer, so I am filled with the end of year, end of an era blues.  The founders now scatter off to college, and we look to the future with the choir which has formed beneath their feet...the choir proper, no more founders among us to lead and point the way.  We are on our own.

And we will be okay.

Next year will bring some amazing new challenges:

• ROME!
• Mass TWICE a month!
• Beginners who will learn to sing as a blended choir
• The graduation of two more of the earliest members of the choir
• Another Pueri Trip
• Learning the Latin Ordinary and singing it in context FINALLY
• Figuring out where we go from here

I have been privileged to watch these fantastic young people grow through the darkest of adolescence into hopeful fledgling adults about to take on life and the world.  I am deeply proud of all of them, and of each step of the journey.  So much silly fun, so many moments of discovery and the sheer joy of figuring out that if you PRACTICE, you really do GET BETTER at a thing, even a thing like singing. 

Often, with my own family, I play this difficult game of "What was your favorite moment?"  For me, it remains the singing of "Nunc Tempus Acceptabile" because it is beautiful and because we were given it to sing by the composer himself, and because we worked so hard on it.  It comes from the period before the man voices showed up and made us a mixed choir, in the old times of trebles singing separately from our guys while we patiently waited on their voices to settle.  My second favorite moment of all time was at State Honor Choir during "Signs of the Judgment" when I could HEAR Sean singing "Gotta be" loud and clear and resonant and confident and I could see James' beaming smile as he and a BUNCH of other basses boomed out "better be ready for that great day".

Other happy times happened as we were working together...bead n' bakes, banquets, dishes and more dishes, dinner theatres, and bracelets.  There were a LOT of those times.

Some things will never change.  If you are in a choir I am directing, you WILL work HARD.  Both at music and at service, and you WILL learn why we sing at Mass the way WE do, and you will find friends along the way.  "Mama" will still occasionally go "boom" when people are being adolescent jerks, and we'll all work with each other toward community and forgiveness and growth at all times.

Thank you, SRYC, and parents and friends of the choir, for an amazing journey so far.  I look forward to the road ahead.

Mrs. Carleigh