Plans for the May 30 meeting

Schedule

This is the last dropin meeting before we start working exclusively on the June 21 program. So if there’s something not on that program that you’ll miss if you don’t get to do it for a month, let me know, and we’ll do it. We might do some May music, since it’s the last meeting in May.

Our regular dropin meetings will resume on June 27.

June 21 program

I timed the playlist on the wiki, and it’s only 35 minutes. It can certainly be expanded and stretched out to fill an hour, but there’s also room for solos and duets if people have anything they want to play that would be suitable. So let me know. I would think 2-3 minute pieces would be the easiest to accommodate.

If you want me to print you out a notebook, let me know.

If you have a copy of All ye whom love or fortune hath betraid from before last Friday, please get a new one, either from the website or from me at rehearsal. I had indeed fixed up the tenor repeat, but not all the fixes had found their way into the PDF file.

New Blog

I’ve converted my blog to wordpress. I’m planning to eventually convert the whole laymusic.org site, so let me know if you have any problems with the layout or navigation or anything. If you subscribed by RSS feed, you have to resubscribe to the new feed.

Plans for May 23 meeting

[cantabile] Plans for the May 23 meeting

Schedule

Once we start working on a new program, the dropin people seem to
abandon us even when we say we’re happy to have their help.
This is a problem, because not all the people who want to
perform start coming all the time. So last week we had a couple
of recorder pieces we would have liked to try, but we didn’t
have 4 recorder players to try them with.

So here’s the schedule from now to the next performance. All
rehearsals start at 7:45.

May 23, dropins welcome but mostly working on music for June
21.
May 30, dropins welcome but mostly working on music for June
21.
June 6, rehearsal for June 21 performers
June 13, rehearsal for June 21 performers
June 20, rehearsal for June 21 performers
Wednesday, June 21, Performance. We will be playing from 7:30 until
9. I’m requesting that all performers arrive at the site at 7
PM. There will be a break in the middle of the performance for
the presentation of some awards, so we’ll only be playing for an
hour or so.

For the performers’ rehearsals,
everyone should arrive in time to set up so that the actual
rehearsal can start at 7:45. For most people this seems to mean
about 7:30. If people are actually arriving ready to start at
7:45, we could start off with a vocal warmup, which I think
would improve both our sound and our comfort level on pieces
that are at the edge of our ranges.

One of the performer’s rehearsals is likely to be coached by John
Tyson.

There are directions to the performance venue and links to public transportation information
on the Conference site.

Performer signup

So far, we have 4 people officially signed up for the June 21
performance. I need to know who’s playing by the end of this
week, so that we can start assigning parts and constructing a
real playlist.

We did much better on taking the Walk for Hunger seriously than
we’ve done the previous few performances. But there’s still
room for improvement, even on the easy part of arriving at
rehearsals and performances on time and ready to play. We’ve
scheduled more unfamiliar music for this one than usual, so
please don’t sign up unless you plan to make most of the
rehearsals between now and then and to make the performers’
rehearsals and the performance on time.

One of the encouraging things about the Walk for Hunger performance
was how much better the performance was than the last
rehearsal. This means that when people want to, they can work
on their own to improve the weaknesses in their individual
parts. Now let’s see if we can do that work before the final
rehearsals, so that we can start working seriously on what we
sound like when we all know what’s coming next.

Music planning

I’ve been recording most of my planning in the wiki. If you’re
playing, you’re welcome to help.

I have a script that will print a notebook of all the music in the
wiki playlist. If you want me to run it for you, let me know. I don’t promise that we won’t do a lot of adding, subtracting, and rearranging this notebook, though.

This week, Stuart won’t be able to come, so I thought it would be a
good week to work out some recorder arrangements. One piece
that might be fun to play with is Susato’s
Ronde V, which I transposed for Aldo’s Junior High band into
parts for Bb, Eb, F, and G transposing instruments. This way,
we can stick people on instruments with fingerings they haven’t
learned.

If you look at the playlist, you will see that there are several
Dowlands that we haven’t done very often, so we really do have
to run those again and see which we think we can play in public
in less than a month.

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Mon May 22 11:36:30 EDT 2006

Plans for the May 16 meeting

[cantabile] Plans for the May 16 meeting

This is a drop-in meeting, although we will be doing some
exploration of pieces that we might play on the June 21
program. You can edit the tentative list at the
wiki playlist. Here’s the current version:

Ingalls, Night Thought
Instrumental fantasias, solos, and duets
Ravenscroft, My fearful dreams
Dowland Set
- Come, Heavy Sleep
- Come again
- Thinkst thou then by thy fayning
- Rest awhile, you cruel cares
- Sleep, wayward thoughts
- Awake sweet love

We have two Jenkins Pavanes that Bonnie set for us, which she
thinks will go well on the large recorders.

Schedule

We’ll be meeting every Tuesday for the forseeable future. The
meetings start promptly at 7:45, and are at my place, 233
Broadway, Cambridge.

The May
meetings will probably all be dropin and the first three June meetings will
probably be limited to people playing the June 21 gig. Please
feel free (encouraged, pressured…) to come to the dropin
meetings if you’re thinking of playing the gig, and also free
(encouraged…) if you aren’t thinking of playing it but would
be interested in the music.

June 21 plans

I’m trying out a new Wiki technology on the plans for this gig. This
one is a real Wiki, that anyone can edit. It’s at http://www.laymusic.org/dreams06/.
I especially need to know who’s thinking of playing on this
program. You aren’t making a hard and fast commitment yet, but
obviously we can’t program 5-part pieces if only 3 people are even
thinking of doing the gig.

Last meeting

We played:

Susato
Purcell Fantasia 7
Vive la serpe
More Susato

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Tue May 16 10:45:27 EDT 2006

Plans for the May 9 meeting

[cantabile] Plans for the May 9 meeting

We resume our regularly scheduled drop in meetings tonight. There are
a number of things we’d like to accomplish; I’m sure we’ll manage at
least some of them:

Some of us are playing Susato for Needham Hospital Nurses’
Appreciation Day tomorrow, and there’s been some feeling that people
would like to go over that even though the organizer of the event
didn’t think it was necessary.
We’ve had those big recorders around for a while and not been able
tu use them because we didn’t want to take them to the River on
Sunday, so I want to try out some recorder pieces at 8 foot pitch.
We need to start trying out repertoire for our June 21 gig. My
current plan is to start with Ingalls “Night Thought” and end with a
Dowland set, and in between to do some instrumentals and maybe some
solos and duets.
I really like that Gibbons May piece that Bonnie found for us, and
would like to work on it some more.

Walk for Hunger report

It was fun, and I think we played well. There are a few pictures
in our gallery, and I think we’ll
get some more later. Thanks to everyone who played, or helped
rehearse, or supported us in any way.

Schedule

We’ll be dropin for the rest of May, and probably limited to the
people playing June 21 for June. As far as I know, we’ll be meeting
at the usual time and place every Tuesday.

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Mon May 1 14:59:44 EDT 2006

Set up a google calendar

[cantabile] Google Calendar

I’ve just started using google
calendar for my appointments, so I put the Cantabile ones on
their own calendar and exported it.

So you can go to the Cantabile
google calendar and include it in your own google
calendar, or import it into whatever ics or xml based calendar
you use.1

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Mon May 1 14:59:44 EDT 2006

Report on April 11 meeting

[cantabile] Report on April 11 meeting

We played:

All in a Garden Green
Earl of Essex Galliard
Can she excuse my wrongs
Millennium
Billings, Easter Anthem
Burst forth my tears
O sweet Wood
His Golden Locks
My prime of youth
Lamentation over Boston
He that will an Alehouse keep

Walk for Hunger preparations

This year I’m trying out a new technology for the web presence of
this gig. The place to look for the play list, part assignments
(when we make them), timings, pointers to the PDF’s, etc. is here
.

Schedule

Next week is still open to non-performers at the Walk for Hunger,
but they should be aware that we’ll be working pretty intensely
on the Walk for Hunger music. The following two weeks are
exclusively for performers. After that, we’ll have some more
dropin meetings. We may try to schedule a coaching session with
John Tyson for May or early June.

April 18, Dropin, but working on Walk for Hunger
program
April 25, Walk for Hunger performers only
May 2, Walk for Hunger performers only
Sunday, May 7, Walk for Hunger
May 9, regular dropin meeting.

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Thu Apr 13 13:38:35 EDT 2006

Report on April 4 meeting

[cantabile] Report on the April 4 meeting

We played:

Shape note group
- Experience
- Friendship
- Danville
- Prince of Peace
- Fellowship
- Haverhill
Quand je Bois
Clear or Cloudy
April is in my Mistress’ Face
Can she excuse my wrongs
Sleep, wayward thoughts
Come Heavy Sleep
Burst forth my tears
Now, O Now

Schedule

So far, we have 5 people signed up for the Walk for Hunger, and you
need to let me know very soon if you want to play and haven’t
told me yet. The people who are signed up are me, Anne, Bonnie,
Ishmael, and Paul. Stuart is available to play, but has limited
rehearsal time in April, so he’s welcome to come, but I have the
impression he’s thinking of skipping it this year. Did I say
you have to tell me NOW if you want to play?

If you aren’t signed up to play, you’re still welcome to come to
the rehearsals next week and the week after that, if you
feel like doing the music on the playlist below.

April 11, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
program
April 18, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
program
April 25, Walk for Hunger performers only
May 2, Walk for Hunger performers only

Tentative playlist

Spring group
- Now is the month of Maying
- Burst forth my tears (?)
- April is in my Mistress Face
- Clear or Cloudy
- All in a garden Green (?)
Elizabethan Nobleman group
- Can she excuse my wrongs
- Earl of Essex Galliard (?)
- O sweet Woods (?)
- It was a time when Silly Bees could speak
- His golden locks time hath to silver turnd. (?)
- My Prime of Youth
Shape note group
- Millennium
- Friendship (?)
- Haverhill
- Lamentation over Boston

I haven’t timed anything, so I’m sure this is way too long. The
ones marked (?) are the ones I’m going to think hardest about
dropping when this turns out to be an hour and twenty minutes
worth of music. But let me know soon if I’m leaving off
something you’d especially like to do, or if you know for sure
you don’t want to work on something on that list hard enough to
perform it.

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Wed Apr 5 10:05:06 EDT 2006

Blurb for the dream concert

The Cantabile Band has a mix of singers and early and modern instruments and plays music composed for amateurs to play in their homes. They perform regularly at the Walk for Hunger, and have played recently at Theatre@First in Somerville and at Destination World in Lowell. This program will feature John Dowland’s disturbing settings of the seventeenth century literature of melancholy/dreams and Jeremiah Ingalls’ examination of sleep as a path to religious ecstasy.

Report on March 28 meeting

[cantabile] Report on March 28 meeting

We played:

Duets from Il primo libro a note negre a due
voci
Two Fantasias by Giovanni de Antiquo
Morley, La Caccia
All in a Garden Green
Randall, Haverhill
Ingalls, Millennium
Billings, Africa
Sermisy, En Esperant
Gibbons, Now each flowry bancke of May
Mundy, My prime of youth
Dowland, It was a time when silly Bees could
speak
Dowland, Now o Now

Schedule

I misspoke last week when I said that we needed to know who’s
playing on May 7 by April 11. We need a fairly firm playlist by
April 11, which means we need to know who’s playing by April 4
or very soon after that. Let me know if you’re thinking about
it, and what your problems are if you’re having trouble
deciding.

Otherwise, the schedule I gave last week still seems pretty good:

March 28, regular dropin meeting
April 4, regular dropin meeting
April 11, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
program
April 18, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
program
April 25, Walk for Hunger performers only
May 2, Walk for Hunger performers only

I still don’t have the official word on the arrangements for May 7,
but if it’s like the last couple of years, people should plan to
be there by noon, play two one-hour sets with a break in
between, and then go eat, drink, and get warm (or cool) and dry
at Bugaboo Creek by about 3:00 or 3:30.

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Wed Apr 5 10:02:12 EDT 2006

Report on the March 21 meeting

[cantabile] Report on the March 21 meeting

We played:

Campian, Faine would I wed a faire yong man
Drinking songs group:
- Quand je bois
- Vignons, vingons
- Changeons propos
- Vive la serpe
Shape note group:
- Millennium
- Haverhill
- Night Thought (all 11 verses)
- Friendship
Gibbons, Now each flowry bancke of May
He that will an alehouse keep

Schedule

We have a busy performing schedule between now and July 22.

Sunday, May 7, Walk for Hunger. We’ll be playing a program
about an hour long, probably doing it twice with some other
group playing in between while we take a break. The choice of
material is up to us, but we’re playing outdoors for people who
are walking for 22 miles, so upbeat and uncomplicated tend to
work better than some of the other things we do. But we’ll use
as much as we can from the June and July programs.
Wednesday, June 21, program for the Society for the study of
Dreams in Bridgewater, MA. We’ll be playing for about an hour,
with the music as closely related to dreams in some way as
possible. The program will probably be like the Lowell program,
with big band sets at the beginning and end, and some solo and
small group performances in the middle.
Saturday, July 22. Ingalls
concert, Newbury, Vermont. It’s too early for us to need a
musical commitment, but it’s an area with a lot of tourists at
that time of year, so if you think you might want to do it, and
might not want to drive back home after a possibly very long
concert, you might want to think about reserving a hotel room.
There are a large number of groups on the program, so I would
expect that we’ll be playing at most a 20 minute set, and
possibly as little as 10 minutes. But there’s an
all-day Singing before the concert.

By April 11, we need to know who will be singing at the Walk for
Hunger. The May 2, and the April 25 meetings
will be limited to and compulsory for those people. The April
11 and 18 meetings will be open to other people, especially
people who want to play the June and July gigs, but we will be
working exclusively on the music for the May program.

So the schedule is:

March 25, regular dropin meeting
April 2, regular dropin meeting
April 11, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
program
April 18, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
program
April 25, Walk for Hunger performers only
May 2, Walk for Hunger performers only

If you want to perform and can’t make both the April 25 and May 2
meetings, we should discuss how well you know the music, and
whether there are pieces you shouldn’t play on.

If there are pieces you’d like to play at the Walk for Hunger that
I didn’t mention last
week, you should mention them as soon as possible.

After the Walk for Hunger, we’ll probably have two or three dropin
meetings and then a similar schedule for the June gig. Then one
or two dropin meetings and a similar schedule for July.

Who should perform

We had this kind of performing schedule last Fall, and there were
some management problems. Thinking over why this was, I decided
it was because people hadn’t really thought about what has to
happen when we go from being a dropin group to being a serious
performing group. Back when we used to be a dropin performing
group, this transformation wasn’t as radical, but we now have a
core group of people who are capable of performing on a pretty
high level, so we really need everyone who plays with us to have
the kind of discipline (for those few weeks) that serious
performing groups have.

When we’re being a dropin group, people come when they can, we
don’t worry about people coming late or leaving early, we tell
jokes in the middle of rehearsal, we play music that we aren’t
capable of performing in public, and we don’t worry about it if we
end up spending some time printing or finding music people want
to play. We are a stronger group because we do this, and our
programs are much better than they would be if we didn’t have
this informal environment for finding out what music we want to
play together.

When we perform, we are making a commitment to both the audience
and the people we play with. This doesn’t mean we have to meet
any particular standard of technical excellence, but it does
mean that we have to do our best to know the music. This means
treating both the performing and the rehearsing times as
precious resources. So you should arrive at rehearsals on time
with your music in order. If you need help getting music
printed, you should let me know well before the rehearsal. You
should arrive at the performance well before the start time, and
if you need anyone else to bring something for you, you should
make sure they know about it. You should be able to play or
sing your own part confidently by yourself.

The Walk for Hunger in particular is a really good performing
opportunity — has anyone else offered you a chance to play for
more than 20,000 people? And I really want everyone who would
enjoy it to do it, but you shouldn’t sign up for it if you
can’t make the same commitment that the other performers are
making.

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Wed Mar 22 11:02:03 EST 2006