The Cantabile Renaissance Band
We played:
The next dropin meeting will be on June 27. Until then, meetings
are restricted to people playing the June 21 gig.
Then we will meet as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM, except that the July 18 meeting will be
restricted to people playing the July 22 gig.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Last modified: Mon May 22 11:36:30 EDT 2006
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:
We have two Jenkins Pavanes that Bonnie set for us, which she
thinks will go well on the large recorders.
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.
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.
We played:
Last modified: Tue May 16 10:45:27 EDT 2006
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:
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.
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.
Last modified: Mon May 1 14:59:44 EDT 2006
Set up a 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
Last modified: Mon May 1 14:59:44 EDT 2006
Report on April 11 meeting
We played:
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
.
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.
Last modified: Thu Apr 13 13:38:35 EDT 2006
Report on April 4 meeting
We played:
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.
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.
Last modified: Wed Apr 5 10:05:06 EDT 2006
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
We played:
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:
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.
Last modified: Wed Apr 5 10:02:12 EDT 2006
