Skylark

Since our reading this week talked a lot about Jazz in High School choirs, I decided to use a video of one of my absolute favorite jazz ballads. This is North Central High School Descants from Indianapolis, Indiana. This is a Women's Choir/Show Choir in grades 10-12 performing an arrangement of Hoagy Carmichael's "Skylark." 

I wanted to search for a jazz choir this week because jazz high school seems to be important to high school music programs. Vijay Singh explained a lot in this chapter how it is important to develop a solid foundation for vocal technique, before attempting an unfamiliar style of vocal jazz. There was talk of how if a choir is not careful, jazz choir can cause unhealthy singing. Sometimes the vowels become too bright, the sound becomes unfocused and the choir completely forgets about keeping an ensemble sound because of the style of the piece. However, Singh also talked a lot about how Jazz can help the young musician. Jazz is a perfect way to improve students' ears for tonality and sense of rhythm. A lot of jazz relies on listening and just hearing the harmonies, and feeling the rhythm naturally. Jazz choir is a perfect way to improve your choir's overall musicianship. Singers always good a bad reputation for not being able to count, or not being good at ear training, so why not use jazz to prove everyone's perception of singers wrong? 

Regarding this performance I do not have a lot of negative things to say. I think that the girls have a wonderful blend. I can really hear all of the individual parts. It really shows that they are working together and listening to one another to produce a focused and blended sound. The intonation of the choir is also very nice as a whole. They have the accompaniment in the piano to help them out, but as Singh mentioned, singing jazz choral pieces with a solo piano accompaniment is a great way for high school choirs to experience successful jazz singing. The choir is really listening to the accompaniment to help them make their sound even better than it already is. Also, the sound does not sound very breathy at all which is a problem for many high school female singers. These singers were clearly trained in proper vocal technique before moving on to singing jazz. The sound is confident, full and well-supported. All of the consonants are articulated correctly and it is very easy to understand the choir. There is also wonderful dynamic contrast, and the choir really uses the accompaniment to aid musicality and dynamic contrast to make the performance exciting. 

I have very few complaints. Sometimes the vowels do seem a little bit brighter than normal. However the vowels do still match for the most part.  Naturally in jazz I think you are just going to have some brighter vowels sometimes just because that it what the style calls for. Additionally, while the choir demonstrates a lot of great vocal technique, I am little off put by how they are standing. They have one foot in front of the other for the entire piece. While it seems as though they are grounded into the floor, I just do not know if this is the best posture for singing. Also I feel that since this a jazz piece they could have maybe moved around a little bit more, just to feel the "groove" as Sing mentioned, rather than just standing in one place. All in all though, this is a wonderful ensemble and a positive representation of how jazz can be a healthy practice for the high school musician. 

"One Day More"

Since our reading this week was all about Musical Theatre in High School, I decided to use a video from a performance that I witnessed when I was in high school. This is the drama club called Blue Masques from Riverhead High School performing "One Day More" from the musical Les Miserables. Skip ahead to about 3:10 to get to "One Day More." These students are all in high school in grades 9-12.

This week Jordan and Holt talked a lot about how to be successful when planning a high school musical. There was a lot of discussion on choosing the right show and how to the right show for your school specifically. The chapter mentioned that it is very important for a musical production to be a collaborative effort. I know because of my experience with this high school, that this production was not a collaborative effort. The director of this theatre department does both the musical direction and the stage direction for this show. It is very apparent in this video because both the vocals and the staging suffers. Not to mention, that there is very little actual acting going on amongst the young actors. Had the students had a collaborative production team, they would have been able to work on both aspects of singing and acting separately and in greater detail.

The chapter also talks about picking the right show for your high school. Many high school teachers only think about picking the dream Broadway shows that they want to direct. However, the chapter that it is really important to think about criteria when choosing your musical. Les Miserables is an extremely long musical. This director clearly did not consider the fact that a three hour musical is difficult on both the students and the audience watching. The show is also extremely complex and extremely vocally demanding. I think a lot of this weak performance has a lot to do with the fact the show is very vocally demanding. It is not just the fault of these young actors.

In some of the solo vocals, there are a lot of the issues as far as "belting" is concerned. The chapter mentioned students will sometimes try to belt some of their high notes, rather than singing them healthily. There is a lot of issues regarding that belting amongst a lot of the students in this cast. Additionally there a lot of issues in the ensemble sound. The director clearly did not think about assigning choral parts correctly because there is way too much soprano sound. There is additionally a lot of soprano sound that sounds forced and out of tune. There is one soprano that can actually high the C at the end, but it does not sound good at all because a lot of them are struggling. Not to mention that the staging is very sloppy. This director clearly did not work with a collaborative team because the overall production just seems thrown together. Everything from the direction, the vocals, the sets, the orchestra and the costumes all just seem very mediocre. It is a shame because there are clearly a lot of talented students in this ensemble, they just did not receive they proper direction they needed to a successful high school musical.

Hartt Choir Tour-2011

Since our reading this week was all about planning a choir tour, I decided to use a video from our own Hartt Choir Tour. This is the 2011 Hartt Choir Tour performing "Sing Me to Heaven" at a church in Budapest, Hungary. With the exception of one 40 year old doctoral student, there are 27 singers all college-aged and this an SATB piece.

I wanted to choose a piece from a choir tour, and I decided to choose a choir tour that I was actually a part of. Holt and Jordan talked in great detail about the success behind planning a successful choir tour. From my experience, and by Holt and Jordan's standards, this tour was very well planned and very successful. Our choir director worked with a great tour company. Aside from being well fed and housed, the overall travel experience was phenomenal. Throughout the tour we did not simply go on a "trip." We went to both Vienna and Budapest and all of the stops that we made on the tour all related to music. Granted we got a lot of general history lessons on the tour as well, but we learned a lot of music history and visited a lot of historical musical sights. Additionally, we were able to do what Jordan and Holt mentioned and made singing part of our daily routine. This was one of the two formal performances that we had throughout the trip. However, every single day we either sang on the streets or just walked around to countless churches and sang in them (with the permission of the people in charge of the church). Like Jordan and Holt mentioned, we all felt immediate joy and satisfaction out of performing on the street, and being able to hear how amazing we sounded in these amazing acoustical spaces throughout the entire trip.

We did perform some Hungarian repertoire because we were going to visit there primarily and wanted to embrace the music of the culture we were traveling to. However, like this piece, we sang a lot of American music as well. Jordan and Holt mentioned how people from other countries really want to hear some great American choirs, and they are 100% right. We got amazing responses from all of our performances, whether they were formal or just casual street performances.

This performance was one of my absolute favorites. As a choir we were all completely moved by this performance. This was one of our last stops on the tour and a beautiful space to sing in. Our sound just rang through this church and we really immersed ourselves in the music. There were surely a couple of nit-picky errors with our performance. However the audience and a lot of the choir was moved to tears after this performance. I think this performance speaks for itself, as to what makes a successful choir tour.