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.