I’ve been helping with the music for the masses held by the seminarians from the North American College for AUR students. The music is just me singing and one of the seminarians singing and playing guitar, but the church is really small and the congregation hasn’t yet exceeded a dozen people, so it works well. The seminarians keep complementing me on my singing. I really enjoy doing it, mostly because I like singing songs in English that I’ve known all my life, and since I’m one of two singing I can have fun with it, make up harmonies, belt out stuff I like, and generally enjoy myself singing. Not to mention that the acoustics in the tiny church make me sound really good. Yep, really enjoying that.
I’m also singing with the “AUR Vocal Ensemble”, which is me and 6 other people singing Sondheim showtunes (how’s that for an alliteration?). We would be singing some classical Italian piece as well, but as we can only practice once a week due to AUR’s complete lack of space, the director thought it best that we limit ourselves to one really long piece in one genre. Since the group is so small we all get to do short solos, which is fun. Another plus to the group being so small is the director can give us a little individual attention and suggestions on how to sing better (apparently I need to open my mouth more, and supposedly I could be a soprano if I worked at it a bit). The director’s going to “write me a note” or something to get me out of having to take beginning class voice at GW so I can go straight to taking individual lessons. Looking forward to that.
Speaking of the vocal ensemble, I should really find out when our concert is. That might be good to know.
