Christmas Singing

It's been too long...

since I posted anything here. First, I haven't established a good habit of posting - shame on me. Then, it got to be time to start working on Christmas music.

Besides singing in the barbershop chorus, I have also joined a community chorus, the Delaware Valley Choral Society. The DVCS started working on Christmas music in August. Seems way early, right? As it turns out, it may have been too late.

Just to complicate things, the DVCS also took on a second concert. This one was full of show tunes, opera, and Gilbert & Sullivan pieces, with featured professional soloists and an orchestra. That amounted to nearly an hour of singing, much like the Christmas program. As if that wasn't enough to overload my ability to learn music, the degree of difficulty was a lot higher than the barbershop music I've been working with for a couple of years.

So there's my mea culpa. I could have just said I've been busy, I guess.

The Various Performances

We got the extra concert done in the Masonic Temple in Scranton. We made various mistakes, but not all that many. Nobody seemed to notice, really, so that was good.

Then the Christmas stuff started.

We did the DVCS Christmas concert on November 30 and again on December 1. Seemed a little early to me, but I didn't make the schedule. We made more mistakes during these performances, but again nobody seemed to notice and we heard about how good it all was.

In the meantime, the barbershop chorus started its Christmas appearances. Now, we hadn't really rehearsed the Christmas music more than a couple of times. In years past, I've been accustomed to starting to work on the Christmas songs in October. This year, we didn't even look at them until the middle of November. Most of us were not entirely comfortable with singing these songs in public, but we managed.

First, we sang for the folks at an assisted living facility, and sounded pretty darned good. Still, "White Christmas" didn't work all that well for us. For some reason, that was the one song that we have been having problems with.

This past weekend, we did a show for the German Christmas Market in Sparta, NJ. Again, we sounded good, and struggled with "White Christmas" somewhat. People still told us that it was a good show, which is what really matters.

I'm looking forward to singing at another nursing home this evening, providing the roads aren't too bad because of the nor'easter that's spreading snow, sleet, and freezing rain around the area.