A Beautiful Day At Peersing

Last Saturday saw Morningsong perform as part of Peersing, the annual gathering of community choirs in Brisbane.

It was a great day of music and our crew performed brilliantly.

Thanks to Mal Lloyd for having the presence of mind to have his recorder on hand.   Here's how we sounded from the second row:


Chi Mi Na Morbheanna/Hush, hush
(Scots Gaelic traditional, Jim McLean/arranged Nicole Murray)


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Vuma Traditional African/arranged Beat Lehmann

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Quest Newspapers - Great Morningsong Photos

Quest Newspapers in Brisbane are doing a story on the choir and so last Friday, Richard came along to take some pix.  The gallery of photos has been posted here.

Some great shots!

Update from NSW

Hello again!

In answer to some emails and a comment from Ros just posted - and because Blog Technology has so baffled me that I can't answer on my own blog (the messages just go Phhhff! ) no I haven't started a new choir yet. And yes - my email and mobile are still the same and I love hearing news from QLD.

Starting a new choir is a tricky business - I have spent months scouting out the various existing choirs and developing graphs of their various styles and meeting times so that I don't tread on any toes and ruffle feathers. But most of the geographical areas close to me already have a choir similiar to Morningsong. I went to a concert one choir gave on Sunday and every single song they sang was straight out of Morningsong's repertoire.

In the one area where there is a gap which could do with a community choir, there is not a venue in sight. Well - maybe the surf life saving club.

However, the one thing which is different here is the age of the singers. Where the Brisbane groups (and the Melbourne groups) have quite a range from young to old, here they seem to be grouped according to age - and the presumption is that if you are on the older side - you won't want to sing anything adventurous.

I got that first hand. Missing singing very much I rang two groups to see if I could just join. Not only could I not join because I had missed some kind of enrolment cutoff - after some not so discrete questioning by both groups it was found that I was on the wrong side of 50 and "we have enough older singers" . WHOA.

So - at least I have a niche if I can find a venue. It's for those people who just want to sing now and don't want a demeaning quizz about their age.

Keep in touch - and I'll let you know if and when I have a new group. It would be wonderful to do what they do in the UK and Europe which is develop networks of 3-4 choirs. They go visiting each other, hosted by choir members, and have little mini-festivals for weekends where they sing and eat, eat and sing. Hey, sounds like Morningsong!

Cheers and love
Jane

Samford Sings - workshops mid-July

Hello everyone -

Just in case you need a reminder about this event I'm posting it here. Ann from Peace 'N'Choir (Peer Sing group) started organising it a year ago.

Samford Sings

Golden Fleece is a small group of singers who sing Georgian music - one of them is Joseph Jordania who is regarded as one of the world's foremost ethnomusicological experts on Georgian harmonies. It was hearing this group in Melbourne that sparked my interest in Georgian polyphony.

I am thinking of coming up to QLD especially for this - about a 50% chance at this point.

Missing you all heaps -
Jane

CD recording

Wow - what a fabulous day.

We don't really know what our contribution to the CD will sound like but it sure was fun doing it. For those who couldn't come we sang three songs; Thuma Mina, Thula Sizwe and Aya Ngena and the recording engineer/director Simon, will decide what to use.

Nicole, John or I will let you know when the CD's have been made and what the procedure is for ordering them - and anything else to do with the project.

Thanks to all for coming and singing so enthusiastically. And the lunch afterwards at Bar Merlo in that gorgeous courtyard was a great finishing touch to a memorable day. But then we've always been a lunchy kind of group. Perhaps my next choir should be held in a cafe.

This is probably my second to last post to this blog. John and Nicole are pretty ready now to do all the communication to keep things running smoothly so we hope you have found the transition nice and eeeesy. There are still a few things to go like changing the website but we'll get there. No hurries no worries.

love
Jane

Term 2 start date: May 13

Hi everyone:
Yes, I'm still very connected with Morningsong while this transition occurs.

Apologies for not getting this info out to everyone earlier but I temporarily lost my blog password, my head and everything else in the move. My piano has disappeared into the ether but we hope to be reunited one day.

The first day back for you all this next term is Friday May 13. However, if you would like to join in the sing/welcome back/rehearsal for CD this Friday at Madeleine's in Bulimba, contact Mal for details: mallloyd (at) bigpond.com

The times and place for the CD recording is still the same - Sunday May 15. I'll be there around 8 am and hope to see everyone between 8- 9 for rehearsal starting at 9 and we start recording at 10 for an hour. Nicole is planning to be there. If anyone has a good place for a post-recording coffee in the UQ area please sing out. And if you didn't get the maps to UQ also please let me know.

See you in a couple of weeks,
Jane

Morningsong: Changes

Hello everyone -

So...it's for real and is all happening. It's hard to believe. I leave lovely Queensland for NSW in the week after Easter for a permanent move. This takes Morningsong and me up to the end of first term.

The absolutely fabulous news is that Nicole Murray and John Thompson from Cloudstreet are going to take over the reins after Easter. They intend to keep the name, the venue, the fees, the time, and the general style (non-auditioned, non-note reading mixed adult choir).

Nicole and John are both professional, active musicians with fantastic voices which you will find totally inspiring. They are super talented - playing many instruments between them and doing many original compositions and arrangements. On top of that they have made lots of CD's, are experienced at running workshops and hop around the globe doing concerts.

They may teach individually or together as a team - they will see how they go and see what works best and what their concert timetables dictate. They will delight those of you with a celtic bent because they are really into Irish, English and Australian folk music. As well as a lot of other styles...

There is no doubt in my mind that you will be in the best hands possible, and I'm really excited about where John and Nicole will take you musically.

We will be working together to figure out the logistics of the upcoming Peer Sing CD and they are happy to hear that Morningsong gets together for a Christmas concert. Meg has booked the hall for the last week of November for this concert/party.

I have another 4 sessions with you all. It's going to be hard to part company. However, since starting with 8 bright and shiny singers at the beginning of 2009 it feels really good to see that Morningsong has brought so many people together as friends and community - and you all sing pretty darn well now, too!

Edit: Whoops - Nicole pointed out that they weren't arriving in regal style so I changed reigns to reins!