August 31, 2007
Well, I suppose I could have got here a bit sooner but I paid for an easier journey home with a harder journey here.
Let me back up.
I’m at the fall 2007 Village Harmony singing retreat. That’s the event anyways. Venue-wise I’m at St. Benedict’s Lodge, a Dominican retreat center on the McKenzie River in the mountains of western Oregon. The key fact is I’m going to be singing my heart out for the next 10 days with 40-odd like-minded musical fools. We’ll be singing, and doing int’l folk dancing, maybe a little contra dancing, hiking and gallivanting and drinking wine and singing some more for the next 9 days, culminating in a concert or two in Sisters and Eugene next weekend.
Back to the journey here. The drive here from Moscow would have been manageable, I suppose. Had I left and driven straight here, let’s see… from Moscow to McKenzie Bridge is probably about 8-10 hours. But our final concert on Sunday 9th in Eugene ends at 5:00 pm and I wouldn’t relish the drive home that late.
It sounds like a script for a John Candy movie, but instead of driving the whole way here all on my lonesome I opted to contact other participants and hitch a ride. So this morning I drove to Spokane Airport, hopped a Horizon shuttle from there to SeaTac, and was picked up by Martha and Jim who were also heading to the camp. 9 hours[1] later we arrived. Check-in was officially from 4-6 but oh well, they saved dinner for us and no singing happened until we arrived (not that they were waiting for us). The payoff will be next Sunday evening when I go to Eugene Airport, 10 miles from our concert venue, and catch a flight back to Spokane via Seattle. I probably won’t get home much sooner but I’ll only have to drive the last 2 hours instead of all 9+ hours.
My ride was with Martha and Jim of Seattle. Martha works as director of interpretive services for King County courthouse in Seattle. I would guess her to be 50ish. Her job sound fascinating. Since she started the job (really creating the whole service from the ground up) in 1992 they’ve interpreted 121 languages for people involved in the court systems of King County. For avocation she’s a singer though. She’s active in two choirs, the Seattle Labor Chorus and the Police Chorus. Oh, and she’s involved in the Seattle Peace Chorus as well, though maybe I’m confusing that with the Labor Chorus. At any rate she’s very concerned with peach and social justice and expresses that through music. The Peace Chorus has toured several countries that are for one reason or other at odds with the US in an effort to counter the bad feelings between the countries. They’ve been to Cuba twice(!).
Jim is a bit of an enigma. He is a late bloomer as a singer, having taken a “Singing for shy people” class 8 or 10 years ago, and is now in the Seattle Symphony chorus and does other singing as well. For avocation he’s an avid rower (sculling in singles, pairs, and quads). He’s also recently become a referee for rowing events. I suppose he has a job but he hasn’t said anything about it.
I had a good time visiting with Jim and Martha, but was pretty zoned out for much of the way on account of only 3 hours of sleep last night. I put in 14 hours at work Thursday (and into the wee hours Friday morning) getting all my ducks in a row at the food co-op. Hopefully there won’t be any panics while I’m gone.
Musical highlights:
Tonight we started working on two pieces. The first was a Zulu folk song:
Indongo se Jeriko
Iwe, indonga se Jeriko, sadiliga!
Iyo, sadiliga!
Siwe, se’ndonga, se Jeriko, sadiliga!
The walls of Jericho are falling!
The piece is in 8/8 time, not 4/4 mind you but 8/8. The rhythm is ^vv^v^vv. Rich bold harmonies. The basses lead off with a rolling, happy foundation, and then the parts join in by turns. Then there’s a little improv and showing off for some of the parts (bass, 2nd alto and soprano). We tenors and first altos just have a groove that anchors it all. Patty Cuyler led that one.
The other piece was a New England shape-note piece from the early 1700’s, “Providence”, led by Larry. Slow and rich and sonorous, and very minor. It’s written in A minor but the G is sometimes sharped to give a leading tone. We tenors have to be especially on our toes, because we often have that middle note of the chord our G alternates almost every time between a natural and sharp.
Good lord, its 12:15. I’d better hang it up for the night. Breakfast at 8:00, dancing at 9:30, then singing at 10:30 for two hours. Lather, rinse, repeat, with 6 hours singing planned for the day. Have I died and gone to heaven?
[1] With stops for snacks and boxes of wine to share with our fellow
No comments:
Post a Comment