I agree with you, Jerry, about the wonderful experience it is to make music with no orchestra backing you. One of the most stunning experiences I've had in our group was when we had a black group singing with us, and at the end of the rehearsal they just stood up--all over the place, not together in a group--their basses mixed in with ours, their sopranos with ours, etc--and belted out a spiritual from memory.

In one of the songs we did for the Martin Luther King concert this year, they told us to put the music down completely and just get cues from the pianist, who was also the soloist. So we did--and it came out just fine--even with the clapping, swaying, and raising hands--which we also never do. Admittedly some of our group were fish out of water, but I love to sing getting physically into the music--heck I do it with some classical music.

Of course I love to sing doo-wop, Balkan, country, madrigals, black and white gospel, western swing, Gershwin and jazz in general, Sacred Harp, bluegrass, sea chanteys--and the list goes on.   In fact I feel pretty strongly that for non-classical music, people should not read off printed music--or out of a "folk hymnbook", i.e. Rise Up Singing. (a sore point lately, I'm sure you've noted.) Sacred Harp is the only exception--and even that is better without books, if the group can do it. As I mentioned earlier, a bunch of us used to play volleyball--and sing Sacred Harp and madrigals from memory between games.

Actually, in our Christmas concerts and some others, I prefer by far the a cappella pieces. It seems to me that an orchestra messes up the wonderfully clear sound of massed voices. By the same token I often prefer the sound we make while practicing with our pianist--when it's just him and 180 voices. Even better when it's just us with no piano.

I keep trying to get our conductor to do more a cappella pieces. With marginal success. I'm also trying to get him to knock out the orchestra at Christmas for at least one verse of a familiar carol.   I know the audience (with our assistance--and maybe just by themselves) could carry a verse without the organ--and it would sound stunning--the packed Kennedy Center Concert Hall filled with nothing but people singing. And those audiences do sing.

The problem is he's come up with a competing job for the audience--every year to learn a verse of Silent Night in the language of whichever embassy is sponsoring our Christmas concerts that year. ( It really helps for that if the "teacher" has a dry wit--as the Czech cultural attache had this year--telling the audience he was looking for high academic Czech, not the strong Prague accent they were showing.)

And I've also been trying to get our conductor to tell us--way in advance of the occasion--to get us to memorize some pieces--as most of the groups we sing with, it seems, have done..   Some of us already have--like the Randall Thompson Alleluia (for which after all the text is not too challenging--just the one word Alleluia, repeated for 10 pages.)

Among other things, we need something to sing at the drop of a hat at a big meal while one tour--especially if the host group has just sung something from memory--which has happened.


And I certainly do sympathize with you, Deirdre, about the tenor problem. For my SATB yearly carol sing, I'm a prisoner of tenors--have to schedule it on a night tenors can make it.