As you've probably heard by now, our Muscial Director, Bizzy, has had to resign as she'll be moving out of the area soon. I'd like to extend our deep gratitude to Bizzy for getting us up and running, for her time, care, and hard work, for everything she's taught us since January! We all wish Bizzy the best for her upcoming move and everything after!
This week was primarily a planning meeting where we discussed how to move forward. A lot of our regulars couldn't make it but the five of us present each discussed our ideas for how we'd like to proceed. There were four options we discussed: (1) Joining up with another choral group that would have a different schedule and certainly a different focus, since the lack of a local pagan choir is why we started TPC. No one really wanted to pursue this option, not even the person who suggested it! (2) Proceeding as a sort of "campfire" group without a musical director, choosing songs by consensus and singing acapella, to recordings, or to whomever can bring a keyboard on a given week. (3) Proceeding similarly to that until we can find a musical director. (4) Appointing an interim musical director until we can find someone with vocal coaching expertise. We all agreed that having a qualified musical director with vocal expertise would be ideal. When considering if we should appoint an interim musical director, we asked if anyone would be open to filling that role and our only volunteer was one of our core members, Emori Kaydus, who just so happens to have gone to college for musical directing, though in the musician sphere rather than the vocalist sphere. So, appropriately enough, on Super Tuesday in a building that had just hosted primary elections, TPC had our own election and unanimously voted by secret ballot to appoint Emori our interim musical director! Our thanks and congratulations to Emori!
During their time as musical director, Emori plans to help us improve our music theory chops, in addition to leading us in song. We'll be working, for now, from the selections Bizzy had already chosen for us, particularly those we've already been working on. In fact, Emori jumped right in and lead us through the first page of "Crescent Moon"! Once Emori has a chance to better acquaint themself with the music, I think we'll be doing just fine. Also, I'm proud to say that this means TPC is 100% trans (nonbinary) lead at this time! Not many organizations can claim that!
If you'd like to review the music we've been working on, the sheet music and recordings are available on our Drive. For the naming conventions of the recordings, see the document in our Drive or the blog entry "Rehearsal Summary 01/30/24". If you're trying to practice at home and can't quite discern your note, you can use a keyboard app to plunk out whichever ones you're having trouble with. (This is by no means an official endorsement, but the app I use is "Voice Training - Learn to Sing" by the developer Learn to Master. It labels the notes on the keyboard and gives you real-time feedback on what note you're singing.) If you need a tutorial on how to read music, this one seems sufficient for helping you figure out which note you want to find on the keyboard.
We received $11 in donations this week. Thank you to all those who donated! If you would like to track our accounting, you can view our donations and expenses spreadsheet and receipts on our Drive.
We've also received a valued donation of creative labor! One of our members, Christi Pickren of Glimmerfae Creations, has created a gorgeous logo for us to use on social media. We'll probably continue tweaking it for a little while but I'm rolling out the current design across platforms now!
We can't wait to sing with y'all!
- El Pethybridge, Administrative Director
TrianglePaganChoir@gmail.com
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