I enjoyed that a lot.

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Julie: We're getting better at making these virtual choir videos, but they're still a pale, pale shadow of what our full 100-member choir could do while hearing each other!

Yes, I can imagine. I've done some remote voice work in-studio and it's like having a phantom limb.
I do love voices when they are unleashed and in concert. These virtual choirs mask that energy that is lost with technical make-up. Musical cosmetology, I guess. Or perhaps they (virtual choirs) are a completely different animal. Each voice toiling in isolation. Every voice joined together in virtual reality.
You've posted Eric Whitacre's work before, which I love. The musical world (and the world in general) is moving towards virtuality like moths to a lightbulb, I'm afraid. It will not replace the energy gained and the experience of being in the moment and hearing sounds this beautiful emanating from the body.

I think your engineers do a nice job of replicating the acoustics. I close my eyes...
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Glad you enjoyed.

I have very mixed feelings. It's great to be able to do something together (or sort-of-together), and of course the composer's material is gorgeous. But the whole endeavor really makes me miss what's special and magical about the experience of creating live choral music (and live orchestral music, too--gosh, I miss the strings and brass SO MUCH in this version of the Hallelujah Chorus!).

There's an irreplaceable sense of communion with others during the shared excitement of creating something truly wonderful together. And that sense of communion is built by paying close attention to others and instantly adjusting one's own output accordingly. We all have to be fully inhabiting a particular moment in time for that to happen.

A bunch of overlapping solo performances is just not a choir to me. Frankly, there's something a bit masturbatory about each artist doing his or her own thing in isolation, without being constantly responsive to someone else--whether those someones are one's fellow singers, a conductor, or the audience. It's still a beautiful experience, but it's just not the same when you're not sharing the same sliver of eternity.

A small group of SD Master Chorale volunteers and I used to put on free "senior sing-alongs" at local nursing homes. Lately we have been doing them solo, via Skype and FaceTime. The activities staff carry an iPad connected to one of us from room to room, to residents who are pretty much in solitary confinement now. There's only time for one or two familiar songs (heavy on the Sinatra rep!) and a bit of conversation, then it's on to the next one. I know that the residents with memory issues don't remember anything five minutes later, but the sincere joy and connection of that brief interaction still matters, I think. (It's inspiring that the oldest resident for whom I've performed, 105 years young, is still as sharp as a tack, although she was older than the song I sang for her that day, which was "California, Here I Come," written in 1924.)

Anyway, the hardest thing about performing remotely is that however enthusiastically they are singing along with me, I can't respond AT ALL to what I'm hearing, because there is a double delay--they hear me a bit later, and I also hear them a bit later, so from my perspective they are always significantly behind what I'm doing. My instinct is to slow down to let them catch up, but of course catching up is impossible, due to the limitations of the technology. So I have to focus on overriding that instinct, and just keep steadily strumming my 'ukulele and singing over them. As a person who has trouble with sensory overload anyway, because it's hard for me to block things out, it's exhausting. But the staff and residents are so appreciative that I want to keep doing it. I'm really looking forward to getting back to live performances, though!

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Julie: "It's still a beautiful experience, but it's just not the same when you're not sharing the same sliver of eternity."


That's exactly it.
I'm not lamenting the demise of the communal chorus at the hands of the emergence of virtual one. I know that it is a kind of subspecies. Perhaps an all together different animal. One that was not possible until recently. Both are welcome… But yes, the labor of love, the blood sweat and tears, the toiling, is not the same. The experience is different.

Wow to your work navigating through all the hoops to bring the beauty of music to seniors in confinement. It is more than I can say, how much it must and does mean to them. I'm going to find a way to do that as soon as the time is right... Ukulele? Wow again! Amazingly, I watched a clip of Taimane Gardner this morning. Maybe you’ve heard of her?

One thing though — the end product of a well-done virtual choir or any other form of virtual musical expression is often mind-blowingly, fascinatingly beautiful, to me at least..
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I passed my Ph.D. comprehensive exams today -- basically a two-year process of reading and remembering 130 works of Renaissance poetry, prose, drama, and scholarship, culminating in a 5000-word written exam, and a two-hour oral exam, in which the four-person committee can ask me anything about anything on my list. It's the final hurdle before the dissertation, and I'm excited to finally return to my research on specific editions of poetry from the 1630s and 1640s. Despite a COVID-filled world, I'm a very happy man today!

That's Good News indeed, Shaun!

What a fantastic achievement after all your hard work. Bask in the glory... and I'll celebrate over here with a glass of something... :D

Cheers, my friend.
Jayne

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Great!! But the time frame suggests that I can’t ask you questions about my big favorite, Andrew Marvell. Just kidding. Congratulations!

Congratulations. Keep your world alive within this broken one and ride triumphant on it out to the other side.

Thanks, all!

And Allen, I do love Marvell (I somehow had the entirety of his 1681 Poems on my list), but I'll have to settle for a chapter on his friend, Milton, instead.