Hilda Ross Glee Club Spring Concert

This post comes with the ongoing euphoric feeling all performers experience, that comes with a performance. I have no doubt that the singers from today will be feeling it for the rest of the day. Today The Glee Club performed in front of their peers, and invited guests, an audience of 79, where extra chairs had to be put out three times!!

The seventeen women and men of the Glee Club sang well, their words were clear, their voices were strong, and the part singing was secure and most enjoyable in four of the songs that we performed.

A year ago there were twelve singers, and part work was not part of public performance. The repertoire of songs has also changed. Last year they were the songs that I considered might be old favourites, such as 'My grandfather's clock' 'Edelweiss' 'By the light of the silvery moon'. Today's concert included two ABBA songs, Mozart's Horn concerto with words by Flanders and Swann, and a song prepared for one singer's 90th birthday earlier this year: 'It is no secret', sung in three parts. I mentioned in another post that I have an expectation of improved singing technique and growing complexity of music in those groups with whom I work, and this group has shown the evidence of this expectation emphatically today.

The Glee Club is going to make a recording in early December, and today I was asked by members of the audience if the disc would be for sale... is this the beginning of a new journey for the Hilda Ross Glee Club? Rest assured I will keep you informed!

Hamilton Chorale data

Having now taken identification from the members of the Chorale, I am excited about this new direction, but also aware that I do not want to view them differently, unless it is helpful to the Chorale to do otherwise.

The median age of the women is 66 and the median age of the men is 69. There are three people over 80, with eight people over 70. Three people have left the choir in the last year, I want to talk to them about what caused them to give up the choir, with my new lens of gerontology, rather than aggrieved conductor.

Now I have a delightful three-group setup

The Hamilton Chorale of fully independent participants
The Hilda Ross Glee Club with residential independent participants
The Hilda Ross Rest Home Singers with dependent singers.

Watch this space!!

I have now seen the movie young@heart

I attended a showing of this movie last evening, and firstly let me say that I really enjoyed the movie. The absolute ebullience of the participant singers cannot be understated. Their enjoyment of the camaraderie, the performances, and the learning new things was refreshing and a joy to see, but not surprising for me, having seen such enthusiasm among the Glee Club, the Rest Home Singers and the Hamilton Chorale, with whom I work.

The videos that were designed for certain songs, using the participant singers, were very clever and entertaining: from the bowling alley to the fairground. Their team of instrumentalists is also fantastic, and give great support to the singers and the shows. Instrumentalists are part of the choir community rather than session musician brought in, the movie had an elderly violinist. The movie music track was, for me at times, too intrusive in the setting of mood for what purported to be a documentary.

What is also apparent from their website is that they have been producing shows since their second year of the formation of the group from members of an elderly housing project called the Walter Salvo house in Northampton, Massachusetts. New members have been attracted to the group as they have presented sell-out performances, initially in their own town and then in other towns and countries. They were linked early on to the No Theater and their expertise to put on that first show, and from there it grew 'like topsy' The story is delightful.

The young@heart story

A very moving event was the choir's performance at the local jail, where approx 40 men were being held in a minimum security setting. There were very real bonding moments between the two groups, instant grandparents for many of the men.

I note also that there is a big time commitment to this group, with 2-3 hr rehearsal once a week and three rehearsals a week when a show date is close, along with rehearsing at home with discs to learn the music off by heart. The final product is very entertaining, and very American.

The Choir of Unheard Voices

This is a wonderful interview with singers and the conductor of a choir in northern Australia. Thank you to friend Brian Livings in Sydney for sending this site to me. While the singing is 'unique' as far as best practice is concerned, it is great to hear what the participants say, and what singing is doing for people in a different context. I wonder if this choir in a year's time will still be singing with 'flexible' intonation. If so I would see that as unfortunate. I have personally found that, in every setting, singers can improve. It's a bit like riding a bike, you keep doing it, you get better.

The Choir of Unheard Voices

Text from the above website:

Singing for Soul

Using the regional arts development fund given by the Mackay Regional Council the Mental Illness Fellowship of North Queensland have set up a unique way to cope with mental illness.

Known as 'The Choir of Unheard Voices' ABC reporter Daniel Hamilton went along to find out about the power of music.

The Hamilton Chorale joins my research

I have been conductor of the Hamilton Chorale now for nearly two years, a community-based non-auditioned adult choir. In looking at my new direction I examined where this fitted in. In fact there is a good synergy, because many of the choir members are retired, and I know there is at least one 80-yr-old. I think that they have become used to my expectations and it will be interesting to compare and contrast the fully independent Chorale members and the Glee Club members; their motivations, their back stories and what singing in a choir does for them. In addition I want to contact the people who have left the Chorale recently, to hear their story.

Group Singing Is Good for You!

According to an article in Medical Hypotheses, “Vibration of the human skull, as produced by loud vocalization, exerts a massaging effect on the brain and facilitates expulsion of metabolic products into the cerebrospinal fluid, leading neurophysicists to hypothesize that vocal vibrations cause a kind of cleaning of the chemical cobwebs out of the head. A process as simple as singing might well make the removal of chemical waste from the brain more efficient.

Medical Hypotheses Vol 25 Issue 1
Mechanical effect of vocalization on human brain and meninges

And according to a recent study by the University of California, Irvine, singing in a choir just might make you healthier. This study, authored by Robert Beck and Thomas Cesario and published in Music Perception, found that Immunoglobulin A, a protein used by the immune system to fight disease, increased 150 percent during rehearsals and 240 percent during performance.: Beck, R. J.; Cesario, T. C.; Yousefi, A.; Enamoto, H..
Music Perception, Fall 2000, Vol. 18 Issue 1,

There certainly is a sense of euphoria that choral singers experience after a particularly inspiring rehearsal or performance. But part of that sensation is due to more than just individual physiology; it derives from the cooperative effort that is at the heart of the choral endeavor. The late great conductor Robert Shaw thought of a chorus as a “community of _expression,” whose meaning “rests upon a common devotion to the composer’s utterance and a mutual respect for the personal dignity of fellow-workers.” Shaw’s associate, Ann Howard Jones enlarged on this idea. Noting that in a chorus the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts, she wrote, “I know of no other activity where access to the most profound artistic works can be made possible and satisfying for the participant who has limited skills as an individual but whose capacity is enlarged by the group.”

In one study, a health educator and music professor teamed up for a study published in England’s Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, in which they reported choral singing promoted not just physical health, but offered emotional and spiritual benefits as well. Using their own choir as a basis for their study, Dr. Stephen Clift and Grenville Hancox developed questionnaires to document physical and emotional feelings while singing. Singers reported improved lung capacity, high energy, relieved asthma, better posture, and enhanced feelings of relaxation, mood, and confidence. In a follow-up questionnaire, 89 percent of the singers reported intense happiness while singing, 79 percent felt less stressed, and 75 percent experienced heightened adrenaline and wakefulness.