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Learn to Sing 2010 Diary: February |
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Welwyn Garden City Music |
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Michael Cole | 23 February
The third session within the Learn to Sing course took place yesterday evening. We had a few apologies but still had 122 attendees. If we add in the apologies it would seem that we have a core of participants of just over 130 persons which is delightful.
Our course educator stressed on week 1 of the course that one of his objectives was to ensure that the participants had fun. From the feedback already obtained it is clear that this objective has been fully achieved. In fact two of the three sessions have overrun and nobody has wanted to get up and go.
It is very pleasing to hear how much progress has been made already on the course songs. Two of these have been mastered so far as the notes and harmony are concerned although we shall have to work somewhat on the dynamics. The course participants are impressed with themselves in this respect!
We now look forward to lesson 4 - it all seems to be going so quickly. |
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 More about Welwyn Garden City Music |
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St George's Singer |
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Anne Francis | 18 February
Two more sessions completed and although there has been a slight drop off in numbers we have some very happy singers. One participant was amazed at the sound when they sang Agnus Dei - if you have never sung in harmony before it is a wonderful experience. Another said 'For the first time in my life I can follow simple written music, that in itself is an achievement which will help me learn'.
A great deal of effort is still being put in from committee members and helpers to make things run smoothly - registering, giving out materials, checking on those who don't turn up, making arrangements for the group to attend the Choir of the Year competition - all this means a few of us are missing rehearsal time for our next concert, Monteverdi's Vespers, which is making our Musical Director nervous! |
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More about St George's Singers |
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Welwyn Garden City Music
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Jon Conway | 12 February
Picking up some very helpful pointers from the Egham choir, we set up an email address for participants to register their interest and from which we sent out our registration forms. We also set up a Google doc for the actual registration of participants. As a consequence we were fairly easily able to cope with the enquiries and registered over 160 participants between three volunteers in about 10 days. Where we had telephone enquires we requested them to send an email which, fortunately, was possible in well over 90% of the time.
We held our first course lesson on Monday. About 20 people turned up who had not registered but we were able to accommodate them - just! Our course educator has advised us that we are likely to lose some after the first evening but we are still confident that we shall maintain or be very close to our target of 150 participants. As for the evening itself it started, after some frenetic early activity, on time and was tremendous fun - one of the course objectives. We now look forward to next Monday. |
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More about Welwyn Garden City Music |
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Wokingham Choral Society |
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Jon Conway | 11 February
To date we have 120 applications - they are coming in a steady stream - all but 5 or so have been online registrations which is working really well. About a quarter are men.
The most interesting part of the enrolment process is seeing how they heard about the course!
The best two sources so far are our local Catholic church - as a result of our chairman giving altar talks at three masses a couple of Sundays ago - and my local gym where we have put leaflets on a table in the entrance area. |
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More about Wokingham Choral Society |
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The Great Western Chorus and Avonbelles |
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David Proud | 8 February
With just two days to go before the start of the Bristol course we have fielded 243 enquiries and have 103 of these signed up. The last 10 days have been very difficult for our people handling the deluge of enquiries and it is fortunate that we have such capable people on the job. For those choirs still to get to this stage don't underestimate what is required! While the marketing gurus maintain that the best time to advertise is in the last two weeks prior to the course start date this nevertheless puts enormous pressure on the ability of the host choir to process enquiries. From the odd comment from applicants a little more flexibility on the press dates might have been beneficial.
More about The Great Western Chorus
More about Avonbelles
St George's Singers Anne Francis | 2 February
We have updated the register from last week - two or three people have had to drop out for work or family reasons, some missed the first week because they were ill and we are wondering how many will come to the second session. Our vocal coach has said to expect as much as a 40% drop off - we hope not.
Registration will be done in the Church this week - it should be simpler but we do have to give out Course notes for the second week and the revised 'Guide to Reading Music' which has been sent to us by BABS. We also need to ask people to sign up if they would like to attend the heats of the Choir of the year Competition at the Royal Northern College of Music on 20 February.
Snow decided to fall again on the Pennines making another difficult journey for Timm, but he arrives in time and the participants have another very enjoyable session finishing with a new song from the pack - they are singing four part harmony now and it sounds good. Another group comes across to join our choir rehearsal afterwards and we sell some tickets for our next concert. Afterwards we have a count up - 185 attended - wow! No significant drop off yet and we'll contact those who didn't show.
There's more work to do before next week. We need to contact all the local choirs so that we can produce a booklet on the last night showing people where they can carry on singing. We are having a mini concert on the last night which is a bit difficult to organize as St George's are going to join the Learn to Sing members for a joint performance and there is not much space. We need to send invitations out to local choirs, schools, mayors and so on and we need to plan for the third session. So far so good! |
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More about St George's Singers |
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