Friday, April 11, 2008

Berlioz

So this entire year I've been a part of the University Singers ensemble here at school. I've been singing my whole life and I love being in choir. I was always in choir in high school but being in a college level chorus is so much better than high school choir. Anyways, this semester we've been working on a huge piece, The Berlioz Requiem. A requiem was a piece written for someone's funeral. This particular requiem was written by Hector Berlioz and has 10 movements. It's been pretty intense working on it and tomorrow night is the culmination of our work. We're performing the piece with the Memphis Symphony Chorus and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Maestro Loebel.

The piece is really a wonderful piece. It's full of drama and excitement. It's amazing to think that these pieces used to be performed at people's funerals. The piece is about 110 pages and from start to end will last about an hour and a half. So needless to say, practicing for the piece has been kind of a bitch. Every night this week we've had rehearsals downtown from 7 until 10. The majority of the rehearsals are spent standing up, so we get tired really quickly. I'm always trying to save my voice because my opera is next weekend. So I've been having to lip sing a bit and sing softly so I don't get too burnt out.

I'm looking forward to the concert tomorrow night because the Cannon Center is a really nice venue and people have paid up to $100 for seats. It should be a really good concert, so if you don't have anything to do at 8:00 tomorrow night come on down for some good old classical music.

1 comment:

Carlin said...

Wow, that's really cool. I was in Choir in high school and I liked it pretty well.There was always a lot of drama going on, but I loved singing. I still do. Sometimes I sing and I don't even realize that I'm doing it. I bet U of M choir is really fun, but a lot more intense. That's really neat that you're a part of that. Oh, and good luck with "The Magic Flute". I will be seeing it so I'll be silently rootin for ya!