Pacific Mozart Ensemble

One of PME's most active small group organizers, Josie Diaz, came to me with an arrangement of "Truck Drivin' Man" by Craig Knudson of the Edlos. Josie knows Craig through her work in the Berkeley public schools. The Edlos are past champions of the Harmony Sweeps, where many members of PME have performed over the years. In fact, this Saturday, May 5, our good friends in Solstice will be competing in the Harmony Sweeps finals. In fact, my quintet Clockwork has been in the finals twice. In fact, ex-PMEr Avi Jacobson is the bass in the Edlos. In fact, ... but I digress.

In the early days of PME, we would take an arrangement like Craig's and simply learn it. These days, I often find it more interesting to create a new arrangement. So I reworked the song for a mixed quintet (the Edlos are four guys) and made it a little more jazzy. Craig's version is a manic ride that leaves you breathless, ending with a Doppler effect that I would love to have used in my chart but he had already stolen my idea (many years before I had it, dang). My version starts out very slowly and works up to a frantic pace at the end.

First rehearsals are almost always rough. We mainly learn the notes and struggle with key changes, trying to stay in tune. Normally a chart like this one, that modulates up a half step three times, will end up flat. Because experienced a cappella singers know this, they tend to over-compensate. Sure enough, this fine veteran quintet finished a half step sharp every time we sang it. Other than an extra bridge that I composed in four-part close harmony, the arrangement is not too challenging musically. We just need to pace ourselves through all the tempo accelerations so we get up to the right speed.

[N. B. - this photo is not the "Truck Drivin' Man" group, but it is in the same place that group and many others have rehearsed, namely my dining room.]

As we got more comfortable with it, in subsequent rehearsals we added some visual gimmicks to accentuate the comedy. I won't give them away in case you, my esteemed reader, decide to attend one of this year's shows on June 2, 8, or 10. You see, we made it through the audition successfully and will be singing "Truck Drivin' Man" for the public next month.

Another tune I arranged for this year's show is a setting of Michel Legrand's "I Will Wait for You" in 7/4 time. You may recognize many members of Clockwork in this picture of our rehearsal. (Once we know a song well enough, we graduate from the dining room table to the living room.) We have premiered many Clockwork tunes in the PME Jazz and Pop concerts, and I hope to have this one in Clockwork's repertoire soon.

That brings up an interesting aspect of the Jazz and Pop show. Almost all the arrangements are done by members of PME and almost all of them are new. We very rarely perform a song we have done in previous years unless the treatment is significantly different from the last time we did it.

Now that auditions are over and the show is set, it's on to the retreat, where we all go away for a weekend of intense work.

Jim Hale

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. We auditioned pieces for Jazz n Pops and had our annual retreat. At the same time our pals Solstice sang in the Harmony Sweeps takes in Marin (taking 3rd place, way to go!). And finally one of our own Monica put together her Masters Recital in SF. Things just keep coming. Next week our director, Dr Lynne Morrow, opens Porgy & Bess in with the Oakland Symphony (featuring some Peemers too). Then it's time for to start dress rehearsals for the big show. I'll leave it to others to write about it. For now I just wanted to share some pictures.

Photo Album #1: Prepping for auditions through the auditions themselves
Photo Album #2: Retreat weekend plus

Here's a teaser of the pics in both albums:

Rehearsing "Still Loving You"

J&P Auditions

Tridecatet

Retreat Rehearsal

Solstice at the Sweeps

Brushing up outside

Nature walk docent

Monica's Recital

Technorati : Harmony Sweepstakes, Oakland Symphony, Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Solstice

This year we had 44 small-group tunes audition for the show, and only 22 could make it into the 90-minute program. Cutting 22 tunes is a daunting task, and the committee took over 4 hours of deliberations to do it. Imagine getting down to the last 2 slots and having 10-12 very good songs to choose from. It was almost 2:30AM by the time the job was finally done.

The next step in preparing for Jazz and Pop is the retreat. Usually we take an entire weekend at a beach on Monterey Bay. One full day is dedicated to rehearsing and the rest of the time is for relaxing and partying. In order to describe a full day of rehearsing, we'll have to do some math (sorry).

We have two coaches who work with each group, so for 22 groups that means 44 sessions, each 15 minutes long. That is a total of 11 hours. We also take at least 2 hours for the whole group tunes. If we start at 8:00AM, we would go to 9:00PM with no lunch break and certainly not a lot of energy left to party. (The party is an essential element here.)

Sound impossible? It isn't. The solution is to figure out how to have 2 different small groups working with one of the two coaches at the same time. Potentially we can cut 11 hours down to 5 1/2 hours. The odds of being able to find 11 pairs of small groups with no overlapping personnel are very low, but each year we manage to shave a few hours off the day. It is still a marathon for the coaches, and the singers are often dashing from one room to another between tunes, grabbing lunch when they can.

Speaking of lunch, a huge part of planning the retreat is organizing the meals. We are rather particular about this subject, and having many outstanding cooks in the group keeps the bar high. PME has come to expect fine dining along with their music (the young son of a former member dubbed us the singer-eaters). With many active professionals in an ensemble this size, you cannot count on them all to be able to attend the enitre retreat, so figuring out who can prepare or clean up after a given meal and how many will be there to eat can be as complicated as figuring out how to find 11 pairs of small groups (see above).

Since many of us wanted to see our good friends Solstice (which includes three PMErs) perform in the finals of the Harmony Sweeps, we moved the retreat to Marin County so we could get from the retreat to the Sweeps more quickly. You can see some of the benefits of this move in the previous blog's photo gallery. The Point Reyes peninsula is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and the weather cooperated nicely.