Be sure to check out the online offerings from Augusta this summer!

Once again I have the good luck to be running the morning warm-ups for Vocal Week at the Augusta Heritage Center!

Lineup:

Raging Grannies
Sarah Bowen-Salio and Chuck Bowen
Pittsburghers for Public Transit presentation and song (Dean Mougianis)
Penny Anderson
Casa San Jose presentation (and song?)
Chie Togami and friends
Smokestack Lightning and friends

On the main stage just after Jesse Milnes and Emily Miller (gulp).

A one-hour sing with a little help for newcomers.

I'll be running vocal warm-ups again, one of my favorite things to do, the week of August 6th.  

Vocal Week is August 7–12th this year. I'll be leading vocal warmups and acting as liaison for Flawn.

See the shape note page for details. All are welcome, no experience necessary!

Probably a little of me with my concertina while waiting for my friends to show up – then some shape note singing. We'll be done around 12:35. (For the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy through Calliope.)

Here are some photos of the event.

A crankie presentation with Annie Trimble and Ellen Gozion.

Not a performance! Everyone welcome to come sing from the Denson edition of the Sacred Harp. Pot-luck lunch at noon.

Bach's Birthday celebration with a small choir and some instrumental music and a reception afterwards.

Four 75-minute sessions Monday through Thursday of Augusta Heritage Center's week five.

In 18th-century New England a generation of self-taught composers created a new choral style. They were inspired by a grab-bag of materials including Handel’s oratorios, British “fuging tunes”, the “grave and solemne and plaine Tunes” of traditional psalmody, newfangled hymns, and their own unruly imaginations. This music truly lives at the intersection of the oral and written traditions, giving life to the vigorous voices of the working people who made it. It is fun to sing and there are many interesting texts, including William Billings’s “Chester” (arguably the first American national anthem), and the self-referential “Down Steers the Bass with Grave Majestic Air.” Too rambunctious and “incorrect” for the would-be sophisticated churches in the urbanizing northern states, the New England music gave birth to the shape-note tradition preserved in Appalachia and the deep South. We will sing some “plain” tunes, fuging tunes, anthems, and “set pieces,” in three or four-part harmony, selected from the work of Billings and his contemporaries. The ability to read music is helpful though not necessary, but students should be able to match pitch and hold a part.

I'll be leading the morning vocal warmups and running some evening jams for Augusta Heritage Center's Vocal Week.

The still-unnamed MayDay Choir will sing Cat Jeoffrey again as part of an eclectic mix including a re-imagined shape-note hymn and a new composition by Joel Kennedy. We're also collaborating with the marching band.

The still un-named choir variously known as the MayDay Choir and the Anarchist Choir will perform my composition Cat Jeoffrey.

A lecture-demonstration for the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists on shape-note singing and early American hymnody, with a lot of help from local shape-note singers.

Eclectic Chorus: harmony singing from all over the map

 Five-week sessions: Begins September 10th Wednesdays 7:30—9:00 PM. $60 for a five-week session.

 Come  sing music from many times and places in two, three, or four parts. Using just our voices and occasionally our hands and feet we will make music drawn from cultures ranging from southern Africa to New England, from the 14th to the 21st century. Some of the sources we can draw on, depending on our personal tastes and talents: African village music, French and English folksongs, medieval chansons, Renaissance madrigals and songs, Balkan and Georgian songs, rounds, and shape-note hymns. Bring your own favorite songs if you'd like to! Singing together in harmony is fun and better than fun--stimulating mind, body, and soul. 

 We will learn parts by ear. Word sheets and occasionally printed music will be provided, but there is no need to read music. All you need is the ability to match pitch and carry a tune

A 45-minute participatory workshop singing from the Sacred Harp, with special guest Darlene Dalton.