Week 20 Newsletter
March 11th, 2024
A note from Tyler…
Thank you for a great rehearsal Tuesday! The memory work on the songs went very well. We’ll continue to build on this as the singing is vastly different when everyone’s eyes are off the page :)
Announcements
REMINDER: We’ll take our ‘Spring Break’ is the week of Tuesday, March 26th then resume rehearsals Tuesday, April 2nd.
Next Rehearsal - March 12th
We’ve been waiting on some final edits from Jen McMillian on the new song ‘Mama Don’t Dance’, which is why the newsletter is being sent today as opposed to last week. She let me know today she won't have the music ready until mid-week, so we’ll wait till next week to start learning this tune.
‘Africa’: We’ll revisit a song we sang in the first season, ‘Africa’ by Toto! This is one of my favourite songs, and it’ll be fun to explore it again together. Sheet music and audio recordings are now in the Members Area. Please print it off and have it ready for tomorrow. Members that have sang this one with us, please bring the copies you had with you!
Copies: Again, we will have numbered copies for members to borrow with Ashley and Christine at the check-in desk to return at the end of the night if you aren’t able to print things in time. We will always try and give more than one days notice to prepare new sheet music, but as I said above, sometimes you gotta pivot! Thanks for your understanding and flexibility :)
Musical Moment
-
A: I started playing piano early on, and then began playing violin when I joined the school orchestra at age 11. I absolutely loved it! This was in Indiana. I owe a lot to my middle school orchestra teacher.
-
A: Yes! I had put an ad on Kijiji looking for a roommate. Tyler answered, and we ended up rooming together for two years.
-
There are many. One that comes to mind is a concert featuring the pianist Yuja Wang playing Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto with the L.A. Philharmonic under conductor Dudamel in the 2000s. Yuja is a rock star.
-
A: I like all spirits. I don't discriminate.
-
A: A distillery that is pretty cool is Bruichladdich. They are super nerdy, experimental, and forward-thinking, while maintaining excellent quality.
-
A: Pop can be a challenge to find a groove. In classical, the tempo is pushed and pulled by the performer. It is not uncommon for classical players to have difficulty with pop. I enjoy the challenge of playing pop music.
-
Eileen: You are very welcome; it’s a rewarding experience to make music with people.
Eileen Kosasih…LIVE!
by, Brent Moore
I was elated to catch OOTB’s pianist, Eileen Kosasih, performing last week with soprano Lauren Woods as part of the ProArts@Noon concert series. The concert was absolutely lovely! It started with Eileen playing piano to accompany Lauren, who has a gorgeous operatic voice. Then Lauren moved to the piano (while still singing), and Eileen came out front to play the superb violin. They played a number of Scottish Folk Songs, which were both beautiful and heartfelt. Elaine’s fine violin was a highlight of Beethoven’s Opus 108. Yes, ol’ Ludwig actually wrote a collection of 25 Scottish folk tunes! Who knew? My favourite was The Lovely Lass of Inverness.
Below is a half-hour excerpt of tunes from the concert.
(Elaine’s violin comes in at about 7 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGe--ur3_FQ
Why Scottish tunes, you ask? Well, Eileen got the idea after reading some Scottish authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson. She is also big into Scotch! Once again, who knew? So, I thought it would be good to do a little interview, so we could get to know Eileen a little better.