From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V13 #4 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Monday, February 8 2010 Volume 13 : Number 004 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- Singing Festival [capitoltee@comcast.net] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 00:40:19 +0000 (UTC) From: capitoltee@comcast.net Subject: Singing Festival Hi All, Okay, I can now die and (probably not) go to heaven, cuz I have sung in a gospel choir backing up Susan Werner. East Lansing's 8th annual Mid-Winter Singing Festival was held this past weekend, and Susan was one of the Saturday night song leaders. http://www.singingfestival.com/ The structure is: a community sing on Friday night in a large auditorium, all day workshops on Saturday at the same community center where the auditorium is located, an 'All-Comers Festival Choir' rehearsal from 3-5, and another community sing on Saturday night in the same auditorium, with the aforementioned choir featured in two numbers after intermission. This year, one of the choir's songs was 'Help Somebody', featuring you-know-who as the soloist, with the 50-some voices of the Festival choir providing the 4-part harmony back-up. There was also a pianist, bassist, and percussionist along with SW on guitar. So, yeah, it was an AMAZING experience - both rehearsing with the choir and Susan, and performing on stage during the show. The 'stomp/clap' at the beginning was especially fun. And Susan nailed it during rehearsal when she said that we should finish the song to what would certainly be rousing applause (it was), and then she'd break right back into the bridge and we'd do it from there all over again to an even bigger finish - so we did - and the crowd went wild! I would love to know how many copies of 'Gospel Truth' were sold that night! The choir also performed "Here is My Home" by Si Kahn, which was also beautifully arranged - and we nailed it! It was such a pleasure to sing with such great voices, especially such fine tenors and basses. The men were wonderful! Susan didn't present any workshops, just rehearsed with the choir and acted as one of the song leaders, along with Joel Mabus and Frank Youngman. The first half of the singalong, they each led three numbers alone. Then the second half was the choir, then all three song leaders together on stage leading the crowd to the end. They put the lights up so everyone can see their song sheets. It is truly inspirational, no other word for it, to be in the middle of 500 voices raised in song. There were some sorta snide comments on Facebook about it, but in reality, it was divine. Susan's selections were 'Here, There and Everywhere' (Lennon/McCartney), 'Save the Last Dance for Me', and 'Tonight' (from West Side Story). She launched right into the first number without prelude and sang it fairly straight, but afterward she commented on how seamless a song it was, and how the melody just flowed perfectly. She was much more vocal prior to Save the Last Dance, ultimately instructing the men to sing the bridge (after she ripped apart its sophomoric lyrics - know, so, touch, much) in their manliest manly voices. It was a blast! And on 'Tonight', well, she made it into a show-stopper, go figure! At first she expressed trepidation at having picked such a tough song, then she expounded at Bernstein's creativity on the chord progressions in that song, about how the chord changes happen under the note being held by the singer. She instructed us to get in touch with our inner drag queen on the second verse and really belt it out, and she did too. On one song (I think it was Malvina Reynolds' Little Boxes) Susan played the string bass, and quite handily, too. She also did some serious piano improvisation on (I think) 'Accentuate the Positive' and 'Pennies from Heaven'. She also orchestrated the audience's three-part harmony on 'My Girl'. It's a bit of a blur - Joel played the guitar, but played fiddle on one song. Frank played guitar, but on a couple songs, he played a button accordion, and he also played the string bass on a few numbers. Susan played the bass, the guitar, and the piano. I was waiting for her to pick up the accordion, but she never did. Once again, she came in a relative stranger and went outta there with 500 new fans. She'll be back!!! The last number was 'Day is Done' (Peter Yarrow), with most of the song leaders from both nights as well as most of the workshop leaders and musicians on stage. After that, there was an impromptu encore by Frank, Joel and Susan, 'Happy Trails'. Near the end of the encore, I found myself sitting right in front of Sally Potter, the festival's founder and main life force, who had come to stand near the sound board. Once the applause had died down for the encore and people were standing up to leave, Sally's voice just rang out - a very strong true alto - on the opening line of the festival's signature song, the hymn 'How Can I Keep From Singing', and everyone joined in immediately. All those voices lifted in song, a cappella, with many beautiful harmonies being offered up - it was magic!! Happy Listening, Suzie Tee HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V13 #4 ****************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message