By: Helena Palmer,
on 2/4/2016
Our instrument of the month for February is the popular and melodic cornet. We sat down with Hannah McGuffie, Senior Marketing Manager for History and Science and lifelong cornetist, to talk about the joys and challenges of the instrument.
The post Cornetist memories: A Q&A with Hannah McGuffie appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Helena Palmer,
on 1/7/2016
This month we're spotlighting the unique and beautiful oboe. We asked Heather Calow, lifelong oboe player and now an oboe teacher based in Leicester, UK, what first drew her to the instrument.
The post An interview with oboist Heather Calow appeared first on OUPblog.
By: VictoriaD,
on 7/7/2015
Although often overlooked, the piccolo is an important part of the woodwind instrument family. This high-pitched petite woodwind packs a huge punch. Historically, the piccolo had no keys and was an instrument of its own kind.
The post A tiny instrument with a tremendous history: the piccolo appeared first on OUPblog.
In the kingdom of Goredd, humans and dragons have lived and worked side by side for more than forty years, a treaty of peace signed, and the past war forgotten. But when a member of the royal family is brutally murdered and the finger of blame points to dragons, it appears that not all is forgotten, or forgiven.
Add a CommentShadow Scale jumped out at me. It was more complex than it first appeared, I realized in that moment, because “scale” could mean several different things.
Add a CommentEnter to win a copy of Seraphina, written by Rachel Hartman, and the newest release, Shadow Scale (Seraphina: Book Two). Giveaway begins March 9, 2015, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends April 8, 2015, at 11:59 P.M. PST.
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By: Metin Seven,
on 2/20/2015
The electronic musician — pixel artwork in a minimalistic style.
Available as a high-quality art print.
More images: MetinSeven.com.
By: Helena Palmer,
on 1/29/2015
Throughout the month, we’ve been examining the myriad aspects of the human voice. But who better to discuss it than a singer herself? We asked Jenny Forsyth, member of the Sospiri choir in Oxford, what it takes to be part of a successful choir.
Which vocal part do you sing in the choir?
I sing soprano – usually first soprano if the parts split, but I’ll sing second if I need to.
For how long have you been singing?
I started singing in the training choir of the Farnham Youth Choir, in Surrey, when I was seven. Then I moved up through the junior choir when I was about 10 years old and then auditioned and moved up to the main performance choir at the age of 12 and stayed with them until I was 18. After this I studied for a Bachelors in Music, then did a Masters degree in Choral Studies (Conducting).
What first made you want to join a choir?
I had recently started having piano lessons and my dad, a musician himself, thought it would be good for my musical education to join a choir. We went to a concert given by the Farnham Youth Choir and after that I was hooked!
What is your favourite piece or song to perform?
That’s a really difficult question – there is so much great music around! I enjoy singing Renaissance music so I might choose Taverner’s Dum Transsiset. I also love Byrd’s Ne Irascaris Domine and Bogoroditse Devo from Rachmaninoff’s Vespers.
I also sing with an ensemble called the Lacock Scholars, and we sing a lot of plainsong chant, a lot of which is just so beautiful. Reading from historical notation – neumes – can give you so much musical information through such simple notation; it’s really exciting!
I’ve recently recorded an album of new commissions for the centenary of World War I with a choir from Oxford called Sospiri, directed by Chris Watson. The disk is called A Multitude of Voices and all the commissions are settings of war poems and texts. The composers were asked to look outside the poetical canon and consider texts by women, neglected poets and writers in languages other than English. I love all the music on the disk and it’s a thrilling feeling to be the first choir ever to sing a work. I really love Standing as I do before God by Cecilia McDowall and Three Songs of Remembrance by David Bednall. Two completely different works but both incredibly moving to perform.
However I think my all-time favourite has to be Las Amarillas by Stephen Hatfield – an arrangement of Mexican playground songs. It’s in Spanish and has some complicated cross rhythms, clapping, and other body percussion. It’s a hard piece to learn but when it comes together it just clicks into place and is one of the most rewarding pieces of music!
How do you keep your voice in peak condition?
These are the five things I find really help me. (Though a busy schedule means the early nights are often a little elusive!)
Do you play any other musical instruments?
When I was younger I played the piano, flute and violin but I had to give up piano and flute as I didn’t have enough time to do enough practice to make my lessons worthwhile. I continued playing violin and took up viola in my gap year and then at university studied violin as my first study instrument for my first two years before swapping to voice in my final year.
Do you have a favourite place to perform?
I’ve been fortunate enough to travel all around the world with the Farnham Youth Choir, with tours around Europe and trips to both China and Australia. So, even before I decided to take my singing more seriously, I had had the chance to sing in some of the best venues in the world. It’s hard to choose a favourite as some venues lend themselves better to certain types of repertoire. Anywhere with a nice acoustic where you can hear both what you are singing and what others around you are singing is lovely. It can be very disconcerting to feel as though you’re singing completely by yourself when you know you’re in a choir of 20! I’m currently doing a lot of singing with the Lacock Scholars at Saint Cuthbert’s Church, Earl’s Court, so I think that’s my favourite at the moment. Having said that, I would absolutely love to sing at the building where I work as a music administrator – Westminster Cathedral! It’s got the most glorious acoustics and is absolutely stunning.
What is the most rewarding thing about being in a choir?
There are so many great things about singing in a choir. You get a sense of working as part of a team, which you rarely get to the same extent outside of choral singing. I think this is because your voice is so personal to you can find yourself feeling quite vulnerable. I sometimes think that to sing well you have to take that vulnerability and use it; to really put yourself ‘out there’ to give the music a sense of vitality. You have to really trust your fellow singers. You have to know that when you come in on a loud entry (or a quiet one, for that matter!) that you won’t be left high and dry singing on your own.
What’s the most challenging thing about singing in a choir?
I think this is similar to the things that are rewarding about being part of a choir. That sense of vulnerability can be unnerving and can sow seeds of doubt in your mind. “Do I sound ok? Is the audience enjoying the performance? Was that what the conductor wanted?” But you have to put some of these thoughts out of your mind and focus on the job in hand. If you’ve been rehearsing the repertoire for a long time you can sometimes find your mind wandering, and then you’re singing on autopilot. So it can be a challenge to keep trying to find new and interesting things in the music itself.
Also, personality differences between members of the choir or singers and conductors can cause friction. It’s important to strike the right balance so that everyone’s time is used effectively. The dynamic between a conductor and their choir is important in creating a finely tuned machine, and it is different with each conductor and each choir. Sometimes in a small ensemble a “Choirocracy” can work with the singers being able to give opinions but it can make rehearsals tedious and in a choral society of over a hundred singers it would be a nightmare.
Do you have any advice for someone thinking about joining a choir?
Do it! I think singing in a choir as I grew up really helped my confidence; I used to be very shy but the responsibility my youth choir gave me really brought me out of myself. You get a great feeling of achievement when singing in a choir. I don’t think that changes whether you’re an amateur singing for fun or in a church choir once a week or whether you’re a professional doing it to make a living. I’ve recently spent time working with an “Office Choir”. All of the members work in the same building for large banking corporation, and they meet up once a week for a rehearsal and perform a couple of concerts a year. It’s great because people who wouldn’t usually talk to each other are engaging over a common interest. So it doesn’t matter whether you’re a CEO, secretary, manager, or an intern; you’re all in the same boat when learning a new piece of music! They all say the same thing: they look forward to Wednesdays now because of their lunchtime rehearsals, and they find themselves feeling a lot more invigorated when they return to their desks afterwards.
Lastly, singing in a choir is a great way to make new friends. Some of my closest friends are people I met at choir aged 7!
Header image credit: St John’s College Chapel by Ed Webster, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr
The post Sospiri’s Jenny Forsyth on voice and song appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 10/5/2011
Today’s guest post comes from our friend Derek Baird who spoke with Mike Schmid, a talented singer-songwriter and highly sought-after musician who has worked with some of the biggest acts in the music business. In addition to playing... Read the rest of this post
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By: Charlesbridge,
on 3/1/2011
For years I have loved the music of Leonard Bernstein. Music he composed such as the opera Candide, the ballet Fancy Free, and the shows On the Town, West Side Story, thrill me. And when I hear a recording of Lenny conducting music by another composer like Mahler or Beethoven, I am deeply moved. I feel Lenny’s passion and it enhances my pleasure of the music.
This pleasure was something I wanted to bring to readers in Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein. I was astonished to learn that as a boy growing up in Boston, Lenny had to struggle to make a career in music despite his exceptional talent. His father, a Russian immigrant who had successfully established a beauty supply business, opposed the idea. Sam Bernstein, Lenny’s father, believed that it would be impossible for an American Jewish kid to break into the world of classical music, which in the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by Europeans. And he was right. Sam wanted Lenny to take over his beauty supply business. Or, at second best, become a rabbi.
Although Lenny loved his father and was greatly influenced by Judaism, he pursued his dream of a life in music. From the moment when he was ten-years-old and the family received a cast-off piano from Aunt Clara, Lenny knew that “music was 'it'.” “There was no question in my mind,” he recalled, “that my life was to be about music.”
With the encouragement of his mother, younger sister Shirley, supportive teachers and influential mentors, Lenny achieved his goal. The book ends with his triumphant conducting debut at Carnegie Hall when he was just twenty-five. A reporter asked Sam why he had ever objected to Lenny’s desire to be a musician, and Sam relied, “How could I know my son was going to grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?”
Researching and writing this book was a joy. During the process I had the marvelous opportunity to meet and interview two of Lenny’s children, Jamie and Alexander Bernstein. I also talked to Lenny’s brother Burton and his lifelong friend and one of his first piano students, Sid Ramin.
But reading about Lenny is incomplete without listening to his music. I tried to compile
a discography for the book but had trouble because Lenny is one of the most recorded conductors in history. With the help of my wonderful edit
Continued experiments with a "gouachy" style.
By: Scribe Chronicler of Aventar,
on 6/6/2008
“Did you know we have a super cool Illustration Gallery on our site now? “
“That’s where we’re going to put all of our illustrations from the LadyStar manga, visual novel, books, webcomics, game and even some of the first concept sketches of our characters and the people and creatures in Aventar!”
“Ten Update Friday rocks on, folks.”
By: Scribe Chronicler of Aventar,
on 4/19/2008
“Ooh! Looky! Talitha-chan is playing the piano at the community center!”
“It’s our new Sketchbook Gallery. We’re going to put up tons of our artwork for everyone to see.”
“Professor’s got her emerald barrette too. Ready for action if the baddies show up.”
“Heheee… we gots lots more art soon minna. Ja!”
“Have a great weekend!”
By: April Henry,
on 10/8/2007
I've been awake for about five minutes. I just had the mother of all anxiety dreams. Exactly one week from today, I'll be in Texas, where I will give 16 presentations over the course of four days.
In my dream, everything went wrong. I'm staying in a bed and breakfast, but in my dream, it was someone's crowded house and I was sleeping on the couch. I woke in the morning, and couldn't find my luggage, so I was going to have to go to the school in my pajamas. With effort, I managed to control the dream to the point where I found my luggage, but things kept happening. I had no shoes, and after I managed to find them, no bra. I had no makeup, no sleep, no coffee, and no idea of the schedule. I had a cold (that part might be true). As we were going to the school, a helicopter cartwheeled down the street in front of us and ended up smashing against someone's garage. Inside were two small children (miraculously unhurt). I had no access to email. I had no notes and no computer and no ...
But you know what? I still had a shred of confidence. In my dream, I was telling the class about what happened to the helicopter. And I said they could retell it and make it their story. It didn't have to be what really happened. And they were interested.
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Nice intimate feeling to this. I love his hands coming forward and the interior feeling that the wallpaper gives. Love the loose quality.