Reflection on practice for winter concert

For the winter concert, we have chosen to perform Adiemus by Karl Jenkins. This is a very peaceful song and very interesting song to perform as a choir. This is quite different to all songs we have performed as a choir before so it will definitely attract an audience. 

There are 6 singers, 1 pianist and 1 flute player. This may seem like a small choir but I think with right amount of practice, we will really be able to a good job. 6 singers was really convenient for 3 part harmonies. Subho, the pianist starts off playing the chords and then the choir comes in singing in unison for the first verse. This really starts the song with power and will hopefully will spark interest in the audience as that is what we are trying to achieve. For the second verse, we devised ourselves into group for 2 harmonies. Asli, Miray, and Almira sing the bass for "A re va re tu e va te", while Maria, Leen and I sing a lower harmony which was taken from the original song. They blend really well and make the piece more rich. And we basically we repeat this process again until we reach teh chorus. Here, we split into a 3 part harmony. Miray and I sing the original melody. We work well together to produce the perfect volume since we have to be slightly louder than the supporting harmonies. The higher harmony is executed by Asli and Almira. We decided not to follow the original higher harmony, but instead produce our own for a touch of originality. Lastly, the lower harmony is conducted by Maria and Leen. They sound quite nice together with supporting voices. When all these harmonies are sung together, it sounds very lavish. We were actually quite productive, we finished up till the flute solo. 

What i like about this song is that it requires quite a group effort and we all depend on each other for as the song progresses. I aslo like how we split into more groups as the song progresses. For example we start off as one cohesive group singing all together, then for the second verse we split into 2 part harmonies and finally for the chorus, there's 3 part harmony. Doing this will keep the audience entertained and gives a sensation or expectancy that there's more to come. Additionally, this song is very unique and I'm pretty sure this would be this type of song is the first to ever be sung in a winter concert.

Although, we could still improve some aspects of our piece so far. Firstly, we could improve our timing with the piano. Since it's a 3/4 time signature and not 4/4 like most of the songs we usually sing, Subho sometimes has a hard time keeping up and playing the chords on time. But I'm sure he'll perfect it with practice. He's already made progress in this from the first week with this piece to last

week. In addition, our voices are too quiet so sound very timid due to the small group. So we need to work on projecting our voices otherwise we'll be washed out by the instruments.