In 2015, Joni Mitchell suffered a devastating stroke. According to her friend, musician and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, “When she got back from the hospital, she couldn’t walk or talk, and the doctors were so pessimistic about her recovery they didn’t even schedule follow-ups.” One of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century might be permanently silenced.
However, a breakthrough came when nurses at her home found Levitin’s number in the kitchen and called him. They noticed Mitchell responded to music from their phones and sought his advice. Levitin had previously collaborated with her to compile a CD of her favourite tracks for the Artist’s Choice series, a Starbucks project. The playlist spanned artists like Debussy, Marvin Gaye, and Leonard Cohen—an ideal foundation for personalised music therapy.
Levitin, author of Music As Medicine, emphasises that therapeutic music must resonate personally: “If you don’t like it, your cortisol levels spike, and you’ll reject it.” Fortunately, Mitchell’s favourites were already documented. Levitin directed the nurses to her living room bookshelf and supplemented the collection with meaningful songs like Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters and Graham Nash’s Our House, written for her.
Mitchell gradually recovered with support from speech and physical therapists, but Levitin credits music as pivotal. “Music, increases dopamine, the neurochemical that motivates action. Hearing songs that reminded her of who she is and what she values helped her face the challenges of recovery and stay committed to therapy.”
Oops, I did it again! 2000
There is slight irony as to where the Astronaut has been sent: Mars.
Elliot introduced the dreaded tongue circles last night. For those of you who have not encountered Eamonn yet, be warned: He does them every week and starts with 8 in each direction!
The number exercise helps us work our brains and voices together and teaches us not to be embarrassed about making mistakes. If you make a mistake, don’t draw attention to yourself; just carry on regardless, and hopefully, no one will know except you!
However, don’t be afraid to be wrong and mumble when rehearsing. Be strong and wrong, and then it can be easily corrected.
Anyone Who Had a Heart is a very dramatic song. It can be very loud by building up the volume and then lowering it again.
It is not just loud and soft; you can put feeling into the song by noticing the lyrics and their meaning. In the line, ‘Knowing I love you so’, aim for the ‘so’.
‘Anyone who had a heart could take me in his arms and love me to. You ….’ The ‘to’ and ‘you’ are very short and staccato
Keep the ‘Aahs’ bright and the ‘Doo, doos’ with strong ‘ds’ and short vowels.
Basses do NOT be lured on to the tune. Sing your own tune instead!
Down By the Riverside, again, keep the ‘Aahs’ bright. Sops come in confidently on your ‘Aah’ and make it swell in sound and then get softer. We reached the part where there was a change of key. Not only that but new harmonies, especially for the Tenors and Basses. Please listen to the voice parts on Dropbox and practice for next week when your homework is marked!
Here's some guidance: there are three basic options for the notes: go up, go down, or stay the same! Mark your music score accordingly, and this might help.
Peace In the Valley was started part way through.
Sop 1s be prepared for the very high note on ‘sorrow’
Tenors have extra words ’Lord and’ after sorrow’, feel the blues notes on this.
Basses you go a complete octave down on your part ‘There’ll be no sadness and no sorrow’ Make sadness long (without hissing on the ‘s’) With ‘trouble’ in ‘…no sorrow, no trouble, trouble I see’, the first ‘trouble is a long ‘trou’ and short ‘ble’, but the second time the notes are even with a long ‘see’, so watch for the cut-off!
Next week, we will complete all these songs and start a new one. Please print it and bring all your music with you.
Everyone, please do your homework so you won’t have to say, ‘Oops, I did it again! ’
Me!
'Tenors then have the tune for a whole two bars until they don’t!'
All I can say is that the Tenors must have a lot of love to give as they are always giving the Tune away (a bit of poetic licence).
Oscar Hammerstein, knowing he was dying, met with some friends a few days before he died. One was Mary Matin (the original Maria and mother to JR Ewing) in the stage version of The Sound of Music. Oscar wrote something down on a piece of sheet music, folded it up and gave it to her but told her not to open it until he had passed away. After he passed away, she opened it, and it said:
A bell is not a bell until you ring it.
A song is not song until you sing it.
He was telling Mary that if it hadn't been for her terrific singing and selling of the Sound of Music, no one would have ever appreciated it. The song wasn't included in the film version of The Sound of Music.
Elliot was back in good voice with acute hearing again!
A warm-up with 1, 121, 12321, 1234321, etc, with a missing number. A good exercise so you learn to sing the missing number in your head is good practice for finding your notes in songs by listening to the other parts and singing it until it is your turn to hit the right note!
We now have three songs in Dropbox, a couple of Gospel songs and a Cilla Black number.
All sounds so simple, but don’t be fooled. Be warned, they are not simple at all!
Generally, all three songs have:
At least five-part harmonies
Difficult, mixed timings and rhythms
Changes of key
Lots of words to fit in
Everyone singing the tune at some point
Repetitive once the first part is learnt
A blast from the past. We started with Down by the Riverside at a slower pace than written to enable us to learn these tricky notes.
Tenors & Basses starting us off can be a bit raucous (but don’t get carried away!)
Diction can be relaxed without the crisp ‘t’s and d’’s etc
Sops & Altos, give your ‘Aahs’ more expression and come in confidently so it is an extension to the tenors & Basses ‘more’ fading out in ‘study war no more’. Keep the ‘Aah’s bright.
When it comes to the chorus, ‘I ain’t gonna study war no more….’ The timing of ‘study is still not quite right. It is not a clipped even ‘study’. The ‘stu’ part is slightly longer than the ‘dy’ Please practice this as it is sung many times in this song and must be right!
Keep up the energy in this song.
Peace in the Valley is much slower, even slower than you think, so don’t be tempted to rush.
Many times in this song you will find one word has more than one note!
DO NOT slide on ‘Oh, yes’. Keep it clean with two definite separate notes.
With the ‘Ooh’s, even if they are the same note, give them a little push when sung the second time so it can be heard as if it is a separate note.
Enjoy another blast from the past "Anyone who had a Heart" is a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, originally recorded by Dionne Warwick in 1963. Her version reached the Top Ten in several countries, including the US, Canada, and Australia, while Cilla Black's rendition became a UK number-one hit for three weeks in early 1964. Cilla Black's version was the fourth best-selling single in the UK that year, with around 950,000 sales. Burt Bacharach presented the song to Warwick in an unfinished state during rehearsals in unfinished form while she, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were rehearsing in Bacharach's Manhattan apartment for an upcoming recording session. He later backed Cilla Black to record it after Warwick's success with the song in America. In 2010, a BBC Radio 2 study recognised Cilla Black's version as the biggest female UK chart hit of the 1960s.
'Too Doo Be Or Not to Doo Be?' that is the question.
Another great challenge Elliot has set us with this song with many different time signatures, not to mention ‘Doo Doo be dos’ which need to have a muscular sound with short vowels (usually we are told to lengthen vowels!), making it like a full stop.
There are three ‘Doo, doo, doos and a ‘be doo’, then a count of ‘and a one and’ before a ‘Ba doo be do aah’.
Make the ‘Aah’ crescendo before going into two ‘Doo, doos and’ be doo’ followed by ‘Ba doo be do aah’.
Tenors then have the tune for a whole two bars until they don’t!
Not a bad attempt at all the songs.
We must listen and follow our Musical Director, not chatter while he goes through the other parts. It is distracting for everyone else,
You can learn from listening, even though it is not your tune, as it may be later in the song.
If you have a question, wait and ask the person who will know the answer (Elliot at present)
Next week, we will work in reverse and start with Anyone who had a Heart, working our way back through all the songs, so check your voice parts in Dropbox and familiarise yourselves with them so we can impress Elliot that we have done our homework
And remember, listen to our musical director, Elliot. How lucky are we!
Happy New Year to everyone. It was wonderful to see so many singers together again, with some new faces too!
You will also note from our Treasured Treasurer’s email that we have a new official In Flagrante Choir bank account.
Please make sure you use this account only to make any payments with your name as a reference.
Elliot is our Musical Director for the next 8 weeks, and we were delighted to see him again, although he was not at his best as he was recovering from a bout of flu, and it was much appreciated that he came to spend the evening with us even though he was probably wishing he was curled up in bed.
As many of you know, Elliot is an actor, musician, and composer. Just before the dreaded Covid, he was on tour with a musical production called the Million Dollar Quartet where he played the part of Jerry Lee Lewis.
The Million Dollar Quartet is an impromptu jam session featuring Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash on December 4, 1956, at Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. This session was initially reported in the Memphis Press-Scimitar and later released in different formats, including The Complete Million Dollar Session and Elvis Presley: The Million Dollar Quartet. The gathering occurred by chance when Perkins recorded new material, and Elvis, a former Sun artist, dropped by. Johnny Cash joined later, and the session is noted for its gospel songs and the informal nature of the gathering. This event is significant in rock and roll history, highlighting the contributions of these artists to the music scene in the late 1950s.
Elliot chose two of the gospel songs and arranged them especially for us. He has challenged us with four and sometimes five voice parts and given us a wide range of voices.
Peace in the Valley is a 1939 song written by Thomas A Dorsey. Elvis Presley performed the song at the close of his third and final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which reached 54.6 million viewers. The song has become one of the ten best-known gospel standards of all time and has been performed and recorded by numerous artists.
Some words have two or maybe three notes. Don’t be tempted to try and rush things.
Basses keep it a gentle, mellow rumble.
‘Oh yes – keep the ‘s’ at the end short and clean and not sounding like a hiss!
There are some Oohs (yes, for the Sops as well!). Keep them bright so they don’t sound flat.
There is also an Alto split, so those in the front two rows are Alto 1s, and the second two rows are Alto 2s. Remember who you are for next week!
Down by the Riverside is an African American spiritual. Its roots date back to before the American Civil War. The song was first recorded by the Fisk University jubilee quartet in 1920 (published by Columbia in 1922), and there were at least 14 black gospel recordings before World War. Because of its pacifistic imagery, Down by the Riverside has also been used as an anti-war protest song, especially during the Vietnam War
Tenors & Basses, be ready for the ‘ain’t gonna study war no more’ coming quickly in bar 16/17
The Aahs for Tenors and Basses allow for a short breath but Sops and Altos do not breathe (sounds like having Eamonn back!) during your Aahs.
On the chorus, Sop 2s remember to go down on ‘study’.
The pronunciation of ‘study’ is tricky. The slightly longer part is on ‘stuuu’ with a short ‘dy’ so it is like ‘stuuuudy’ and not ‘studddddy’ Have a little practice at home.
On a final note: Another first – we made it into the local newspaper, The Richmond & Twickenham Times and the local Guardian thanks to REACT, the charity we supported from our most successful Winter Concert.
Look out in Dropbox for any new songs. Print them off and bring them with you next week.
See you all then!
Elvis is leaving the building
