bear

I enjoyed watching Glee back in the day, at least for a little while, before the melodrama became too much for me. I loved all of the a cappella music getting mainstream attention and awareness, and as an inveterate choirgirl and lover of all series' musical episodes, getting an entire series dedicated to such? Hell yeah.

That being said, the performances on Glee and the level of dance talent and coordination they were expected to display? While singing? Utterly bemusing to me. In my then-twenty-plus years of singing in choirs, whether a cappella, orchestral, or church music, even when singing more pop-y songs? We didn't *dance*. The most complex choreo I ever had to worry about was "processing into the church holding LIVE FIRE a candle" or "rearranging ourselves into an arc."

Oakland Symphony Chorus is ... a little different, heh, despite being an orchestral chorus. We have several African songs in our repertoire, with simple accompanying line dances. (They have to be simple, given the percent of choiristers with physical limitations and even more decades of "SING NOT DANCE" under their belts than me ;) )

So we had two songs with planned choreo for our holiday concert this past Sunday - the African Noel, which we did last year, so at least it was review for many of us; and Donna Summer's Last Dance as the concert finale, because the theme for this year's concert was The Queens of Disco. A coordinated routine for African Noel, relatively simple two-step for Last Dance. Out of five songs total that we were singing (out of 17 for the entire show), that wasn't much, right?

... we ended up spontaneously dancing on the risers to five additional disco songs because engaging the audience. (I'm So Excited, Celebration, Love Sensation, You Make Me Feel, and I Will Survive.) It was an education for the high school choir that joined us this year about rolling with the punches. Every time it happened, I turned to them and went, "Surprise!" Because, well.

It also meant my watch decided I was "working out," and I got some kind of badge for "longest amount of time working out in one day," ROFL. If a tree falls in the forest, and it wasn't wearing a fitness tracker, did it actually happen, or did the observation need to have occurred by a third party?

All of this dancing did mean that for the first time in ages, we'd memorized a bulk of the music well enough that we sang without scores - obviously none for the two official dance pieces, but I and other old-timers didn't bother picking up our music for the Hallelujah Chorus, and we probably could have done the same for Let Us Break Bread Together, since we literally open every holiday concert with it. Which meant a lot better eye contact with the conductors! I get the feeling we're going to be seeing more of this, especially since our next concert isn't for awhile.

Where did April go? Oh, right, concert, Indie Bookstore Day, the cough I cannot seem to shake. The cough that made me decide I am physically not going to be up for auditioning for SF Symphony this year, alas; that I'm unsure I will have the vocal control I want even for this Friday's (May 17) Oakland Symphony concert. We're doing Copland's Canticle of Freedom! I know my part! It's my diaphragm support that has basically forgotten how to function, I can't hold long notes for shit right now, nor can I hit much below a G4 without audibly wobbling. Yikes. Four years of masking means I managed to make it *51 months* without contracting an illness or having anything worse than seasonal allergies, which is like 10x longer than I've ever managed to do in my life before. It was an amazing run. Crossing my fingers to start another streak like it, as soon as my throat heals.

In other belated music news, the concert with Pacific Edge Voices last month went off splendidly for the most part. A much more theatrical production than I've been in in awhile - complex lighting design and actual staging instead of the more minimalist walk-on-walk-off of symphony choir performances. After a year of singing with an orchestral choir, I loved getting the chance to sing a cappella in concert again. (No, dear self, you don't have enough spare time to be in two choruses!)

And there was enough complex choreography in this concert for the main Pacific Edge Voices performers that I wonder if their audition includes tests of movement and coordination and inquiries into dance training background. Thankfully, I managed to hit all of our marks for our simpler choreo part on Shosholoza. Hymn of Acxiom, we sang in the round, encircling the entire audience, otherworldly.

Oh, how I love singing in the round, in mixed formation, just vocals.

Also in the news: Oakland Symphony has hired Kedrick Armstrong to be our new music director! Armstrong was the guest conductor when we did the Simon's Paul Robeson piece back in February, Michael Morgan's last commission; fitting that Armstrong will take up the reins now.

Just as Esa-Pekka Salonen announced his departure from SF Symphony. Which was part of why I wanted to audition for SFS this year, for the chance to sing under his direction. Next year, who knows? Given Salonen's cited reasons for not renewing his contract, who could SFS hope to attract in his wake?

Bay Area friends! We've got another concert coming up with Oakland Symphony Chorus a week from Friday (February 16, 8 pm at the Paramount; The Artist As Activist), and we'd love to see you there. The Symphony will be performing Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No 6 and Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No 5, and we'll be joining them for the world premiere of Carlos Simon's Here I Stand: Paul Robeson.

And then in April, OSC will be collaborating with Pacific Edge Voices for their The Sound Garden of Love concert at St. Mark's in SF. On the program: Elgar's Lux Aeterna, luminous and crystalline; it's new to me, but I'm looking forward to floating up there, supported by close harmonies. And to my utterly ecstatic joy, a piece with which I am quite familiar: Vienna Teng's The Hymn of Acxiom. Yes, when I found this out, my squeals could be heard clear across the bay. :D (I know! I still need to write about her Freight concerts in December, but suffice it to say for now that I am glad those shows have become part of my end of year rituals, grateful for every year she's managed to find a way to come back since my first time in 2019, or done an online concert the years she couldn't.)

There is something very now-ish about taking a song created with electronic voices based on one person's voice, and extracting it back out to a group of human voices to perform with all of our quirks and foibles, and the power of community enabling a group performance where we as individuals will need to take breaths unplanned, will make mistakes, but will make art, beauty, together. It feels zeitgeist-ish, similar to how I've written 100,000 words' worth of stories in the last six months, as if I'm rebelling against the mainstream embrace of large language models as authors, algorithms as intellects, corporations as people. Now-ish, even on the accelerated schedule of technology changes, because the forces Teng described in the early 2010s have had more than a decade to entrench themselves into our lives.

*

Sometimes, the advertising algorithms get stuck in a rut. Like Lily Diamond, I, too, have been inundated with lingerie ads in my social media in the runup to Valentine's Day, now barely a week hence, and I'm mildly curious if it's the usual spray and pray targeting feel of most ad campaigns, or if any signals I threw out being a person online have contributed to so intensely refocusing the ads that I'm being shown.

( (someone is gathering every crumb you drop )

But what's being advertised even more avidly to me at the moment than even the seasonally predictable lacy red and pink and black trousseaux? These Friends of the Boundary Waters x Hippy Feet Merino Wool Hiking Socks.

( they are cute ... )

( look, I know I tend to evangelize about wool socks, but also 'now we possess you, you'll own that in time'? )

(o how glorious, glorious, a new need is born)

*

Later in that piece, Diamond confesses:

Aside from feeling bullied by an ostensibly omniscient algorithm that's supposed to know me and anticipate my needs better than I do myself, I feel a bit let down. It feels good to be known. I've made many a joke about my phone being a pseudo-surrogate boyfriend, but it's the algorithm we rely on to feel understood psychologically, spiritually, capitalistically.

( (someone is learning the colors of all your moods, to (say just the right thing and) show that you're understood) )

(leave your life open, you don't have to hide)

And yet I'm posting this publicly, anyway - rolling the dice, seeing who will read, engage. (Hoping for who, rather than what. Betting that silence means what.) Going on four years of having our social life circumscribed by circumstance, our social media interactions bound by ever tighter limits.

Posting this here, while knowing that everyone is tired of creating Yet Another Account To Keep Track Of, and burned by the corporate mainstream options that are tolerated enough, if limited in other ways. And, too often, too worn down by the demands of twenty-first century life to conjure up the activation energy to engage, either. (Who has time for 2000 words of my rambling observations?) Yet I'll still link to this on the mainstream social networks where I know people, because. (I guess with Bluesky opening up this week, I ought to look again and see who's made digital homes there, on Threads, on Mastodon. I gave up last year because, again, Yet Another Account To Keep Track Of.)

*

I've also been reading Rebecca Solnit this weekend. Her latest for the London Review of Books, In the Shadow of Silicon Valley, weaves together a lot of loose threads. It's long, but worth the read. What caught my attention most was how she talked about the social pandemic both predating and coexisting with the current medical pandemic, a crisis of extractive technology impeding human connection, exacerbated since the first stay home orders. The loneliness Diamond expressed above, too.

( (let our formulas find your soul) )

The piece ends with even Solnit sounding weary, she of changing the story from despair to possibility.

"I don’t know whether these billionaires know what a city is, but I do know that they have laid their hands on the city that’s been my home since 1980 and used their wealth to undermine its diversity and affordability, demonise its poor, turn its politicians into puppets and push its politics to the right. They have produced many kinds of dystopia without ever deviating from the line that they are bringing us all to a glorious utopia for which they deserve our admiration.

I used to be proud of being from the San Francisco Bay Area."

Valentine's Day will mark 4.5 years since hyounpark and I arrived (back) in the Bay Area. It is a markedly different Bay from the one I left for college; I am a markedly different person in my 40s now from who I was in my teens. But even with the 13-month interruption of staying home curtailing our plans to establish our Bay-based social life, see old friends more regularly, make new friends? The best parts of being here have been the relationships we're forging and reviving, the community we're finding our way into. And among our community, among the people we know, we're all trying to make things better for all of us.

We're all a chorus here, doing the work, needing to breathe at points when the sound must go on. Staggering our breathing as individual singers so we can sustain the sound as a whole. If you're feeling like Solnit here? Breathe. To end by quoting Vienna Teng again: "We've got you."

Imagine the setting. There are about 170 choristers onstage at the Paramount Theatre, along with the Oakland Symphony. We’re at final dress rehearsal for today’s holiday concert. It’s Oakland Symphony Chorus, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, along with choirs from Cal State Hayward and like four area high schools.

The orchestra conductor has his baton up for the downbeat of What’s Love Got To Do With It, when several dozen cell phones START PLAYING THE bereal CHIME.

Oh my god the youth energy, 🤣, I love it. Happy holiday concerts to everyone else performing today! (Original post.)

Hey, guess who got to do a small solo at the Paramount last Saturday night? For Angela Y Davis and W Kamau Bell?! is totally beaming behind that masked post-performance selfie in the green room, if still a little in shock (Original post.)

So, yeah, I got to shout, "Paul Revere ran a horse race!" to a couple thousand people in a concert setting. (Paul Robeson's Ballad for Americans). Who included activists Angela Y Davis and W Kamau Bell. In a Boston accent. Thank you, 20 years of Boston living and performing that let me pull that off!

And then I got to go the other direction and float way up in the stratosphere of my natural range for the Ode to Joy. :D Wir betreten feuertrunken indeed, I love that natural high of performing, diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt.