Can any of us believe that it has been about 8 weeks of social distancing, isolation, quarantine.
It has been, on the whole, a pretty busy time at Song Dynasty Central – as I have attempted to adapt my teaching to online. And now Im asking myself…what next? What now?
There is much talk across the world about the timeframes for returning again to singing, to rehearsing and to performing. Ive read and watched forums, listened to experts, but the truth is that noone really knows. In Australia we have been hardly been affected so we have been pretty lucky. I cant imagine what it’s been like in other parts of the world. but we are still needing to keep our distance.
This week is the final week of Big Song Online Sessions for the time being – Ive been doing these sessions pretty much from the beginning of quarantine and Im taking a break while I figure out what to do next.
I’ve bought a couple of umbrellas – the ones that act as a barrier, almost a cone of silence – and Kathryn Walker (my fellow soprano in Dynasty8 Chamber Choir) and I will be having a go at singing with our umbrellas. Ive considered forming the Brolly Choir – but really, is it worth the work? And the risk? Could be fun though.
Speaking of Kathryn, here is a video of a song we recorded last weed. We are having great fun learning and recording old songs – especially songs by the Silly Sisters.
Meanwhile, so far I have written about 10 new songs, and learned a whole lot more from going online, listening to others. Ive deepened my knowledge of my craft, and connected with many. Ive communicated regularly with three other wonderful choir leaders – Suze Pratten (Colo Valley) , Kate Swadling (Lawson, Blue Mts) and Christina Mimmochi (Sydney). I’m singing with Kathryn, Jenny Parenteau (The Loveys) and I are going through lots of our old songs and working on them, and The Loveys have started rehearsals for an online concert soon.
Dynasty8 Chamber Choir – one of Song Dynasty Music’s projects – has made a mosaic video of a beautiful song by Paul Smith from Voces8. We are now working on a second original song called Show Me the Truth – music by Janet Swain, words by Gillian Rubenstein. It’s a pretty fiddly business, and we are really lucky to have Ashley, one of our tenors, who is spending hours putting them together. Have a look at this – our first video….
So, if you’ve read this far you’ll see that it continues to be a creative time for me, despite much of my teaching being curtailed. It’s been a time of songwriting, arranging, listening, learning, discussing, applying for various grants to develop the Big Song concept, and also to support the development of my own one woman show that Ive been banging on about for the past two years! I promise it will be done – a small miracle, but it has kept tapping me on the shoulder and will just not let go.
Remember, you can support me by joining my Patreon – I’m developing a lovely small community of supporters over there in Patreon Land, so why dont you join them?!
https://www.patreon.com/janetswain
