Happy Holidays!!!!

What a great month for our choirs! The Chamber Singers Concerts all around town were wonderful, and the Winter Concert was just fantastic. I hope you are all enjoying a much deserved rest. We are back January 3rd with just 5 weeks to put together a fabulous February Show. It should be fun to go up to the mountains on January 30-31 and pull the whole show together! Here are some great clips of your beautiful Schubert performance that Micah posted.
Happy Holidays to all of you!
Schubert Kyrie

Schubert Benedictus

Schubert Agnus Dei

Choir Tour!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so excited to be kicking off another choir trip! I LOVE touring with the choir more than anything I do, and I know we will have a great trip this year. The choirs are off to such a good start (the Fall Concert was fantastic!) and there is no more exciting or affordable a trip than New York City.
The Boosters and I put together a mailing today which you should receive by Wednesday. I do have all the materials available online, so I thought I would post them in case you want to start reading about the whole thing. There are two different sites where I have posted the info. The first is my introductory letter about the tour, plus the sheet that tells you how to register online. Just go here: http://drop.io/GunnNYCdocs. The other documents are about selling ads in the program, which will help us to generate the much needed scholarship funds that will allow everyone to go, regardless of their financial situation. http://drop.io/SponsorshipDocs. The site I use is called drop.io and it is really great for things like this. You can view the files and print them, or download them or just save the address for when you want to print or download, and there is no advertising or fees involved. Pretty cool!
Check it out. It is going to be a great trip! Deposits and reg fees are due next Monday.
Best,
Bill Liberatore

Monday, November 2

Greetings! Congratulations on a fantastic Fall Concert. I was so proud of it. You sang very well, especially for the first concert of the year, and the church was packed with a wonderful enthusiastic audience. I don't think we can hope for much more than that!
The DVD's are in, so be sure to pick one up if you ordered one. Andrew Mellows did a beautiful job with all kinds of different camera angles and terrific sound. The blackout version of Battle of Jericho is there too, if you want to hear a whole lot of applause! And could the men's number have been any better? Impossible. One of the best all guy numbers in a long time. Congratulations to all of you.

Don't forget to check out Don Anderson's awesome gallery of pictures too! Just go to GunnChoir.org and click on the Gallery.

We are off into a new set of music and a very full time of year for the choir. We have a little over 6 weeks to put together our Winter Concert, which will feature a performance of Schubert's Mass in G with students from the Gunn instrumental program. It is a really thrilling work, and I know you will enjoy working on it. Chamber Singers are working hard on their holiday repertoire for the annual caroling program as well. When we return from WInter Break it's February Show time again, and it's going to be a blast with a brand new show this year.

In the midst of all that we will be signing up for the Spring Tour to New York City. It's maybe my favorite city in the world and an amazing place to sing and to sight see. More info on that before the end of the week.

Thanks for all the hard work. It is really paying off!

Fall Concert This Sunday!!!

It's hard to believe that the first concert is already upon us. I am very excited about it. I think we have a great variety of cool music to share, and everyone has been working hard to make it sound great. I hope you are all telling your families and friends to come!! 7:00 Sunday night at Grace Lutheran, corner of Loma Verde and Waverley. Chamber Singers have to be there at 5, everyone else at 5:30. I will be recruiting a set up crew to come at 4:30 to set up the risers, etc. Set up crew gets lots of free food from Mr. Lib. Chipoltle, In n Out, etc.

This Thursday is our rehearsal at the Church. You are excused from your morning classes, thanks to the incredibly supportive staff and administration at Gunn. We will meet in the choir room at 7:55, take school busses to Grace and spend the morning rehearsing the whole thing. We will be back during lunch. We will need a lot of help moving risers, etc, so everybody be ready to chip in and help. There will be do-nuts!!!

The best thing you can do to guarantee a great night is study your score! Take 15 minutes a day and just look and sing through the pieces you are not that sure of. It will make a huge difference! I am already proud of you, and really pleased with how this year is starting off. I LOVE the attitude and supportive energy in the room, and I know that we are going to do amazing things this year!

Get your permission slips in, and I look forward to these next days as we pull it all together.

Best,
Bill Liberatore

New Stuff

Treble Choir: Click on the link on the right for the Sop2 and Alto recordings of At the River. It would be great to get those parts down right away so we can start making music out of it.
Below is the Color Purple from the Broadway Production. Fantastic!

Concert Choir: A great video of Moses Hogan talking about The Battle of Jericho. The subsequent performance is too fast, but it's cool to hear Moses talk about it it.

This recording is Moses' group doing it. Better tempo and diction!

Chamber Singers: Click on the link to the right to hear the recording we made last night. You are going to hear lots of good things, and some things that are obviously in need of attention.
I am also posting some videos of Hark All Ye Lovely Saints and A Maiden is in a Ring for you to compare and contrast. Have fun!

Wednesday, Sept 23

Things are really moving along! Chamber Singers had a great rehearsal Monday night. I am so happy with all the new guys, and the enthusiasm is very high. Treble Choir is really finding their voice. I had chills numerous times in rehearsal yesterday! And last but not least Concert Choir is sounding great. I love the size and the balance, and the great tuning! Wow. We all have a lot more to accomplish before we can give a concert, but we are on the right track!
I have a couple new things on the blog. I posted the Chamber Singers Rehearsal Schedule. Please make sure all those dates are written in your calendar immediately if you are in that group. It is a class for credit with a letter grade, so please take these obligations seriously.
I also added a link to recordings of the songs we are going to do at the Fall Concert to feature the men and the women's sections. I love both of these song ideas. Check it out. I posted 3 different versions of the women's song. The original Queen version, and then 2 versions sung by women which are in the keys we will be using. I am very excited about the guy number! What a crazy idea! I wish I could take credit for it, but it came to me via Ruth Escher. Thanks Ruth! We will be doing our own arrangement, with a string quartet and a sort of pseudo classical interpretation. It will be really cool! Start listening to these now.
Finally, I am ready to get started with our Choir Board. We really want to put together a sweats order (Choir Bums is BACK!) so we can start wearing the stuff around campus and publicizing our first concert. If you are interested in being an officer, please read the job descriptions posted here, and write me a short email by Monday telling me why we should put you in that job!
Thanks to all of you for all of your hard work. It is going really well!
Best,
BL

Chamber Singers 2009-10

Here is the list. Thank you to all who auditioned. I find it very difficult to turn anyone away. Obviously we cannot have 55 people in Chamber Singers. We usually push it to about 42-44, and even that is quite a big group.  If you did not make it, keep in mind that we have lots of spots opening up next year when the class of 2010 graduates. It is always harder for sophomores to grab a spot, even when you are as amazingly talented as the class of 2012 is. Don't interpret this as a reflection of your talent if you did not make it. It is just a matter of balancing the male to females voices, and giving returning members priority. There will be plenty of opportunity for everyone during their time in this Choir at Gunn. 

Best,

Bill Liberatore

First Rehearsal: Monday, September 14, 6:30-9:00 PM 

Exsultate Justi

For Concert Choir: Go to http://drop.io/ExsultateJusti and you can hear your part. The sheet music is there too so you can look at your part as you listen. Let's make it a great sectional tomorrow!

Here is a youtube clip also. The tempo is too slow, but the tone is really nice!

Ave Verum Corpus

For Concert Choir members: Your assignment tonight is to spend 5 minutes on your part for Ave Verum Corpus. The link on the right will take you to the site where your individual part has been recorded. If you have another 5 minutes, watch this performance conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Really gorgeous!

Week Two!

We are off to a great start! Many thanks to all of you for bringing so much enthusiasm and energy to the first week of school. This week is all about hearing people and getting everyone into an assigned section. If singing in front of people is something you don't want to do, just come see me or send me an email and we can do it outside of class. Here's a little checklist of what you should have done by now:

1) Sent me an email at GunnChoir@aol.com with the subject "Choir Info". I will then send you an online form for the data base. It only takes just a minute.

2) If you joined after the first day, make sure you have your picture taken for the choir members info page (coming soon) and fill out a personnel info sheet.

3) Copied all of the performance dates and trip dates into your calendar!!

Auditions for Chamber Singers is tonight at 6:30 PM. You must be a member of the Concert Choir to audition. I am really looking forward to seeing who is going to be part of that group this year. 

For those of you who have been struggling with the lip trill exercise, here is Seth Riggs, a very famous teacher in LA, explaining the exercises. There is no video, it's just audio. Very short and really helpful!

Many thanks for a great first week!

Bill Liberatore

Great First Day!

Thanks to everyone for a great first day. I was so thrilled to see so many new people and enthusiastic faces. There is so much to do to get everything off the ground, but hopefully we will be making great music before you know it. In the meantime, here is my favorite choir rehearsal ever seen in a movie. Hilarious! I am sure our first rehearsal will go better than Whoopi's did!
Best,
BL

Welcome to the Gunn Choir 2009-2010

August 20, 2009
Dear Choir Members,
I am so excited to be welcoming you all back! The 2009 Choir Tour to Prague and Vienna was one of the most exciting musical experiences I have ever had with a choir, and I can hardly wait to get started making music with you all again. The tour really helped to remind me what incredible things are possible when we all focus and commit to making great music together. I can’t wait to see what 2009-10 brings for us all! For those of you who are new to Choir, here are just a few of the things you have to look forward to.

Fall Concert, Sunday, October 25th, 7:00 PM, Grace Lutheran Church
Be sure to mark your calendars now for the Choir’s debut performance on Sunday, October 25th at 7:00 PM at Grace Lutheran Church, corner of Loma Verde and Waverley. It is always one of the most exciting concerts of the year as our choirs take the stage for the first time in a program of culturally rich and diverse choral music from around the world.

Winter Concert, Thursday, December 17th, 7:30 PM
This year we will be doing a winter program featuring a wonderful mass for women’s voices by Latvian composer Imant Ramnish, who lives in Canadian and writes really cool and contemporary music; a Gloria by Emma Lou Diemer, one of the most fantastic female choral composers in America; and with our own amazing Gunn Orchestra we will be performing Schubert’s Mass in G, one of the great masterpieces in the classical repertoire. There are lots of fantastic solos in this set too!

Choir Retreat, YMCA Camp Jones Gulch
I am excited to announce that we are doing the retreat a whole new way this year. Instead of going in November when so many of our singers have conflicts with the fall play, we are going in January while we are working on the February Show. I think it sounds really fun to go up while we are doing so much singing and dancing and acting, and I think it will be a kick. I have the camp booked for Jan 30/31, but I think we should think about leaving on Friday instead of Saturday morning. I think we will get so much done for the choir show, and have a blast at the same time.

Choir Staff Musical, Tuesday/Wednesday, February 9th & 10th, 8:00 PM

One of the biggest events at Gunn is our annual Choir/Staff Musical Extravaganza. I am thrilled to announce that we will be doing an all-new show this year. Nancy Hersage is writing it as we speak, and I know it is going to be hilarious. I love the excitement of putting a show together for the very first time. This year’s show will be February 9th & 10th and will feature all of our Choir students as well as more than 50 Gunn Staff, and the JLS & Terman Choir students.



CMEA Choral Festival, Saturday, May 8, Saratoga High School
The California Music Educator’s Association hosts annual music festivals which include fantastic live and taped adjudication by top choral conductors and a chance to participate in a sight-reading examination. It is a great motivator for us to work hard on our musicianship as well as our sound as the year progresses. This year’s festival is on Saturday, May 8th. Festival times will not be announced for a long while, but I am hoping for morning performances. The choirs were simply amazing at last year’s CMEA. You can hear their performances at GunnChoir.org.

Spring Tour to New York City, May 26-30. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cannot tell you how much I love touring with the choir, and there is no other more affordable or exciting place to sing than NYC with it’s amazing array of shows, museums, and fantastic concert venues. It is without a doubt my favorite place to go in the United States. I cannot wait to experience the thrill of Times Square, and the glorious acoustics of Riverside Church or Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. We need lots of chaperones too, so parents save the date!



Spring Concert, Thursday, June 4, 7:30 PM Spangenberg
Our musical farewell to the class of 2010!
Composer’s Showcase, Sunday, June 7, 7:00 PM Spangenberg
I decided to continue the tradition of producing a concert of original works but I wanted to move it to the end of the year so we could include some of the terrific compositions written by the AP Music Theory class as well. It also sounded like a good idea to move the concert around so the lyrics can be inspired by different things. The last 2 years were in December so there were a lot of songs about Winter or the holidays. Let’s see what Spring does to inspire our young composers!

Other details:
Enrollment
Enrollment is really good, especially considering all the seniors who graduated last Spring. We have an unprecedented 50 singers in Treble Choir, the biggest ever. I could not be more thrilled about that. That group is going to be incredible! We also have a really good balance of male to female voices in the Concert Choir, with about 30 men and 55 women, so our program is essentially the same size, but it has shifted a bit to a bigger Treble Choir and a slightly smaller but more balanced Concert Choir. Personally I think this is going to be great, with just a little more elbow-room in E period, and not quite such an overwhelming task when it comes to roll, and basic rehearsal functioning. I do hope you will keep encouraging men to join though. We can only take as many women in Chamber Singers as we have men to balance them, so if you know any guys who love music and travel, bring ‘em on down! Assure them that we will provide the training, if they do not have much singing experience. Chamber Singers auditions are Monday night, August 31 at 6:30.
Choir Data Base
Please send me an email to GunnChoir@aol.com and put “Choir Info” in the subject. I will send you back an online form that you can fill out giving us all your phone and email info. It will save a lot of paper hassle and data entry. Send me your email today! Just one person per household needs to do this.
It is going to be a wonderful year, and I am really looking forward to all of this. I know that with all of us working together, we can make it another year of great music and memories.

Sincerely,
Bill Liberatore
Choral Director
Henry M. Gunn Senior High School
780 Arastradero Road
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 354-8287
email: GunnChoir@aol.com website: GunnChoir.org