Haslett HS Select Women's Choir - Observation #2

Today was my second day observing Samara Valla and the Select Women's Choir. Ms. Valla is a little concerned about running out of rehearsal time with this group given that they did not have school on Thursday and lost a rehearsal. She is currently in the middle of prepping for a pre-festival concert, which is next Wednesday, and choir festival, which is the following week. I expected there to be a lot of dictation of musical ideas during today's rehearsal, simply because she was running out of time to get the group prepared.

As Ms. Valla started her warmups, I noticed that she went right into singing without any kind of body or breath warmups as we have done in class. I wonder if this is because the group meets after school and everything is warmed up already? Even so, I might do a little bit of transition from speaking voice to singing voice, but that did not happen. Ironically, while Ms. Valla's rehearsals are very speech heavy, her warmups are not. She begins warmups while students are still walking in and settling down as a way to begin class without having to call for attention (I do this in my Suzuki violin group classes as well!). She introduces a new warmup by singing it once at the piano, and then the choir joins on the second time as she moves to a new note in her progression. A student assistant from the choir takes attendance while the warmups start, allowing Ms. Valla to focus on the group and getting the sound she wants. She had the girls think about blend during warmups, especially on higher exercises, so that voices did not stick out and vowels remained aligned throughout the higher registers.

This discipline and lack of talking quickly dissolved as the warmups finished and students were asked to sit and take our the first piece. Ms. Valla had to briefly step away to speak to a student, there was a lag while her accompanist walked from the adjoining office to the piano in the choir room, and the delay was more than enough invitation for the room to explode into conversation and for attention to be diverted from music.

Ms. Valla began the rehearsal of "Dance on My Heart" by reminding the girls of the (fast approaching) concert and festival performances. She then explained how she had everything mapped out in order to be covered on time, but that there could be no talking. I found this ironic given that she spent 5 minutes of rehearsal explaining the lack of time she had, and some of the girls were very chatty during this time as well, which she did not address. She began the rehearsal by focusing on small parts, individual phrases, and walking the choir through text emphasis. She went through each phrase saying which words or syllables should be emphasized, a change from last week when the choir was discussing this same issue. She did not sing the phrase, just spoke, which I thought was interesting. As the choir sang, Ms. Valla sang with them, looking at her part. She was not conducting, more keeping time occasionally during tempo changes. After a little singing, she modeled the stress she wanted in her speaking voice, but she never sang it, which I thought may have been helpful.

After some part work and more text emphasis work, Ms. Valla had the group stand and perform the work again. This time, she did conduct more formally with her hands instead of the pencil she had been using earlier. I did notice that she mouthed/sung along during this time even though all the choir members were using music. I wasn't sure why she was mouthing words if the students were looking at them. Perhaps this is a habit of hers? Following the run, she had the choir sit and did some musicality work, adding some personality to the work (this should be more playful, cuter, melodramatic, etc.). During this part, she did model a little with her voice, but this was after saying something with words, hearing the choir, and not receiving her desired result. After she sang, the group gave it back to her and she moved on.

The second piece was a straight run, as the choir is clearly more comfortable with this work. Again, Ms. Valla mouthed and sung along with the choir while she was conducting, even though the group was using music. Her conducting appeared to be mostly doubling, but I did notice her use her left hand to show phrases that she wanted sustained. Her right hand was always moving in pattern and also showed cutoffs. She did a little part work with the choir after this run and she did use modeling for this piece, but not a lot of modeling with the first, which I thought was interesting.

Overall, it was a very speech heavy rehearsal, which I expected. I found it odd that her rehearsal seemed to be structured part - whole - part, as opposed to the whole - part - whole that I have been taught at MSU. It seemed to me that any musical moments were buried by the extensive part work after the singing had occurred. However, the choir responds very well to both her verbal and singing directives and they clearly have a great rapport with one another and a very relaxed atmosphere in the room.