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Music(als) week!
Jan. 21st, 2016 03:11 pmFirst actual Charis (St Louis Women's Chorus) rehearsal was Tuesday. I made Rosa come with me, and she has agreed to come back for at least the two more open rehearsals before deciding whether she wants to stick it out for the whole season. I hope she does, but it's up to her. There is another geeky sixteen-year-old newbie, so that may influence her to stay.
I am going to need a LOT of practice. It's been a very long time since I've attempted to sing in any circumstance other than 'in the car, with the radio/mp3 player'. Rosa can carry a tune much better than I can, but she can neither read music nor follow parts (she kept wanting to follow the melody or sing along with whoever was singing at the time). I told her we can help each other, since I can do both those things.
***
Yesterday Tammie called me around five. "Cait's inviting one of us to a musical at the Fox. You should go." "Well, I have a massage scheduled..." "You can postpone that." "Good point. And this is supposed to be my year of saying yes to things. I'll do it." Show at 7:30, pick Cait up at 6:45...I had just enough time to cancel my massage, take a shower, stuff my face with Arbys, and watch one episode of Yowamushi Pedal with Rose before I had to jump in the car and zoom away.
Cait's tickets ended up being for the Fox Club. Fancy box seats with waiter service throughout the show! The musical was Newsies, a critically-acclaimed show about the 1899 New York Newsboys Strike. Now you know more about it than I did until I got there and had time to Wikipedia the plot synopsis before the show started. More, because I've given you the links. ;-)
We had a great time, and have resolved to hang out together more often. I regret to say that it's probably been more than a year since I've spent any one-on-one time with Cait. We see each other at most of the polymunches, but that isn't the same.
***
And lastly...I've been filling my head with "Hamilton" lately, after seeing a dozen blog posts and other chatter about it (starting at Making Light, here, where you can find lots of other links to start with). The cast album is free for streaming on Amazon Prime Music which, conveniently, we have. I believe the whole musical is also available on YouTube although I haven't looked.
I've listened to the cast album three times now and am quite thoroughly earwormed. If you have managed to miss hearing about this, it's a historical musical about (two-hundred-year-old spoiler alert) yes, the dude whose face is on the ten-dollar bill and who got himself shot in a duel with Aaron Burr. It's rap and hip-hop and totally virtuosic and almost entirely race-bent, so comments very eloquently on race relations in the US both now and two-hundred-odd years ago, as well as featuring several named female characters who talk to one another about things which include politics--so yay, Bechdel-passing--and its various themes and plots are summed up rather well in the title of the last song: "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?"
It's absolutely fantastic, I recommend it highly... and fair warning: the second act will leave you reeling and devastated, so I recommend a private place for your first listen. Unless you enjoy sitting at your desk at work sobbing. To each their own after all.
So after last night's show, when I stopped at the grocery store for a couple of things requested by the folks at home, I spotted evidence of Time Magazine's finger on the pulse of the (my) zeitgeist: a special edition magazine entitled "Alexander Hamilton: A Founding Father's Visionary Genius--and His Tragic Fate". It had to come home with me.
***
Yowamushi Pedal: an anime series that Rosa has recommended to me. We've been watching it together. It's about high school bicycle racers, and I'm actually really enjoying it. I absolutely hate Midousuji and think he's really a demon not a person, but all the other characters have at least some redeeming qualities, even if they are sometimes irritating (like most humans, after all). The protagonist is a very ingenue-riffic wide-eyed first-year named Onoda Sakamichi whose earnestness and innocent enthusiasm are over the top, down the next hill and back up again, but he's also so ridiculously engaging and sweet. His given name means Hill Road, and he specializes as a climber in the team road races (Some of the names are rather in your face if you understand any Japanese at all. There are probably even more in-jokes in the names that I don't get, but there's another climber named Manami Sangaku--Manami Mountain Range.)
I am going to need a LOT of practice. It's been a very long time since I've attempted to sing in any circumstance other than 'in the car, with the radio/mp3 player'. Rosa can carry a tune much better than I can, but she can neither read music nor follow parts (she kept wanting to follow the melody or sing along with whoever was singing at the time). I told her we can help each other, since I can do both those things.
***
Yesterday Tammie called me around five. "Cait's inviting one of us to a musical at the Fox. You should go." "Well, I have a massage scheduled..." "You can postpone that." "Good point. And this is supposed to be my year of saying yes to things. I'll do it." Show at 7:30, pick Cait up at 6:45...I had just enough time to cancel my massage, take a shower, stuff my face with Arbys, and watch one episode of Yowamushi Pedal with Rose before I had to jump in the car and zoom away.
Cait's tickets ended up being for the Fox Club. Fancy box seats with waiter service throughout the show! The musical was Newsies, a critically-acclaimed show about the 1899 New York Newsboys Strike. Now you know more about it than I did until I got there and had time to Wikipedia the plot synopsis before the show started. More, because I've given you the links. ;-)
We had a great time, and have resolved to hang out together more often. I regret to say that it's probably been more than a year since I've spent any one-on-one time with Cait. We see each other at most of the polymunches, but that isn't the same.
***
And lastly...I've been filling my head with "Hamilton" lately, after seeing a dozen blog posts and other chatter about it (starting at Making Light, here, where you can find lots of other links to start with). The cast album is free for streaming on Amazon Prime Music which, conveniently, we have. I believe the whole musical is also available on YouTube although I haven't looked.
I've listened to the cast album three times now and am quite thoroughly earwormed. If you have managed to miss hearing about this, it's a historical musical about (two-hundred-year-old spoiler alert) yes, the dude whose face is on the ten-dollar bill and who got himself shot in a duel with Aaron Burr. It's rap and hip-hop and totally virtuosic and almost entirely race-bent, so comments very eloquently on race relations in the US both now and two-hundred-odd years ago, as well as featuring several named female characters who talk to one another about things which include politics--so yay, Bechdel-passing--and its various themes and plots are summed up rather well in the title of the last song: "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?"
It's absolutely fantastic, I recommend it highly... and fair warning: the second act will leave you reeling and devastated, so I recommend a private place for your first listen. Unless you enjoy sitting at your desk at work sobbing. To each their own after all.
So after last night's show, when I stopped at the grocery store for a couple of things requested by the folks at home, I spotted evidence of Time Magazine's finger on the pulse of the (my) zeitgeist: a special edition magazine entitled "Alexander Hamilton: A Founding Father's Visionary Genius--and His Tragic Fate". It had to come home with me.
***
Yowamushi Pedal: an anime series that Rosa has recommended to me. We've been watching it together. It's about high school bicycle racers, and I'm actually really enjoying it. I absolutely hate Midousuji and think he's really a demon not a person, but all the other characters have at least some redeeming qualities, even if they are sometimes irritating (like most humans, after all). The protagonist is a very ingenue-riffic wide-eyed first-year named Onoda Sakamichi whose earnestness and innocent enthusiasm are over the top, down the next hill and back up again, but he's also so ridiculously engaging and sweet. His given name means Hill Road, and he specializes as a climber in the team road races (Some of the names are rather in your face if you understand any Japanese at all. There are probably even more in-jokes in the names that I don't get, but there's another climber named Manami Sangaku--Manami Mountain Range.)
