my heart is broken
love doesn’t conquer all
unselfish love
unreturned
unrequited
opens me to wound after wound
some turn from love no matter what
cling to the lies they tell themselves
cling to the poison they embrace
turn from love into the uncaring bottle
turn from love into the insensate smoke
turn from love even to the grave
I wish my heart would let them go
and heal
__________________
My friend Liz took the photograph, half way through the Rainshadow Chorale concert last Sunday.
Rainshadow Chorale is getting ready for our fall concert. Amazing music! One hundred pages of Rachmaninoff in Russian! I have been practicing remotely, using the recorded choral practices on Facebook, MP3s, language recordings, and my flute to practice tricky sections until they are earwormed into my brain.
The concerts are on Saturday and Sunday, three weekends from now, November 2 and 3, at First Presbyterian Church at 4:00 pm in Port Townsend, Washington. I leave soon to drive back there, cat and all. I think Sol Duc has learned some Russian too.
Here is one of the 15 parts. I like the title: Blessed Be the Man. It makes me think that this is Russian rap music. Actually, I think the whole thing sounds like angels singing in Russian. This is the first time I sing in Russian, but it’s the time that is particularly tricky. Rachmaninoff doesn’t care a bit about time signatures so some measures have eight beats, others twelve, others ten. Count, count, count.
I am using this for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: burgundy, both because of the poster colors and because the music and language is so rich and complex.
Saturday my daughter was still here and we hiked the smaller loop at Palisade. It is about 3.5 miles. Coming down, the soundtrack in my brain was “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain”. I did not sing it to my daughter. One person with an earworm is enough!
My brain definitely plays music. I’ve had 24 years in Rainshadow Chorale and hope for quite a few more. Sometimes in clinic, quite inappropriate music plays. Everything from children’s songs to Bach to Blues, Rock and Punk and various oddities.
November means concert this year. I have sung in Rainshadow Chorale for 23 years now. My father was one of the eight people who started it in 1997. Concert this coming weekend!
My favorite song is the lobster one, though “Something like a star” always makes me tear up.
Rainshadow Chorale is going to sing like Shakespeare birds on November 5th and 6th. I think this will be another delightful and really fun concert. I tried out for a solo wearing a cowgirl hat. My hat got a solo. I got a small group part. I’m too jealous of my hat, of my hat.
Why a cowgirl hat for Shakespeare? You’ll have to come to the concert to find out! We have composers ranging from Purcell to modern, all using Shakespeare’s words.
Anyhow, mark your calendars. My father was one of the initial eight choral members in 1997 and I joined in 2000. Sing on!
I have been in Rainshadow Chorale since 2000. My father, Malcolm Ottaway, was one of the eight people who started it in 1997. He and my mother moved here in 1996. My mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, died of ovarian cancer on May 15, 2000. Rainshadow agreed to sing a Byrd Mass for my mother’s memorial. My father asked if my sister and I could sing in the chorale for the memorial. We were told yes. I had moved to Port Townsend at the end of 1999.
After the Memorial, I asked if I could stay in the chorale. The answer was yes and I have been in it ever since.
Our director, Rebecca Rottsolk, is retiring from the chorale after our next concert. She has picked favorite pieces. I have sung in nearly every concert since 2000, though I couldn’t sing in the one right after my father died in 2013. He followed my sister, who died in 2012. My throat wouldn’t let me sing that one.
So Rebecca, thank you for the music and thank you for being a wonderful director and forcing us to level up over and over. I am sending you peace and love and joy.
And everyone else, put this concert on your calendar.
Rainshadow Chorale practicing outdoors wearing masks in a fine rain. Dedication.
Ok, maybe it is not inappropriate for work. But it would be a little weird for work… I was going in the woods with my oxygen tank. “Local doctor of 21 years found eaten by cougar, which then died because it couldn’t digest the oxygen tank.” Heh.
I love the orange sky and peach and lemon and tangerine, just as the sun rises! This has been a difficult week with the time change and with a concert or concert rehearsal four out of the last 5 evenings after a full day of clinic. Concert today and tomorrow, and I love the pieces we are doing. Here: Rainshadow Chorale.
I am in RainShadow Chorale. My father was one of the people who started it in 1997.Β I moved to Port Townsend in 2000, because my mother had cancer. She died in May of 2000. My father died in 2013. I had the joy of singing with him in this group for 13 years.
Our concert is weekend after next and I really love this one. We are doing a wild mix of pieces and moods with the theme from a Walt Whitman poem. In this time of so many people being afraid and angry and stirred up, going to chorus is healing. All of these people, unpaid, coming together to create these two concerts of beauty and unity and joy. A gift to each other and a gift to the community.
Blogging from A to Z, the letter R for rainshadow, rehearsal, raise your voice! Only I did R yesterday and should be on the letter S! Sing, shout and shadow…there, whew!
My father and seven other people started Rainshadow Chorale in 1997. I joined when I moved here. He died in 2013, but we are still singing. Two concerts today and one tomorrow, and by yesterday they were nearly sold out. All three.
We had a dress rehearsal last night, with Rebecca Rottsolk, our brilliant director, doing the final touches. It’s the first time that we rehearsed in the space that we will sing in, so we pay close attention to how we sound there.
And raise your voice in song and praise! We walked this morning and traded songs with the birds: song sparrows, red wing blackbirds and quieter birds…the above photo of the bird slipping quietly through the ripples. Here is another view:
I think that this is a Hooded Merganser, here. Hooray for happy things and the letter r. And the letter s too!
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Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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