Day 5, 2010

The weekend has arrived! Sleep is in sight! The midway point of singing school is always bittersweet. The free time is very much looked forward to and needed, but it also means that the second week is just around the corner. The second week of singing school goes by so quickly, you sometimes want to apply the brakes and just be able to savor the moment.

Class work today included more chord identification and this afternoon we began identifying four-part chord inversions... probably not a wise choice for a Friday afternoon, but we got through it. Monday will be a BIG review day.

Got caught in the rain during dinner at the cafeteria. (Did I mention it's about a five-minute walk from the dining hall to the music building???) Thankful my GREAT friend and fellow teacher Freddie Edwards had an umbrella we tried to share. Once we got back and dried off, group singing began. I was able to sit next to Rosa Nell tonight and I hope I can get my hearing back in my left year! She'll be 88 in September and can still sing louder than the whole alto section of probably 30 or 35 voices. Listening to her belt out some of those great southern gospel convention alto lines is like a little piece of heaven.

The LeFevre Quartet performed after group singing and did a wonderful job. This was the first time their new tenor was with them and he sounded great. Next week, they're filming a live concert video in Memphis and were "trying out" some of the material for that shoot. It's going to be a combination of new stuff and old favorites.

This will be the earliest I've gotten to bed since last Friday evening... looking forward to a good night's sleep and a busy day helping Allison Speer with a mini-Elijah Conference workshop all day.