Chamber Strings

Today we worked on two songs: Dance of Iscariot and The Star Spangled Banner. Our national anthem is a new piece that they received today because we have been invited to play at the President's Achievement Awards ceremony on May 5th at 3:30pm. Chamber Strings will play right in the beginning, and they can leave right after our performance. Unfortunately, because it is a Wednesday, there are no late buses. Students should arrange to have their parents pick them up on this day.

In Dance of Iscariot, we touched upon a number of items:

1. Dotted/Accented eighth notes as seen in the 2nd violin and viola parts: Play these as low in the bow as you can get! Right next to the frog, with a slight bounce. To play in this location for any length of time in a consistent tempo is tiring. Only diligent practice with a mirror and a metronome will develop the muscles needed to maintain this character.

2. Accidentals between m56 and 76 in 2nd violin and viola parts and how to achieve them: We wrote in 2 sets of fingerings in these sections. The first stays in what we call "half" position because we set our fingers behind the tapes that they usually fall on. When we play this passage in half position, we can hit all the notes, but it makes for awkward string crossings. Instead, I highly recommend that the 3rd position fingerings be used (shifting to 2nd finger on the A# in m63 and staying in 3rd position until beat 4 of measure 65).

3. Accelerando in m84 for violins: We only have 1 measure to get to our Presto tempo at m85. As much as I'd like to be consistent, accelerandos have potential to be different every time. Practice pushing the tempo faster at varying degrees so that you will be comfortable no matter what happens.

4. Presto section: mark in your part how many repeated measures you have. Violin 1 plays the B-A-B-A-B-A-B-A figure for 8 measures (or 7 measures with the 8th measure accented). Violin 2 plays G-F#-G-F#-G-F#-G-F# for 4 measures before switching to the double-stopped section. Viola also has 4 measures before you change.

In attendance were:

Joe Sipzner

Gretchen Long

Alicia Chen

Katie Gonick

Erin Templeton

Arianna Barnum

William Wang

Bill Dong

Marko Crnkovic

Gianluca Russo

Karthik Ramesh

Catie Rafferty

Andrea Long

Cody Ingraham

We missed:
Rachel Swyer

Emma Pearson

Naila Brown

Katie Yang