Tomorrow sees the inaugural meeting of the brand-new 'London Kodály Choir'.

The choir will meet at the Stockwell Community Resource Centre in Studley Road (1 minute from Stockwell Tube Station) from 2-5pm on the following Sundays - 18th April, 23rd May, 6th June and 4th July.

The choir will use solfège and the principles of music education of Zoltán Kodály to make choral music accessible to all. All levels of experience will be welcome.

The cost is £10.00 per session for non-BKA members, £7.50 for BKA members and £5.00 for students. This includes music, which will be provided.

The choir will be led by renowned Kodály music educator, David Vinden.

So - if you are either already familiar with solfa and the Kodály principles - or whether this is completely and utterly new to you - do please come along to one or all of the sessions and enjoy making lovely music with other people. Benjaminja, zolly's dude and I from the forums will be there!

Do please PM me if you would like to know more.

VERY excited about this new venture - wish us luck!!!

Very sorry I can't make tomorrow C : I'm clarinetting in Kingston...

I can't do 6th June or 4th July either, but will see what I can do with 23rd May. Can't guarantee, but I'd like to be able to make a rehearsal sometime.

I'll put all four rehearsals on the forum calendar now.

Very many thanks, Baz!!

No problem.

Have just checked Tube engineering works for the four Sundays, rather unhelpfully, there's no Northern line to Stockwell on 23rd May ...

Ah - very many thanks for that - will let people know...

BAH!!!

I'll be there.

Great, muffinmonster!

Good luck folks. I hope that you all have a lovely time.

Thanks Judith!

I'm pleased to say that we had a fabby afternoon and that hopefully this will be the first of many!

Next meeting - 23rd May.

I'll see what I can do with 23rd May : especially as I know I can't do the June or the July rehearsals.

I second that. Great turnout, great singing. Really looking forward to the May date.

What did you sing?

Gasparini: Adoramus te, Christe
Stanford: Soft soft wind
Giardini: Viva tutte le vezzose
Victoria: O quam gloriosum
Dowland: Flow my tears
Hassler: Nun fanget an.

Very nice I remember studying Flow my tears when I did my A level music ages back. Glad you had fun

It was great. Looking forward to the next one!

OK...having found an alternative route (why are there no direct buses from London Bridge to Stockwell? ), I'll come along on 23rd May. Will I need anything apart from my voice?...

Glad you had a good time, zolly's dude (and to the musica ficta thing!)...



Brill!!

Er - you'll need your voice, a pencil, and £10!!!

Sounds amazing Cyrilla. Best of luck with this!

Thank you, pianodub!

I'd have failed to bring a pencil...

Thanks C

Pencils are Useful for Writing In Vegetables!

*tries to imagine how to make a pencil mark on a carrot or cauliflower, and fails*

Writing in vegetables will make not a lot of difference to the vegetables I actually sing...

LOL!!!



Btw, Stockwell is on Victoria as well as Northern Line - so hopefully despite engineering works on the latter on 23rd May people will still be able to get to the venue via the former...

yes, the Victoria line is OK on 23/5. I'm going to Kennington by tube, then bus to Stockwell

Hi Cyrilla,

This sounds really interesting and glad to hear the 1st date went well.
Is it really OK for a complete beginner to singing?
(My only singing experience is the few notes in the aural exam - which I hate!)

I imagine it would be fine - but I must leave Cyrilla to give the definitive word on that!

What I would like to add is that if you do join, you will hate the exam -singing much less next time!

Hi smd (I'm afraid every time I see your name, my thinking voice goes, 'so-mi-do' ).

Glad to hear of your interest!

I think the only way for you to find out is to come along - suck it and see! You probably will find the whole solfa thing a tad overwhelming to begin with, but so did I when I first started singing in a (solfa) choir - a lot of it went over my head and I just clung on by my fingertips...but now, 'x' number of years later, I'm totally at home...so give it a try!

There will be copies of the music with all the solfa names written in, so that will be helpful - also there are quite a lot of experienced people that you can sit next to and who will help. There were a few people at the first meeting who had never sung in a choir before, or who were new to solfa - and none of them looked too traumatised by the end of the session!!

If you do come, PM me beforehand so that we can introduce ourselves.

And Maggie's right in what she says...

If you do decide to come to the May rehearsal smd, I'll have a go at helping you out : I can't profess to being terribly brilliant at it, but I get by...

Now that I know I am not the only one who will need help, 23/5 is in my diary. If I survive that, 4th July is also a possibility. I will remember the pencil and the £10 but might leave the voice at home. Even if all I end up doing is listening and not singing, I am sure it will still be enjoyable.

The three of us (you/me/smd) can stand at the back and hide

Oooh, this sounds all very interesting, especially if it's open to people who'll happily tell you they 'can't sing' (i.e. me. I can sing, I just can't sing very well. Or when anyone else is in the house/car/office/etc)

Can't make the May date but the June and July might be possible...

Aw, I can't make either June or July but I think they're planning to go beyond July...

We are indeed!

Anyone who is thinking of (nervously) trying it - please come and introduce yourself to me! And I will make sure you're sitting next to someone more experienced (if you could tell me if you'll be singing soprano/alto/tenor/bass it would help).

I think PianoNotes has the right idea - even if you just sit and listen and follow the music and do a bit in your thinking voice as well as a bit in your singing voice whenever you think you can, you will still get a lot out of it - and hopefully the solfa will start to make a bit of sense, too.

One reason we set this up was to give people who have been on Kodály courses an opportunity to practise their solfa singing in a choral setting (courses are often a bit few and far between - I would often just do a summer school and then nothing throughout the year, which doesn't make for very rapid progress!).

But we also want to encourage people who have done little or no solfa before to give it a whirl, too! Considering we were a motley group of 30 people who had never sung together before we made a pretty good sound and it was a really enjoyable and uplifting occasion (well, it was for me!!).

The forums' muffinmonster and zolly's dude were there (singing soprano), as was occasional poster Willard (tenor). Baz and I can help people out on the alto line..

Of course you may find it's not for you - but do come along and try it! As I said, when I first started going on Kodály courses, I had NEVER sung in a choir and was a real beginner at solfa, so almost everything went WHOOSH over my head. But I found the whole thing fascinating and I stuck at it...(and the rest, as they say, is history ).

A Cyrilla endorsement!

No pressure then...

Forumite Onion was also there, singing alto.

Ah, that's good - plenty of forum representation

Argh! Sorry, onion! I knew there was another forumite there and for the life of me couldn't remember who it was!

I'll be in a separate choir with barry and smd.

Here's an occasional post:

If anyone (not being male) has any male friends or acquaintances or meets anyone on the way there who looks like they can sing, do bring them along. As with many choirs, we could do with a few more male voices to balance the sound - although I think the sound was quite good for a first meeting. I think that is a tribute to the way using solfa helps with sight-reading and accuracy and once that clicks, means you can concentrate more on producing a better sound.

There should be help in all the voice parts for those who are less experienced.

And tea and biscuits in the interval !

I hope the conductor is prepared for such a thing...

I'll warn him

Not convinced what I was doing would be classified as singing!



That's ok Cyrilla, it was a very busy afternoon. I was very pleasantly surprised to see how many people were there. I really enjoyed the music and even I could keep up, mostly, with what we were doing. It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I liked the fact that you had even arranged the weather to be nice enough so we could sit out in the garden - terribly civilised.

I'm looking forward to the next session.

Lís

Ah! Glad you enjoyed it so much, Lis (liked the new hair, too!) and that you approved of the way we sorted the weather as well as the music!

As you say, what a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon...

Just kicking this thread back up to the top of the listings : next meeting is this Sunday

Can you arrange for some more nice weather for this Sunday's meeting, please?

The BBC seem to think that this weekend will be glorious

This event is literaly 10 minute walk away from my house so I would have loved to have come along, depsite knwoing nothing about the Kodaly method.

However I have just joined an orchestra that meets on a Sunday afternoon so unfortunaltey I can't come to this lovely sounding event. Hope everyone who goes has great fun.