Many songs have been written about water; some of them for choir.
One of the most fun is Miniwanka, R Murray Schafer's choral soundscape of the moments of water. Probably because there is no wrong way to sing CHUCK! or nibinibi or BRRRRRRRAASHSHHSSSOHHOHSSS ... unless it's bel canto.
Drizzle.
Storm.
Ripples.
Water never dies.
So—the SYC picked up Miniwanka again at our most recent Zoom sing-along, 24 years after we first performed it.
Why? Because :
Watery sounds teach us what we can do with (to?) our voices.
And Schafer brings back the joy of consonants. SPLoSH!
(More on Consonants Are Our Friends in a later post. Remind me.)
Still—it felt time to explore ways to perform the idea of water, not just its varied sounds.
I had to try. I wrote some watery songs for the SYC, word-sounds that travel through the performance space.
I called these umbrella songs:
an umbrella octet sings these songs from the middle of the stage, surrounded by a watercolour choir, who catch and carry the words.
Word-sounds from the umbrella octet flow outwards, re-sounded and re-coloured—painted—by the watercolour choir, the performance becoming a kaleidoscopic word-painting.
During our Zoom call, the singers asked about catching and releasing sounds—
Must Nic wait for ZY to sing before she does? (See annotations on stage layout.)
What if JR—who has good ears—is the only one singing on stage left?
My response—let sound behave as sound does, changing through space, over time.
We only have to receive (words), and re-sound...
A splatter, random.
One or two droplets.
Diluted paint.
Parchment.
Different paper, different smudge = Different hall, different spread.
BL: How does the song end?
me: I don't know. Water never dies.
Yeah, interesting to see how this one turns out.
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