The Band/Choir/Orchestra Thread

Euphonos

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  • My personal favorite song I have ever sung is Dream of a Blessed Spirit by Dan Hall. I've done both the tenor and bass parts and I'd give the edge to the bass part but the whole song is so good!!! It's sooo good!!
  • If you have access to a pretty good pianist and a cello player, Boat On Tai Lake by Reed Criddle is a fun one, especially if you're looking to broaden the language scope of your repertoire
Okay, going to listen to those pieces.

  • Northern Lights by Ola Gjeilo is good, fairly technical but about where an upper level HS choir can be for sure
I actually thought of the Eriks Esenvalds version of "Northern Lights", where my college choir is going to rehearse for next month. I'm so tempted to listen to them, really!

  • O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen is easily one of the prettiest songs i have ever heard. It's a bit more technically challenging than the other two butbit is WORTH IT. My choir is putting it together rn and its a bit tough because the song is very emotional and its tough to sing through the tears ;~;
Ahh, this. I feel you.

  • If you have a really strong Tenor range soloist, take a look at Mata Del Anima Sola by Antonio Estévez. It's a personal favorite that goes very quickly but is otherwise pretty simple
The earlier tour cast of my college choir (I'm still a trainee at that time) performed that piece, and I really appreciate the nuances behind that, especially its very Spanish background after the solo.


Some of the songs included are Salmo 150 (really fun song for the bass/bari section, for other sections it's apparently horrifying), I Will Be A Child Of Peace, Come Ye Sinners Poor And Needy, A Jubilant Psalm, and i carry your heart with me. ...

my personal favorite songs we've ever done are John The Revelator, Salmo 150, and Peze Kafe, which are all super fun songs with bass/bari parts that arent just one note over and over and over like apparently every bass/bari part seems to b...
I wonder who composed those pieces, especially Salmo 150, because I thought there are a lot of Salmo 150's out there and I recognize a Salmo 150 from a Filipino composer Robin Estrada.
 
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P Squared

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I actually had an orchestra concert last night :o

I was in school orchestras from fifth to twelfth grade! I noticed that most of the people in my high school orchestra quit playing when university started (and the ones that didn't went on to study music, so), which I thought was sad. I wanted to keep playing in some form but I also doubted I was good enough or had the time to be in the official university orchestra. Coincidentally the year I entered uni, people started up a video game music orchestra, and so I've been in that for the past 2.5 years :) it's pretty casual, which is nice because we're busy college students and don't have time to rehearse multiple times a week, though quality naturally, uh, fluctuates as a result... but we've consistently gotten so much turnout for our concerts that they've had to stop letting people in because there's just no room, and this year the venue made us use a ticket system to avoid a fire hazard :s

Anyways, the concert yesterday was streamed on Twitch and there's a replay here if any of you want to listen :) I think it went pretty well for the most part! There are some chamber pieces at the beginning too and the orchestra starts playing around 40 minutes in.

41:08 Halo - One Final Effort
45:38 SSB Melee - Title theme
49:51 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney medley
56:49 Civilization V - Elegy
1:01:04 Legend of Zelda medley
1:15:29 Golden Sun: First Book - Golden Sun theme
1:27:17 Kingdom Hearts - Hikari

shoutouts to Magnemite Quote The Dutch Plumberjack Imanalt Spy and others for watching the stream as it happened, thanks guys :heart:

More generally I've noticed that orchestra is pretty different from other uni clubs--especially larger ones--in that it can be really easy to feel 'unimportant'/unnoticed in other clubs, since it's mostly executive board/upperclassmen that are doing 'important' stuff, but in orchestra everyone is making a really important contribution to the group, so that's something I like about it :toast:
 
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GoodMorningEspeon

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That sounds so cool omg. The biggest thing my band did was play at Disney World last year, but I would kill to get a chance to perform at Carnegie Hall!
How coincidental, my school band actually did the same last year :o

I've been a percussionist through the school for alost seven years now and have really enjoyed it. Although I'm absolute trash at set, I'd love to be able to improve someday. I play the marimba/xylophone/all the other mallet instruments well and will be performing a solo in a couple months! Maybe I'll post it here.

On an unrelated note, I've also been trying to learn guitar recently. I'm finding it a bit difficult, but I've been getting better.
 

Pastelle

we're all star stuff
We had a concert yesterday and something so amazing happened that I had to share it here.

My wind ensemble performed at the National Band Association- Wisconsin Chapter yesterday in front of a crowd of experienced band directors. Its a great honor to be accepted to play there, and we spent a lot of time preparing for it. Our band director's wife, the day before, gave birth to his daughter, and he dedicated our performance of Reed's Greensleeves and Biebl's Ave Maria to his newborn daughter. He's known to get caught up in the music while conducting by closing his eyes and slowing down so the piece won't end, but halfway through Greensleeves, he started crying on the podium, and cried even harder during Ave Maria. He wasn't bawling by any means, but you can definitely tell that we was getting very emotional. Being on the other end of that was very moving. Looking at him be so moved by what we were doing and so proud of us and of his daughter, it was really inspiring. It was like we all knew 'We can't let him down now'. It was an unforgettable feeling and performance, and something I'll look back on fondly.

Thought this was a neat story expressing the power of music and being in an ensemble. It was recorded, and once it becomes available I may post it here. It was truly an amazing experience.
 
I think that song would do really well in a small ensemble too, as long as y'all can get the harmony parts down consistently i think 3 or 4 to a part isnt bad at all!

Hoooooooooo boy do i have HS recommendations n_n
  • My personal favorite song I have ever sung is Dream of a Blessed Spirit by Dan Hall. I've done both the tenor and bass parts and I'd give the edge to the bass part but the whole song is so good!!! It's sooo good!!
  • Northern Lights by Ola Gjeilo is good, fairly technical but about where an upper level HS choir can be for sure
  • O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen is easily one of the prettiest songs i have ever heard. It's a bit more technically challenging than the other two butbit is WORTH IT. My choir is putting it together rn and its a bit tough because the song is very emotional and its tough to sing through the tears ;~;
  • If you have a really strong Tenor range soloist, take a look at Mata Del Anima Sola by Antonio Estévez. It's a personal favorite that goes very quickly but is otherwise pretty simple
  • If you have access to a pretty good pianist and a cello player, Boat On Tai Lake by Reed Criddle is a fun one, especially if you're looking to broaden the language scope of your repertoire
Those are just a few of my favorites but I will legit talk about choir songs all day n_n
Northern Lights remains my favorite choral work that I've ever sung at any level: Gjeilo's brilliant, and the work is just outstanding. I love the way the lines just mesh into the atmosphere of the piece. Was the highlight of my choir's winter concert my junior year of high school. It's neither the most difficult nor the most well-performed piece I've done, but the memories associated with it (all the rehearsals and such, since this was with a small madrigal group, rather than a large ensemble) make it so special.

I've been in organized choir (school and extracurricular) since I was 8 (I'm 22 now: for school, I'm in my 11th year of being in choir in a school setting). Music is one of my top hobbies. I like to play piano here and there, but singing is something I really enjoy. People tell me it's kind of ironic that I've been in choir for as long as I have been, since I don't care much for performances: rather, I enjoy being in choir for the interactions with different people in rehearsal, making friends with fellow singers, and such. I've rarely had a performance that I felt was done "better" than a previous rehearsal, and I've always had a deeper appreciation for music after a performance because I'm personally attached to all the memories and such of a rehearsal. Similarly, I can never relate well to the performers as an audience member because I don't have that knowledge of the rehearsal process leading up to that one performance I got to see.

Some of my favorite pieces are:

Northern Lights - Ola Gjeilo
Ballade to the Moon - Daniel Elder
(It's not an overly complicated piece, but it's really heartfelt and beautiful. My clinician for this piece was the editor of it, and he really connected with our group at a personal level).
Sing Me To Heaven - Daniel Gawthrop
Sound Off - Paul Rardin
(I've never done this piece, but I've seen it performed and my HS choir director was a section leader for a clinic that performed this piece as well. It's just an entertaining all-men's piece).
Water Night - Eric Whitacre
Cloudburst - Eric Whitacre
(Whitacre's not my favorite choral composer, but he's up there, and these are two pieces I've thoroughly enjoyed. I love his use of harmonies and dissonance).
Aftonen - Hugo Alfven
Come to Me My Love - Dello Joio
(We performed this piece not long after my favorite and most influential teacher passed away, and I was a mess on stage whenever we performed this, whether for Spring Concert or tour).

I'm probably forgetting a number of pieces, but that's a start.
 

Martin

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Two pieces that every band/orchestra should make a point of playing at some point are Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite and Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld Overture as they are both really fun pieces to play. Both originally composed for orchestra, but it shouldn't be too hard to get hold of an arrangement for either of these if you are in a concert band/wind orchestra, brass band, string orchestra etc. as they are popular pieces. Lots of fun to play and they sound really good to boot.
 
as a horn player fuck music from light operas. it's all offbeats and sucks

i can go into great detail about intermediate level band/orchestra rep but its 3 am and i need to sleep
 

DaAwesomeDude1

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Hey there, didn't even know this thread existed haha. Anyways, I have a quick question regarding playing better but first, a little bit about myself. I've been playing the Viola for 6 years now and I'm in my school's top orchestra. Until recently I didn't realize how bad I was. Back in middle school, I was always leagues ahead of everyone else, so I was always first chair. That got to my head and I stopped practicing. Flash forward to high school and despite being in the upper orchestra, I still slacked off. I thought, well I'm still not last chair and I don't even practice. Plus I'm just a freshmen so by next year I'll move up once the seniors graduate. It's been two years and I'm a junior now. Naturally I didn't move up, but I actually dropped. Right now I'm second to last, which isn't acceptable at all. So this year, I decided to actually practice in orchestra and move back up. I haven't practiced seriously in forever and my main problem is with faster pieces. My fingers always lock up and my bow can't really keep up. So what's the best plan in order to play faster, and I guess better haha, in general? Help on sight reading will be really helpful too! Thanks!
 

GatoDelFuego

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Hey there, didn't even know this thread existed haha. Anyways, I have a quick question regarding playing better but first, a little bit about myself. I've been playing the Viola for 6 years now and I'm in my school's top orchestra. Until recently I didn't realize how bad I was. Back in middle school, I was always leagues ahead of everyone else, so I was always first chair. That got to my head and I stopped practicing. Flash forward to high school and despite being in the upper orchestra, I still slacked off. I thought, well I'm still not last chair and I don't even practice. Plus I'm just a freshmen so by next year I'll move up once the seniors graduate. It's been two years and I'm a junior now. Naturally I didn't move up, but I actually dropped. Right now I'm second to last, which isn't acceptable at all. So this year, I decided to actually practice in orchestra and move back up. I haven't practiced seriously in forever and my main problem is with faster pieces. My fingers always lock up and my bow can't really keep up. So what's the best plan in order to play faster, and I guess better haha, in general? Help on sight reading will be really helpful too! Thanks!
Getting over plateaus like this is not easy. I don't know a thing about you, so my advice will have to be general. One big thing is knowing your scales backwards and frontwards. In the 10 minutes I waited before class in university, I would just play around with some scales I like or some pieces of random music I tried to transpose, and would play it at various speeds and keys. Being able to play scales very very quickly means that if you can identify a pattern in a fast piece, just go back to the muscle memory that you've learned. Of course, you can always play the faster piece at a slowed tempo, and slowly work it up. It's super frustrating because you'll want to move on, but spend a day mastering it at 3/4 speed, come back the next day and see what you can do.

Sight reading is not that easy. I've always had the best thing I do be sightreading (but not that great at practicing) so I don't have any crazy advice, but I'd recommend studying patterns again, especially with rhythms. Once you have a 'repertoire' of complex rhythms you can play, remembering how to play them next time you see a new song won't be as hard. There's only a finite number of ways to arrange a measure after all!
 
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Oglemi

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We had a concert yesterday and something so amazing happened that I had to share it here.

My wind ensemble performed at the National Band Association- Wisconsin Chapter yesterday in front of a crowd of experienced band directors. Its a great honor to be accepted to play there, and we spent a lot of time preparing for it. Our band director's wife, the day before, gave birth to his daughter, and he dedicated our performance of Reed's Greensleeves and Biebl's Ave Maria to his newborn daughter. He's known to get caught up in the music while conducting by closing his eyes and slowing down so the piece won't end, but halfway through Greensleeves, he started crying on the podium, and cried even harder during Ave Maria. He wasn't bawling by any means, but you can definitely tell that we was getting very emotional. Being on the other end of that was very moving. Looking at him be so moved by what we were doing and so proud of us and of his daughter, it was really inspiring. It was like we all knew 'We can't let him down now'. It was an unforgettable feeling and performance, and something I'll look back on fondly.

Thought this was a neat story expressing the power of music and being in an ensemble. It was recorded, and once it becomes available I may post it here. It was truly an amazing experience.
Hey I remember doing that in high school, tuba 4lyfe. I still have the purple shirt. Can't remember any of the songs we did but I do still have the CD at home, I remember them being fun pieces but I don't remember practicing at all prior to the performance. IIRC I was super duper incredibly tired for the actual performance because the kids in our hotel room wouldn't shut the fuck up and go to bed, and they even started the convo with how they hated those people that stayed up and talked all night. -.-

Anywho glad you had a good experience. What instrument you play? If it was flute I woulda been scared of getting sobbed on from the director .-.
 

Euphonos

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Northern Lights - Ola Gjeilo (Northern Lights remains my favorite choral work that I've ever sung at any level: Gjeilo's brilliant, and the work is just outstanding. I love the way the lines just mesh into the atmosphere of the piece. Was the highlight of my choir's winter concert my junior year of high school. It's neither the most difficult nor the most well-performed piece I've done, but the memories associated with it (all the rehearsals and such, since this was with a small madrigal group, rather than a large ensemble) make it so special.)
Ballade to the Moon - Daniel Elder (It's not an overly complicated piece, but it's really heartfelt and beautiful. My clinician for this piece was the editor of it, and he really connected with our group at a personal level).
Sing Me To Heaven - Daniel Gawthrop
Sound Off - Paul Rardin
(I've never done this piece, but I've seen it performed and my HS choir director was a section leader for a clinic that performed this piece as well. It's just an entertaining all-men's piece).
Water Night - Eric Whitacre
Cloudburst - Eric Whitacre
(Whitacre's not my favorite choral composer, but he's up there, and these are two pieces I've thoroughly enjoyed. I love his use of harmonies and dissonance).
Aftonen - Hugo Alfven
Come to Me My Love - Dello Joio
(We performed this piece not long after my favorite and most influential teacher passed away, and I was a mess on stage whenever we performed this, whether for Spring Concert or tour).
  • Northern Lights - Ola Gjeilo: I actually liked the work, too, now that I remembered listening that piece on YouTube. I just found Eriks Esenvalds's work of the same title more interesting with all the wine glasses and chimes action. Hehehehe
  • Ballade to the Moon - Daniel Elder: Ahhhh, this is one piece I'd love to sing with my university choir once more. We last performed that piece while we had an out-of-town tour in our country almost a year ago.
  • Sing Me To Heaven - Daniel Gawthrop: Just listened to it a while ago; while it is quite simple at first glance, the appropriate use of dissonances makes it very ethereal to listen to. (I love pairing this choral work to Shinji Miyazaki's "Oracion" from Pokemon: The Rise of Darkrai, imo)
  • Sound Off - Paul Rardin: Wow, this piece is very entertaining; I wonder if my all-male high school choir could pull this off hehehe
  • Water Night - Eric Whitacre: I actually liked this piece the most among all Eric Whitacre's works. Most notably, the climactic "If you open your eyes" part is so amazing as if the heavens would open up from that part hahahaha
  • Aftonen - Hugo Alfven and Come to Me My Love - Dello Joio - I have yet to listen this soon.


Alright, time for me to mention some of my personal choral favorites up to this time, alongside the two pieces I've mentioned in this post.
  • Ave Maria - Franz Biebl: While I performed this piece along with my fellow high school choristers at that time, I shed a lot of tears when it reaches to the near end of the piece. Totally one of the most remarkably astounding works from this composer.
  • Light of a Clear Blue Morning - Dolly Parton, arr. Craig Hella Johnson: The message is truly inspiring; the arranger made the message touch our hearts. Along with the Ballade to the Moon mentioned by jvl101993, this is one of the pieces we've performed in our out-of-town tour.
  • Dulaman - Irish Folk Song, arr. Michael McGlynn: While the chorus part is very simple (hell, repetitive, even), this is one of the pieces I got obsessed with when I first learned it (most especially that I was given the solo, hence more responsibility on my part to not murder the piece) because its tempo is really fast making my tongue twist given the text. With that, I also appreciated Fionnghuala (definitely the same structure as Dulaman) and Hinbarra.
  • Stars - Eriks Esenvalds: This is one piece I liked the most from the composer. One of my fellow choristers in our university choir told me that our conductor considered the piece as a "choral suicide" because of the natural tendency to raise our intonation, which is the biggest challenge this piece entails, especially when the wine glasses go tacet on some parts.
  • Only in Sleep - Eriks Esenvalds: This is another piece I liked the most from the composer. I actually thought that this piece is very simple from the sounds of it with a little hint of dissonance, and it's very ethereal to listen to.
  • We Beheld Once Again the Stars - Z. Randall Stroope: One of my fellow choristers in our university choir told me that (I guess you know this world-renowned choir:) the Philippine Madrigal Singers pulled off this piece amazingly. It's true; I've listened to some choirs attempted to perform this piece decently (whether live or recorded), but I loved the rendition of the Philippine Madrigal Singers the most in that regard.

On another note, has anyone here performed or listened to this piece? It is an arrangement of a Visayan folk song that even international choirs made surprisingly decent renditions of it:

 

Pastelle

we're all star stuff
What instrument you play? If it was flute I woulda been scared of getting sobbed on from the director .-.
I'm a trumpet player, so I was far enough away to not get wet lol. It's cool to hear other people performing for NBA conventions as well.

  • Ave Maria - Franz Biebl: While I performed this piece along with my fellow high school choristers at that time, I shed a lot of tears when it reaches to the near end of the piece. Totally one of the most remarkably astounding works from this composer.
We played a band arrangement of this piece at our last concert! It was actually the one that made my director cry on the podium lol. While its gorgeous either way, the band version will never top the male choir version imo. The ending is by far the best part of it, it's so moving.
 
So, I went to see my HS choir perform a preview concert last night (they were selected as an honor choir for my state's annual Music Educators' Convention, which is also where the HS All-State ensembles gather to perform), and they absolutely blew me away. They sounded on par with a number of university choirs I've heard. I didn't get any recordings, but I'll definitely come back and edit this post when I get my concert program from home and highlight some of the pieces they did. My HS director loves programming energetic, animated pieces (where the singers are doing a lot of movement and interaction with one another), but he also has a real knack for programming amazing soulful works as well. I'll look for good recordings.

Meanwhile, my community college chorus is doing Faure's Requiem, so please send us well wishes (that piece is monstrous, and the level of direction isn't exactly high-quality, considering we never touch on basic choral concepts, such as vowel modifications and such to try and help tuning or blend, so my expectations aren't exactly high.).
 

Martin

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Man... I wish the orchestra/choir at my sixth form was competent. Its a real downer to have a really poor quality orchestra, and its really put a damper on my fondness of school concerts.

I guess its why I enjoy my orchestra/concer band/brass band so much. They are at least somewat competent. Its amazing how much of an effect the quality of the performance can have on your attitiude towards playing in it.
 
I'm a pianist at my high school chamber orchestra, and I can say it's rather fun. It's nice to see that there are other piano players in this thread.

We play a ton of different things and compete in UIL competitions, as well as doing performances at my school and other local areas. I'm currently working a piece called Concerto Grosso for "String Orchestra and Piano obbligato" (lol I don't know the proper name) by Ernest Bloch, and a piece called "Raindrops" by Yukiko Nishimura. My real passion though is solo playing. Currently I'm trying to become good at Chopin's Scherzos 1 and 2 (which are both very nice pieces that are painful to play), and various other things. Since I moved recently, though, I don't even have piano (we had to sell it due to difficulties) and I can only practice at school.

It would be nice to have a chat with other pianists in this thread. If anybody wants details I'd be glad to oblige.
 
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I'm a pianist at my high school chamber orchestra, and I can say it's rather fun. It's nice to see that there are other piano players in this thread.

We play a ton of different things and compete in UIL competitions, as well as doing performances at my school and other local areas. I'm currently working a piece called Concerto Grosso for "String Orchestra and Piano obbligato" (lol I don't know the proper name) by Ernest Bloch, and a piece called "Raindrops" by Yukiko Nishimura. My real passion though is solo playing. Currently I'm trying to become good at Chopin's Scherzos 1 and 2 (which are both very nice pieces that are painful to play), and various other things. Since I moved recently, though, I don't even have piano (we had to sell it due to difficulties) and I can only practice at school.

It would be nice to have a chat with other pianists in this thread. If anybody wants details I'd be glad to oblige.
I took piano lessons for about 10 years, but I was never diligent in practicing, so I can't say that I'm very good (not at the level to be a pianist in any ensemble). What I did get from it, however, was a lot of pitch recognition things that helped me in singing (knowing intervalic relationships helped me read music a lot better, so it made me a better sight singer). My piano lessons were also split into halves: one half was playing pieces, while the other was focusing on theory, scales, sight reading, and such. The latter half helped me so much in music education throughout school, as understanding theory in general really is a big help (which is something many of my friends who ended up taking AP Music Theory agreed with me on).

I do regret quitting (with school getting busy, studying for college exams, more involvement in choir, plus the increased courseload in later stages of HS). I definitely dabble a bit more now though, if that counts (I've tried learning various pieces from Pokemon game OSTs, as well as other pieces in general).
 

Martin

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I really dislike solo playing personally. I'm better at playing as part of a group and I find it more enjoyable, and as a result of my distaste for playing alone I've been slow in advancing grades due to a straight-up lack of practice (while for grades 1-4 I advanced at a rate of 1 grade per year, I've gotten lazy and it took three years to move onto grade 5, and two years on and I've still not done my grade six). I'm 17 and doing my AS levels, which means that I'm running out of time for extra the UKAS points that grades 6-8 give you to make a difference, and honestly having those grades under my belt would probably also make me a much better player in my various bands and orchestras. Its just that I have so little motivation to play solo and having a harder time balancing it with school and other activities* which is further slowing my ability to progress. It sucks because it was around when I got lazy with solo practice that I genuinely started to enjoy playing my instrument in a group as a pastime, and only recently have I thought that I really should play solo to improve my group playing.


*For example, this week has been a living hell, for example, with me not actually getting home until 1 AM every day due to coursework followed by one activity or another (I attended a talk about overuse of screens on Wednesday evening that overran by four hours due to parents with no idea what they were talking about interjecting every two seconds, I had a language lesson and my parents' car got stuck in a gridlock for three hours due to road works on one of the worst crossroads in London on the way back on either Monday or Tuesday (can't remember now 'cause my mind is still swimming due to a lack of breaks from working this week) and I had rehearsals for a concert that went on until midnight on the other three days.
 
Alright, so I've finally had time to sit down and look up videos.

Count on It! - Kevin Memley: It's an entertaining piece that is almost entirely count-singing. This is probably the best recording of it that I could find, though it still isn't quite what my HS choir did (again, my HS director loves energetic pieces, so there was a lot more movement, interaction between singers next to one another on stage, and the claps and stomps were a bit more pronounced: this choir seemed a bit stiff on stage).
Wayfaring Stranger - Michael Engelhardt: This is the type of soulful piece my HS director loves programming. You can find it on YouTube (though the audio quality is either not very good or not very loud. Also, their group performed it with bass guitar and percussion, which isn't the same for the other groups).

Their full program included these pieces as well, which were all done quite spectacularly.

Norwegian Lullaby - Gunnar Eriksson
Cheres Fleurs - Jules Massenet
Neckereien Op. 31 No. 2 - Johannes Brahms
The Piano - Don Macdonald
August - Brendan Taaffe
 
My piano lessons were also split into halves: one half was playing pieces, while the other was focusing on theory, scales, sight reading, and such. The latter half helped me so much in music education throughout school, as understanding theory in general really is a big help (which is something many of my friends who ended up taking AP Music Theory agreed with me on)
Ooh, did you ever have to learn the four scales (major, natural, harmonic, melodic) for every key? Did you have to practice arpeggios (major, minor, V7, etc.) for every key? I have to do those and it improves my playing significantly. What theory books do you work out of?
 
Ooh, did you ever have to learn the four scales (major, natural, harmonic, melodic) for every key? Did you have to practice arpeggios (major, minor, V7, etc.) for every key? I have to do those and it improves my playing significantly. What theory books do you work out of?
Yes: Major scales seven times, all three types of minor scales five times, as well as arpeggios, chromatic scales, inversions, and we eventually got to secondary dominant progression exercises.

The theory books I worked out of were called "Note Speller" and "Harmony Lessons". Believe there were four or five of the former, and I got to the second on the latter (I stopped near the end, where it got to melody composition).
 
That's too bad... I love cool percussion arrangements :[ Were they played on set?

That sounds so cool omg. The biggest thing my band did was play at Disney World last year, but I would kill to get a chance to perform at Carnegie Hall!
As far as your question goes, all I can say that every music person has said before is PRACTICE. I'm not a vocalist, so I can't really help you with things like breathing and presentation. As far as reading music, try to find recordings online to get an idea of how things are read. Pay attention to articulation and dynamics, they're so important and take music to the next level. Practice until you can perform it in your sleep.

Hope this somewhat helped! ^_^
When I was in high school we played at Disney world. It was one of my fondest memories. We all got completely Shit faced drunk in our hotel room. Ahh good times.
 

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