music

“The Structures and Movement of Breathing” by Barbara Conable

November 30, 2019 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Primer for Choirs and Choruses

Recommended to me by: reading Conable’s previous book What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body

A brief book (45 pages) with lively, pithy anatomical details about breathing for singing. Illustrations show breathing anatomy from lips to pelvic floor, including where are lungs are (from slightly above the collarbones to the bottom of the sternum, and filling the space front to back) and aren’t (no lung whatsoever below the diaphragm doming up from the bottom ribs).

Reminders for singers include

How are your ribs moving as you sing?
Remember to organize around your spine like an apple around a core.
When you take air in, your spine gathers, like a cat preparing to spring.
When you are using air to sing, your spine lengthens, like a cat springing.
Your diaphragm works on inhalation. Leave the area along to dome back up on exhalation.

Highly recommended for singers and anyone else interested in the anatomy of breathing.

Available at Amazon.

“Unintentional Music” by Lane Arye

August 23, 2016 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Releasing Your Deepest Creativity

Recommended to me by: a friend

This is a wonderful introduction to Process Work via making music.

There is the primary signal – the music we want to make – and the secondary signals – all the mistakes, hesitations, and imperfections that pop up despite our best efforts. Lane Arye recommends emphasizing a secondary signal and seeing what happens. Probably, another secondary signal will emerge.

Following the chain of secondary signals can lead directly to core issues and allow them to change. It can lead organically to more effective technique. It can connect us to what our spirit wants to express.

Highly recommended if you make music or art or want to learn about Process Work in a playful way.

The introduction and first chapter are available on Lane Arye’s website.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Northwest Passage” by Stan Rogers as seen by Matt James

January 28, 2016 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

“Northwest Passage” on youtube Go listen!

Stan Rogers was a Canadian folk music luminary, writing and performing songs with wonderful lyrics and harmonies. Sadly, he died back in 1983 in a airplane fire. He got out, but died of smoke inhalation when he went back in to help others. I remember the collective grief at a folk festival when the news first went around.

When I saw a post about a large-format children’s book that illustrates Stan Rogers’ song, I immediately requested it at the library. The colorful, detailed, dramatic paintings illustrate the song line by line.

The book also includes a detailed history of John Franklin’s doomed expedition searching for the Northwest Passage through Arctic waters to the Pacific. The explorers died of an unusually cold winter, and of hubris in thinking they did not need the help of local First Nations people. Instead of foraging locally, they carried canned food brought from England which turned out to have a lot of lead in the cans.

The last page has sheet music for the song, and a fourth verse that was never recorded.

And it will be I’ll come again to loved ones left at home,
Place the journals on the mantel, bake the frost out of my bones,
Leaving memories far behind me, only memories after all,
And hardships then, the hardest to recall

Rest in peace, Stan Rogers. You are not forgotten!

Stan Rogers website with information about his albums and another book about the same song.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Mass” by Leonard Bernstein

October 9, 2014 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

I heard Bernstein’s Mass on the radio as a kid and was hooked by both the words and the music. I bought the double CD set at some point, but hadn’t listened to it for years. I got it out recently, thinking about interfaith. It’s a theater piece of a full Latin mass, interspersed with more modern songs and commentary, written by a Jewish man. It still grabs me, and to my amazement large parts of it are stored in my head.

The odd rhythms struck me, and I looked on Multnomah County library’s website. Lo and behold, they have sheet music for the entire Mass (3 copies), including stage directions. The part that I thought was in 7/8 was in 5/8, and other parts are written in combination 3/4 and 3/8, or 12/8 with a few measures of 6/8 interspersed. I can imagine what the singers and musicians thought as they were learning their parts!

The Multnomah County library has a CD of the music too.

“Imperfect Harmony” by Stacy Horn

August 17, 2013 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Finding Happiness Singing with Others

This book answered exactly the question I had. What is it about singing that is so compelling for me? Do other people have the same experience?

Stacy Horn expertly blends personal experience, choir history, music history, and contemporary events into a compelling narrative about her membership in the all-volunteer Choral Society of Grace Church in New York. Each chapter focuses on a musical piece, which I thought would be dull, but she brings carefully researched music history to sparkling life, woven together with the other themes.

She forthrightly acknowledges sexism in choir membership and racism in the Chatham Street Chapel Riot, where a white choir chased out a Black assembly to celebrate Emancipation Day – and then four Black men were arrested. She doesn’t point out that all the composers she highlights are men (except Britlin Losee), and the choir leadership is all men, but she does include women’s voices talking about what singing means to them. Despite being affiliated with Grace Church and performing religious music for Christmas concerts, the choir members have a mix of religions and beliefs.

Singing brings connection. When we sing the same sounds, our brains are in sync. When people sing different parts near each other, their voices mingle in the air and reach warmly back to the singers. Interviewed singers repeatedly speak of choir membership as a balm for loneliness and a source of community. Singing enlivens the body and spirit with joy even with sorrowful songs

Highly recommended if you sing, or if you just want to learn a little more about singing, or music history, or the Grace Church Choral Society.

Book excerpt: Science says singing makes us happier

Book excerpt: What singing in a choir teaches us about teamwork

Youtube videos of all the musical pieces in the book

Available at bookshop.org.

“How to Learn the Alexander Technique” by Barbara Conable

July 20, 2013 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: A Manual for Students

Recommended to me by: reading Conable’s previous book, What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body

This book is less playful and more dense than What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body, but it is not at all the dry instruction manual I thought it would be. It is full of lucid explanations about how the body really works, along with common errors in how we map our bodies. I think the subtitle should be, “A Manual for Humans.” I long for the freedom of movement and buoyant support she claims is possible for everyone.

There is a section titled “If You Have Suffered Abuse or Violence” which is sensitive, compassionate, and accurate (like the rest of the book).

“Persons who are healing learn to become very skillful inhibitors [an important Alexander Technique concept], not in the sense that they do nothing, but in the sense that they say no to habituated self destruction and wait for the more constructive response that was blocked by the habitual.”

I keep saying that the Alexander teachers I’ve tried don’t acknowledge the work I’ve already done, and I think this is why. Years of practice in stopping and waiting.

Some insights:

The weight-bearing part of the spine is inside the body, deep to the knobs we feel along our backs.
The pelvis is the lower part of the upper body, part of the torso. There is no internal anatomical structure at the waist.
The top of the sacrum transfers the weight of the upper body to the pelvis. The rest of the triangular sacrum and tailbone float free of weight.
Flexibility can be increased by putting all the joints gently through their range of motion once a day. The whole routine takes 5 minutes.
Give yourself permission to be a “flapdoodle” at night – to move freely in your sleep like a child.

Here is a brief interview with Barbara Conable with a pointed comment about “inhibiting” at the end.

Here’s her page at bodymap.org.

Highly, highly recommended for all humans with an interest in how to move comfortably and well.

Available at biblio.com.