'Tis The Season for Auditions, Fa-la-la-la-la---la-la-la-la!

‘Tis The Season for Auditions, Fa-la-la-la-la---la-la-la-la!

On Monday, another cycle of summer auditions starts for the Midwest Motet Society.  It’s our longest audition period—about two months—and the one I look forward to the most.  While the winter audition period has brought many wonderful singers to the MMS, it is right in between the most busy times for me, Christmas—and conducting “Messiah”—and the next concert cycle.  I can’t relax or enjoy the winter auditions as much—and I do ENJOY auditions.

Now I know, those of you who have ever auditioned for anything can’t imagine why or how I would enjoy auditions, but I do.  I like to meet new singers and hear them—and unlike many music directors, I WANT you to do well.  I want people to feel relaxed so they can sing their best because—and I know, this again seems counter to many—I WANT you to make it. The Midwest Motet Society is different from other local choruses because we are a chamber choir and only a few can ever *make it*.  Our By-Laws state we can only have 24 singing members. But still, I want to have more wonderful singers join us and always look forward to hearing new people to join the wonderful people who already sing with us. We have a good time and I have always believed the more the merrier, at least until we hit 24 singers!

The music planned for the next two concert cycles is really outstanding and here again, no one else is really doing the repertoire the MMS is doing. 

Our Fall concert will be in early November 2012 and is titled, “Sacred Songs from Sacred Places: Motets of William Byrd, Salome Rossi and Claudio Monteverdi.”  The composers themselves are very interesting and were contemporaries.  William Byrd was a composer of the Chapel Royal in Tudor England.  The only problem was he was Roman Catholic at a time when it wasn’t exactly safe to be a Roman Catholic in England—Henry VIII didn’t just behead wives he didn’t like!  Salome Rossi was an Italian Jewish composer in Mantua (he was Court composer of the Gonzaga family, the Dukes of Mantua) and Venice.  He was the first person to set the Psalms for choir for use in a Jewish worship service and his short religious pieces are GORGOUS! He was also a viola da gamba player and played in Claudio Monteverdi’s orchestra. Rossi’s sister was a fine opera singer (she had a beautiful voice, could dance and act and was beautiful to look at too) and sang with Monteverdi’s opera company. And out last composer is Claudio Monteverdi, who was the Capella master at St Mark’s in Venice—a very nice gig at the time.  Monteverdi is the best known composer of the late Renaissance/early Baroque period and laid the ground work for opera as we know it. We are singing motets and English Anthems and short religious works of the three—and their works fit together nicely. Beautiful music.

Spring 2013, with a concert in early June, brings something completely different—operettas!  We will be singing choruses from operettas and several MMS members will sing arias (with and without chorus) from those operettas as well.  I have one or two other *silly pieces* to add to the mix and we plan to semi-stage the whole thing.  Puns will reign--or is it rain?—down.  Naughty Marietta will join Rose Marie, the Mounties and the Mikado on the HMS Pinafore—will we sink?  Join us and find out!

Our auditions begin Monday, July 2 and will continue through the end of August.  We will have an MMS Retreat with our clinician, Dr. Albert Jackson, Chair of Music at South Suburban College and Director of the South Suburban Chorale, on Saturday, August 11, so try to audition if possible before, so you can be included.

All auditions are individual so you need not worry about anyone else hearing you—I try to make you comfortable.  Our rehearsals will start the end of August, continue until our November concert and are on Tuesday evenings in Flossmoor.

If you would like to make an audition appointment either call the MMS phone (708)206-0380 and leave a message or email:     marie@midwestmotet.org 

 More information is also on our website:  www.midwestmotet.org

Hope some of you audition and look forward to hearing from you!