Waking up was a task that we knew could easily be accomplished with the knowledge of a great breakfast and a day full of music ahead of us. After another incredible meal, we once again moved to rehearsal. The men and women were in separate rooms for the first rehearsal. Both rehearsals produced astonishing results as the pieces came together wonderfully. Then, a few of the men showed Mr. Snyder the video of us singing “The Longest Time” in the dorms Tuesday night, which led to the rehearsal of that piece. After singing through it once, we were all impressed with how well we had learned the song in such a short amount of time, and we agreed that we could sing it on tour next summer! After our first rehearsal, we returned to work on the piece “Honor and Glory” with Muskingum University’s very own Dr. Highben. This piece has been a fun challenge for the Chorale and our rehearsal with Dr. Highben brought new insight and passion.
After lunch, we began ‘Opus Olympics’, a series of fun and silly games where all of the small groups, or opera, challenge one another. We began outside for the first game, which was a competition of ridiculous random skills (such as pig calling and yodeling) and then we had a soccer relay race up one of Muskingum’s hills. After that, we moved inside for several games. The next was to guess a song by the first few seconds of the piano accompaniment and to be the first to say the title – backwards! That is much harder than it sounds! Then we had a written ‘group quiz’ about the Cardinal Chorale’s history and handbook, and we finished with a game of ‘drawing telephone’. We now have to wait in anticipation for the results tomorrow!
After our normal schedule of rehearsing and our evening meal, we met once more as the full Chorale and had a rehearsal with Len Thomas, who has arranged multiple pieces in our repertoire. He shared his wisdom and his wonderful sense of humor with us and gave us some musical advice. He even played a recording of some Pennsylvanians, directed by Fred Waring, Jr, sight-reading his arrangement of “On This Night of a Thousand Stars”, – the piece that we are working on! Hearing this motivated and talented choir sing the same piece as us over forty years ago inspired us to meet the highest expectations, especially under Len’s direction! When the rehearsal was coming to a close, Len serenaded us with “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music, which was beautiful! He is an inspiration to us all!
We found some time to take the full group picture, as well as other small group photos, which included the choral assistants, the dorm assistants, the opus assistants, and even our very own blog team! Those photos will be shared in a separate blog post. Click here
As the sun began to set, the Chorale met in our groups to share affirmations and blessings from the week, since tomorrow night we will be closing our time together with a concert and then heading home. Each opus reflected on the week and shared thoughts about the experience. Tomorrow will be ‘crunch time’, as Mr. Snyder says, full of rehearsal and laughter as we finish up our week!
