1990 was a year of new stuff. The Hubble Telescope was launched. (It didn’t work, but they fixed it eventually.) The first web server was created and, with it, the World Wide Web. Smoking was banned on cross-country flights in the US (Yay!). The last official flight of the SR-71 Blackbird was a leisurely cruise […]
This bit of fun came up in conversation this week and I thought I’d toss it out to remind everyone of it. If you’re new to the Windward Choral Society (or just cruising the blog), this was the result of a donation from the Whole Foods Market in Kailua; they provided a bunch of cool […]
Pop quiz, what’s more difficult: singing really loud or singing really soft? If you answered “soft”, you get a gold star. If you didn’t, you go stand in the corner and think about what you did (spoken in my mother’s voice, of course). When you’re singing soft, you’re holding back a lot of the pressure […]
The Windward Choral Society June concert repertoire is in place and includes a truly beautiful rendition of “Oh Danny Boy” by Frederic Weatherly. To celebrate this wonderful tune I want to share a slightly…um…different version. For some (truly unfathomable) reason, my father had a 45 rpm* single of this tune and would break it out […]
“I don’t know if it is a spiritual, physiological or psychological phenomenon, but I believe now more than ever that singing is a universal, built-in mechanism designed to cultivate empathy and compassion.” – Eric Whitacre One of the missions of the Windward Choral Society is the exploration of the health benefits of choral singing. Many […]
If you’ve been a choral singer for any length of time, you’ve had it happen. A beautiful song is flowing from you and you’re deep within its meaning and it reaches out and climbs on in and sticks in your throat. There’s nothing you can do about it, the lump forms and you’re nearly brought […]
I just stumbled upon this little gem featuring our old friend Patti “Always Wearing a Look of Mischief” Amelotte. As always, she had managed to park herself in an unexpected place doing unexpected things wearing that sneaky little smile. If you thought playing Appalachian Christmas music in Hawaii was a stretch, how about Bluegrass in […]
According to the Guinness folks (the record-keepers, not the brewery), the longest continual vocal note was held for 1 minute, 43 seconds by Richard Fink IV. Wow. I can’t even hold my breath that long, I can’t imagine making noise too! Hawaii’s own Raiatea Helm can crank up a long note as well. If you’ve […]
So there I was, listening to a visiting choir, when somebody started playing a whistle. At least it sounded like a whistle, playing a melody line that complimented the piece being sung. Why is this significant? Nobody had a whistle. The technique that was being demonstrated is Polyphonic Overtone Singing. The “Poly” part refers to […]
If this doesn’t give you chicken skin, I don’t know what will. I found myself struggling not to cry (I didn’t do very well either). Amazing and inspiring. https://youtu.be/67WZN4JlInw