July 5, 2010 by Ro.
Moderately Bright Four plus their extremely bright spouses and children head north in a three-car caravan to visit Jeff’s parents in upstate New York for the holiday weekend. Jeff and Audrey lead the way for the four-hour trip, the last hour of which is on meandering country roads with “Warning! Farm Equipment!” signs, wild turkey crossings, and more silos than Steve has seen in his entire life. Ro is especially curious and excited by this adventure because Jeff’s parents actually live in a barn! She is picturing a weekend in a hay mow, sharing a bed with chickens and other farm creatures, and waking to sweet mooing noises made by the family cow.
At last they arrive to what is indeed a barn, (yes, painted barn-red and everything!) but now equipped with guest rooms, plumbing, an in-ground pool, a hot tub, a rec room with a pool table and ping pong, a modern kitchen, surrounded with beautiful gardens and decks, and featuring a spectacular view of Lake Cayuga, one of the Finger Lakes. There is not a cow in sight, and the only chickens around have been deliciously barbecued.
Over the weekend, as Jeff’s generous and hospitable parents proceed to stuff us with fabulous meals and libational fluids, the tale of the barn’s conversion is told. Jeff and his brothers were raised in the barn, which originally had only a wood stove for heat, a hand pump for water, and a composting toilet. It still is a barn, but decades of innovation and hard work have transformed it into a the unique, elegant, and comfortable structure it is today. In addition, the family owns the property next door, with a house they turned into a charming and spacious guest house. An acre of lawn and an expanse of wildflowers lead to the lake a mile and a half down the hill. It is breathtaking!
Weekend activities include non-stop eating, swimming in the pool, gazing at the lake, nightly bonfires (and, of course, s’mores) and sing-alongs with Ro’s husband Allen on guitar, watching fireworks, a picnic at Taughannock park and trek up to the river to the waterfall, and a trip to the local farmers’ market and craft sale. Jeff arranges for MB4 to sing at the market and we have appreciative audiences both inside the market and outside by the dock. It is a thrill to sing at such a beautiful location!
We also “sing for our supper” in front of the barn before dinnertime (on the very foundation of the barn’s original silo), locking in the vote for “most picturesque place we’ve ever sung” — with a view of the lake in the background.
The entire weekend is a splendid success and we are so grateful to Jeff’s family for their hospitality!
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May 8, 2010 by Ro.
May 8, 2010
We begin work yet again on the “William Tell Overture.” We have begun work on this piece several times before, but no one can remember how to sing it at all, so we have to start all over again each time. The only way we know we have tried it before is that there are pencil notations in the music, made by Steve’s very hand.
But this time we are determined to learn it once and for all, so we plod gamely through it, in excruciatingly slow tempo, for several weeks, each time adding a few more pages that have been scribbled upon. It is a hectic piece, almost entirely eighth and sixteenth notes that dance dizzyingly across the page. Couple that with numerous page turns that happen at just the trickiest vocal parts and a multi-page repeat plus a nasty coda and you have yourself quite a challenge to our moderate brightness. We work diligently.
At last Steve is confident that we can pick up the tempo, so like Captain Kirk ordering “warp speed,” he kicks up the metronome. We sail at breakneck speed through the first four pages, huddled over the music in intense concentration, through all the tricky repeats and page turns, vainly trying to gasp a bit of breath during the rare sixteenth note rests. We fly through page five all the way to the bottom of the page. And suddenly and simultaneously, we stop. There is profound silence. Steve has forgotten to turn the page.
We all stare mutely at the measure we have just sung, with no clue whatsoever what comes next. After a heavy silent beat we all look at each other and burst into our patented hilarity as we all try to describe what it felt like. The best description is that it was like a pack of lemmings scrambling hellbent for the cliff, with the “William Tell Overture” as their soundtrack, and on reaching the edge, launch themselves headfirst, tiny lemming feet splayed, their mouths agape in silent screams as they plunge to their deaths.
We then spend quite a bit of rehearsal time mimicking the hapless lemmings, with snippets of “William Tell Overture” thrown in as the lead-in to their silent deathly plunge. Ba-da-bum ba-da-bum ba-da-bum-bum-bum AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!
It was funny. It really was.
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April 3, 2010 by Ro.
So Steve has a new shirt he is wearing at rehearsal. It doesn’t take Audrey long to remark how very hip he looks in his new threads. It is the truth. The shirt is of waffle weave fabric, and is printed all over with green argyle-type diamonds, and what’s that at the bottom right? A skull? Could be. Very hip indeed.
Finally we settle down to sing, Steve at the piano and the rest of us standing behind him. That’s when Ro notices something at Steve’s collarline, beneath his shirt. Could it possibly be a TATTOO??? There is a design at least 3 inches in diameter just below the nape of Steve’s neck. Green ink. Ro cannot resist a peek. Gently she pulls away the back of Steve’s neckline and peers inside to see — HAIR HAIR HAIR! There’s no tattoo at all, just a prodigious amount of luxuriant hair! The “tattoo” was a printed label inside the back of Steve’s shirt.
This leads to a protracted discussion of how difficult and ill-advised it would be to tattoo hirsute individuals like our beloved Steve. How Steve would have to endure frequent and painful depilatory sessions to keep his tattoo from becoming obscured beneath his natural furriness… Or perhaps this might lead to a whole slew of professional opportunities: electrolysis especially for those too hairy to tattoo, or a line of “Pluck-a-Tatt” kits, or, hey, let’s just work with the hair and create CHIA-TATTS! Imagine the possibilities: a schooner on a fuzzy sea, a skull that grows real hair, “I [heart] my golden retriever” (with pettable fur!)
Ro, Jeff, and Audrey are in ruins as these ideas came out in gasps, barely able to breathe in between spasms of laughter and hare-brained (hair-brained?) ideas. Even Steve’s shoulders are shaking a bit. It is a miracle we are able to salvage the rehearsal at all and get down to business.
We have just performed at our 6th annual Temple Hatikvah Coffeehouse and are getting ready for our April 17 performance at the Sacred Bean Coffeehouse. Our goal is not to repeat any of the songs we sang there last spring. It is a tall order, and if we can control our silliness, we should be able to pull it off.
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February 14, 2010 by Ro.
So much to be happy about: a new decade, Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, and new songs and new ventures for Moderately Bright Four. We are able to leave our holiday repertoire behind and start work on new things. It is a relief to sing songs without the word “mistletoe.” Steve, our priorities expert, has a fistful of tempting arrangements to suggest for us. We decide to work on “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “Drive My Car.” Both are excellent and have their own features to test the musical mettle of MB4. “Wish” has challenging harmonies with weird intervals, a bizarre key change, and sections that split into 5-part harmony. Steve solves the latter problem by asking Ro to cover both of the alto parts simultaneously. Aside from cloning or enduring some sort of schizoid episode, Ro can’t imagine how she will do this. Steve launches into his role as music theory guy, deconstructs the chords, and yes, succeeds in getting Ro to cover both alto parts and yet remain one person. The entire quartet is in awe.
The main problem with “Drive My Car” is three repeats and a coda, all involving split-second page turns. There are also quite a few nonsense syllables with tricky rhythms. Steve’s entire part consists of “Noo-n-n-noo-n-n-noo-n-n-noo” and Jeff’s bass line is, and I am not making this up: “I’ll love you ba ba b dm dm dm dm beep.” In fact the only part of the song that is catchier than the intro (“beep beep m beep beep yeah”) is the instrumental break. The Beatles used guitars, bass and drums. Since we have none of those things, we have to do the instrumental solos on voices alone. It is a lot of fun and we are starting to get good at it.
We better be! We have some shows coming up! Our first is a Purim celebration later this month at White Meadow Temple. To prepare for this, we are running through our tried and true repertoire. Most of the songs are ready for performance, but others show some memory lapses, in lyrics or harmonies or both. The most hilarious lapse shows up in the barbershop song “Bye Bye Blues.” The song features bell chords in which one by one we sing one note to add to a chord. (Bye bye bye bye blue blue blue blues). It’s a standard barbershop feature and lots of fun to do. For some reason (perhaps because we are standing out of order) Jeff forgets to come in, so it sounds like: Bye bye ___ bye blue ___ blue blues — with resounding silence in the blank spaces. We feel as if we have arrhythmia or sporadic hearing loss problems, like a loose wire. Jeff says we should say, “The tenor part will be sung by a CPAP machine.” Audrey suggests that we each be issued an air horn or similar noisy device to deploy in the event of such a memory lapse. It would be handy if one forgot a lyric: “There were bells on a hill but I never HOOOOONNNK!!” If we each have a different noise, our bell chords would be outstanding in a cacophonous way: HONK! Riingg! Screeech! Yowl! Yowl! Screeech! Riingg! HONK!
It’s worth looking into.
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December 21, 2009 by Ro.
Moderately Bright Four finishes a whirlwind of holiday festivity beginning with a perky show at the Morris View Adult Day Care Center right before Thanksgiving and ending on December 20 with a performance at Morris Choral Society’s annual Christmas concert as guest vocalists. In between we sing at the Sacred Bean Coffeehouse for an all-Christmas show, at the Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, at the Temple Hatikvah Chanukah dance, at the menorah lighting in Long Valley, and at Ro’s tree-trimming Soupfest. We are busy bees indeed.
All of this takes lots of rehearsal and many snacks, supplied generously by the fabulous and kind-hearted Brenda.
We succeed in building our holiday repertoire to a full hour of material, adding this year “Throw the Yule Log on, Uncle John,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” which has only one word: plum. Somehow we manage to get it wrong in rehearsal, substituting “fig,” “grape,” “prune” and other monosyllabic fruits. We think we are riotously funny and frequently wind up twitching on the floor, snorting merrily.
Morris Choral Society requests that we banter a bit with the audience, so Ro appoints herself the schtick master (she likes the word “schticksa”) even though this costs her many hours of sleep and anxiety planning and rehearsing her witty remarks. Many of these jokes are at poor Jeff’s expense, mostly because he doesn’t mind, but also because he is an easy target. [Go back to our bio and reread the part about Jeff being raised in a barn, and you’ll see why the stuff just writes itself.]
Ro is horrified to find out just before the show that Jeff’s parents will be in the audience, and she is concerned how they will react to these attacks on their son. Fortunately, they turn out to be good sports, just like Jeff. His mother even states, “That’s OK. He was born with a ‘Kick me’ sign on his back.”
The best part of the show is the wonderful audience, who seem to like Moderately Bright Four quite a bit. From their generous applause to their laughter at Ro’s jokes to their sighs at the end of songs like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” they give us the support we need not to melt into four little pools of stage fright in front of their very eyes. It is a wonderful day, followed by a raucous after-party at Ro’s where we even sing “M-O-T-H-E-R” to Jeff’s mother. The whole day is a huge success.
In fact, 2009 as a whole is a huge success for Moderately Bright Four, and we are looking forward to more musical merriment and mayhem in the New Year!
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