Chorus D

As I mentioned a while back, I've joined an a cappella group. After a few weeks, I learned that their official name is Chorus D. I haven't yet asked what the D stands for, since I rather enjoy thinking of a new D-word each time I go to rehearsal. (My current favorite is Daphnomancy.) The group consists of approximately twelve folks, with more or less the same number of men and women. I say approximately because we pick up new members every now and then (much like me), and not everyone can make it every week to rehearsal. The chorus is four-part mixed, so it's S-A-T-B, which is a first for me. I'm used to being in a four-part men's group, meaning the basses and tenors are subdivided into higher and lower parts.

They're all simply wonderful people. The conductor, Noguchi, is also the conductor of the high school chorus, and is also a math teacher. I'm not sure what most of the girls do, but I know they're all just local townsfolk--Noguchi and I are the only teachers in the mix. Of the guys, there's a member of the coast guard, and the guy who runs the Fujifilm shop and does most of the photography on the island. One of the other basses has a son at the elementary school I teach at, and it's scary how similar they look. The other low bass is Nagato, and he's a 72-year-old tour guide. He seems to love giving me random bits of trivia about Tsushima, or Japan in general, from explaining kanji to describing the mountains on Tsushima to Japanese architecture. Our only full-time tenor (Noguchi spends most of his time conducting, and only sings with us during rehearsal) is Ushijima, the priest at the local church. His wife sings with us, and is the really good soprano I think I've mentioned here before. (I also found out their church is Anglican.)

I learned very quickly that the chorus isn't tied to the church at all. I wouldn't have had much of a problem with it had they been--my favorite part about the whole church experience is the music. New songs are arranged and proposed by the conductor, and the group talks it over and decides together whether to include them in the repertoire. Our current set list consists of the themes from Mononoke Hime, Astro Boy, and Space Battleship Yamato. All of these are anime in one form or another, and are all classics in their own right. At least, that's the feeling I get from people here.

The entire group is laid back. It feels in many ways like the glee club did back at UGA--no pressure or elitism, but still an earnest desire to make good music. They love to make jokes, and we spend a good chunk of time just laughing during each rehearsal. It's really interesting to hear the conductor give instructions in Japanese. I still can't understand most of the finer points of his directions (I usually choose some bit of Crowell's advice at random), but they use the same Italian words we do for music--forte, piano, legato, soprano, alto, tenor, bass.

The group speaks more English than I was expecting, but that's still not much. It's been great not having an English crutch, having to fend for myself, and I imagine it's helping my listening and speaking a lot. It's still kind of frustrating when I can't get the specifics on things like how the conductor wants us to shape a certain phrase.

Also, the group has an official drinking song. Maybe drinking song is the wrong term... Anytime we all go out, we have a song that we sing as a toast before drinking. It's in four-part harmony, it's done a cappella, and it's done wherever we are, regardless of the restaurant or the otherwise quiet atmosphere. I've recorded the full song, and I'll get around to posting it one day, but it's about 200 megs, which will take a while to upload. Suffice it to say, it's a lot of fun whenever we go out.