As I write this I’m listening to Bach’s St John Passion on Radio 3. I always try to hear the BBC National Chorus of Wales when they are broadcast (as they have been quite frequently recently), at least so if I am ever an ‘extra’ in one of their concerts there is a talking point with other singers. And my last performance in concert was of this very work.
Bristol Choral Society has had another ‘virtual’ rehearsal which I joined for the first part. We started work on autumn repertoire, using a digital recording of the notes as a backing track. Some of us have discovered one advantage of rehearsing this way – we can happily sing along to the solo parts in whatever voice with impunity. Unfortunately when the recording was relayed to us directly through Zoom rather than via the loudspeakers in our conductor’s home, I couldn’t both hear it and see the score on another application, so I had to drop out at that point. (I was standing at a music stand with a tablet balanced on it, so a second device wasn’t really an option).
Over at church, we in the choir are going to try to record a couple of hymns for Easter Day, one voice at a time over a backing track and then have them edited to sound simultaneously. I haven’t tried recording mine yet – somehow it didn’t seem right to do so before the evening of Good Friday.