Another concert I wish I’d attended. Dale Warland’s retiring, and the Dale Warland Singers sang their last concert yesterday in the Cities.
Courtesy of A Capella News
A couple years back, I bought the DWS recording of Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb. I’d sung the piece in high school; Tom Kasdorf is partial to Britten, and our choir was up to the technical challenge. In TK’s first rehearsal he introduced us to Christopher Smart‘s Cat Jeoffry, who’s been following me around ever since.
When the Warland Singers recording arrived, I picked it up at the post office on my way to work and popped the CD into the player on my desk. Suddenly, a bit over a minute into the performance, a vision of Dale, in a rehearsal on Macalester’s stage, dancing and chattering the complex rhythms of Britten’s second movement:
Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter….
It was probably our second rehearsal. We’d stumbled badly on a run-through, and Warland was isolating the technical problems. We worked on the rhythms for a time, added the words when he was confident we’d mastered the counts, and finally fit the music to the section. I’d forgotten I’d sung this at Mac. But I’d not forgotten Dale’s teaching methods.
Best wishes, Dale. Hope the new career goes as well as the Singers.