Philadelphia Concert Reflection

During one of the days of the Philadelphia trip, we had the privilege of performing in Temple University. Upon arrival to Temple University, I was immediately overwhelmed by the size of the campus and the seemingly endless amount of buildings. When we got to the room we would be performing in, I was shocked at how large it was. A-18 was tiny compared to the room that sat all three choruses. In addition, we had the opportunity to work with Rollo Dilworth, who’s the chair of music education and Christine Bass, the assistant professor of music education at Temple University. The learning experience was quite beneficial and we all got a taste of how different pieces are treated in college. Gospel was the first chorus to perform and

The first song we sang was “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” by Peter Lutkin. Our group did well in terms of blend and balance, but the tone was an issue. For example, in measures four, seven, and eight, we didn’t open our mouths tall enough on words like countenance, peace, and face. Furthermore, we had trouble making the song flow smoothly at first, but after we were instructed to act as if we were spreading butter on bread, the effect was achieved. Expression and musicianship wasn’t something our group excelled at, and we lacked emotion in a song with so much meaning. The next song we sang was “Ain-A That Good News” by William L Dawson. In this song, we had the most trouble with our expressions and the tempo. In order to fix this, we were instructed to turn to each other and demonstrate call and response singing, which helped the group understand the meaning of the song. We also marched along to the song to get into the tempo and act more lively. The last song we sang was “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff. Unlike the other songs, balance was cited as an issue and Ms. Bass worked to help the men project and obtain a darker sound. On the other hand, our expression and musicianship was demonstrated best in this song and we sang with great intensity and power. Although we did have kinks that needed to be worked out in the songs, I still feel as though we did a great job performing. I didn’t enjoy performing in front of other