The Brazos Valley Chorale

Janice and I had a lot of fun singing with the Yellow Door Choir in Montreal, so we were eager to join a choir again down here. After a bit of online searching, we found a choir - or rather, a chorale (say it with a Texas twang :-) - the Brazos Valley Chorale.

It's a massive group - I think we're about 125 people. The choir has been around for about 35 years and it's a really eclectic group of people. There are 4 large concerts during the year, the first being on Nov.2. For our first concert, we're doing Carmina Burana by Orff. You might not recognize it by name, but you'll probably recognize the first piece, "O Fortuna".

According to our director, "It's not a sacred piece..." - apparently, it was written by a bunch of monks that were having a lot of fun. For our Christmas concert on Dec.6, we're doing a *beautiful* suite of Christmas carols arranged by John Rutter. I've heard all the usual Christmas carols, but Rutter's arrangement of them is just so incredible and breathes new life into them for me. After Christmas, there will be an "On Broadway" themed concert as well as an "Opera and Oratoria" concert. The music so far is challenging and fun - should make for a great season.

The choir itself is extremely well-organized - I'm really impressed. We had auditions on Aug.23 (two days after we got here), and we've hit the ground running with Carmina and Rutter at our Monday rehearsals. Every other week is a half hour men's sectional immediately preceding the rehearsal and on alternate weeks it's a women's sectional. The choir director is very focused (there's no "break" in the middle of our rehearsals to socialize), but he manages to keep the mood light throughout the rehearsal with jokes. Not to mention a couple of rowdy tenors sitting beside me that are the clowns of the entire choir.