22-Mar-99 Manna rehearsal

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The JCC windows were covered with Passover pictures this morning when I went to swim. The building is in two parts, the old Working Boys’ home on the right, five stories of brick with a tower that you can see for miles away over the Charles River marshes, and the new gym and auditorium on the left, with a lobby in between that’s all glass in front. Today the glass had pictures of seder table items, horseradish, matzo, cups of wine, parsley; Moses in the bulrushes; Moses before Pharoh; the burning bush; the plagues; etc. Inside is a display with handouts of passover projects to do with kids, songs for the seder, and recipes. I’ve been much more conscious of the Jewish aspect of the Jewish Community Center the last couple of years than I used to be.

There was an empty medium speed lane in the pool and I did 32 lengths (800 meters) in 20:20 without having to stop to let anybody pass or having to slow down because of any slower traffic. I love when that happens. There was a woman in the lane with me most of the time, but she was consistently 1/2 to 2/3 of a length ahead of me. The first three or four lengths seemed long as usual; then I hit my stride and cruised up to about 12 lengths feeling effortless and smooth. From 16 to 24 lengths I switched to breathing every stroke instead of every other and put on a little more steam, taking a couple of seconds off the time per lap. When I’m really in the swing of it, after swimming all winter, I can think in groups of 8 lengths rather than individual ones.

The conductors of the gospel choirs have an entirely different style of conducting from those of the Jewish choirs, and a different way of teaching songs, too. Our conductors pretty much stay still and work with their arms, but the gospel conductors get their whole body into it and make much bigger movements with their arms. When we get new music we generally sight read through it once, then go over small parts of it section by section with the piano until people know their parts. When we learned the pieces we’re doing together for the Project Manna concert, Dennis, of the Boston Community Chorus, sung the melody once through, then had the sopranos join in, and went through the whole piece with them a couple of times. He had them keep going and went over to the altos and sang the alto part and had them join in. By the time the basses were singing, everyone knew the whole song. I love seeing the different approaches to music, as well as the music itself.