The San Francisco Bach Choir invited Bay Area Sacred Harp singers to give a workshop at their choral festival, which was intriguingly titled “Many Voices, One Art.”
We had a pretty good turnout at our workshops. It’s very hard to adequately present the Sacred Harp tradition in a one hour workshop — as we’ve learned every yer at the San Francisco Free Folk Festival. Even for singers who are used to sight singing, it’s a lot to take in because it’s significantly different from other singing traditions: we’re not a performance tradition, we don’t rehearse, we don’t use absolute pitch, you have to be OK with microtonalities and improvised ornamentation.
I don’t think we’ll get any new singers from giving this workshop. But we had fun, and most of the participants had fun.
And personally I enjoyed going to the other workshops.