Trinity Newmarket Singers

What a wonderful afternoon! We had the largest group in a long time, and it was fun to have all that extra energy. We still managed to do quite a bit of talking about life and music.  I went on a bit about the Persian new year, happening tomorrow morning. It's the first day of spring. The vernal equinox happens at 10:46am. That is the astronomical spring, the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator – a line directly above Earth’s equator. So, our theme was Spring (as advertised), but my playlist was Songs about Celestial Events and Change.  Winter has been very long this year, long and cold. So, a celebration right now is a very good thing. I'm happy to be celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year with my family tomorrow. I talked a bit about the Haft Seen, which I love, the table of symbols, things that represent wishes or hopes for the new year, like abundance and prosperity, health and love. Here's a link to an article about the Haft Seen table.  Spring is about ne...

We stayed in the 1970s for most of our hour, but ventured into the 80s for a few songs. As usual, we laughed at some of the lyrics we had misunderstood or totally missed when we were young. Often when we dance to a song, we don't really listen, and maybe just sing along with the chorus. The other thing we laughed about was how much drug culture we noticed in the seventies songs. We wouldn't have noticed it then, as some of us were still quite young then.  We talked about unique elements in songs that we wouldn't have thought would be good, but they are. The b-b-b-Benny stuttering and the n-n-n-nothing yet and other stuttering caught our attention. We decided that it not just super-fun to sing, but it was also very inclusive. So cool to introduce stuttering into pop songs, and excellent that they are so well loved! We could stay in the 70s and 80s longer, and we'll turn back to them again in the future, but next week our theme will be SPRING! Spring officially starts on ...

We missed a bunch of people today, but had a great time, 4 of us connected to my choir. Choosing an era instead of a topic made this an easy playlist for me. Apple Music has several playlists of music from the 1970s. I simply chose one. Normally, we sing songs from a playlist which I create, choosing each song for it's connection to the theme, and hopefully connection to us. Last week, when we sang from my Songs with Dogs, Cats, Pets playlist, we noticed that several songs we liked were from the 1970s and wondered whether we should look closer at the that decade. So, that became our theme this week.  Sure enough, we found that we remembered and liked most of the songs on our list today. We laughed about not remembering the words, or never having known the words aside from the chorus, or being surprised that we misheard/misunderstood the lyrics, as we often do. Memories of our lives at the time and our feelings about things in the past arose and inspired conversations about all kind...

It was a lovely afternoon spent in lovely company. I baked raisin bran muffins earlier and brought them with a few slices of a pumpkin loaf I baked earlier in the week. We didn't manage to eat much because we sang a lot today, and had some lively conversation as well. Who knew there were so many songs about pets, or on the theme of pets ?! Some songs were obvisously not about cats or dogs, but about people (What's New Pussycat?), and some really had nothing to do with pets (Year of the Cat), while others were about pets but sounded like they were about people (Martha, My Dear). We had fun looking up the year of release of some of these songs. How little were we when we first heard these songs?! So many songs were from the 1970s.  I'm thinking, for something different, to look at a playlist of 1970s songs.   I hope to see you next week. For now, here's what we sang and listened to on Feb. 26th: Always on My Mind and I Want a Dog by the Pet Shop Boys Cat's in the Cra...

I'm sorry, folks, this flu (or whatever it is) has clobbered me and I'm now on my 6th day of being knocked out. My nose and throat are still productive, and I don't want to share this with anyone. We were going to add pets to our Home and Family theme, for Valentine's Day and Family Day. We love our pets and they become family members. I have a playlist with songs with animals. Let's hold on to that for next week.   Just one example of a Pet song: Martha My Dear by the Beatles  If you're ever in need of a sing-along and you're alone, head over to YouTube, and you'll find so many songs with lyrics, and even playlists based on artists. So, you could search for "Beatles songs with lyrics" or "Chicago songs with lyrics", or songs in an era or decade, or individual songs that you like, with lyrics.  Here's something fun to listen to: a Beatles medley by Walk off the Earth. It's frustrating for me to not be able to sing, but I can ...

Our theme was Home and Family, as we're looking ahead to the Family Day weekend, and also keeping in mind that Saturday is Valentine's Day.  While Valentine's Day often looks like a romantic thing, it's really a love thing. In my experience, it's been about Family and Friends more than for Lovers. All the Moms and Grandmas get special cards and maybe flowers, handmade gifts, chocolates. There's a special family dinner, maybe in a restaurant or maybe it's Dad's favourite dish. Every kid in your class, your teams, your teacher, coach, the bus driver, all the people you love get a message of love from you on a card that you made or picked out. Valentines Day changed as I went through the changes of the different seasons of life, but mother, mine or myself, and family have been constant. Family is the thing I love most; my family are the people I love most. Home is where we are together.   My Home and Family playlist starts off with 5 different songs called ...