Weeeell, it’d been a long time coming, but at long last the fourth movement of 20-20: A Choral Suite is in the wild. This movement, as mentioned previously, is based on real events and characters — a kindergarten class taught by a Fayette County veteran teacher over Zoom. (Granddaughter Katherine is even mentioned, and if memory serves, the mention — in the voice of her teacher — is an actual quote. There are other reality snippets as well. What fun!)

Any hopes of getting a Soprano/Alto/Tenor/Bass chamber chorale to sound like a bunch of 6-year-olds on Zoom pretty much went by the wayside, but you still get a sense of the chaos. Although the three verses illustrate three different class events in rapid succession, they, of course, didn’t occur that way. Some artistic liberties were taken. In addition, the chaos of multiple student connections, everyone talking at once, or (in the third verse) everyone failing to work together, had to be abstracted, but the humor involved can still be seen — especially at the end.

A few notes on the technicals — as mentioned on the playback page, an electronic reproduction of my writing will not have the words. Music software simply isn’t that good, so the full effect of the words will require listening and reading the lyrics on the page. But more to the point, it will need to wait until I’ve enlisted real vocalists to sing the music and record the results. I will say, though, that the technicals of choral reproduction in my recording have improved some with some recent upgrades, so you can at least hear what voices singing the pitches involved might sound like. The soloist even sounds like an operatic mezzo-soprano! (As much as you can expect with “ooo’s” and “aaah’s” the only words.)

But, still, you’ll miss the words. In addition, there are several dramatic things (a few spoken words, for example) you won’t get from this playback.

To listen, go to the delivery page here. To start at the beginning of this suite, go to its home page here.

One further aside: since I’ve improved my sample library with better choral content, I’ll be replacing all of the previous 3 movements with new renderings in the next few days. When finished, I’ll blog that too.