Word: blended
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...plot is a fast-paced blend of theatrical parody, stock farce, and typical British silliness. Frederick (Lee Eichen), ex-apprentice to a gang of nice-guy pirates, is torn between loyalty to his former masters and his moral duty to turn them in. To complicate matters, he has fallen in love with the daughter (Lisa Zeidenberg) of the local Major General (Andrew Gardner) who is bent on the pirates' destruction. How does Frederick escape from this frightfully sticky wicket? Suffice to say that the resolution is as silly as it is stirring...
When a single "Amen" requires the sopranos to sing 22 notes, he has the other sections pause to savor the glorious sound that their voices will support. And always he implores, "Listen to each other. Listen for the blend...
...blend is a question not just of music but of personalities. The singers share a familial sensibility, with a family's history of love, conflict and eccentricity. The chemistry of rehearsals has lately been altered, for instance, by the absence of a popular soprano, who lives someplace called Katydid Lane and who is celebrated for crawling around her living room in her nightgown lest her appearance in the picture window scare off visiting deer. The chemistry is also different because Ethel Brandon, who directed the choir for 38 years, is now back in the congregation after an illness...
...blend is a delicate thing. Lately, it has been adjusting uneasily to a new professional bass, Winthrop Buswell. His predecessor, a divinity school graduate named Peter Vanderveen, is moving away from singing into the ministry, as the parish intern. He sings with the bass section now merely as a volunteer. "It's been more difficult for him to replace me, because I'm still here, than for me to step aside," says Vanderveen. But his friends in the choir say singing means more to Vanderveen than he realizes. His key ring is an organ stop labeled "choral bass...
...members of the choir falter momentarily at the start of the Nunc Dimittis. But then, suddenly, everyone is there. You can hear the blend, unmistakably. They sing through the rest of the service as one choir, from the foundation of Buswell's subdued bass on up to the surging descants of the soprano line. The 22-note "Amen" dances down like the leaves in the streets outside. For a few moments, it is possible to feel ordinary people lift themselves up into the communion of saints and the cloud of witnesses...