Word: blends
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...trick for Barber is to blend the changing cast and the varied talents into a unified voice. He drills them on breathing and on the peculiarities of sung pronunciation. At verse 9 of Psalm 37, he interjects, "This is my favorite: 'For evildoers shall be cut off. ' With a big t before the 'off.' Crisp as a knife." He is relentlessly attentive to the details that weave together the different parts: "Everybody, on the bottom of page 3, let's make that a dotted quarter note with an eighth rest, so we can hear the soprano entrance...
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...
Hockey is a game of poetry and brutality. There is the precision of passes and the crushing vengeance of players smashing each other against the glass. Hockey is a blend of baseball and football, soccer and the Ice Capades...
Carolyn See's latest novel is an adventuresome blend of feminist fiction and nuclear apocalypse fantasy set in California. That pulling this off might require the implacable imagination of Doris Lessing does not seem to have daunted the author, whose career suggests a practical attitude toward the writing game. See has had good critical success with her novels Rhine Maidens and Mothers, Daughters. As a component of "Monica Highland," she has collaborated on mass-market romances (Lotus Land and 110 Shanghai Road). There is also Professor See, who teaches writing at UCLA, and See a book reviewer...