music on the job

There are several amateur vocal groups at ${TECHJOB}. Ten years ago I tried to join one of them, called "Scaleability", and was told there were already too many men in the group, but invited (with three other guys) to form a spin-off group. We named it "Nanoscale" and did a few concerts of one-on-a-part music (some barbershop, some medieval, some folk, some classical) over the years (here's a track from our first concert, opening for Scaleability). I also joined Scaleability a year or two later, and enjoyed doing a cappella with them (mostly modern pop and ${TECHJOB}-themed parodies of modern pop), but after two or three years I decided to concentrate on Nanoscale instead. A few years ago I got a call from Scaleability saying they had a concert that afternoon and were suddenly short on basses, but the repertoire was all things I had done before, and could I fill in at the last minute? I did, and it went well, but I didn't go back to singing with Scaleability regularly.

With the arrival of COVID, people have been working from home a lot more, which makes it hard to get enough people together in one room to rehearse, particularly with a one-on-a-part group like Nanoscale. As a result, we've only had a few dozen rehearsals, and no performances, since early 2020.

More recently, another group named Incognitones has formed, similar to Scaleability but with actual auditions to get in. I attended one of their concerts a few months ago, enjoyed it, and got on their mailing list. Last week they announced they were looking for new members, and I signed up for a ten-minute audition slot (range check, pitch and melody matching, one-minute prepared solo) this past Tuesday. I wasn't sure what to do as a "prepared solo", but settled on a verse and chorus of the Agincourt Carol, which is really a three-part piece but has a reasonably melodic tenor line. And I foolishly picked a starting pitch that worked well for the burden, but not for the verse, so I had to change keys in the middle to fit my range.

I got an e-mail from Incognitones yesterday saying I was not being called back for the second round of auditions. Wait, what? I failed a musical audition? That hasn't happened since high school, I think. Perhaps the universe decided I needed a shot of humility. Or they didn't want to waste time on somebody who wasn't already focused on modern pop repertoire.

I'll probably try again the next time they hold open auditions, with better solo prep, and in the meantime keep trying to get a critical mass of Nanoscale together to sing. And I was talking to a local early-music pro this summer about taking voice lessons to keep my aging voice working; I definitely want to follow up on that.

Meanwhile, Trio Tramontana (me, shalmestere, and our friend Beth) are doing a joint concert in Albany this Sunday with Beth's other early-music group, the Bleecker Consort.