And again, 5,6,7,8...

It has been hot and sultry all day, the kind of day in which just breathing is exhausting. I promised yesterday to write about today's rehearsals, and would have done so hours ago, but when I got home, I sat down for a moment - that was my tactical error - and was overpowered by a sneak-attack nap. I woke up again still in the chair, book open in my lap, spectacles askew. A pretty picture!

We had a JaLaLa rehearsal this morning with our band (Yaron Gershovsky on piano, Steve LaSpina on bass, and Deric Dickens on drums), and another rehearsal this afternoon just for vocals. The new material is terrific and difficult. It's still settling in. The more familiar material from the Mercer CD has developed a little creativity creep here and there in the vocal harmonies. That's inevitable - at the moment, JaLaLa can only exist in the spaces left blank on the calendar by the New York Voices and Manhattan Transfer, so we have not sung together since February. Repetition is the handmaid of memory, and we've not yet had a lot of repetitions. And, because all of us are quick harmonizers, if one of us makes a mistake - not that we ever do, but just pretend, OK? - the other two singers will fill out the harmony so fast a listener might not hear that anything odd has happened. Without periodic review, the spur-of-the-moment parts become the parts. So we had to clean that kind of thing up, keeping the happy accidents and losing the not-so-happy ones. Finally, we put together the set list. We accomplished a lot, and laughed a lot, and ate fresh ripe cherries and drank tea, because we three that good food shared is part of the harmony.

Just a few more days now until the concerts at The Egg in Albany on Saturday and at Birdland in NYC on Monday. You still have time to get tickets (and I still have time to figure out what to wear).