"Elijah Rock" or "I Hear a voice a prayin'" both have a great bass part "ostinato-like" part that your basses would love--and gives them a melody to groove on.

H Jean,

What a wonderful "problem" to solve! Too many boys in the choir! :)

If you have some strong basses, You could have a lot of fun with "YaLaLay" (in Swahili- it is easier than you think!). If you search that title on youtube you can hear it, and there is also a score perusal video under the same title. Or you could go to rockarbormusic.com, and watch the video there. The translation is found in the notes on youtube. I would be happy to send a pdf perusal score, and give you any assistance you need. 

Hi Jean,

 

I have a perhaps more unorthodox suggestion. I would recommend having several boys learn/cultivate falsetto male alto singing. If the environment is "safe", I've found that young high school men love singing in falsetto. I would have probably two to four men sing male alto on each piece, and switch the young men so that many of the men cultivate their falsetto, and they all get to sing more of their "normal" parts as well. 

 

In my experience, most youn female choir altos are actually mezzo sopranos, so by moving some men up, it would actually help them develop their more natural voice anyway.

 

This approach to your wonderful and relatively rare situation would allow you to continue doing balanced satb literature, help many ladies sing a more natural part, develop an excellent skill in your men (falsetto singing), and provide a unique experience for your choir.

 

To help "sell" the idea, bring some recordings of some lovely male choirs that use falsetto with their tenors (such as the Norsemen of Luther College), male choirs that sing satb music (Chanticleer, King's Singers), and mixed choirs that use/supplement with male altos (Hilliard Ensemble).

 

God bless,

Michael Sandvik

Check out the arrangements by and for Norman Luboff; they're all Walton Publishing, I believe. They often have divided (four-part) men with just two parts for women. This has the added benefit of giving at least your men experience in four part, TTBB, divisi.

Thanks very much! I will have a look at those suggestions.

 

Michael I haven't had a chance to formally assess the students individually yet but I'm pretty sure judging by their speaking voices we only have one true alto amongst the girls. I had been planning to swap the mezzos in and out of the alto section on different pieces to avoid strain, but I hadn't thought of using the boys in that way. In fact there is one piece we'll be doing that includes a falsetto section for the boys so that would fit quite well. My only reservation is I'm female and my knowledge of falsetto technique is, um, rudimentary.

 

Unfortunately my own limitations are also a factor here. I'm a decent singer and musician myself but I'm actually just a math teacher. I have no formal training as a singing teacher or choral director other than a wonderful summer school I went to a few years back. I've done a lot of choral singing myself and led a choir for a couple of years at another school. However I do worry about my ability to get the most out of the boys. I plan to use video resources to help demonstrate things as I can't demonstrate a lot of things myself. I'm working in a very small school where we have no proper music teacher and there hasn't been a choir running for years. At some stage I'd really like to get a top quality singing teacher in to do a workshop with the boys.

 

I should probably have a look through back threads to find advice for female directors of mixed/male choirs.  :-)

Oh and looking through a sheaf of old music last night I came across Buffalo Gals arr Bob Chilcott. I think that will work well for us if we just reverse the girls and boys on the chorus, so the girls become an echo. I've met Bob and he was a cool guy so I don't think he'd mind.  :-)  There is one short section of close harmony, but it is piano so I can just tell the girls to be "less piano."