Musical News

Nicholas McGegan, the English conductor, is coming to Cincinnati (from San Francisco, his current base of operations, where he is conductor of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra) in December to conduct 3 performances of Handel's Messiah.

The entire chorus will not be involved -- just a subset of us. The list came out yesterday, and I'm part of the smaller ensemble, indicating that Bob thinks my voice is agile enough for the piece. I'm pleased about that. Before I moved here, my Connecticut chorus and orchestra performed it frequently and I've only sung it once in the 29 years since. We got a nice review when we last did it here in Cincinnati, just 4 or 5 years ago:

“The Messiah is apparently this ensemble's calling card and one admired its razor-sharp diction, crisp rhythms, and dead-on intonation throughout. It was a splendid night!” Musical America on the May Festival Chorus.

We'll do the entire piece twice, but the third performance will be a shortened version for an afternoon concert.

It's appropriate this year, as it's the 250th anniversary of Handel's death. When David and I were in London, we were at Westminster Abbey, Handel's resting place, a week after the anniversary date had passed. His home in Germany had honored him with flowers lying on his tomb, still fresh.

As an aside - when Handel died, he wanted a small private service, but over 3,000 people arrived to mourn his passing.

What is scary is that there are rumors that these performances are the beginning of an "annual tradition" for the symphony. Please, no. As much as I love singing this oratorio, doing it every year is a bit much. Oh, well. I plan on singing only two more seasons after this year (my plan is 30 years and out, and this is #28), so someone else will have to keep on singing it.

In other choral developments, I've built a web site for all the rehearsal materials I create for the chorus. This year, the plan is to put the rehearsal tracks on the web so that people can download them. This frees up a lot of time for our chorus administrator, who has to burn over a 1,000 CDs a season. However, the technical support people at Music Hall are overwhelmed with work, and the non-technical chorus administrator doesn't have the skills or the time to maintain a website and all the links required. I got tired of waiting for the tech guy to give me a quick lesson on Dreamweaver and access to the May Festival's web site, so last week I bought a domain and paid for hosting for the next three years.

So all our administrator has to do is put one link on our private chorus pages, and they'll be taken directly to the hidden home page of my site (hidden because our May Festival repertoire is still a deep dark secret and we don't want just anyone seeing what we're doing). So far, I've posted some 300+ MP3 versions of all the tracks for the rest of the symphony season -- all the movements of Messiah and Carmina Burana - repertoire for the rest of the symphony season, which has been announced. There are five of each track - one each with soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts emphasized and one that has all parts with equal emphasis. For Carmina there are also tracks by a diction coach.


I've got a lot more to post sitting here on my desk, and I'm working on digitizing another major work, so it's a big project. But the site has been built and is easily expanded by just creating a page for each work as I complete the digitizing. It's more work for me than formerly, but it will save the festival some money and give our administrator back a lot of time -- and the singers can burn their own CDs (except for the 10 or so who seem proud to tell us that they can't figure out how to use mainstream technology and want someone to do it for them). Luddites. Boo.

Next season, I'm going to suggest that we coddle them no more. I have built a help screen to end all help screens for these people. If they can find a computer with a CD burner installed, they can do it with the information and tools I have given them. I've talked with other chorus people who were frightened at the prospect of CD burning, but have figured it out, using my step-by-step instructions, and were successful -- within a couple of days of getting access to the web site.

I have no patience with those who can't be bothered to try.

godaddy.com loves me these days.. This site was the third I've bought in a month (and this one had hosting). I also bought domain names for my old blog, www.greaterdowntownmeridian.com (which will have the more public entries, focusing on politics and the arts) , and for the one I'm just starting, this one, (which is more about personal experiences), both of which are hosted by google's blogger.

Weekend One of the Cincinnati Symphony Season

Notes from a member of the chorus:

The concerts of the weekend are over. There was more sitting than there was singing, which is tiring.

It was the opening weekend of the Cincinnati Symphony season (although there was a single concert a week ago that featured the pianist Lang Lang).

The program opened with the national anthem, since it was opening weekend, and was followed with Richard Strauss'  Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. We had great seats, being on the stage, of course and it was great fun to both watch and hear the piece

Next was Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Symphony No. 7, Pietas, in its U.S. Premiere. It was commissioned by the CSO and a European orchestra (Frankfurt, I think?) and this was its second performance.

(It was originally thought to be a 20 minute piece when the concert program was set, but it turned out to be twice that length, so the concert was dangerously close to going into overtime both Friday and Saturday.)

It’s a cacophonous piece, in my humble opinion. There is a lot of noise, which appears random, although I understand that the composition makes sense on paper. All I’ve seen is the choral parts, and there appears to be little sense there.

The choral parts consist of dissonant chords and strange syncopated rhythmic chants of feel-good quotes from Buddha, Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Deepak Chopra and Jimi Hendrix. The choral parts, if you ignore the saccharine sentiments, were the best part. We performed it three times, and that was enough, if you ask me.

The composer was present, and seemed pleased, blowing kisses at the chorus during one of the curtain calls.  He hugged Paavo Jarvi, the conductor after the second performance.  I'm not sure if it was in congratulations for a fine performance, or in sympathy, because Paavo (or the orchestra, I'm not sure which) got lost and stopped and the performance at measure 20 and started again.  I don't think the audience noticed, but now you know.

Intermission offered enough time to file off stage and arrive at the rehearsal room just in time to line up and file back on.

Next we were fortunate to be on stage to witness a delicate and sweet performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto by a slip of a girl named Alina Pogostkina. The piece is one of my favorites. I prefer the David Oistrakh performance I’ve been listening to for years – it’s much more powerful – but Alina’s was excellent, as well. Paavo let the orchestra accompany her and her playing shimmered along throughout.

Finally, the orchestra reset yet again, and we wowed ’em with Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances.

Friday and Saturday we did the full 2 ½ hours. This afternoon’s concert was much shorter, leaving out the Borodin and the Strauss. We opened with the Tüür, and went home while the orchestra continued with Alina.

Here are the reviews:

http://www.musicincincinnati.com/site/reviews/T_r_s_Pietas_Timely_Towering_at_the_CSO.html

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090925/ENT03/309250118/1028/ENT/CSO+launches+115th+season+brilliantly

Dancing in the Rain

he MidPoint Music Festival (a midwestern version of the South by Southwest festival with 200+ bands performing all over town) kicked off Thursday night in pouring rain on Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati.

The unfortunately rather sparse crowd was surprised when about 200 people connected with Cincinnati's arts organization, including Alex, erupted into what's being called a "splash dance."

I had wanted to do this, but when I looked at the rehearsal videos, I was a little worried about my knees, so bowed out.  As it turned out, I had a symphony dress rehearsal that night, so was unavailable.



Here's what the Fine Arts Fund had to say about it:

Cincinnati, which embraces the arts like no place we know, erupted in a mass flash dance celebration on Thursday evening.

It had been raining, but stopped just long enough for the first ever splash dance surprise. Dancers amazed the onlookers at the music festival kickoff event when they suddenly started to dance after the first band finished.

Hundreds of people from all parts of the metro area and all walks of life volunteered their time and resources to plan the surprise over the past eight weeks.

It started with just a few people from theater, dance, music, museums, and the Fine Arts Fund staff, and grew to include hundreds of Cincinnati residents.

Even though the initial invitation didn’t say what the participants would be doing, hundreds of people signed on to show their enthusiasm for the arts. We successfully kept the secret for weeks because we all shared the goal of touching others in our community with the unexpectedness of the event.

It is amazing how the arts reach everybody in every part of our city. We started with a small group, and before you knew it, we were dancing with people who live from Mason to Covington, and all over the region. The volunteer dancers included everyone from soap executives to young children.

Great big thanks to Scott and Riann and everyone at Lightborne, which produced the video, and contributed in so many ways to making this a fun event that lives on in this video so many others can share with friends and family!

The Creative Team -- volunteers from large and small arts organizations across the region who helped the Fine Arts Fund organize the dance -- spent one afternoon listening to local musicians and choosing the music together. More thanks go to these local bands for contributing the music.

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