Dark times: I’ve seen them aplenty and they no longer daunt me (for long). We will get through this dark time stronger, more alert, and more passionate than ever about how the arts matter to society. Move towards what you love: it will sustain you.
Tonight at 7:15 in Bristol Chapel at Westminster Choir College, I give a pre-concert lecture as part of the American Art Song Festival. Hope to see some of you there!
If you are in Boston and can get to a lunchtime concert at King’s Chapel, Carson Cooman is poised to play the heck out of my “Chanson Variations” on Tuesday at noon. Hope to see some friends there!
“Poems are rough notations for the music that we are.” –
– Rumi
Harmony singing: there will sometimes be casualties.
The challenge for most composers: patience. Sometimes posthumous patience.
– Christian Carey
This week I am pinch hitting for my colleague Andrew Megill, guest teaching a choral literature class about English Baroque music. I think it is important to include “Your Hay it is Mow’n” (from Purcell’s “King Arthur”) in my lecture, because choral conductors need to know that after all the work they do with their choirs on tone, tuning, and balance, sometimes the composer wants the chorus to sound drunk as skunks.
