Minnesota Public Radio features an item on a St. Olaf Choir performance of music by Abbie Burt Benitis. The audience sat silently, transfixed by the beauty and creativity of the piece and granted the composer a prolonged ovation. At intermission she was besieged by admirers. Abbie is the grand-niece of Christmas-carol composer Alfred Burt.
Distraction of the day: Seventy-six trombones
Are women’s choirs different?
I have a friend who sings in a women’s choir, and after their conductor/den mother died of breast cancer, they got in a new conductor who has, shall we say, an XY chromosome. I have commented that that must have changed the family feel of the group somehow, but my friend has always denied that. […]
Translations for Higher Resolutions
Sweden — A new art project got under way at the mall in Handen on Sunday when all of a sudden 12 people began to sing. The project is called Konsten i Centrum. A bit of a word play. Art in the (Shopping) Centre might be a possible English translation. This first part of the […]
Iowa Stubborn
I just re-watched The Music Man on DVD the other night, and I always find the show depressing. Although it’s primarily a love story, we musicians inevitably zero in on the musical elements of a show with music as a main theme. In the final scene, the fraudulent Prof. Harold Hill is trying to conduct […]
Artists
Another excellent post by Liz Garnett. I think I’m in love! In a topic related to performance practice, she talks about performing songs which have definitive recordings by the original composers (or at least famous recordings). But if we do know exactly how the original went, that doesn’t tell us what we should do in […]