E G O S P E W

The typographically clever title above is not my creation, but I did find this cool engraving on Gutenberg.org (normally my go-to source for classic Nook reading content).  The image represents, best as any, the upcoming concert by the Syracuse Vocal Ensemble, with which I am pleasantly associated.  (It was they who combined with the Hobart & William Smith Chorale plus invited performers for the Carmina Burana concert this past October.)

This upcoming concert, with performances December 11th and 12th, contains an assortment of absolutely delightful Christmas carols from various sources, selected by Bob Cowles, who has been directing the SVE for some 15 years.  Several pieces are arranged by Jeffrey Van and there is a suite by Conrad Susa.  The singing is some of the most challenging I’ve encountered and the 24 ensemble members are all first-rate musicians.  I highly encourage your attendance at one of the performances.

Perhaps most importantly for some, the Christmas Pie performance will be immediately followed by a “sumptuous reception boasting a wide assortment of delicious pies.”  . . .Two of which, might I add, (chocolate-bourbon-pecan and mocha-walnut) will be created by my talented wife Laurel.  Ahhhh, music to my palate.

Plucking the Christmas Goose…PIE: Music for Choir and Guitar

Saturday, December 11, 2010, 7:30 PM
United Church of Fayetteville
310 E. Genesee St., Fayetteville, NY

Sunday, December 12, 2010, 3:00 PM
Liverpool First United Methodist Church
604 Oswego St., Liverpool, NY

Our second program of the season also showcases local instrumental talent as Kenneth Meyer, classical guitar, Ursula Kwasnicka, harp, and Anthony Calebrese, marimba, join the ensemble for a lovely assortment of Christmas works for chorus and guitar. The group will present traditional as well as more recently composed music for the season. As always, the Christmas Pie performance will be immediately followed by a sumptuous reception boasting a wide assortment of delicious pies.

Carmina Burana

Everyone should have the Carmina Burana experience at least once before they die. Listening to it is good, performing it much better. (Some, I’ve heard tell, even dance it.) I have now done it twice, first in 1962 as a boy soprano piping the ragazzi bits, plus this past October as a more mature adult blasting the first tenor parts. I suspect the raucous pagan depravity of the piece speaks to a phase of one’s development somewhere in between.

My next appearance on stage will be as a soldier and wedding guest (i.e. chorus member) in this production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte.  Get giddy.

Cosi Fan Tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Friday & Saturday July 30 & 31, 2010

Smith Opera House

Geneva, NY

My next concert, in the Hobart & William Smith Colleges Community Chorus,  Tuesday, April 13th, 8:00 pm, St. John’s Chapel, 630 S. Main Street, Geneva, NY 14456.

Since 2000, my father, Lindsay, has engaged in a charming tradition usually sometime around Easter, driving cross-country from Arizona to St. James’ Episcopal Church in Montross, Virginia. There, he offers his services as a guest conductor of the Festival Choir while accepting the generous hospitality of the local residents, his old friends and new.

The St. James Festival Chorus

This year, on Sunday April 18, 2010, he will continue that tradition, once again conducting the St. James Festival Choir in a (post-) Easter celebration.  The major work will be The Seven Last Words of Christ, which he composed in 1992 while in Coral Gables, Florida. (That was the period of his first “retirement”, lasting 15 years and including the following positions: music director and organist at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Coral Gables; guest conductor of the Coral Gables, Florida, Civic Opera and Symphony Society; resident campus carillonneur at the University of Miami; later administrator of the Anne Pohl Lafford Language Laboratory, named in honor of his wife for her contributions to the lab over her eight-year tenure as its director until her death in 1988.) In 1994 he retired again and moved to Tempe, Arizona, his current home, where he devotes most of his energy to music composition and zooming to performances.

The usual cohort of pals will parachute in to Montross, including my soprano-sister Julia Welbon from Philly (inevitably tapped for solo work), tenor-brother Peter from Phoenix,  former students of my father’s (basses and college roommates) D.Dyson Gay from Rochester and hopefully Carl Hye-Knudsen.  Carl and wife Melba, who now live in Bradenton, Florida, were responsible for starting the whole tradition when they lived near Montross in the Northern Neck. I, too, will be joining the St. James Festival Choir as a guest (with a few bars of solo, at the insistence of the composer/conductor, ahem) and, as always, we so much look forward to being with our friends in Virginia.