Tag: concert

Ronald Perera memorial concert

Earlier this month, I was privileged to attend a memorial concert for Ron Perera, composer and professor emeritus of music at Smith College. The concert took place in Sweeney Concert Hall in Sage Hall, the long-time center of musical life on campus. I had taken five semesters of theory and composition with Mr. Perera and he had been my major advisor. We had been in touch variously over the decades and we had enjoyed a wonderful lunch together last spring when I was back on campus to sing with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus.

All the pieces at the concert were Ron Perera’s compositions, some of which were performed by the musicians for whom they were written. I especially appreciated seeing pianist Professor Emerita Monica Jakuc Leverett perform Out of Shadow almost 36 years after its premiere. Another piano piece that I loved was Three Waltzes for Four Hands, written for Ron’s three daughters, and performed by Professor Emeritus Kenneth Fearn and his daughter, Kaeza. I’m looking forward to ordering a copy for daughter E and son-in-law L to play for our granddaughters ABC and JG.

As a writer and choral singer, I was especially drawn to the choral pieces that opened and closed the concert. The opening was “Hold Out Your Hands Over the Earth” from The Outermost House, text by Henry Beston. The work was commissioned by the Chatham Chorale, on Cape Cod. The Perera family lived on the Cape during the summers and Ron loved to sail there. Some of the text in this movement is:

To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honor the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.

It was a perfect reflection to begin.

Besides the music, there were four remembrances in the program. The first was from one of Ron’s daughters, Rosalind, which also served as a welcome. Two were from pastors of St. John’s Episcopal Church, located in the midst of Smith’s campus, where Ron was a long-time member and volunteer. The other was from Professor Emeritus Donald Wheelock, who was Ron’s composer-colleague for many years and who helped to organize the concert. It was beautiful to hear them speak about his kind, caring nature and the depth and breadth of his thoughts, talents, interests, and beliefs. Even as a college student, I could sense what a wonderful man he was and it was inspiring to hear how he sustained those qualities throughout his life and shared them with so many, most especially his family.

The concert closed with the Smith College Chamber Singers offering Ron’s setting of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Music, When Soft Voices Die” conducted by Jonathan Hirsh, who is a current faculty member, friend of Ron, and another concert organizer. He had graciously kept me apprised of the plans as the memorial came together so that I could arrange to attend. It was such a perfect, quiet, love-filled ending to the memorial. “And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,/ Love itself shall slumber on.”

At the reception after the concert, I was able to speak briefly with Don Wheelock and Jonathan Hirsh and at greater length with the third organizer, Professor Emerita Karen Smith Emerson. I am grateful for their work in putting the program together to celebrate a remarkable, generous, talented man who leaves a legacy of music and writings but, more importantly, of human connection and spiritual strength.

I’m also grateful to CK, Smith ’81, and her spouse who opened their lovely home near campus to B and me for the weekend. I appreciated their hospitality and their companionship at the concert and reception. I’m hoping CK will be able to sing with us the next time I’m back on campus for an event with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus.

It will be bittersweet, though, knowing that Ron will not be there to hear us. Maybe, we will perform a piece of his music in remembrance…

recording of the concert

SoCS: concert update

Just back from a long day that featured the first of Madrigal Choir’s Lessons and Carols performances. It was in a small church to our north. Our audience was small but appreciative. It gives me confidence in our performance in our home county tomorrow, which will draw a larger number of listeners.

Now, I need to get some rest…
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This short and sweet post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday series. The prompt this week is “confidence.” You can find out more about SoCS here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/12/01/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-2-2023/

Concert (and American) Reflections

Yesterday, the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton presented the first concert of our 45th anniversary season, “American Reflections.”

Our artistic director, Bruce Borton, chose the program to commemorate a number of anniversaries. We sang a set of pieces by William Billings in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party; Billings was a Boston resident at the time and two of the pieces we sang directly referenced the revolutionary period. Special guest soprano Christina Taylor sang four settings of Walt Whitman poems by Ned Rorem, in honor of Rorem’s centennial. We also sang Randall Thompson’s “The Testament of Freedom,” a setting of Thomas Jefferson texts composed in 1943 for the University of Virginia’s glee club commemorating the bicentennial of their founder Jefferson’s birth. We rounded out our all-American program with pieces from Aaron Copland’s opera, The Tender Land.

I’m pleased to say that the concert went well and was enthusiastically received by our audience. We owe our thanks to Theresa Lee-Whiting, who relinquished her role as singer and president of Madrigal Choir to serve as guest conductor for this concert after Dr. Borton needed to take medical leave. We were grateful that Dr. Borton was feeling well enough to attend the concert and hope that he was proud of the work we had done.

I admit that rehearsing and singing this program had its challenges from a historical perspective. For example, in “Stomp Your Foot” from The Tender Land, the text is very explicit about the devaluing of the work of “ladies” versus men. The story is set in the farmlands of the 1930s Depression era, so it is accurate for the times, if a bit galling to sing these days.

The more problematic text for me was Jefferson’s words in “The Testament of Freedom.” The bulk of the text Thompson chose to set is from the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms.” There are a number of references to bondage or slavery as a consequence of the colonists not taking up arms against the British. For example, “We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.” It’s difficult to sing the text with the knowledge that Jefferson was holding hundreds of men, women, and children in “hereditary bondage” as he wrote these words. He also writes that the colonists must take up arms “for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves,” as though the work of those he enslaved was not also adding to his wealth, although he would have considered those people part of his property. I wonder if Thompson would have chosen the passages to set differently if more modern scholarship on the colonial and Revolutionary War times had been available to him in the 1940s.

Given that he was composing this work during World War II, the final movement, using text from a letter Jefferson wrote to John Adams in 1821, is poignant. “And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them…” Some of the young men premiering this work would have been about to enter the armed forces to fight in Europe or the Pacific theater. Both my and my spouse’s fathers were in the service during World War II eighty years ago. It was sobering for me to sing these words at a time when democracy is again assailed by authoritarian and fascist influences in Europe and here in the United States.

The fourth movement begins with these words from Jefferson to Adams, “I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance…” On July 4, 1826, both former presidents died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence they both signed.

May light and liberty – and music – continue to advance.

One-Liner Wednesday: MCOB concert invitation

If you are in the Binghamton, NY area, please join the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton on Sunday, October 22, 2023 at 4 PM at Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church for a concert of American music, including works by William Billings, Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, and Randall Thompson, with special guest Christina Taylor.

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/10/18/one-liner-wednesday-heading-out/. Also, check out Linda’s photo she posted today.

A Tale of Two Concerts

My recovery from cataract surgery has been complicating my computer time but the delay gives me a chance to draw together two remarkable choral concerts that I was honored to be part of this month.

The first was a performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony at my alma mater, Smith College, on April first. As you might expect, the performance forces were large, 90-some members of the orchestra and almost 200 singers, student ensembles from Smith, Amherst, UMass-Amherst, and Penn State plus alumni from Smith and Penn State. The orchestra filled the stage at John M. Greene Hall, with the chorus in the gallery.

The concert began with a piece from each of the four college choirs, followed by a brief intermission for all of us to assemble for the Mahler. The Second Symphony is known as the “Resurrection Symphony” – you can read more about it at the link above. The chorus sings in the later part of the fifth and final movement, which afforded us the luxury of watching our conductor, Jonathan Hirsh, and the orchestra playing for an hour before we joined in. As always, I was struck by Mahler’s talent in using such large forces in ways both subtle and powerful. He also uses space in an interesting way, for example, by using percussion and brass off-stage. The fourth and fifth movements include soloists, in our performance, Katherine Saik DeLugan, soprano, and
Rehanna Thelwell, mezzo-soprano, who both sang with soaring beauty.

Of course, the disadvantage of singing at the end of a symphony is that you have to have your brain and voice ready when it’s been a couple of hours since you have warmed up. Fortunately, we were able to rise to the occasion and do our part to create a remarkable and moving performance.

It is always risky to assemble a chorus from singers in disparate locations, who literally don’t rehearse together until 24 hours before the performance. Yet, thanks to Jonathan Hirsh’s skill as a conductor, the preparation given by the other choral directors, and the solitary practice of the alums in our homes, we were able to deliver a moving performance. As soon as Jonathan’s baton came down after the final cadence, the audience was on their feet. It was the longest ovation I have ever seen after a performance in which I have participated. It was a fitting tribute to Iva Dee Hiatt, in whose memory the concert was held.

The weekend was also meaningful for me because I was able to connect with several people who I knew in my student days from 1978-82. I had a lovely lunch with RP, my theory and composition professor and major advisor, whom I also saw at the concert along with his wife. I had dinner with my friend LT, who is an alum from ’81 and who lives in town. She joined several other members of ’81 at the concert, including MC who I hadn’t seen in person in about forty years. There were several alum members of the chorus from my era, including my senior year suite-mate PT. I was able to visit some special places on campus – Helen Hills Hills chapel where I played often for services and spent countless hours practicing, the Lyman Plant House and gardens, Sage Hall, Josten Library, John M. Greene Hall where we performed and where I played my senior recital, and the Poetry Center which didn’t exist in my day but has become an important entity for me.

The second concert was on Sunday, April 23rd. The Madrigal Choir of Binghamton sang our way through a hundred years of Broadway tunes. While we are more accustomed to singing art music, it was fun to sing a popular concert. We were thrilled to draw an audience of over 250 people, who smiled, swayed with the beat, and applauded familiar tunes from Gershwin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Sondheim, and Bernstein, while also enthusiastically receiving some newer tunes that might have been unfamiliar, such as “Who Lives, Who Dies” from Hamilton.

It was also great to have the opportunity to feature our accompanist, Jean Herman Henssler, at the beautiful grand piano at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and soloists from Madrigal Choir. We were honored to have a special guest, Bex Odorisio, who recently completed a national tour of Hadestown, sing a couple of tunes from her extensive repertoire. I especially enjoyed “Times Like This” from Lucky Stiff.

This was our final concert of the season and I’m looking forward to seeing what our director, Bruce Borton, has planned for our next season, which will be the 45th anniversary of the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton. While I’ve only been a member for a little over a year, I’m so grateful to have a choral home again after the demise of the Binghamton University Chorus, with whom I sang from 1982-2019.

Stay tuned for more music gigs, perhaps this summer, but definitely in the fall!

How low can you go?

This month, my county (Broome in New York) has finally made it into the low community risk level for COVID-19, using the current US Center for Disease Control tracking method. Our community transmission rate is still in the medium category, the second lowest of four categories. Both of these are the lowest levels that I recall seeing since this tracking model went into effect.

In recognition of this, I’ve begun to back off from masking in indoor public spaces. For example, I went to church on Easter and this weekend unmasked. On Friday night, I ate and sang unmasked with Madrigal Choir at a retirement dinner in honor of a Binghamton University professor who is a long-time choir member.

It feels a bit strange after masking for so many months.

I know there is still risk. A friend came down with COVID a few days ago. I had not seen her recently, so I wasn’t exposed, but it’s definitely a reminder that I may not be able to stay COVID-free forever. The number of people I know in the never-been-infected category is tiny at this point.

I don’t want to get sick and I especially don’t want to transmit COVID to someone else but I’m feeling that, with the community risk level at low and major personal events like my two cataract surgeries and visit from our UK branch of the family completed, I can let down my guard a bit. I’ll still be tracking our local statistics so I can put more precautions back in place as warranted.

Madrigal Choir is going into a busy week, getting ready for our final concert of the season next Sunday, so fingers crossed…

from N’hamp

I am at Smith College, my alma mater, to join in a performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony on Saturday. It is a memorial concert for Iva Dee Hiatt, legendary conductor and faculty member, who passed away from ALS in 1980 when I was a sophomore. It’s a privilege to be on campus to participate in this concert.

I arrived yesterday and had a wonderful lunch with professor emeritus RP, who was my theory and composition professor and major advisor. I followed that up with a lovely dinner with L, a friend from the class of ’81 who lives locally.

I know I haven’t been posting much lately – and there is so much to write about, including the continuing tragedy of gun violence in the US and the first set of indictments of former president DT – but life has been hectic and is about to become more so. I’ll weigh in as I’m able.

Weekend wrap-up

Just a quick evening post today, because I’ve had a busy weekend with two performances of Twelfth Night with the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton.

Both performances were well received by very appreciative audiences. As always, there are moments that don’t go quite as well as they might have but those aren’t noticeable to the audience, so they don’t matter in the long run.

I was happy to have family and/or friends at both performances. I loved the opportunity to share this music and celebration with them. After the performance today in Greene, there was a lovely reception, which afforded us a chance to meet some of our audience members. This was the first time we had sung in Chenango County, so it was nice to have new community connections.

Madrigal Choir now has a bit of a break before our next set of rehearsals begins for an American Songbook concert in April. Stay tuned!
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/01/08/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-8th-2023/

Twelfth Night!

I will be performing with the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton this weekend, my first time participating in their traditional Twelfth Night celebration.

If you are in or near Broome County, New York, please come join in the fun! Tickets are $20 in advance at www.madrigalchoir.com or at the door. There are also $5 student tickets available at the door only.

I’ll be in the second row, dressed like this:


Hope to see you there!
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/01/06/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-6th-2023/

Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday tribute

Last night, my family had hoped to watch a livestream of a special birthday celebration for composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim in honor of his 90th birthday. The performers were all in their own homes and there were pretty massive technical difficulties which delayed the start for two hours. It was too late for us to watch live, but T and I were able to watch it on youtube today:

I loved it!

There are performances from generations of Broadway stars, some jaw-droppingly amazing given the unusual circumstances, all heartfelt. Most of the songs were well-known, but several were less so. It was a tribute to Sondheim’s incredible range as a composer. While a few were more light-hearted selections, most were poignant, which is a quality I notice often in his songs.

The first Sondheim musical I saw was a community performance of Company when I was in high school, which seemed very adult and sophisticated to my small-town teenage self. I most associate Sondheim, though, with my daughters.

We had a video recording of Into the Woods, which was a favorite of E’s when she was young. She especially liked singing Little Red’s “I Know Things Now.” When T was old enough to watch with her, we would only let her watch the first act. (If you know the show, the first act ends with what could be construed as “happily ever after”; the second act gets dark pretty quickly.) This worked for a little while, until E told T the rest of the story and we relented and let her watch the whole thing, which she did not find upsetting. I guess that the non-bowdlerized Grimm version of fairy tales, which involve quite a lot of mayhem, endure for a reason that I had not hitherto fully appreciated.

T’s favorite Sondheim musical became Sunday in the Park with George. She and E would often break into Sondheim songs around the house, just for the joy of singing. And they sang them very well, which is an accomplishment, because Sondheim is very difficult to sing accurately. T and I especially liked a video clip in the tribute of a young Iain Armitage singing “Finishing the Hat.”

E and T often did summer workshops at our local playhouse, some of which involved singing. Sometimes, Sondheim worked his way into those performances. I especially remember that in summer of 2001, E sang “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd. A few weeks later, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, I found the memory of her singing that song oddly comforting. “Nothing’s gonna harm you, Not while I’m around.” Not that I thought her singing would protect us from terrorists, but that sense of caring and sheltering resonated in those circumstances.

“Not While I’m Around” was part of last night’s concert, too. It and several other selections that have that same poignancy of love, protection, and care brought tears to my eyes.

The power of music.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Sondheim, and thank you.