Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Happy Thanksgiving! If you have a concert this weekend, I'm not sure what I think of your management, but let us know if we should take the relatives to any choral concerts this weekend!

Friday cat post

Where should a cat sit? Sometimes there's an easy answer.

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Singing any choruses in public this weekend? Well, I think you're mad, quite mad, but let us know about it in the comments!

Monday link

Robert Page is retiring. Big shoes to fill!

Friday cat post

Cats in wartime. Via Sylvia Berry.

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

I officially give you permission to be self-aggrandizing. What are you doing that we should know about this weekend?

Sporadic Friday Cat Post

My brother found a kitten crying under the deck a few weeks ago, and so (long story short) now he and his wife are a 2-cat household! The new denizen is called Porkchop. She is very cute!

Porkchop and Oomi apparently do not get along, but they get along WAY better than the two cats in our household, Samson and Kitty, who cannot be in the same room without trying to kill each other. January will see Operation Acclimate the Cats. Baby gates may be involved.

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Concert season is heating up; let us know if you have anything we should be sure to attend this weekend!

What do they teach in these schools...

Classes that they REALLY ought to require for your degree in Choral Conducting:

• Math 101: Scheduling
• Math 203: Scheduling
• Math 405: Scheduling
• Design 101: How to lay out attractive recruitment and concert posters
• Design 102: What the hell is up with that Facebook timeline thing
• English 101: Writing a Decent Resume
• English 102: Writing a Decent Press Release
• English 201: Writing a Decent Newsletter Update
• English 202: Writing a Decent Blog Post
• Social Media 101: Twitter, Facebook, and You
• Social Media 201: Surviving a Discussion Thread on Choralnet
• Comp 101: E-mail: How Mohammed Dealt With the Mountain
• Comp 201: E-mail: Mailing Lists: Getting Off Them
• Comp 301: E-mail: Mailing Lists: Getting Other People On Yours
• Advanced Seminar: Carpentry 400, or Dealing With Your Board
• Advanced Seminar: Econ 400, or Getting Above Minimum Wage
• Advanced Seminar: Public Relations 400, or Explaining Why We're Not Doing That John Rutter/Eric Whitacre Piece

and finally:

• Score-Reading 400: Because you'll never have time to practice, so you'd better be able to sight-read deez notes!

What'd I miss?

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Got something to promote? Promote away!

Free ticket offer!

Hey there, concert-goers: an opportunity for FREE tickets!

If you would like to go to either of La Donna Musicale's upcoming performances, then be the first to e-mail ladonna@ladm.org. Mention that you saw the offer on this blog; feel free to use the code ALLEGRAISAWESOME.

Soprani Virtuosi!

Friday, October 26th at 7PM
First Church in Cambridge
11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA

Sunday, October 28th at 4PM
United Parish of Brookline
210 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA

We are pleased to introduce internationally known opera singer Robert Crowe, a 1995 National Winner of the Metropolitan Opera Competition. He returns to Boston after many years singing leading roles in the major opera houses of Europe. Mr. Crowe will delight us with both flashy virtuosity and heart-rending pathos, recreating the musical world of the fabled castrati. Joining him will be a rising star, Colombian soprano Camila Parias. Together they will summon Eros with their intertwining harmonies as they sing duets of 18th-century composer Maria Antonia Walpurgis and 17th -century composers Maria Nascinbeni and Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana. Music by Camilla de Rossi and the great educator of female musicians Antonio Vivaldi will top off our concert.

Robert Crowe, Camila Parias, soprani
Laura Gulley, Joy Grimes, violins
Jane Starkman, viola – Janet Haas, violone
Ruth McKay, harpsichord - Laury Gutiérrez, viola da gamba, director

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Are you singing this weekend? Are we allowed to come? Let us know in the comments!

Tuesday job annoucement

Calling all organists and accompanists! A friend of mine is the music director at this UU/UCC church, and they are looking for an organist. She is super-easy to work with; check it out!

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Are you getting gussied up to perform this weekend? Let us know in the comments!

Concerts!

I am busy this weekend!

Tonight, as previously mentioned, I'm singing in a concert with Schola Cantorum. We're doing Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Romancero Gitano with Aaron Larget-Caplan on guitar, and also Victoria's Missa O Magnum Mysterium, among other things. Singing with Schola is always an utter delight.

And tomorrow, I'm singing in a concert with the Video Game Orchestra at Symphony Hall! I'm pretty sure this is my Symphony Hall debut, and it is going to be an extremely cool concert. It's really a window into another musical world for me; the world of video game music is not one I've had a lot of contact with, but we have a number of guest composers who are going to be there, and we'll be doing music from Final Fantasy, Grandia, Kingdom Hearts, Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid and Chrono Trigger. Details about the concert are here.

One of these things is definitely for you, I'm sure; so that means I will definitely see you this weekend!

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Got any concerts coming up? Have at it in the comments!

Come hear Schola Cantorum this weekend!

This weekend Schola Cantorum is doing a very cool concert. We are performing a set of pieces by Castelnuovo-Tedescho that are settings of de Lorca poems. The work, Romancero Gitano, is for mixed chorus and guitar, and it's very cool! We'll also be doing Victoria's Missa O Magnum Mysterium and some other works by Spanish composers. I hope you can come! Saturday at 8 pm in downtown Boston!

Monday link: Help me out!

This Monday link is quite special!

My women's chorale, Cantilena, has set up a deal with Amazon whereby if you buy on Amazon through a certain link, a percentage of the proceeds go straight to us.

I know there are a number of non-profits who have set up this deal with Amazon, and it is such a simple way to benefit us. If you go to www.cantilena.org and scroll to the bottom of the front page, there is a button you can click that will take you directly to Amazon. Any purchase you make when arriving at Amazon from our site will be credited to our total, and at the end of each month a percentage (between 4% and 8%, depending on volume) of the monthly total will be deposited in our bank account.

Please give this a try the next time you buy anything on Amazon!

Thursday Self-Promoting Open Thread

Got any performances coming up? Let us know about them in the comments!

THAT post

Gentle reader,

It's time for THAT post. The one where the blogger says, "I am so busy! So I won't be around much, but I will definitely be back to blogging in [set time period]."

Generally it is followed by a post six months later saying, "I'm back! Ready to blog!"

And then there is total radio silence for about a year.

Well, I am hoping the last bit of that story doesn't necessarily happen, but blogging is going to be EXTREMELY light this semester. I'm teaching Music Appreciation 101 this semester for the first time, and anyone who has taught a 3-times-a-week lecture class for the first time knows how much work that entails. Add my church job (starting a kids' choir in October!), my auditioned chorus Cantilena, my college and retirement home choruses, and Anthology, not to mention some freelance singing work, I'm going to be pretty busy.

I will still try to post occasionally, but the Weekend Concert Calendars are going to be a self-publicized affair. I'll put up an open thread every Thursday morning, and you should feel free to publicize any concerts (of any kind, doesn't have to have a chorus) yourself. And I hope to get back in the blogging saddle sometime in December after finals!

For now, since it's Thursday, if you have any exciting concerts this coming weekend, let us know in the comments!