True, we just had some Purcell reviewed last time. But how about some more?
Evening Prayer: Purcell Anthems and Sacred Songs with Chanticleer, dir. Joseph Jennings, and Capriccio Stravagante, dir. Skip Sempé. Liner notes by Lindsay Kemp.
About the performance: First off, I must confess to a bias with regards to Chanticleer - in my opinion, they can practically do no wrong. Happily, this recording does nothing to disrupt that opinion. This album is a wonderful collection of Purcell's church music. The collaboration with Capriccio Stravagante is fantastic - the blend between voices and strings is amazing. The music allows a number of the members of Chanticleer to show off their solo voices, which they do admirably. But the real magic is when they sing together. For tuning, tone, and pure musicianship, Chanticleer cannot be beat. Whether they are singing in unison, as in 'An Evening Hymn' or in complex counterpoint as in 'Hear My Prayer', it is hard to imagine Purcell ever sounding better. For anyone interested in Baroque music or simply in really excellent choral singing, I would heartily recommend this CD.
About the music: Purcell grew up during the reign of Charles II, when England was experiencing a bit of an artistic renaissance after the stringent nature of Cromwell's Commonwealth. Music by past composers, such as Byrd, Tallis, and Gibbons was revived, and the music of Louis XIV's court was an influence as well. The earlier English influences can be heard in the complex counterpoint of such works as 'I was glad,' which is reminiscent of Gibbon's 'O, Clap Your Hands' or Byrd's 'Sing Joyfully.' And the French influence is clearly discernable in the ritornellos and dance-like rhythms in 'The Bell Anthem' and other larger-scale sacred works. But Purcell shines the most in the smaller anthems such as the well-known 'Hear My Prayer' where his incredible counterpoint skills are paired with a more daring harmonic approach; in these works he exhibits an unusually intense, emotional, and very unique musical voice.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
CD Review - Janet Baker sings Purcell
Long-term intrepid readers of this blog have probably heard previous mention of The Princeton Record Exchange. The Record Exchange is a fabulous store where many classical CDs can be picked up dirt cheap, and has gotten a great deal of my business in the past year and a half. So much, in fact, that I am hopelessly behind in listening to all the music I've acquired there. In the interests of addressing this situation, I am going to post periodic short reviews of CDs after acquiring them. So, without further ado, on to the first review.
Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, with Janet Baker, Patricia Clark, Monica Sinclair, and Raimund Herinex. With the St. Anthony Singers under John McCarthy and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Anthony Lewis. Harpsichord continuo: Thurston Dart.
I bought this recording because it had Janet Baker, a well-known English mezzo-soprano. I was not disappointed - her performance of Dido was splendid. She has a rich tone, and her singing is extraordinarily expressive. Patricia Clark in the role of Belinda was also very enjoyable - she has a light, clear, nimble voice well suited to Purcell. On the other hand, Raimund Herinex as Aeneas was a little dull and woolly. The chorus, although occasionally sounding a little quavery, was in general quite strong and energetic, and the orchestra was excellent. My main criticism was with the witches' scene. Monica Sinclair as the Sorceress, all the witches solos, and the chorus as well tried to adopt a nasal, sneering, sinister tone. While this was initially dramatic and amusing, this tone interfered with the tuning and the musicality, and I wish a more straight-forward reading had been chosen. Apart from that, this was a fine recording, with Janet Baker standing out from the ensemble for her extraordinary emotional singing.
About the piece: Henry Purcell (1659-1695) wrote Dido and Aeneas, his only true opera, in 1689 for a girls' boarding-school. Accordingly the music is simple and the opera only an hour long. The story focuses on that part of the Aeneid set in Carthage, where Aeneas, a Trojan Prince fleeing the fall of Troy, and Dido, Queen of Carthage, have a brief affair before parting acrimoniously. The most famous part of the opera is Dido's final aria, "Thy hand, Belinda" and the subsequent final chorus "With drooping wings," which must rank as some of the most beautiful music Purcell ever wrote.
Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, with Janet Baker, Patricia Clark, Monica Sinclair, and Raimund Herinex. With the St. Anthony Singers under John McCarthy and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Anthony Lewis. Harpsichord continuo: Thurston Dart.
I bought this recording because it had Janet Baker, a well-known English mezzo-soprano. I was not disappointed - her performance of Dido was splendid. She has a rich tone, and her singing is extraordinarily expressive. Patricia Clark in the role of Belinda was also very enjoyable - she has a light, clear, nimble voice well suited to Purcell. On the other hand, Raimund Herinex as Aeneas was a little dull and woolly. The chorus, although occasionally sounding a little quavery, was in general quite strong and energetic, and the orchestra was excellent. My main criticism was with the witches' scene. Monica Sinclair as the Sorceress, all the witches solos, and the chorus as well tried to adopt a nasal, sneering, sinister tone. While this was initially dramatic and amusing, this tone interfered with the tuning and the musicality, and I wish a more straight-forward reading had been chosen. Apart from that, this was a fine recording, with Janet Baker standing out from the ensemble for her extraordinary emotional singing.
About the piece: Henry Purcell (1659-1695) wrote Dido and Aeneas, his only true opera, in 1689 for a girls' boarding-school. Accordingly the music is simple and the opera only an hour long. The story focuses on that part of the Aeneid set in Carthage, where Aeneas, a Trojan Prince fleeing the fall of Troy, and Dido, Queen of Carthage, have a brief affair before parting acrimoniously. The most famous part of the opera is Dido's final aria, "Thy hand, Belinda" and the subsequent final chorus "With drooping wings," which must rank as some of the most beautiful music Purcell ever wrote.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
RIP Martino
The Boston Globe reports that Donald Martino, Pulizter Prize-winning composer, passed away on Thursday, December 8 while on a cruise with his wife in the Caribbean.
Martino taught at the Third Street Settlement in New York, Princeton, Yale, NEC, and Harvard. After serving as Irving Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis University from 1980 to 1983, he joined the faculty of Harvard in 1983; he retired as Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor Emeritus in 1992. He founded his own publishing company, Dantalian, Inc., to publish his music.
I am not intimately familiar with Martino's work - the one piece I know is Eternitie, from his Seven Pious Pieces on texts by Robert Herrick. I sang it with the Back Bay Chorale several years ago. It was beautiful, and I loved it, and I am sorry the composer is gone.
At least he had a good run. His many awards include two Fulbright scholarships; three Guggenheim awards; grants from the Massachusetts Arts Council, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Brandeis Creative Arts Citation in Music; the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in music for his chamber work Notturno, First Prize in the 1985 Kennedy Center Friedheim Competition for his String Quartet (1983), and most recently, the Boston Symphony's Mark M. Horblit Award.
Nothing to sneeze at. RIP, Donald.
Information from dantalian.com and Grove Music Online.
Martino taught at the Third Street Settlement in New York, Princeton, Yale, NEC, and Harvard. After serving as Irving Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis University from 1980 to 1983, he joined the faculty of Harvard in 1983; he retired as Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor Emeritus in 1992. He founded his own publishing company, Dantalian, Inc., to publish his music.
I am not intimately familiar with Martino's work - the one piece I know is Eternitie, from his Seven Pious Pieces on texts by Robert Herrick. I sang it with the Back Bay Chorale several years ago. It was beautiful, and I loved it, and I am sorry the composer is gone.
At least he had a good run. His many awards include two Fulbright scholarships; three Guggenheim awards; grants from the Massachusetts Arts Council, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Brandeis Creative Arts Citation in Music; the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in music for his chamber work Notturno, First Prize in the 1985 Kennedy Center Friedheim Competition for his String Quartet (1983), and most recently, the Boston Symphony's Mark M. Horblit Award.
Nothing to sneeze at. RIP, Donald.
Information from dantalian.com and Grove Music Online.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
the meaning of conductor
Not many posts this semester - one of my New Semester's Resolutions is to change that! Look for more updates coming soon to a blog near you.
Roseae Feminae, the women's choir I founded a little less than a year ago, is having their winter concert tomorrow night. I am a little nervous and a lot excited. Our dress rehearsal was excellent, and while usually that's considered a bad sign, I think in this case it's a sign that a lot of hard work by the chorus paid off. Most of today was spent making the program, both writing program notes and wrestling with the actual machines that put the ink on the page. I did not know that it was possible for a copier to jam so often, and I have had some experience with them. After an hour's worth of work yielded me 27 programs, I decided to call it a draw and retire from the field of battle.
But tramping home in the evening (with a big pile of messed-up programs to recycle) got me thinking, as I have before, about what a conductor does. There are many noble theories related to artistic philosophies and interpretation and focus and musicality and whatnot. But in my experience, what a conductor does is wrestle with copiers. And spend time looking up Purcell in New Grove, and translating words in German folksongs that don't appear in dictionaries, and trying to find translations of the Great Antiphons on Catholic websites, and then digging out a Latin dictionary to make sure those translations are correct. And e-mailing people (oh, the time spent e-mailing people) and making charts to calculate when people are free to rehearse and scheduling rooms and calling choir members, and putting forth an enormous amount of work to get people in the same room at the same time with the music in their hands. And putting up posters to recruit singers, and then putting up more posters to recruit audience members. And pounding out lines on the piano, and learning notes, and studying scores, and waving your arms in the air, and then waving them again, and then waving them again, because your muscles can't seem to remember that it's 3/4, then 1/4, then 2/4, not the other way around.
This blog's web address is based on a pun - in physics, a conductor is a material or object that permits an electric current to flow easily. But that's not so much a pun as a metaphor. A conductor permits the music to flow easily, or in many cases, a conductor permits the music to happen in the first place. That means a lot of administrative organizing, and a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and more than anything, a lot of e-mails.
I spent part of the day reading The Robert Shaw Reader for my last assignment of the semester. Much of it consists of letters to his choir. While most of the letters address rehearsal techiques and philosophies, or artistic reflections, many of them contain injunctions to the choir to show up to rehearsal, not to be tardy, to learn their notes at home, and to get their heads out of the scores. Even Robert Shaw had to get people into the same room at the same time with the music in their hands. I am in good company.
Roseae Feminae, the women's choir I founded a little less than a year ago, is having their winter concert tomorrow night. I am a little nervous and a lot excited. Our dress rehearsal was excellent, and while usually that's considered a bad sign, I think in this case it's a sign that a lot of hard work by the chorus paid off. Most of today was spent making the program, both writing program notes and wrestling with the actual machines that put the ink on the page. I did not know that it was possible for a copier to jam so often, and I have had some experience with them. After an hour's worth of work yielded me 27 programs, I decided to call it a draw and retire from the field of battle.
But tramping home in the evening (with a big pile of messed-up programs to recycle) got me thinking, as I have before, about what a conductor does. There are many noble theories related to artistic philosophies and interpretation and focus and musicality and whatnot. But in my experience, what a conductor does is wrestle with copiers. And spend time looking up Purcell in New Grove, and translating words in German folksongs that don't appear in dictionaries, and trying to find translations of the Great Antiphons on Catholic websites, and then digging out a Latin dictionary to make sure those translations are correct. And e-mailing people (oh, the time spent e-mailing people) and making charts to calculate when people are free to rehearse and scheduling rooms and calling choir members, and putting forth an enormous amount of work to get people in the same room at the same time with the music in their hands. And putting up posters to recruit singers, and then putting up more posters to recruit audience members. And pounding out lines on the piano, and learning notes, and studying scores, and waving your arms in the air, and then waving them again, and then waving them again, because your muscles can't seem to remember that it's 3/4, then 1/4, then 2/4, not the other way around.
This blog's web address is based on a pun - in physics, a conductor is a material or object that permits an electric current to flow easily. But that's not so much a pun as a metaphor. A conductor permits the music to flow easily, or in many cases, a conductor permits the music to happen in the first place. That means a lot of administrative organizing, and a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and more than anything, a lot of e-mails.
I spent part of the day reading The Robert Shaw Reader for my last assignment of the semester. Much of it consists of letters to his choir. While most of the letters address rehearsal techiques and philosophies, or artistic reflections, many of them contain injunctions to the choir to show up to rehearsal, not to be tardy, to learn their notes at home, and to get their heads out of the scores. Even Robert Shaw had to get people into the same room at the same time with the music in their hands. I am in good company.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
alive mid-semester
I realize I have neglected this blog of late, for which I apologize. Here are some brief notes on two of the most exciting upcoming concerts of the semester.
Upcoming concerts:
Kantorei
Sunday, October 30 at 7:30 pm
Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church
213 W. 82nd Street
New York City
Membra Jesu Nostri by Buxtehude
Cantata IV, Christ lag in Todesbanden by Bach
Fürwahr, er trag unsere Krankheit by Distler
(I have a small solo in the Buxtehude.)
Westminster Choir
Sunday, November 20 at 3 pm
Bristol Chapel at Westminster Choir College
Hymn to St. Cecilia, Britten
Trois Chanson, Debussy
other assorted pieces
(I have a small solo in the Debussy.)
Hope to see some of you there!
Upcoming concerts:
Kantorei
Sunday, October 30 at 7:30 pm
Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church
213 W. 82nd Street
New York City
Membra Jesu Nostri by Buxtehude
Cantata IV, Christ lag in Todesbanden by Bach
Fürwahr, er trag unsere Krankheit by Distler
(I have a small solo in the Buxtehude.)
Westminster Choir
Sunday, November 20 at 3 pm
Bristol Chapel at Westminster Choir College
Hymn to St. Cecilia, Britten
Trois Chanson, Debussy
other assorted pieces
(I have a small solo in the Debussy.)
Hope to see some of you there!
Thursday, September 01, 2005
A brief synopsis of my London and Paris visit
This blog swings back and forth between being serious essays on issues in conducting and music, and more pedestrian entries noting what's going on in my life. This entry will swing towards the latter.
8/15 - arrive in London
eat dinner at Il Vecchio Monde on Cromwell Rd. Not that great.
8/16
morning: go on London eye, go bungee-jumping on South Bank, see mimes on South Bank, walk to Trafalgar Sq.
eat lunch at Garfunkel's in Trafalagar
afternoon: visit St. Martin-in-the-Fields, pick up theater tickets for the evening, walk through St. James Park, see outside of Westminster Abbey
eat dinner hurriedly at an American diner near theatre (!!!)
evening: see Woman in White, Lloyd Webber's new musical. Is about what you would expect - I find it quite enjoyable, if unsurprising.
8/17
morning: meet up with my friend D
eat lunch at the Marlborough Head, a perfectly lovely pub with secret bookcase doorways to the bathrooms
afternoon: wander Covent Garden and watch the buskers, hit another pub
eat dinner at Pasha, a North African restaurant on Gloucester Rd. Very good.
evening: go to BBC Proms, see Paul Hillier and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. Fine performance.
8/18
morning: see auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham and British museum
eat lunch at British Museum. Fairly miserable and over-priced food.
afternoon: continue to wander British museum. Have very nice private tour with a volunteer on early Celtic artifacts
eat dinner at Ask, an Italian restaurant on Cromwell Rd. Very good.
evening: visit a coffee house on Gloucester Rd. Mom has best cappucino ever.
8/19
morning: meet K, family friend
eat lunch at the Hook and Cleaver with K, near Smithfield Market. As is drizzling and chilly, finally understand the true magic of British pubs.
afternoon: walk through Barbican, find nearby music store
evening: go to BBC Proms, see LSO under Sir Colin Davis perform Tippett #4 and Beethoven #3. Graceful and gentlemanly performance, w/ incredibly tight ensemble.
eat dinner at Koi, a Japanese restaurant on Gloucester Rd. which is divine.
8/20
morning: go to Portobello Rd. with Mom, incredible market that I highly recommend. Get hit by car. Buy several presents.
eat lunch at Electric, a shockingly good bar on Portobello Rd. V. good watercress soup with goat cheese.
afternoon: continue wandering Portobello Rd, also stop by Harrods. Have incredibly overpriced sushi snack at Harrods.
evening: go to BBC Proms, see LPO under Kurt Masur perform Sofia Gubaidulina's The Light of the End and Beethoven's 9th. Much broader stroke and bigger energy than previous night.
8/21
morning: drive to Oxford
eat lunch at a pub called the White Horse. Like all pubs I visit in England, the food is entirely satisfying.
afternoon: wander bookstores, walk around Christ Church Meadow. Father and brother watch Chelsea vs. Arsenal.
eat lunch at Le Petit Blanc, v. good French restaurant in Jericho section.
8/22
morning: visit Blenheim Castle. See very good sword demonstration.
eat lunch at Blenheim Castle
afternoon: visit Mini Cooper factory
eat dinner at the Eagle and Child, which was the meeting place of the Inklings, a group that included Tolkein and Lewis, and which they called the Bird and Baby. Find all this out quite by accident when reading placques on the wall.
evening: see The Importance of Being Earnest at the Oxford Playhouse. Very enjoyable - especially enjoy Cecily.
8/23
morning: private tour of Bodleian and Magdalen College w/ RB, librarian and colleague of my father's.
eat lunch at Queen's Lane Coffeehouse. Quite good and reasonably priced (nearly faint.)
afternoon: punting on the River Cherwall. Not as embarrassing as feared. Drive back to London.
eat dinner at Frontline, a restaurant near Paddington Station. Possibly the best meal I have in England.
evening: go to Fountain's Abbey pub, watch end of some crucial soccer game with father and brother, stay out late drinking and talking w/ A.
8/24
morning: fly to Paris
NO LUNCH - v. unhappy
afternoon: check into Tim Hotel in Montparnasse
eat dinner at Zazous. Perfect. In France at last!
8/25
morning: visit Cemetaire de Montparnasse, see graves of Saint-Saens, Poincare, Beckett, etc. Then visit catacombs. Cannot recommend highly enough. V. creepy.
eat lunch late at small cafe near Alesia road
early evening: see The Island (w/ French subtitles) Shockingly good - quite delightful, since previews made it look quite bad.
eat dinner at yet another non-descript perfect French cafe.
8/26
morning: meet w/ friend CFC
lunch: picked up at small corner bakery - cheese, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with mayonnaise on real French bread. Yum.
afternoon: prepare house in Berzy-le-Sec for wedding. Old charming house in old charming cute French countryside.
eat dinner at Pere Claude with wedding party. Best chicken ever, and best potatoes. Continue to adore France - way to my heart is through my stomach.
8/27
morning: meet w/ CFC
lunch: buffet by groom's parents. Bread, fruit, cheese, meat, v. delightful cherry tomatoes.
afternoon: check into Hotel Le Regent, prepare for wedding
Wedding, feasting, partying!
8/28
Go home.
My brother would no doubt want me to recount the jottings he made in my notebook, namely the soccer games he saw and the types of beer he tried, but since his handwriting is illegible, I'm afraid this entry will remain centered around me.
8/15 - arrive in London
eat dinner at Il Vecchio Monde on Cromwell Rd. Not that great.
8/16
morning: go on London eye, go bungee-jumping on South Bank, see mimes on South Bank, walk to Trafalgar Sq.
eat lunch at Garfunkel's in Trafalagar
afternoon: visit St. Martin-in-the-Fields, pick up theater tickets for the evening, walk through St. James Park, see outside of Westminster Abbey
eat dinner hurriedly at an American diner near theatre (!!!)
evening: see Woman in White, Lloyd Webber's new musical. Is about what you would expect - I find it quite enjoyable, if unsurprising.
8/17
morning: meet up with my friend D
eat lunch at the Marlborough Head, a perfectly lovely pub with secret bookcase doorways to the bathrooms
afternoon: wander Covent Garden and watch the buskers, hit another pub
eat dinner at Pasha, a North African restaurant on Gloucester Rd. Very good.
evening: go to BBC Proms, see Paul Hillier and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. Fine performance.
8/18
morning: see auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham and British museum
eat lunch at British Museum. Fairly miserable and over-priced food.
afternoon: continue to wander British museum. Have very nice private tour with a volunteer on early Celtic artifacts
eat dinner at Ask, an Italian restaurant on Cromwell Rd. Very good.
evening: visit a coffee house on Gloucester Rd. Mom has best cappucino ever.
8/19
morning: meet K, family friend
eat lunch at the Hook and Cleaver with K, near Smithfield Market. As is drizzling and chilly, finally understand the true magic of British pubs.
afternoon: walk through Barbican, find nearby music store
evening: go to BBC Proms, see LSO under Sir Colin Davis perform Tippett #4 and Beethoven #3. Graceful and gentlemanly performance, w/ incredibly tight ensemble.
eat dinner at Koi, a Japanese restaurant on Gloucester Rd. which is divine.
8/20
morning: go to Portobello Rd. with Mom, incredible market that I highly recommend. Get hit by car. Buy several presents.
eat lunch at Electric, a shockingly good bar on Portobello Rd. V. good watercress soup with goat cheese.
afternoon: continue wandering Portobello Rd, also stop by Harrods. Have incredibly overpriced sushi snack at Harrods.
evening: go to BBC Proms, see LPO under Kurt Masur perform Sofia Gubaidulina's The Light of the End and Beethoven's 9th. Much broader stroke and bigger energy than previous night.
8/21
morning: drive to Oxford
eat lunch at a pub called the White Horse. Like all pubs I visit in England, the food is entirely satisfying.
afternoon: wander bookstores, walk around Christ Church Meadow. Father and brother watch Chelsea vs. Arsenal.
eat lunch at Le Petit Blanc, v. good French restaurant in Jericho section.
8/22
morning: visit Blenheim Castle. See very good sword demonstration.
eat lunch at Blenheim Castle
afternoon: visit Mini Cooper factory
eat dinner at the Eagle and Child, which was the meeting place of the Inklings, a group that included Tolkein and Lewis, and which they called the Bird and Baby. Find all this out quite by accident when reading placques on the wall.
evening: see The Importance of Being Earnest at the Oxford Playhouse. Very enjoyable - especially enjoy Cecily.
8/23
morning: private tour of Bodleian and Magdalen College w/ RB, librarian and colleague of my father's.
eat lunch at Queen's Lane Coffeehouse. Quite good and reasonably priced (nearly faint.)
afternoon: punting on the River Cherwall. Not as embarrassing as feared. Drive back to London.
eat dinner at Frontline, a restaurant near Paddington Station. Possibly the best meal I have in England.
evening: go to Fountain's Abbey pub, watch end of some crucial soccer game with father and brother, stay out late drinking and talking w/ A.
8/24
morning: fly to Paris
NO LUNCH - v. unhappy
afternoon: check into Tim Hotel in Montparnasse
eat dinner at Zazous. Perfect. In France at last!
8/25
morning: visit Cemetaire de Montparnasse, see graves of Saint-Saens, Poincare, Beckett, etc. Then visit catacombs. Cannot recommend highly enough. V. creepy.
eat lunch late at small cafe near Alesia road
early evening: see The Island (w/ French subtitles) Shockingly good - quite delightful, since previews made it look quite bad.
eat dinner at yet another non-descript perfect French cafe.
8/26
morning: meet w/ friend CFC
lunch: picked up at small corner bakery - cheese, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with mayonnaise on real French bread. Yum.
afternoon: prepare house in Berzy-le-Sec for wedding. Old charming house in old charming cute French countryside.
eat dinner at Pere Claude with wedding party. Best chicken ever, and best potatoes. Continue to adore France - way to my heart is through my stomach.
8/27
morning: meet w/ CFC
lunch: buffet by groom's parents. Bread, fruit, cheese, meat, v. delightful cherry tomatoes.
afternoon: check into Hotel Le Regent, prepare for wedding
Wedding, feasting, partying!
8/28
Go home.
My brother would no doubt want me to recount the jottings he made in my notebook, namely the soccer games he saw and the types of beer he tried, but since his handwriting is illegible, I'm afraid this entry will remain centered around me.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Hair reunion
One week ago, I went to the reunion of my senior-year high school musical. It was a fascinating and very positive event, where I got to connect to some people I hadn't seen for 10 years. After a few hours of chatting and ordering dinner, we all settled in to watch the fuzzy old video of our production of Hair so many years ago. And on the way home I found myself thinking about what I had looked like, what I had felt was lacking in my performance, and in what ways I had changed since that musical.
One of the topics I was mulling over as I drove back to my parents' house was the difference between my movement and the quality of movement of the leads. (I had a bit part, and was mostly in the chorus.) I knew they had something that I was lacking, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
I considered the aspect of risk-taking. It couldn't be fear of looking like an idiot, I thought. I've never been afraid of looking like an idiot, in large part because for much of my life I simply took it for granted that I would, so I might as well not worry about it. Then and now, I consider myself pretty good at simply barging ahead and not concerning myself with other people's opinions.
So if I wasn't afraid of looking like an idiot, how could I still be inhibited in some way?
Then it hit me. I wasn't afraid of looking like a fool. I was afraid of not looking like a fool. I was afraid to try and look good, in case I succeeded in a merely mediocre fashion. In a way, I still was afraid of looking like a fool...but I was afraid of looking like a fool who was trying to look good and failing.
All of my movements on stage had just as much purpose and emotion and intent to communicate as anyone else's. But there was no extraneous joy in movement itself. I didn't think I would be purely aesthetically pleasing to watch while I was on stage.
There are times when I have felt good on stage - in control, the star of the show, graceful, and fun to watch, most notably when I was taking all the baritone leads in Gilbert and Sullivan performances. But that was an exception. Much of the time, on stage and off, I assume people won't really enjoy looking at me. Because I assumed I wouldn't look good, I looked down on the idea at all. Looking good was not the point, I defensively thought. Accomplishing something was the point.
It was at this point that I missed my exit in the bright light of revelation, and had to go into the next town over before I could turn around.
The pieces all fell into place. Since high school, I had certainly learned to be more comfortable in my body and on stage. But I always took pride in the effectiveness of my body, in what I accomplished, and not how I looked doing it. And I chose activities that emphasized accomplishment of a goal, and not how you look getting there - taekwondo, crew, and especially biking. I also tend to dress efficiently, rather than enjoying how I look in clothes. And, crucially, my approach to conducting is communication-oriented, and has nothing to do with aesthetics. I assume that I won't look great while I conducted, and so I concentrate on getting the job done.
And, of course, this cripples my conducting. Since part of me is always thinking "Sorry you have to stare at me while we do this, but it's the best way to get the job done" I am not fully stepping into my role as the visual focus of the musical experience, and I am sabotaging both myself and the ensemble. I can't communicate with people emotionally about what's going on in the music if I think I'm a visual imposition.
So, how to fix this? Start to study Alexander technique, as I had planned. Keep working with my friends who try to get me to enjoy wearing clothes and understand how they work. Start to assume that other people will enjoy looking at me. And work on feeling that I am beautiful when I move, especially when I conduct.
At the reunion, I was discussing taekwondo with the husband of one of the cast members, and mentioned my strong desire to return after the hiatus I took last year during school. But now I feel that perhaps it is not the proper time for me to return to taekwondo. I think it's time I started to study...dance.
Once again, I am brought back to that pivotal Marianne Williamson quote. Perhaps I should just get it tattooed on my arm.
One of the topics I was mulling over as I drove back to my parents' house was the difference between my movement and the quality of movement of the leads. (I had a bit part, and was mostly in the chorus.) I knew they had something that I was lacking, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
I considered the aspect of risk-taking. It couldn't be fear of looking like an idiot, I thought. I've never been afraid of looking like an idiot, in large part because for much of my life I simply took it for granted that I would, so I might as well not worry about it. Then and now, I consider myself pretty good at simply barging ahead and not concerning myself with other people's opinions.
So if I wasn't afraid of looking like an idiot, how could I still be inhibited in some way?
Then it hit me. I wasn't afraid of looking like a fool. I was afraid of not looking like a fool. I was afraid to try and look good, in case I succeeded in a merely mediocre fashion. In a way, I still was afraid of looking like a fool...but I was afraid of looking like a fool who was trying to look good and failing.
All of my movements on stage had just as much purpose and emotion and intent to communicate as anyone else's. But there was no extraneous joy in movement itself. I didn't think I would be purely aesthetically pleasing to watch while I was on stage.
There are times when I have felt good on stage - in control, the star of the show, graceful, and fun to watch, most notably when I was taking all the baritone leads in Gilbert and Sullivan performances. But that was an exception. Much of the time, on stage and off, I assume people won't really enjoy looking at me. Because I assumed I wouldn't look good, I looked down on the idea at all. Looking good was not the point, I defensively thought. Accomplishing something was the point.
It was at this point that I missed my exit in the bright light of revelation, and had to go into the next town over before I could turn around.
The pieces all fell into place. Since high school, I had certainly learned to be more comfortable in my body and on stage. But I always took pride in the effectiveness of my body, in what I accomplished, and not how I looked doing it. And I chose activities that emphasized accomplishment of a goal, and not how you look getting there - taekwondo, crew, and especially biking. I also tend to dress efficiently, rather than enjoying how I look in clothes. And, crucially, my approach to conducting is communication-oriented, and has nothing to do with aesthetics. I assume that I won't look great while I conducted, and so I concentrate on getting the job done.
And, of course, this cripples my conducting. Since part of me is always thinking "Sorry you have to stare at me while we do this, but it's the best way to get the job done" I am not fully stepping into my role as the visual focus of the musical experience, and I am sabotaging both myself and the ensemble. I can't communicate with people emotionally about what's going on in the music if I think I'm a visual imposition.
So, how to fix this? Start to study Alexander technique, as I had planned. Keep working with my friends who try to get me to enjoy wearing clothes and understand how they work. Start to assume that other people will enjoy looking at me. And work on feeling that I am beautiful when I move, especially when I conduct.
At the reunion, I was discussing taekwondo with the husband of one of the cast members, and mentioned my strong desire to return after the hiatus I took last year during school. But now I feel that perhaps it is not the proper time for me to return to taekwondo. I think it's time I started to study...dance.
Once again, I am brought back to that pivotal Marianne Williamson quote. Perhaps I should just get it tattooed on my arm.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Secret Santa Swap
Last December, the conducting department got together and had a Yankee swap. Through a combination of no mercy and luck, I ended up with exactly the gift I wanted - a $10 gift certificate to The Princeton Record Exchange and the company of Prof. DM on a trip to this store where he would recommend all the good recordings.
Well, I finally got my X-mas present today! DM and I met up this afternoon, and spent an hour wading through the used classical bin. The Princeton Record Exchange is the cheapest spot for used CD's I have ever found, but nevertheless, it was a tough job keeping my spending in the double digits.
It is doubtless a sinister sign of a covetous attitude, but I always want to list what I picked up on my blog. For me, it's a way of re-appreciating what I got, and for anyone else, a clouded and confusing glance into my musical interests.
Acquired:
Well, don't look at me like that, people. You should have seen the stack I didn't buy. And I have orals coming up this year. That means I need to have a thorough knowledge of the choral repertoire. It's my job to educate myself like this!
Well, I finally got my X-mas present today! DM and I met up this afternoon, and spent an hour wading through the used classical bin. The Princeton Record Exchange is the cheapest spot for used CD's I have ever found, but nevertheless, it was a tough job keeping my spending in the double digits.
It is doubtless a sinister sign of a covetous attitude, but I always want to list what I picked up on my blog. For me, it's a way of re-appreciating what I got, and for anyone else, a clouded and confusing glance into my musical interests.
Acquired:
- Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, perf. by Les Arts Florissant, cond. by William Christie
- Dvořák's Stabat Mater, perf. by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, cond. by Robert Shaw
- A 2-CD set of Vaughan Williams, including A Sea Symphony, perf. by the BBC Orchestra, cond. by Sir Andrew Davis
- Voices of Life, various songs by the Bulgarian Women's Choir
- Sigismondo D'India's Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, perf. by The Consort of Musicke, dir. by Anthony Rooley
- Martin's Mass and Pizzetti's Requiem, perf. by the Westminster Cathedral Choir, cond. by James O'Donnell
- Various pieces by William Mundy, perf. by The Sixteen, cond. by Harry Christophers
- Górecki's Symphony No. 3, perf. by Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta, cond. by David Zinman
- Zelenka's The Lamentations of Jeremiah, perf. by The Chandos Baroque Players
- Cozzolani's Messa Paschale, perf. by Magnificat, cond. by Warren Stewart
- Renée Fleming's relatively new Handel CD, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, cond. by Harry Bicket
- Various pieces by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, perf. by Cecilia's Circle
- Scarlatti's Stabat Mater, perf. by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, and cond. by John Eliot Gardiner
- Mozart's Mass in C Minor, perf. by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists with Sylvia McNair, Diana Montague, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, and Cornelius Hauptmann, and cond. by John Eliot Gardiner
- Charpentier's Miserere and various motets, perf. by Choeurs et Orchestre de La Chapelle Royale, cond. by Philippe Herreweghe
Well, don't look at me like that, people. You should have seen the stack I didn't buy. And I have orals coming up this year. That means I need to have a thorough knowledge of the choral repertoire. It's my job to educate myself like this!
Vocal Institute
Well, it's nearly over, but July was very busy. Big Job Number One was singing in La bella dormente nel bosco in the Lincoln Center Festival a few weeks ago. Puppets, puppets, everywhere - almost all the action was performed by life-size puppets, and the singers stood off to one side. There was a week of rehearsals, and then a week of performances - 6 shows in 5 days. The opera was splendid and charming, the audiences as giving and receptive as one could possibly hope for, and the music was just as enjoyable to sing and listen to the last night as the first. Best of all, I got paid, and got to be part of a professional opera. And yet, this experience was most valuable because it helped me to figure out that I don't want to be part of a professional opera chorus. Since this is not something I'm currently training to do, perhaps nobody else is surprised, and yet it's always been one of those tempting options, especially when you hear about the salaries and benefits some opera houses offer. However, the hurry-up-and-wait aspect of all professional theater, combined with the business-like approach of all the participants (it is, after all, a job) is not as exciting as the performances I've been in where everyone was an amateur, very passionate, horribly nervous, and totally invested. This goes not only for the singing, but the conducting - I don't think it would be as rewarding to conduct that opera as it would be (was!) to conduct enthusiastic amateurs.
Speaking of enthusiastic amateurs, and the other half of this equation, the middle of July was taken up with Vocal Institute, a 2-week high school choir camp on Westminster's campus. I taught and acted as an assistant to the big chorus. I taught ear-training from 8:30 to 9:00 am, and then from 9 to 9:30, then sectionals from 10:15 to 11:30, then theory from 1 to 2, and again from 2 to 3, and during the second week I sat in on the big afternoon rehearsal from 4:15 to 5:30. I had been extremely nervous about this job, since high schoolers are not a population I'm familiar with. I've taught only once before, and that was high school physics for 2 months, which was pretty tough - convincing second-semester high-school seniors in a lower-level physics class that they care is nigh impossible. However, caring makes all the difference! My theory class, which I had to make up as I went along, turned out to be a great success - I took the kids who'd had a little theory before, and had chosen to be there. We started out with key signatures and intervals, and by the last class they could all analyze a hymn (some of them were superstars, and I was able to push them ahead to seventh chords and secondary dominants.) I was immensely proud of them. I also had more fun than I expected in ear-training, which was mostly teaching solfege, with a bit of tuning thrown in. Although sometimes they were tired and grumpy, it wasn't as hard as I had expected to get them rolling at 8:30 in the morning. My favorite ear-training game was Muppetphone, named after a Muppets episode where someone plays a xylophone made up of muppets. I would assign groups of 3 or 4 students a note, such as "do" or "sol", and put together a whole scale, and then by pointing to a group, which would sing their note, I would play songs and have them try to identify the tune.
Sectionals were fun too, and whether by luck or something I did, the alto section was by far the most bonded, and had the most sense of unity and cohesion. All of the kids, even the ones trying to be noncommittal and cool, were excited and dedicated and generally excellent. Compared to singing professional opera, teaching music theory to high school students was far more interesting, exciting, fun, and rewarding.
I've known since I started studying conducting that I would probably be teaching high school at some point before I reached my goal of a really good university position (I've got my eye on you, MIT!) But until this summer, that knowledge was a source of dread - it's no secret that teaching high school is difficult and draining. Now I've gotten to see the good side of it too, and I'm not so worried anymore. However tough it is, I know there will be some exciting and rewarding moments.
Speaking of enthusiastic amateurs, and the other half of this equation, the middle of July was taken up with Vocal Institute, a 2-week high school choir camp on Westminster's campus. I taught and acted as an assistant to the big chorus. I taught ear-training from 8:30 to 9:00 am, and then from 9 to 9:30, then sectionals from 10:15 to 11:30, then theory from 1 to 2, and again from 2 to 3, and during the second week I sat in on the big afternoon rehearsal from 4:15 to 5:30. I had been extremely nervous about this job, since high schoolers are not a population I'm familiar with. I've taught only once before, and that was high school physics for 2 months, which was pretty tough - convincing second-semester high-school seniors in a lower-level physics class that they care is nigh impossible. However, caring makes all the difference! My theory class, which I had to make up as I went along, turned out to be a great success - I took the kids who'd had a little theory before, and had chosen to be there. We started out with key signatures and intervals, and by the last class they could all analyze a hymn (some of them were superstars, and I was able to push them ahead to seventh chords and secondary dominants.) I was immensely proud of them. I also had more fun than I expected in ear-training, which was mostly teaching solfege, with a bit of tuning thrown in. Although sometimes they were tired and grumpy, it wasn't as hard as I had expected to get them rolling at 8:30 in the morning. My favorite ear-training game was Muppetphone, named after a Muppets episode where someone plays a xylophone made up of muppets. I would assign groups of 3 or 4 students a note, such as "do" or "sol", and put together a whole scale, and then by pointing to a group, which would sing their note, I would play songs and have them try to identify the tune.
Sectionals were fun too, and whether by luck or something I did, the alto section was by far the most bonded, and had the most sense of unity and cohesion. All of the kids, even the ones trying to be noncommittal and cool, were excited and dedicated and generally excellent. Compared to singing professional opera, teaching music theory to high school students was far more interesting, exciting, fun, and rewarding.
I've known since I started studying conducting that I would probably be teaching high school at some point before I reached my goal of a really good university position (I've got my eye on you, MIT!) But until this summer, that knowledge was a source of dread - it's no secret that teaching high school is difficult and draining. Now I've gotten to see the good side of it too, and I'm not so worried anymore. However tough it is, I know there will be some exciting and rewarding moments.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
not there yet
Once upon a time, when I was a wee tyke, I asked my father what he did all day at work, as I sometimes did. On that particular day, he said, "Oh, I sit in meetings a lot."
"What do you do in meetings?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "I make suggestions, and nobody really thinks they're that great. Then somebody else makes the same suggestion an hour later, and I say, 'That's a fabulous idea! We should definitely do that!' and then it gets done."
The prioritization of getting things done over ego made quite an impression on my young mind, as it was already obvious that many people out in the world didn't work that way.
Cut to yesterday. The five graduate choral assistants are all milling around, trying to figure out the best way to have the Vocal Institute choir stand in the Princeton University Chapel. Someone suggested having the guys across the back, and the girls down the pews at the sides, so that the guys' sound would head straight out into the chapel (there are fewer of them.)
"I don't think that's a good idea," I said. "This is a really echoing space, and people have trouble hearing, and my experience standing in the back of the chapel has been that it makes one feel distanced and insecure. They're going to be at the farthest spot from the conductor there. Why don't we put them in the front two rows of pews up at the front, close to the conductor?"
The other four guys didn't seem to think that was such a great idea, and the guys ended up in the back.
Halfway through the rehearsal, one of the conductors moved the men to the two front rows of pews up at the front, close to the conductor.
I went up after the rehearsal, and she was saying to one of the other assistants, "That was a great idea to move the guys up to the front. Whose idea was that?"
The assistant said, "Oh, that was BH's idea."
!!! Maybe he'd been the one to suggest it mid-rehearsal when it was clear the guys were feeling distanced and insecure, but it hadn't been his idea!
I didn't say anything (except a brief look of surprise at the assistant) but inside I was instantly outraged.
I still have a ways to go to reach my father's more mature priorities, I guess.
"What do you do in meetings?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "I make suggestions, and nobody really thinks they're that great. Then somebody else makes the same suggestion an hour later, and I say, 'That's a fabulous idea! We should definitely do that!' and then it gets done."
The prioritization of getting things done over ego made quite an impression on my young mind, as it was already obvious that many people out in the world didn't work that way.
Cut to yesterday. The five graduate choral assistants are all milling around, trying to figure out the best way to have the Vocal Institute choir stand in the Princeton University Chapel. Someone suggested having the guys across the back, and the girls down the pews at the sides, so that the guys' sound would head straight out into the chapel (there are fewer of them.)
"I don't think that's a good idea," I said. "This is a really echoing space, and people have trouble hearing, and my experience standing in the back of the chapel has been that it makes one feel distanced and insecure. They're going to be at the farthest spot from the conductor there. Why don't we put them in the front two rows of pews up at the front, close to the conductor?"
The other four guys didn't seem to think that was such a great idea, and the guys ended up in the back.
Halfway through the rehearsal, one of the conductors moved the men to the two front rows of pews up at the front, close to the conductor.
I went up after the rehearsal, and she was saying to one of the other assistants, "That was a great idea to move the guys up to the front. Whose idea was that?"
The assistant said, "Oh, that was BH's idea."
!!! Maybe he'd been the one to suggest it mid-rehearsal when it was clear the guys were feeling distanced and insecure, but it hadn't been his idea!
I didn't say anything (except a brief look of surprise at the assistant) but inside I was instantly outraged.
I still have a ways to go to reach my father's more mature priorities, I guess.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Flummerfelt - the end of an era
Joseph Flummerfelt just conducted his last concert with the Westminster Choir. I am happy to say it went quite stunningly well, but everyone was pretty teary at the end. I hope we sang Barber's The Coolin well enough for him - he's been trying to "get that song right" for years. He seemed pretty happy.
Last night he conducted the Brahms Requiem and I think he conducted it better than anyone else I have had the pleasure of singing it with, which after this past year is saying quite a lot.
I have nothing particularly deep to add, but this afternoon's concert deserved note.
Last night he conducted the Brahms Requiem and I think he conducted it better than anyone else I have had the pleasure of singing it with, which after this past year is saying quite a lot.
I have nothing particularly deep to add, but this afternoon's concert deserved note.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Hazelle Goodman and Mabou Mines
Notes from the South:
Last Saturday, we had our 3rd Die Vögel performance, and it went splendidly until the finale, where the tree is supposed to miraculously light on fire...and didn't. Singing the praise of Zeus when he's done jack scrap to deserve it tests your acting ability, let me tell you. "Oh, wow! The tree that I have worshipped for so long is...not on fire. Yippee."
Sunday I went to see Hazelle Goodman, the second of the monologuists (Mike Daisey was the first, if you recall, and I will also see the third later this week - there's three at the festival.) She did a performance called On Edge which was essentially a series of skits about race relations, as well as general life issues. She put on a completely different character for each skit, and her transformations were amazing - she really had the body language down of a true variety of people. My favorite skit was her ironic "Get out of the Ghetto! symposium, Part III - The New Black Suburbia!" She scolded her audience to straighten their hair, stop talking with "homeboy" bad grammar, pull up their pants, and to stop eating fried chicken, because "Oreos are a very tasty snack!" Some of the skits were very serious - such as when she played Amadou Diallo's mother - but many of them had me laughing extremely hard.
Yesterday I was pretty sick, and since we had the day off, I spent most of the day in bed, and the rest in front of my friend's TV watching more Alias. But I felt better in the evening, and went out to see Mabou Mines Dollhouse. Mabou Mines is a theater company that had put together an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's The Dollhouse. Most of the script was intact, but the staging was incredibly inventive. To highlight the feminist lesson of women being forced to live in a man's world, all the women were over 6 feet tall... and all the men were played by little people (aka midgets, although apparently that term is now considered offensive.) All the actors were great, and although the performance was very stylized and played with the fourth wall (some dialogues were done with stilted dance, some dialogue was done with overly melodramatic gestures, the stagehands came onstage and participated) I still found it to be very intense and effective.
The next few days will be all-Brahms, all the time - a four hour rehearsal tonight, a rehearsal tomorrow, and then a performance of the Brahms Requiem in the evening. Then a Westminster Choir performance on Thursday...but Friday I'll be hitting the theater again!
Last Saturday, we had our 3rd Die Vögel performance, and it went splendidly until the finale, where the tree is supposed to miraculously light on fire...and didn't. Singing the praise of Zeus when he's done jack scrap to deserve it tests your acting ability, let me tell you. "Oh, wow! The tree that I have worshipped for so long is...not on fire. Yippee."
Sunday I went to see Hazelle Goodman, the second of the monologuists (Mike Daisey was the first, if you recall, and I will also see the third later this week - there's three at the festival.) She did a performance called On Edge which was essentially a series of skits about race relations, as well as general life issues. She put on a completely different character for each skit, and her transformations were amazing - she really had the body language down of a true variety of people. My favorite skit was her ironic "Get out of the Ghetto! symposium, Part III - The New Black Suburbia!" She scolded her audience to straighten their hair, stop talking with "homeboy" bad grammar, pull up their pants, and to stop eating fried chicken, because "Oreos are a very tasty snack!" Some of the skits were very serious - such as when she played Amadou Diallo's mother - but many of them had me laughing extremely hard.
Yesterday I was pretty sick, and since we had the day off, I spent most of the day in bed, and the rest in front of my friend's TV watching more Alias. But I felt better in the evening, and went out to see Mabou Mines Dollhouse. Mabou Mines is a theater company that had put together an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's The Dollhouse. Most of the script was intact, but the staging was incredibly inventive. To highlight the feminist lesson of women being forced to live in a man's world, all the women were over 6 feet tall... and all the men were played by little people (aka midgets, although apparently that term is now considered offensive.) All the actors were great, and although the performance was very stylized and played with the fourth wall (some dialogues were done with stilted dance, some dialogue was done with overly melodramatic gestures, the stagehands came onstage and participated) I still found it to be very intense and effective.
The next few days will be all-Brahms, all the time - a four hour rehearsal tonight, a rehearsal tomorrow, and then a performance of the Brahms Requiem in the evening. Then a Westminster Choir performance on Thursday...but Friday I'll be hitting the theater again!
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Messaien
Well, it turns out that I did not see Xenakis. On Wednesday night I hied me over to the place where the concert was scheduled to occur, and got there barely in time, only to find out that because the weather looked threatening and this was an outdoor venue, the concert had been moved halfway across town. I could have sprinted and possibly gotten in the door late...but I decided it was a sign, and I should go and watch some Alias. So I did. It's a very convoluted show, which is a high compliment where spy shows are concerned.
Thursday was quite busy - we had our first Westminster Choir concert, which was sold out and went quite well, and then our second Die Vögel performance, which also went quite well. Then there was a party at the apartment of one of the lead singers, which was fun - there was some dancing, and I got to talk to some people I hadn't talked to much before (such as the director.) However, it did make hauling myself out of bed at 10 am the next morning to get to a chamber music concert quite painful. It was worth it, because Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time gains a lot in live performance, but I have to admit to briefly falling asleep at a couple of points. The performance was quite good, but the violinist had a few tuning issues at the end.
Yesterday afternoon we all went to a party thrown for the choir by a family of benefactors who have been supporting both Spoleto and Westminster for quite a long time. We all drove out to their beach house, and played games and hung out on the beach (yes, I finally got to the beach!) and we sang some pieces for them, and they fed us dinner. It was very pleasant.
My clock is being set further and further back...I don't have to get up that early usually, and everybody stays up late. Going to bed at midnight is considered going to bed early. I've been staying up on average to about 2 am. It's going to be a painful wrench going back to New Jersey - when they tell you Charleston is in the same time zone, it's not really true!
Thursday was quite busy - we had our first Westminster Choir concert, which was sold out and went quite well, and then our second Die Vögel performance, which also went quite well. Then there was a party at the apartment of one of the lead singers, which was fun - there was some dancing, and I got to talk to some people I hadn't talked to much before (such as the director.) However, it did make hauling myself out of bed at 10 am the next morning to get to a chamber music concert quite painful. It was worth it, because Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time gains a lot in live performance, but I have to admit to briefly falling asleep at a couple of points. The performance was quite good, but the violinist had a few tuning issues at the end.
Yesterday afternoon we all went to a party thrown for the choir by a family of benefactors who have been supporting both Spoleto and Westminster for quite a long time. We all drove out to their beach house, and played games and hung out on the beach (yes, I finally got to the beach!) and we sang some pieces for them, and they fed us dinner. It was very pleasant.
My clock is being set further and further back...I don't have to get up that early usually, and everybody stays up late. Going to bed at midnight is considered going to bed early. I've been staying up on average to about 2 am. It's going to be a painful wrench going back to New Jersey - when they tell you Charleston is in the same time zone, it's not really true!
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Mike Daisey
Last night I went to a performance by a monologuist named Mike Daisey. He did a show called The Ugly American about his experiences studying theater abroad in London, and it was fantastic. If you ever get a chance to see this guy, you should definitely go. He was by turns very, very funny, and very, very intense. Possibly the most surprising moment was when he came out for his bow. He was sitting the entire show behind a desk, where he had a glass of water and some notes, and because of his skill, he was able to present the image of exactly who he was...but then when he took his bow, at the end of the show, after I'd been staring at him for 2 hours, all of a sudden I saw him as I would have seen him if I passed him on the street, a less true image than what I'd been seeing during the show. He was just a short, fat, doughy, ordinary white guy, and not someone I ever would have expected to be that fascinating on stage. It was yet another lesson not to write people off based on appearances.
The show hung together really well, and he didn't pull his punches - he talked about some really disturbing things, and he didn't try to sugarcoat anything to make it easier on the audience. There was also some hilarious commentary on theater, such as a really amusing riff on the idea of "challenging" theater being something people don't always want to see even if they say they do (an issue that hits home with Spoleto audiences, trust me.) Apparently he has a book out, which I plan on investigating.
Tonight will either be watching Alias with some friends or going to a Xenakis percussion concert. Haven't decided yet.
The show hung together really well, and he didn't pull his punches - he talked about some really disturbing things, and he didn't try to sugarcoat anything to make it easier on the audience. There was also some hilarious commentary on theater, such as a really amusing riff on the idea of "challenging" theater being something people don't always want to see even if they say they do (an issue that hits home with Spoleto audiences, trust me.) Apparently he has a book out, which I plan on investigating.
Tonight will either be watching Alias with some friends or going to a Xenakis percussion concert. Haven't decided yet.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Spoleto Update the First
Here I am, at Spoleto USA 2005! The first week was certainly exhausting, but now that Die Vögel has had its opening night, the schedule has dropped off considerably - just in time for me to enjoy all the other festival performances.
The first one I went to was on Sunday night. It was called Improvography, and was a tap-dance show starring Savion Glover. However, it was really a jazz show, because Savion Glover is a jazz musician above everything else. He tapped on a raised, amplified wooden stage, and his feet were his instrument - he tooks solos, and accompanied the rest of the band's solos, and performed little duets with them, and all of it, just like the drummer (if a little more flashy!) His athleticism and dancing were superb, but his primary commitment was to the music, not to the visuals, and every step he took was for the sound it made. It was amazing - I don't know how he kept his body relaxed through that relentless dancing. And his three back-up dancers were amazing as well - when they all danced together, it sounded like one person, they had the rhythm so firmly in their bodies. It was a wee bit long towards the end, especially in a cold theater, but on the whole really fabulous.
Yesterday (Monday) afternoon, I went to a concert of the James Madison University Chamber Choir (I think officially called the Madison Singers?) who were quite pleasant, but not really revelatory on any level. Also, everyone does Billy Joel's "And So It Goes." I know it's a nice song, but give it a rest, conductors of the world. And do we always have to end with a spiritual? Isn't that a little cliched?
Yesterday evening I saw Emio Greco, which was very modern, very avant-garde dance. It was beautiful, strange, and not particularly accessible - very abstract, and I was never sure what the point was. But it made a good contrast with Savion Glover - tap concentrates all the energy in the feet, and this dancing just flung energy out of every limb, using the entire body in all possible swings and curves and large-scale arcs and bends.
Tonight I switch from dance to theater, and if we don't have rehearsal too early tomorrow, I'll get to finally go to the daily chamber music concerts. I've seen other people being drawn to concerts and shows that reflect their particular interests, but I'm hoping while I'm here to absorb as wide a range of performances and art as possible.
The first one I went to was on Sunday night. It was called Improvography, and was a tap-dance show starring Savion Glover. However, it was really a jazz show, because Savion Glover is a jazz musician above everything else. He tapped on a raised, amplified wooden stage, and his feet were his instrument - he tooks solos, and accompanied the rest of the band's solos, and performed little duets with them, and all of it, just like the drummer (if a little more flashy!) His athleticism and dancing were superb, but his primary commitment was to the music, not to the visuals, and every step he took was for the sound it made. It was amazing - I don't know how he kept his body relaxed through that relentless dancing. And his three back-up dancers were amazing as well - when they all danced together, it sounded like one person, they had the rhythm so firmly in their bodies. It was a wee bit long towards the end, especially in a cold theater, but on the whole really fabulous.
Yesterday (Monday) afternoon, I went to a concert of the James Madison University Chamber Choir (I think officially called the Madison Singers?) who were quite pleasant, but not really revelatory on any level. Also, everyone does Billy Joel's "And So It Goes." I know it's a nice song, but give it a rest, conductors of the world. And do we always have to end with a spiritual? Isn't that a little cliched?
Yesterday evening I saw Emio Greco, which was very modern, very avant-garde dance. It was beautiful, strange, and not particularly accessible - very abstract, and I was never sure what the point was. But it made a good contrast with Savion Glover - tap concentrates all the energy in the feet, and this dancing just flung energy out of every limb, using the entire body in all possible swings and curves and large-scale arcs and bends.
Tonight I switch from dance to theater, and if we don't have rehearsal too early tomorrow, I'll get to finally go to the daily chamber music concerts. I've seen other people being drawn to concerts and shows that reflect their particular interests, but I'm hoping while I'm here to absorb as wide a range of performances and art as possible.
Friday, May 13, 2005
semester is done! long live the summer!
This is one of those I'm-still-alive posts, so it will feature bad grammar and run-on sentences. I apologize in advance.
I am done. I finished my exam and project for Choral Literature, and I did a lot of concertizing (my women's chorus, Roseae Feminae, had our final concert, and it went very well, and it was only half an hour, and we had 3 audience members, but they were all high quality audience members, so it was fine) and I sang in a concert with Westminster Choir and Jennifer Larmore, who is a fabulous, charismatic diva, and I'm done with school. Graduation is tomorrow, which I will attend and watch, and that's it. I have a lot of errands to run between now and when I leave for the Spoleto Festival on Sunday.
I just signed a contract with Lincoln Center to perform La bella dormente nel bosco there in July. How cool is that?
And I'm off to Charleston, South Carolina, to perform in the Spoleto Festival and get paid to sing there, too. How cool is that? (Although the rehearsal schedule looks exhausting, so I predict radio silence for the next month.)
I am done. I finished my exam and project for Choral Literature, and I did a lot of concertizing (my women's chorus, Roseae Feminae, had our final concert, and it went very well, and it was only half an hour, and we had 3 audience members, but they were all high quality audience members, so it was fine) and I sang in a concert with Westminster Choir and Jennifer Larmore, who is a fabulous, charismatic diva, and I'm done with school. Graduation is tomorrow, which I will attend and watch, and that's it. I have a lot of errands to run between now and when I leave for the Spoleto Festival on Sunday.
I just signed a contract with Lincoln Center to perform La bella dormente nel bosco there in July. How cool is that?
And I'm off to Charleston, South Carolina, to perform in the Spoleto Festival and get paid to sing there, too. How cool is that? (Although the rehearsal schedule looks exhausting, so I predict radio silence for the next month.)
Friday, April 29, 2005
last week of classes
The past week has been exhausting, but productive and successful.
Thursday (a week ago) I sang in performance class, which is the weekly recital for all the voice majors. Non-majors rarely sing, but my voice teacher encouraged me to do it for the experience. I sang Bereite dich, Zion from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, and it went very well. Didn't hurt that I had a kick-ass accompanist - one of the graduate accompanying majors agreed to accompany me. I totally owe her sushi. (Incidentally, she is perhaps the only other person on campus who doesn't own a cell phone.)
That Bach is a piece that sits very well in my voice, and is a lot of fun to sing. And I'm glad to have done it, and proved myself.
Friday evening was the first Kantorei concert, at Rider University, and Saturday evening was the same concert on the Westminster campus. We sang some Couperin, and Tallis' Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the Gesualdo Tenebrae Responsoris (the third set.) It went spectacularly well, and I was extremely happy to have my father, uncle, uncle's friend, and cousin in the audience. That may have been the best and hardest concert I've ever performed, and I was really proud of it, so it was good to have family there to share it! Saturday especially rocked - and right in the middle of the seventh response, the one with the most war-like text, "The kings of the earth shall rise up, and the princes take council together against the Lord and against his annoited" there was a bright lightning flash and a HUGE crash of thunder. It was so very extremely cool.
Saturday afternoon, between the two Kantorei concerts, was the performance of my women's choir (which now has a name! Roseae Feminae, in an oblique Latin reference to Rizzo's gang from Grease). We performed 3 works by 2 composers on campus, all of which went quite well. At the end of the concert, the head of the department came up and asked if we would perform one of the pieces, the one by the graduating senior, at Convocation (which was today.) We were somewhat caught off guard by this, but of course said yes.
Sunday morning my dad and I attended the Unitarian Church in Princeton, because we had been notified the day before that a fabulous women's chorus, Olympia's Daughters, would be leading the service. They were just as great as we had heard, and afterwards they kind of sort of invited me to join their group, which is based in New Jersey. I'm not convinced that with performances practically every weekend at Westminster I could make it work...but it would be a fabulous musical opportunity, so I'm going to keep thinking about it. I think they have what I was trying to find when I joined the Jubilee Singers last semester - a sort of direct, folk/spiritual-based, fun-loving communication-centered music...and they're also all UU's, so it would be a safe place to explore my spirituality.
Oh, and I liked the UU church, too. I think AN and I are going back this Sunday to dance around the maypole.
Sunday afternoon part of the Symphonic Choir sang the second suite of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. They're a great orchestra - I noticed the outstanding brass particularly - but seeing as we hardly sing at all in that suite, and there was much standing around while the conductor rehearsed the instruments and not us, this rather qualified as a chore. Also, anything is a let-down after singing it with Lorin Maazel. I got home from that and just collapsed.
However, there was really no time to recover - Monday I was back into a frantic cycle of rehearsals, preparing for classes, and generally trying to get everything set up for today, which was extremely stressful. First of all there was Convocation, where Roseae Feminae performed beautifully. I really do get extremely fond of choirs that I conduct on a regular basis. They are all such great and fun people in addition to being an excellent and intelligent combination of musicians. Then there was my ear-training final, which was stressful, but fine. Then there was my 45-minute presentation in my Rachmaninoff Choral Works presentation, which was also very stressful, and required a fair bit of preparation, but also went fine. Now that those three things are over, hopefully I can relax and not have bad dreams from stress and not wake up with the jitters before the alarm goes off.
After Saturday, when I have a masterclass with Dr. Flummerfelt and a recital to sing in, I really ought to be home free - a final or two, several concerts, but also hopefully some spare time. Real life requires my attention. I really need to get my bike out of the basement and give it a good cleaning, for one thing!
I ought to finish my composition assignment for my lesson tomorrow, but I'm afraid that after the intensity of today I'm incapable of focus. I'll just have to get up early tomorrow and finish it then.
Thursday (a week ago) I sang in performance class, which is the weekly recital for all the voice majors. Non-majors rarely sing, but my voice teacher encouraged me to do it for the experience. I sang Bereite dich, Zion from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, and it went very well. Didn't hurt that I had a kick-ass accompanist - one of the graduate accompanying majors agreed to accompany me. I totally owe her sushi. (Incidentally, she is perhaps the only other person on campus who doesn't own a cell phone.)
That Bach is a piece that sits very well in my voice, and is a lot of fun to sing. And I'm glad to have done it, and proved myself.
Friday evening was the first Kantorei concert, at Rider University, and Saturday evening was the same concert on the Westminster campus. We sang some Couperin, and Tallis' Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the Gesualdo Tenebrae Responsoris (the third set.) It went spectacularly well, and I was extremely happy to have my father, uncle, uncle's friend, and cousin in the audience. That may have been the best and hardest concert I've ever performed, and I was really proud of it, so it was good to have family there to share it! Saturday especially rocked - and right in the middle of the seventh response, the one with the most war-like text, "The kings of the earth shall rise up, and the princes take council together against the Lord and against his annoited" there was a bright lightning flash and a HUGE crash of thunder. It was so very extremely cool.
Saturday afternoon, between the two Kantorei concerts, was the performance of my women's choir (which now has a name! Roseae Feminae, in an oblique Latin reference to Rizzo's gang from Grease). We performed 3 works by 2 composers on campus, all of which went quite well. At the end of the concert, the head of the department came up and asked if we would perform one of the pieces, the one by the graduating senior, at Convocation (which was today.) We were somewhat caught off guard by this, but of course said yes.
Sunday morning my dad and I attended the Unitarian Church in Princeton, because we had been notified the day before that a fabulous women's chorus, Olympia's Daughters, would be leading the service. They were just as great as we had heard, and afterwards they kind of sort of invited me to join their group, which is based in New Jersey. I'm not convinced that with performances practically every weekend at Westminster I could make it work...but it would be a fabulous musical opportunity, so I'm going to keep thinking about it. I think they have what I was trying to find when I joined the Jubilee Singers last semester - a sort of direct, folk/spiritual-based, fun-loving communication-centered music...and they're also all UU's, so it would be a safe place to explore my spirituality.
Oh, and I liked the UU church, too. I think AN and I are going back this Sunday to dance around the maypole.
Sunday afternoon part of the Symphonic Choir sang the second suite of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. They're a great orchestra - I noticed the outstanding brass particularly - but seeing as we hardly sing at all in that suite, and there was much standing around while the conductor rehearsed the instruments and not us, this rather qualified as a chore. Also, anything is a let-down after singing it with Lorin Maazel. I got home from that and just collapsed.
However, there was really no time to recover - Monday I was back into a frantic cycle of rehearsals, preparing for classes, and generally trying to get everything set up for today, which was extremely stressful. First of all there was Convocation, where Roseae Feminae performed beautifully. I really do get extremely fond of choirs that I conduct on a regular basis. They are all such great and fun people in addition to being an excellent and intelligent combination of musicians. Then there was my ear-training final, which was stressful, but fine. Then there was my 45-minute presentation in my Rachmaninoff Choral Works presentation, which was also very stressful, and required a fair bit of preparation, but also went fine. Now that those three things are over, hopefully I can relax and not have bad dreams from stress and not wake up with the jitters before the alarm goes off.
After Saturday, when I have a masterclass with Dr. Flummerfelt and a recital to sing in, I really ought to be home free - a final or two, several concerts, but also hopefully some spare time. Real life requires my attention. I really need to get my bike out of the basement and give it a good cleaning, for one thing!
I ought to finish my composition assignment for my lesson tomorrow, but I'm afraid that after the intensity of today I'm incapable of focus. I'll just have to get up early tomorrow and finish it then.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Bush's thoughts on atheists
Is anyone shocked?
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." - George H. W. Bush (father of the current monarch)
From this website, courtesy of my brother.
Good thing I'm just trying to change my graduation program next year, and not get elected.
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." - George H. W. Bush (father of the current monarch)
From this website, courtesy of my brother.
Good thing I'm just trying to change my graduation program next year, and not get elected.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Jacob wrestled the angel
It has taken me days to write this entry. Bear with me.
Symphonic Choir has begun rehearsals for graduation. Naturally, being a choir college, we all sing a great deal in the graduation ceremony, and the entire school is required to be there and sing together. The music for graduation was introduced on Monday. It is all Christian. We are not singing one secular piece. The graduates are singing a secular piece by one of the composition majors, and that's it. And the texts are not as inclusive as many Christian hymns are. Here is a sampling:
"Rejoice, ye pure in heart! Rejoice, give thanks and sing! Your glorious banner wave on high, the cross of Christ your King."
"March we forth in the strength of God with the banner of Christ unfurl'd; That the light of the glorious gospel of truth may shine throughout the world; Fight we the fight with sorrow and sin to set their captives free; That the earth may be fill'd with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea."
"Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee."
"Take my will, and make it Thine: it shall be no longer mine...Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee."
"O, Jesus, I have promised to serve Thee to the end."
Participating in a secular ceremony at a secular school and knowing that everyone was being obliged to sing these texts would cause me problems regardless of my religion. But being someone who is not Christian, this is personally very disturbing as well.
To date, I have been forced to be flexible in my approach to sacred texts, since so much of the music I work with is sacred. I have no problem singing sacred music in concert and honestly and fervently delivering what the composer has created. I love performing the Gesualdo Tenebrae Responsoris for Holy Saturday that Kantorei is working on. Bach and Beethoven present no problems. Nor do current works - everything my chorus sang at the fundraiser last weekend was sacred, and one was a piece by our resident composer. I have no problem singing great, emotional music, nor do I have a problem helping other people to worship. If my music-making helps someone to feel a spiritual connection to God or anything else, then I am happy about that.
But I do have a problem being forced to worship myself. I do have a problem with singing sacred music in a context where it is assumed that I share the beliefs stated in the texts. And I definitely have a problem singing the above words in a context that is supposed to be by definition inclusive, celebratory, personal for the community participating, and secular. This is graduation, after all, not a service.
Another aspect is that if I respect other people's beliefs, and I respect their statement of those beliefs, then I am being disrespectful if I say those beliefs myself while not believing them. And it seems odd to me that people who do hold those beliefs should not feel the same.
Incidentally, this experience has forced me to realize that I really am UU. I have for the past several years described myself as a "lapsed UU", tongue somewhat in cheek. But it was not until the graduation music forced the issue that I realized the UU principles are not just something I agree with, they are my core beliefs. There is nothing that I believe more strongly than that every person should be free to search for what is true and right in life. And so I cannot sing "March we forth in the strength of God with the banner of Christ unfurl'd; That the light of the glorious gospel of truth may shine throughout the world" when I believe that I have no more claim to know what the truth is than any other thoughtful, spiritual person. After all, those are quite insulting words to sing to a fairly diverse community.
The main problem, however, is that I can't keep from breaking down in rehearsal. Being forced to sing about carrying the banner of Christ into battle is just too deeply insulting and hurtful to me, and although all of the reasons above are true, I can't quite effectively communicate the root of my hurt. I almost cried on Wednesday, and I really, really almost cried last Friday - I couldn't read all of the music sometimes because it became blurry. So, I decided steps had to be taken. I knew I wasn't alone in my feelings - AN shared them, which helped. And so I had a meeting with DM Friday afternoon, in which I laid out my problems with the texts, and ended up breaking down in his office. He told me that my feelings were shared by other students, and if I didn't want to be in the choir for those reasons, then I would be excused. He also said that I could determine the extent of my involvement with the ceremony. He let me explain as much as I needed to, and listened very hard, despite the fact that I think he could read my mind on the subject the moment I entered the conversation. I often feel that way in talking to him - conversation can spark along the wires at an incredible rate because he always immediately groks what I am trying to say. Not just understands, groks. In the same way that I always sing better in the presence of my voice teacher (whose initials are also DM - that'll get confusing!) I always think better and communicate faster in the presence of DM. Signs of good teachers, I suppose. Perhaps someday people will think more clearly in my presence.
Come to think of it, DM often says, when teaching conducting, that the best way to make something happen beautifully is just to listen for it. Perhaps the same works for conversation - if you just listen to someone hard, it will come out more truly.
I decided this weekend that I shall go and sit in the audience. I will sing along with the Lutkin "The Lord Bless You and Keep You," because I have sung it before, and I can sing it to the graduates in good faith. But I will not sing the others, and perhaps graduation will manage to be a positive experience yet, rather than the miserable experience I know I would have singing in the choir.
Now, that's not all, of course. The above music was chosen by a student committee. You can bet money that I will be on that student committee next year (see? I am a UU) and will insure that this sort of discrimination doesn't occur again. (For the record, I was informed that the committee decided to choose this music because it has traditionally been sung at graduation, and they decided to try to make other parts of the ceremony more inclusive to other religions. I'm afraid having the local imam make the opening prayer doesn't quite make the ceremony more relevant for me.) My friend AN, however, was unwilling to let the issue rest until next year. She formed a petition, and I helped her collect signatures, requesting that secular music be required to be a part of the graduation ceremony. She meets with the Dean tomorrow. Hopefully she will help initiate a permanent policy. We shall see. The bulk of my contribution will be research done over the summer for works for organ and chorus (or brass and chorus) that are appropriate for graduation. Part of the problem is surely that the student committee didn't feel they had many options - I suspect they may have only looked at past Westminster graduation ceremonies for their ideas.
This issue has consumed me for the past week. I have entered into a great many discussions with people, which is the best outcome of this whole event. One particularly interesting conversation happend today with a rather naive South Korean who said, "Oh, I just assumed that all Americans were Christian, even if they didn't all go to church." (Being deeply Christian herself, she seemed quite sad to find out she was wrong.)
So, obviously, this whole tempest has been of some value, if I'm able to get people who make wide-ranging assumptions to reconsider their preconceptions. Also, I tend not to broadcast my atheism, because I worry that it will either make my Christian friends feel attacked, or else sad. I sometimes feel that just saying the phrase "I'm an atheist," no matter how politely, is perceived as a slap in the face. But if there are people at my school who think that all Americans are Christians, perhaps I've been too circumspect.
There is one final slant to this whole business that is personally important, even if it's not crucial to the plotline. On Friday, after my emotional meeting with DM, I had conducting class. We're working on Bach's St. John Passion - we all have different bits of it that we're working on. So on Friday, several people got up to conduct their chorales. The chorales in this work are rather heart-breaking. The whole work is, really, but the chorales are simple, and nuanced, and direct, and express the emotions of the congregation watching the story unfold. In the middle of class, in the middle of one of the chorales, I started crying - I couldn't help it. It was definitely related to the events earlier in the day, but I still can't articulate to myself exactly how. It was something to do with so recently having broken down, and feeling so wobbly...it had something to do with being confronted with music that was deeply, personally expressive...it had something to do with being allowed to approach the music and not having it thrust upon me...it had something to do with, after becoming so angry and frustrated with the indirect effects that Christianity was having upon my life, being presented with something very near its essence.
When DM was describing to us in conducting class the way in which Bach sets text in the St. John Passion, he pointed out to us that evil or negative characters or ideas are presented very chromatically, and good or holy characters or ideas are presented very tonally. He said that this reflects Bach's idea of tension or unrest being a negative state, and resolution, calmness, and repose being positive states. I suddenly thought of how this is true of so much art. Most plays, for example, set up a problem that must be solved, or a tense or unbalanced state that must come to equilibrium. And although I understand the reasons for equating tension with bad and resolution with good, I think the opposite may be true of my relationship to religion in general, and Christianity in particular. I can't decide to ignore it - without Christianity, Western art music would be so vastly different that it defies imagination. I will be interacting with this religion in an intimate way for the rest of my life. But if I ever come to a resolution with it, that will mean that I have given up engaging with important and crucial ideas. I think where my musical interpretation is concerned and where my humanity is concerned, mental resolution will only mean mental stagnation. I cannot finally make up my mind about a topic as broad and deep as this, because my philosophy can never be complete. My state of grace will be unrest.
Monday, April 18, 2005
editor's corrections
I quoted a passage in an earlier blog entry that I attributed to Nelson Mandela. However, apparently that was incorrect, and it is actually by Marianne Williamson, according to Wikipedia. Apparently it is so often misattributed to Mandela that Mandela's organization, the African National Congress, has publicly stated that it is in fact a Williamson quote.
For those interested, here is the quote again - it is one of my favorites:
For those interested, here is the quote again - it is one of my favorites:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
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