Allegheny College Choir Reunion 2012

Senior Recital, 1994

Every three years, my college's regularly scheduled reunion bash includes a gathering of choir alums.

The school's choral program has its roots in the St. Olaf tradition and there have been only three directors since its inception in the 1920s, the third being my teacher, Ward Jamison.

To say that we choir kids are passionate would be an understatement.  Any given reunion year draws 150, 200 singers from the graduating classes of 1940s to present.

But this year was special, because Ward and his wife Vicki, my voice teacher, are retiring after 31 years.  This year more than 300 of us came back.  The auditorium stage had to be built out to hold everyone.

Rehearsals ran from Thursday night through Saturday morning, with the concert on Saturday afternoon.

2012

And then Ward passed the baton.

How bittersweet.  Many tears, but also a celebration of my mentors' careers and a joyful welcome for his successor, my friend James who graduated a few years after me and has gone on to get a doctorate and teach at the college level and generally make his parents proud.  James is married to the lovely Carol (also an alum, and a soprano like Vicki) who will be joining the faculty as a voice teacher (like Vicki).

The end of an era, but the beginning of a new one.

The next choir reunion, in 2015, will coincide with the college's bicentennial.

James is already planning the program.

Middle School Band Concert 11/15

This.  Was.  So.  Painful.

Saint Patricia, the new guy is not.

Only four more to go, if I can convince Thing Two to stick with it.

Aria

The middle school chorus teacher just had a baby daughter which she named Aria.

I am a mean and horrible person, I know, but the thought of using musical terminology for kids’ names strikes me as gut-bustingly funny.  I mean, if Aria gets a little sibling might it be named Recitative?  Wouldn’t G-Clef be a great name for a hip-hop artist? 

I’m almost sorry I’m done having babies because I would happily endure another infant if it gave me the opportunity to say “This is my daughter Fermata.  Would you like to hold her?”

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother

These need to go to the local stringed instrument builder to see if it's worthwhile - or even possible - to restore them.  One looks to be in pretty bad shape; the other probably can be fixed pretty easily.

Adding "learn to play accordion and violin" to my bucket list now...

Yet another middle school band concert

Yes indeed.

(In case anyone else is keeping track, we have five more after this one.)

An era ended over the summer:  St. Patricia was assumed directly into heaven, leaving behind swirling rumors of retirement.  Her replacement is a dynamic and apparently effective young man; whether he is worthy of canonization remains to be seen. 

However, the fifth-grade band's rendition of "Hot Cross Buns" - one of the six four-measure chestnuts performed in unison by the beginning band students at EVERY fall concert - was certainly credible, the sixth grade woodwinds were actually in tune, and the seventh- and eighth-grade symphonic band tackled some remarkably advanced pieces for so early in the year. 

So perhaps a fast-tracked springtime beatification is in order.  We'll see.

Watch this space.

High School Musical

Our school district really does the arts in a big way. 

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Not that we don't have a great sports program, but our 660-student high school is sort of the anti-Glee.  Success in music or art or theater is a point of pride, both individually and collectively, and community support is overwhelming. 

(As an aside - forgive me, but since we're low on grandparents this is my forum for bragging about my children - my freshman son has just been invited to join the uber-selective jazz band.  Woot!)

So it stands to reason that the annual fall musical has become something of a creative juggernaut, an all-consuming synthesis of music, art, dance, drama and engineering.  The productions since the new high school, with its state-of-the-art, 826-seat auditorium opened, have included Cats, Honk, Once Upon a Mattress, Beauty and the Beast, and Les Mis. 

This year they tackled Phantom of the Opera.

Full disclosure:  I am not an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.  I believe his success is due more to savvy marketing and brand management (see:  Brightman, Sarah) than artistic merit.  His compositions, though maddeningly catchy, are simplistic; his characters are one-dimensional.

What's more, the quality of his music is inversely proportional to the demands it places on its singers.  Even a marginally competent singer can make good music, even if it's technically demanding, sound effortless, because a good composer knows what sits well with the voice.  But poorly written music, even in the hands of a gifted performer, sounds challenging because it is gratuitously demanding.  Lloyd Webber is a master of sweeping, dramatic melodies which are truly a bitch to sing.

All of that by way to say that Phantom might not be the best vehicle to showcase teenage singers, even those who are genuinely talented.  The vocal requirements are too muscular (particularly over a pit band) and the ranges too great (an octave and a half per number is fairly standard) for voices which won't be mature for at least another ten years.

However, these guys pulled it off, even enjoyed themselves, so it seemed, and there was clearly talent to spare - the director double-cast six of the the leads so as not to completely exhaust anyone over the run of eight shows, several of which sold out.  So what if Friday night's Phantom was a little pitchy and had to substitute falsetto for pianissimo in the upper register. 

I can't even begin to guess how many people were involved, between the students in the cast and crew, the parents and teachers who volunteered their time to assist with everything from sewing costumes to folding programs, the directors and musicians... the whole town was caught up in it, and the audience's response to Friday's performance was truly gratifying. 

Our school district really does the arts in a big way.

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother

Yes, this is what you think it is.

Yes, it's personalized.

Celebration of the Arts... and a gratuitous rant

Tonight the middle school held a "Celebration of the Arts" event.

Our school district places a remarkable emphasis on the visual and performing arts - remarkable particularly for a lightly populated area with a declining enrollment.  Our administrators are not letting the arts go down without a fight.  

The purpose of tonight's event was primarily to celebrate the unveiling of this mural:

Sponsored by YouthArts, a privately funded and volunteer-run organization, and in collaboration with artist Eric Hopkins (who, by the way, is to be commended for letting a bunch of tweens loose on a re-interpretation of his work), with an astonishing commitment of time and energy from the middle school art teacher, the project was created by the students - all the students - a bit at a time, after school and during study hall. 

Forty-seven thousand bits of tile. 

Hopkins' work was the inspiration for the design:


Islands and trees...



...and seagulls:



I love these guys - detailed right down to the orange on their herring-gull bills.



And in one very special place...



...a tile cut to the shape of Thing One's first initial.

The mural, though, was only part of the evening's show.  There was the chorus, and the dance routine from the spring play, and the saxophone quintet playing "Satin Doll."

Throughout the hallways were displays of this year's art projects. 

 








This one of Things One and Two cracked me up:

And here is the mural from three years ago, a YouthArts project from way back when Thing One was in fifth grade, which is still gracing the hallway:

Just before the program I went to the polls and voted not for the noisy slash-and-burn anti-tax Tea Party freaks, but for the school board and selectman candidates who understand that a comprehensive education is more than a line item on the budget.  The ones who understand that providing such an education is this community's responsibility.  The ones who believe that a crazy idea like this mural can actually happen, and is something the kids and the community can be proud of. 

By the way:  This article in the latest issue of Down East Magazine should be required reading for the 38% of voters whose knee-jerk support of the anti-regulation trickle-down supply-side prosperity fairy tale put our gawdhelpus of a governor into office last year. 

Jack DeCoster is a menace to his employees, the health and wellbeing of his customers, and the animals he farms - and we're about to give him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he likes because any regulations about health and safety and the environment and worker protections are anti-business.

Because Maine is now open for business. 

And closed to everything else.

Help.

Because we can never get quite enough of those middle school bands...

...this month we had not one, but TWO concerts.  This brings the total to fifteen that we will get to enjoy over the course of the children's middle school career.

Nine down, six to go.  Not that I am counting.

There were two this spring because the jazz and rock bands got their own show, and it was actually kind of nice to hear them play an extended program instead of two or three pieces wedged into the big concert  

St. Patricia has done wonders with the fifth grade this year, by the way.  

Here is Thing Two with a sprained finger which in no way detracted from the quality of her playing.

I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

And here is Thing One, resplendent in his red t-shirt from the Great East Festival and matching carnation.  

The other boys merely pinned theirs to their shirts.  <yawn>  

Dare to be different.

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother: First in a Series

Yeah.  For realz.  

Shameless Plug: The Carolina Chocolate Drops

If you haven’t heard of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, please stop reading right now and order this album.

If you have heard of them, you will know why, when I found out they would be performing at The Strand, I went straight to the computer and ordered up four tickets.

(My darling children put up a mighty howl that their presence was mandated at a concert – a concert – on a Friday at 8 p.m. after a long week when they would just as soon be home watching “Airwolf” on demand and arguing about whose turn it is to fill the kindling bucket.  I bribed them with dinner in an actual restaurant, so they came more or less willingly and had good time in spite of themselves.)

To say that the Carolina Chocolate Drops specialize in the black string- and jug-band music of the Carolina Piedmont region would be true, but a dangerous oversimplification of their niche.  Yes, they play fiddles and claw hammer banjos and guitars (and bones and harmonicas and kazoos and jugs) in that distinctive style, but their repertoire ranges from the ultra-traditional to the brilliantly recast modern. 

The band comprises four musicians (whose arrival in town effectively doubled the midcoast’s African-American population), two of whom are fairly new to the group, filling in for one of the three original members who is not on this tour. 

The more startling of these additions was the large and rather placid-looking young man on the left who unenthusiastically tapped a tambourine for the first couple of numbers and then suddenly stood and opened his mouth to reveal, to our noisy delight, an entire percussion section, two brass instruments and a string bass.

(Apparently one can make one’s living as a human beat box.  Who knew.)

The CCD’s last album, Grammy-worthy though it was, doesn’t hold a candle to experiencing this group in person.  (The live version of “Hit’em Up Style” was far more vivid and terrifying than any studio recording could capture.)  Theirs is community music; it’s physical and athletic, and even an audience of straight-laced, mostly retired white people finds it impossible not to whoop and stomp – and sometimes sing – right along with them. 

We need more of that sort of thing here.  I hope they come back soon. 

An afternoon at the opera

We took the kids to see Don Carlo yesterday – the Metropolitan Opera live HDTV broadcast on the big screen at The Strand.  There was much preliminary moaning about the 4 ½ - hour run time, but once we got there they were fully engaged.  Hungry by the first intermission, but engaged. 

I was impressed, because Don Carlo is, probably more than any other opera, a wrenching portrayal of people who are utterly at the mercy of forces larger than themselves – political, emotional, religious, it’s all there, and it requires a certain maturity of perspective to appreciate.  

This is the third season that we’ve splurged on a family outing to the opera broadcast.  By now my punks are unfazed at being the youngest people there (attendance is heavily skewed to retirees of a certain income level) and they are better behaved than the some of the old people. 

This performance was impressive, to be sure.  In fact it was marred only by the lead tenor’s singing his big opening aria with a ginormous booger hanging out of his left nostril.  

HD is so unforgiving.

But who's counting...?

There are only 1.2 million people in the entire state, and most of those reside in the greater Portland area.  The population here in the midcoast is relatively thin. 

Our schools, small though they are, work hard to focus on the arts, and the high school in our particular district consistently cranks out choral and instrumental ensembles that compete successfully at both state and regional levels. 

The middle school music program is crucial in developing this talent. 

Let’s face it, though:  regardless of the untapped potential represented by any given class of fifth graders, you take these students – some of whom do not know a quarter note from page 8 – hand them a bunch of instruments, rehearse for two months, and then give a concert, consider yourself lucky if they produce a recognizable melody.

Year over year, the beginning band’s annual fall rendition of Hot Cross Buns does not get any better.  But if you want proof that miracles do happen, take that performance and compare it to the stuff the 7^th-8^th grade symphonic band pulls off.   

Saint Patricia is the middle school band director.  She takes all the silliness and spit valves and squeaking reeds and just plain bad playing and in four short years, she turns it into something worth listening to.  Somehow she also maintains her sanity and her sense of humor. 

I have been to exactly seven middle school band concerts so far. 

I have exactly seven left to go.