Report: Silly Christmas Songs

It's kinda old news now, but the performance of the silly Christmas songs went off quite well. Mrs. Hooligan's Christmas Cake and Tom Lehrer's A Christmas Carol were big hits, garnering laughter in all the right places. Only mumbled a few times and had a lot of fun hamming it up! W00t! For your entertainment:



Checked out the space where I'll give a song recital next year. It's my neighbor's office. It's spacious with a high ceiling, mostly concrete and brick walls, so the acoustics aren't too bad. A violin professor who lives in the building on the street (my neighbors's building is back behind the main one) asked if he could use the space for his student's recitals and put a piano in there. Roger asked if he could use the piano for other concerts as well. The piano is just an upright (too bad it's not a baby grand or something more concert-esque), but I think it will be adequate, but then I know nothing about what makes a good piano. As far as I'm concerned if it works and makes a decent sound, then that's a good piano. The finer points are (as yet) lost on me (maybe I could learn...). Anyway, I think it would be nice place to have a little recital.

I had the "ladies" over for Caroling last Friday. I had to play the piano. Ugh. I'm not a pianist - there's some screw loose which makes me play wrong notes in different places on every repeat, it doesn't matter if I practice or not. But this was a very informal thing. There were about 7 of us and we just went through our favorite ones. Ursula brought her Reader's Digest Christmas Carols book, which had arrangements that I could actually play for the most part. Afterwards we drank Glühwein and Eggnog and munched on the things the guests had brought along. Nom!

I baked my first German Stollen! Ursula came over early for the Caroling and walked me through it. We'll see if it turned out OK in a couple of weeks. It's supposed to sit in a cool place for about 2 weeks to develop the flavors.

Silly Christmas Songs

Next week I'll be singing (some) silly Christmas songs at the Annual General Meeting of the International Women's Association of Hannover. Anne Pehrisch, an American and local pianist/piano teacher, will be accompanying me. It was her idea to do fun Christmas Songs, rather than the tired, old, staid Christmas songs. I was all for it. Actually, it will be a mix of things, and the program isn't long. Here's the run-down:

*Music for a While, Henry Purcell (the one serious song)
*A Christmas Carol, Tom Lehrer (go here for a great recording of Lehrer doing this one)
*Mrs Hooligan's Christmas Cake, trad. Irish
*The Gloucester Wassail, trad. English carol - but a drinking song!

If we get the chance we'll do an encore of Aaron Copland's Simple Gifts. Which is just a gorgeous song.

I'm looking forward to it, and I hope that it'll perhaps garner me a few more, more lucrative gigs.

Working with Anne has been a joy and we are planning to do a song recital in the Spring. I'm excited, and a little nervous. I haven't done a recital per se since my exit recital in Bremen in 1996! But they don't make you much money. It'll be great because there are so many great songs, that you never get to do after you graduate from conservatory!

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