It appears that I haven't blogged about the progress of the seminar with Carol Baggott-Forte. Or indeed anything at all! A gross oversight!
My teacher, Carol Baggott-Forte, who is one of the most advanced teachers following in Cornelius Reid's footsteps, is making a trip to Europe to teach classes for a few weeks. She normally resides near Niagara, Canada. When I heard that she was planning to teach in France again for 2 weeks, I quick spoke to my colleague and fellow Reid-ite, Tobias Tiedge and we decided we should tried to get Carol to come to Hanover for a seminar at the same time (in order to consolidate costs of flights, etc.). She said she was willing and we agreed she would come after her classes in France for a period of 3 days.
Tobias and I worked out the details, I created a poster and a brochure/registration form and we sent them out to all our contacts, put notices up on the 'net, hung the poster all over town and posted the notice on the German Functional Voice Forum on Yahoo. That was about a week before Christmas.
There have been some minor bumps in the road along the way, but at the moment things look very good indeed.
We have room for 10 active participants taking 2 or 3 lessons with Carol over the course of 3 days, and as of this writing we have filled the course. Our desire is to give preference to singers from Hanover, Berlin or Hamburg and/or to those who've never done this sort of work before. Unfortunately, we haven't had many random inquiries, but a couple. The rest who've applied are all individuals who have either worked with Carol or Cornelius previously.
Tobias and I are meeting today to work out final details and perhaps decide on the actual participants, considering we have one more applicant than there is capacity. Registration closes on Friday, so who knows who might still contact one of us.
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Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Symphony concert
I don't go to concerts much anymore. Mostly, I'm too lazy and then the close runner-up reason is I'm generally discouraged from going because I'm usually disappointed. Being a professional musician is hard cross to bear. Sometimes, it can really spoil the fun.
I go to even fewer instrumental concerts, because it just doesn't interest me that much, but I did last night. Magnus and I went to the Opera House and heard the Hanover Symphonic Orchestra play Shostakovitch's 1st cello concerto and Beethoven's Symphony #3 the "Eroica". I really enjoyed myself.
The cello soloist, Claudio Bohórquez, is a young man born and raised in Germany, but of South American parentage. He's really an excellent player - he plays perfectly in tune, has a nice touch and plays very dynamically. The only thing I didn't like about his playing was his vibrato, which often was simply too wide and fast. Vibrato and this goes for voices as well, should not draw attention to itself. There is a range of pitch fluctuation and wave frequency within which the vibrato lends a liveliness, a vibrancy (huh!) to the tone and becomes a layer of color. It is a natural phenomenon with the human voice when the antagonistic forces within the larynx are in balance with one another and can only be perceived on notes of a certain minimal length. Instrumentalist must simulate this phenomenon by cyclical fluctuations of pitch. A cellist does this by wiggling his had back and forth rhythmically. If the vibrato spills out of these natural parameters then it sticks out like a sore thumb and is called either a wobble (too big and slow) or a tremolo (too fast). Well, this shouldn't become a lecture on Vibrato, but I thought it worthwhile to explain myself.
As for the pieces I didn't so much like the Shostokovitch (you can hear it if you visit Bohorquez' website), but it's one of those pieces you really should hear more than once to appreciate fully. That said, it was interesting to hear. Then as an encore he played a Bach Prelude. Now that's something after my own heart! Lovely.
After the intermission (I really don't know how people can down a glass of wine that quickly!) the orchestra played the Eroica, one of my favorite Beethoven Symphonies. They did it justice. And the orchestra itself is entertaining: There's the bald 1st violinist who only moves his arms (only what's absolutely necessary) to play; the bass player who's a dead ringer for Verdi; well, the whole bass section was pretty funny, actually; the violist with the shapely arm; and the conductor (from Essen actually), who had some pretty cool disco moves.
All in all, I'd say an enjoyable evening.
PS: Welcome Mona, my most recent follower! And thank you to all of you for reading my blog!
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I go to even fewer instrumental concerts, because it just doesn't interest me that much, but I did last night. Magnus and I went to the Opera House and heard the Hanover Symphonic Orchestra play Shostakovitch's 1st cello concerto and Beethoven's Symphony #3 the "Eroica". I really enjoyed myself.
The cello soloist, Claudio Bohórquez, is a young man born and raised in Germany, but of South American parentage. He's really an excellent player - he plays perfectly in tune, has a nice touch and plays very dynamically. The only thing I didn't like about his playing was his vibrato, which often was simply too wide and fast. Vibrato and this goes for voices as well, should not draw attention to itself. There is a range of pitch fluctuation and wave frequency within which the vibrato lends a liveliness, a vibrancy (huh!) to the tone and becomes a layer of color. It is a natural phenomenon with the human voice when the antagonistic forces within the larynx are in balance with one another and can only be perceived on notes of a certain minimal length. Instrumentalist must simulate this phenomenon by cyclical fluctuations of pitch. A cellist does this by wiggling his had back and forth rhythmically. If the vibrato spills out of these natural parameters then it sticks out like a sore thumb and is called either a wobble (too big and slow) or a tremolo (too fast). Well, this shouldn't become a lecture on Vibrato, but I thought it worthwhile to explain myself.
As for the pieces I didn't so much like the Shostokovitch (you can hear it if you visit Bohorquez' website), but it's one of those pieces you really should hear more than once to appreciate fully. That said, it was interesting to hear. Then as an encore he played a Bach Prelude. Now that's something after my own heart! Lovely.
After the intermission (I really don't know how people can down a glass of wine that quickly!) the orchestra played the Eroica, one of my favorite Beethoven Symphonies. They did it justice. And the orchestra itself is entertaining: There's the bald 1st violinist who only moves his arms (only what's absolutely necessary) to play; the bass player who's a dead ringer for Verdi; well, the whole bass section was pretty funny, actually; the violist with the shapely arm; and the conductor (from Essen actually), who had some pretty cool disco moves.
All in all, I'd say an enjoyable evening.
PS: Welcome Mona, my most recent follower! And thank you to all of you for reading my blog!
---------------------
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Warped Passages - the Opera?
I first heard about this project from Fred, a buddy from StarShipSofa, who is also a choral composer. He wrote a terse blog post about it, not giving much info so I went on a search.
Lisa Randall's own site doesn't say anything about the project, or at least I couldn't find any reference for it.
When I googled "Warped Passages opera" I came up with this. The opera will be called "Hypermusic Prologue - a projective opera in seven planes". Which is a strange title, but what do you expect from the intersection of opera and theoretical physics?
OK, so in case you haven't followed any of the links and haven't a clue what I'm talking about: Lisa Randall is a theoretical physicist who's written a book for the layperson explaining the theory of muliple dimensions, i.e. more than just the 3 we see. I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time when it came out about 15 years ago and saw the movie, really enjoying both. Randall's book sounds just up my alley. I'm interested in science but have a hard time grasping it, if you know what I mean. If someone can lead me to understand this stuff then I'm hooked - this is why I enjoy reading Science Fiction so much. They generally couch science in a story or prose and thus make it more palatable and with the imagery they create make it easier to understand. That said, the science in SF is not always real, but still.
Anyway, I love opera, I love science. I can't wait until this opera comes out. I hope it comes somewhere close to Hannover. Hamburg or Berlin would be good too. I'll be keeping you posted.
.............
Lisa Randall's own site doesn't say anything about the project, or at least I couldn't find any reference for it.
When I googled "Warped Passages opera" I came up with this. The opera will be called "Hypermusic Prologue - a projective opera in seven planes". Which is a strange title, but what do you expect from the intersection of opera and theoretical physics?
OK, so in case you haven't followed any of the links and haven't a clue what I'm talking about: Lisa Randall is a theoretical physicist who's written a book for the layperson explaining the theory of muliple dimensions, i.e. more than just the 3 we see. I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time when it came out about 15 years ago and saw the movie, really enjoying both. Randall's book sounds just up my alley. I'm interested in science but have a hard time grasping it, if you know what I mean. If someone can lead me to understand this stuff then I'm hooked - this is why I enjoy reading Science Fiction so much. They generally couch science in a story or prose and thus make it more palatable and with the imagery they create make it easier to understand. That said, the science in SF is not always real, but still.
Anyway, I love opera, I love science. I can't wait until this opera comes out. I hope it comes somewhere close to Hannover. Hamburg or Berlin would be good too. I'll be keeping you posted.
.............
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Greetings from Switzerland!
I just wanted to let anyone who doesn`t already know that I have a little story narration (Robowassailing) and a Christmas song (a super-kitschy version of Silent Night) on StarShipSofa's Christmas Show. It aired on 24 December. I hope you aren't yet tired of Christmas stories and songs. If not, head over to http://www.starshipsofa.com and check out my offerings for Christmas Cheer!
Happy New Year!
I just wanted to let anyone who doesn`t already know that I have a little story narration (Robowassailing) and a Christmas song (a super-kitschy version of Silent Night) on StarShipSofa's Christmas Show. It aired on 24 December. I hope you aren't yet tired of Christmas stories and songs. If not, head over to http://www.starshipsofa.com and check out my offerings for Christmas Cheer!
Happy New Year!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Bleh
I'm having a Charlie Brown kind of day. Maybe it's been exacerbated by the repeated listenings to A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, but I got two bits of not-happy news in the last two days. It's not exactly bad news but, you know, just not good. Am I taking it too personally? I'll let you be the judge:
1) I blogged last week about the story I narrated coming out on PodCastle. Yesterday I went to Escape Artist's (they produce the podcast) forums online and read the responses to the story. People there say what they want and are not inhibited because I'm not a presence there, like they might be at StarShipSofa. They didn't like my narration. At all. They also didn't much like the story, but that's beside the point. They thought I sounded bored, or simply not emotionally involved. Maybe I wasn't, although I did like the story. One poster thought my accents were inconsistent, and there I'd have to concede the point. I'm not great with accents. I shouldn't try to do them, but in this narration I did - a light southern accent and a pseudo-Asian one. Bad.
2) The other not-happy news is that I didn't make the short list for the First Annual Sofanaught Awards. I can be a bit blasé about this one, because the folks that did make the short list deserve to be on there. But I wanted to be. More than I think I let myself believe.
Now I'm thinking - "Do I suck as a narrator?" I really enjoy doing it and have no delusions that I'm a great one, I can recognize that I need to improve. But you know, it's hard to hear the criticism - expressed outright or not.
That is all.
..................
1) I blogged last week about the story I narrated coming out on PodCastle. Yesterday I went to Escape Artist's (they produce the podcast) forums online and read the responses to the story. People there say what they want and are not inhibited because I'm not a presence there, like they might be at StarShipSofa. They didn't like my narration. At all. They also didn't much like the story, but that's beside the point. They thought I sounded bored, or simply not emotionally involved. Maybe I wasn't, although I did like the story. One poster thought my accents were inconsistent, and there I'd have to concede the point. I'm not great with accents. I shouldn't try to do them, but in this narration I did - a light southern accent and a pseudo-Asian one. Bad.
2) The other not-happy news is that I didn't make the short list for the First Annual Sofanaught Awards. I can be a bit blasé about this one, because the folks that did make the short list deserve to be on there. But I wanted to be. More than I think I let myself believe.
Now I'm thinking - "Do I suck as a narrator?" I really enjoy doing it and have no delusions that I'm a great one, I can recognize that I need to improve. But you know, it's hard to hear the criticism - expressed outright or not.
That is all.
..................
Monday, December 15, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Your cup runneth over
Yes, yesterday two different narrations I've done came out on two different podcasts:
PodCastle #36: "Ancestor Money" by Maureen McHugh. This is an interesting look at what the afterlife might be like.
StarShipSofa #54: "View from a Height" by Joan D. Vinge. Also on that show is poetry by fellow Wisconsinite Mark Rich, Flash Fiction by my buddy Matthew Sanborn Smith, and a fantastic piece of genre history by our resident historian Amy H. Sturgis.
We are in the 2nd week of nominations for the Sofanaughts Awards at StarShipSofa. Please go and nominate your favorite narrator (me!), fave flash fiction or main fiction piece, and your fave poetry and fact contributor in the first 52 episodes of Aural Delights. You can go to the online poll or go to the forums (register) and post your favorites under one of the threads under "Sofanaughts". In each of the categories, the five entries with the most nominations will be short-listed for the run-off poll at a later date.
Go on! What are you waiting for?
PodCastle #36: "Ancestor Money" by Maureen McHugh. This is an interesting look at what the afterlife might be like.
StarShipSofa #54: "View from a Height" by Joan D. Vinge. Also on that show is poetry by fellow Wisconsinite Mark Rich, Flash Fiction by my buddy Matthew Sanborn Smith, and a fantastic piece of genre history by our resident historian Amy H. Sturgis.
We are in the 2nd week of nominations for the Sofanaughts Awards at StarShipSofa. Please go and nominate your favorite narrator (me!), fave flash fiction or main fiction piece, and your fave poetry and fact contributor in the first 52 episodes of Aural Delights. You can go to the online poll or go to the forums (register) and post your favorites under one of the threads under "Sofanaughts". In each of the categories, the five entries with the most nominations will be short-listed for the run-off poll at a later date.
Go on! What are you waiting for?
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