Michael Bishop featured on StarShipSofa (I narrated the main fiction)

I narrated Vinegar Peace, a SF story written by Michael Bishop for his son Jamie Bishop who died two years ago at the Virginia Tech shootings.

" "Vinegar Peace" grew from this disaster and from a grief that I can't imagine ever laying totally aside. Jeri and I mourn Jamie's loss every day in some private way, and we think continually of all the other parents and loved ones of the slain and injured who will carry a similar burden with them until they die. We think, too, of the parents and loved ones of the dead and wounded from the United States' optional war in Iraq, who long for their dead and who pray for their injured with an intensity not a whit different from our own. How ironic that our son died on American soil. How sad the wasted potential and disfigured lives resulting from violence everywhere. And forgive me the inadequacy of these remarks. Clearly, I wrote a story because I could not address either my outrage or my grief in any other way." - Michael Bishop

StarShipSofa - http://www.starshipsofa.com - is very honoured and humbled to be allowed to bring this story to a wider audience. I know I speak for the SF community when I say our hearts and prayers go out to Mike and Jeri and all the families who have to live with this grief every day.

Narrations on StarShipSofa

Recently, I reported having done a lot of work lately on narrations for the StarShipSofa. Many of those stories haven't aired yet, but these are the ones that have:

Poetry by Ann K. Schwader - In Aural Delights Episodes #69 and #70 toward the beginning of the shows you can hear "Time Trapped" and "If Cold is a War" respectively.

Bruce Boston "People" poems - This is a small collection of 3 poems which are loosely related, entitled, Chess People, Marble People and Gargoyle People. On my suggestion Tony interspersed them throughout the show. I thought, since they have similar structures, listeners might get more out of them if they could hear them in one show. Normally Tony would have only included one per show. Feedback on the Forums was positive!

Aural Delights Episode #71

The good ship StarShipSofa undertook the massive task of publishing in audio all the Nebula Award Nominees in the Short form category. You can hear the one I narrated - "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson in Aural Delights #72 This is a nice story, and not so out there that folks who don't like Science Fiction or Fantasy much might actually enjoy. It's about 30 minutes long, so not a whole lot of investment!

Enjoy!

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Returning soon!

I apologize for the decided lack of communication on all fronts: email, phone, blog, Twitter, facebook and MySpace have all been experiencing Radio Silence. We have broadband at home and 2 weeks ago tomorrow it simply stopped working. No landline or internet! The company we use (1und1) has terrible customer service! Anyway, I'm writing this using my phone so I'll keep it brief. I just wanted to let you know that I should connected up again on Wed. I have a couple of things to report on and then I'll be heading to Italy for 10 days: Easter with the In-laws. After that I'll be attending the 15th annual Free-the-Voice seminar taught by Carol Forte in Frankfurt. So, you won't be hearing much from me till May most likely. Until then have a blessed Easter!

Stumble Audio

I just discovered that my CD "Silence" with lutenist Meinhard Gerlach is on Stumble Audio. This is a fun site, where you hear random tracks from CDs available on CD-Baby. You can give each track you hear a thumbs up or down and choose your favorite genre or listen completely randomly.

Silence can be found in the Contemporary section of the overall Classical genre. Here's a link to the song "Silence":

Title from Silence at Stumble Upon

And yes, we do get paid (granted it's peanuts!) for each play. From stumble audio you can click links to go to CD-Baby or Amazon or other sites to buy the album (or just listen to the whole thing). If you like what you hear, please don't forget to log-in and give it a thumbs up. I'd suggest pausing it or logging in early, because you can't back-track once the song is finished playing. If you end up at Amazon or CD-Baby, please write a review. We'd be eternally grateful!

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Upcoming events

A flurry of activity is marking my days lately. Well, relatively speaking anyway. Aside from teaching and recording for the StarShipSofa (and not much of that actually), I haven't done much the past few months. That has changed to a certain extent (I'm still not what a lot of people would call busy, and stress isn't really a part of my life at the moment, but, you know, it's all relative).

I will be singing for a wedding on March 21st. Weddings are small, low-key affairs for me. I usually sing 2 or 3 songs (in this case it's 2) and they are usually songs that are familiar to me and not too difficult technically. I'll be singing Amazing Grace and Climb Ev'ry Mountain (from Sound of Music) for this one. Had a bit of a hiccup when 2 days ago the organist called and said she is bowing out of playing these songs for the wedding. Huh? She said, the arrangements were not suited for the organ (well, I told her *that*) and she didn't want to play them. I think she thought that I had chosen the music I was to sing. I said to her, I have a hymn accompaniment for Amazing Grace which is certainly more suited to the organ, if that would help, but as for Climb Ev'ry Mountain, there is simply no other arrangement that I could find and I had hoped she would be able to cope. I was wrong. She simply flatly refused (2 weeks before the wedding I might add) and said she'd already spoken to another accompanist, one that had an electric piano that he could use. Fine with me, but is it fine with the Bride, I asked. Well, she hadn't spoken with her yet, but she would. So I called the new accompanist to arrange a rehearsal and discuss things with him. He asked me about his payment. What do I know? That's something he and the Bride and possibly the organist are going to have to work out. He told me the organist said I'd arrange that! Sheesh! She seems to live in la-la-land, this one! So, to make a short story even longer - it's all worked out now and I'm sure I'll prefer working with the pianist more than I would have the organist!

A couple of weeks ago I got a call, out of the blue, from a church musician in Wiesbaden, Germany for whom I've sung before. He wanted to know if I was free on April 4 to sing Bach's St. John Passion? I tried to remain calm, but in my mind I was saying, "Duh! I would be over-joyed, I would kiss your feet for giving me this opportunity, Thank God I'll get to sing a real concert again!" I told him, "Yes, I'm free and I'll be glad to sing for you again." Yippee! It's been about 2 years since I sang solo in an oratorio, and I tell ya, I've missed it.

So now, I've got my work cut out for me. I'll keep you posted.

I've recently finished recording a couple of stories for the StarShipSofa, which will be airing eventually. One was a story I've been working on for months. The Green Calling, by Storm Constantine. It's not that long, about 45 minutes total, but for some reason, I was have a really hard time with this one. I recorded most of it, got distracted and when I came back to it, I realized that it sucked. The accents were horrible and my narration was flat. I realized also that just recording the rest would not cut it either, because there'd be no way I could match the beginning to the end. So, I just re-recorded the whole thing. Then came the editing. Because I'd played with accents on this one (and the still suck, but not as much as before) I had a lot of flubbers to edit out. I can't say how many hours I spent on this one, but it was far and away the most of any story I've done so far.

Another story is Vinegar Peace - or the Wrong-Way, Used-Adult Orphanage by Michael Bishop. This is a great story. Mr. Bishop was motivated to write this story as a way of processing the grief over the death of his son in the shooting incident at Virginia Tech a few years ago. This is an event that was actually covered on the news here and I remember it distinctly. I corresponded with Mike a few times to work out some of the details and clear some things with him. He's a very gracious man and I enjoyed our exchanges. I had two songs to sing in this one and it's a powerful story. He also wrote a short commentary, which will follow the story when it airs on StarShipSofa.

Upcoming recordings are: 26 Monkeys by Kij Johnson - a Nebula Nominee! I'm really looking forward to this one; Poetry by Bruce Boston; Daughter of Botu by Eugie Foster - this one will be fun too, it's for PodCastle; Silence in Florence by Ian Creasey; and Project Mastodon a novel by Clifford Simak that I'm doing for SFAudio.


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Opera Review - Idomeneo, Hannover Staatsoper

I've been meaning to write this review since we went to see the opera, but life kind of got in the way...

For Valentine's Day my husband surprised me with tickets to see Mozart's first successful opera, Idomeneo at the Hannover Staatsoper (State Opera House). I'd never seen it and didn't know much of the music, just the odd soprano aria or two, so I was excited!

As we approached the opera house we passed Littfaßsäule (one of those wide pillars onto which they paste posters of current and future events) with a poster for the opera. We looked at each other in horror. Oh no, it's a modern production. Just so you know, neither of us is a fan of modern productions, which is to say modern costumes, modern sets etc. I love costume dramas (movies) and Early Music, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I don't like them. That said, if I ever saw one that was really well done, then I'm sure I would like it, but I never have, sad to say. In this country, they love minimalism and nudity on stage (even if it has nothing to do with what's going on on stage) and as far as I'm concerned, if you are going to do an opera from the ranks of the standard repertoire with modern production elements, then certain other aspects (the singing, the acting) MUST be top-notch. And unfortunately, this is rarely the case. But before I get ahead of myself let me just say this: We were not excited by the prospect of Idomeneo set in the modern world.

Magnus had gotten us really excellent seats, 2nd balcony, first row, towards the middle so we had a great, head-on view and good sound.

The curtain went up and the entire stage was WHITE, with a huge white block (about 12 - 15 feet (4 - 5m)high, 6 (2m) feet wide and 25 - 30 feet (6-8m) long. HUGE. This block was mounted on a mechanical turntable and it slowly spun around. It did this throughout the entire opera. The costumes were completely in white and all the singers had blond hair (or wigs) and white (real or painted) skin. So, monotone is the only and quite accurate word to describe it. Later, when Idomeneo appears bloodied after a harrowing sea voyage, there's lots of red "blood" that gets distributed. Pointless, but a welcome relief from all the white. The stage director (Philipp Himmelmann)also did nothing to help the audience understand the mistaken intentions and intrigues of the story. The characters often sing duets, but aren't actually singing to each other, in fact, if it had been a movie they probably would have used a split screen to indicate that the people aren't actually in each other's presence. But here, the singers acted as though they were singing to each other, touching one another and gesturing: "Why doesn't he realize I love him!" "She spurns my passion - how shall I live?1?". Um, sorry, but I think the stage director completely missed the point.

So, on to the actual singing. The singers, for the most part, were fine. I was pleased to see that my favorite singer from Carmen (Arantxa Armentia) was playing Electra. Unfortunately, she was overly dramatic (which given that her character is the most dramatic one, is reason to forgive her that) and she over-sang the entire time, occasionally to the point of ugliness. Strangely, she was the one who over-sang the least in Carmen, which was my biggest criticism of that opera. Why would she do so in a Mozart opera?!? The other female singers, as I said were fine, especially Ania Wegrzyn, who sang Ilia. She has a fine lyrical voice with lots of understated power. Barbara Senator (Idamante) was a bit weak, especially in comparison to Wegrzyn, but the quality of her voice was pleasant. My biggest gripe: You couldn't understand a word any of them were singing. The vowels were much too dark, (which is a-typical of Italian) with little differentiation.

Tomasz Zagorski, who sang the title role of Idomeneo, was magnificent, however. Nuanced and lyrical, with subtle emotional qualities able to express themselves. AND you could understand his Italian. A fine belcanto-style voice. He deserved much more of an ovation than he received. I'll keep my eye out for future roles he sings.

The orchestra, as usual, was solid and enjoyable. The musicians were occasionally more entertaining than the opera itself.

Besides Zagorski, the choir was a highlight of the evening. They were omnipresent, for which I pitied them (I know what it's like to be required on stage even when you have nothing to do). But they have a wonderful ensemble quality with some fine voices doing the bit solos.

Let's see. Maybe the 3rd opera we see in Hannover will be the charm? At least this one was a definite improvement on Carmen.


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We'll be trudging up the mountain...

Yes, last weekend I was in Switzerland. Magnus and I took off to visit my friend Jane (the Viol player) in Aarau where she lives on Saturday.

We flew into Zurich and had a few hours to kill before catching a train to Aarau. We did about half of the main tourist tour. Zurich is pretty cute for a biggish city. We went to a Pizzeria near Jane's for dinner. Yum.

Sunday, we left quite early in the morning, took 2 trains (picked up a friend) and a bus to the side of a mountain, had hot chocolate first (as one does) and took off. It didn't take long before we had to strap on the snow shoes. Have you ever worn snow shoes? Do you have any idea how heavy those things get after about 20 steps in 3 feet of snow?!? Do you?!? I thought not. Well, I didn't either. I just thought, when Jane suggested it, "How cool, I've always wanted to try that!" I did quite well until about hour 5, when my slow plodding became weary trudging. We still had an hour to go. I'm ashamed to say I let Jane carry my small backpack the rest of the way (she insisted!)and it was a huge weight off my back. And my feet, quite literally! OK, all complaining aside, we wandered through pristine snow and saw almost no one (although a group of about 15 Germans passed us coming the other way). We ended up at a little plateau with several mountain cottages that belongs to the Spelunking club that Jane is a member of. This was pretty rustic - it had only a gas fired space heater (which worked fine because there was only one small room) and gas lamps. No running water and a latrine next to another building 50 yards away through the snow. We made Fondue for dinner. It was heavenly. We slept in the unheated attic, which was basically open to the elements. Jane's boyfriend had joined us there in the evening and created a warm nest for us out of wool blankets and 4 or so sleeping bags. I had also brought along my arctic sleeping bag so I was toasty! Except for my nose. Magnus had to flip his head one way and then the other an hour later to warm up his ears periodically.

One mishap: Magnus lost both his cell phones, which were in his jacket pocket in a plastic bag. Ly went all the way the next morning and didn't find them. By the time the snow melts and someone picks them up they'll be ruined...

We had a leisurely breakfast, packed up, strapped on those damned snow-shoes and slid down the mountain. We caught a bus to Interlaken and another to the base of the mountain across from the famous Eiger, ??? and Jungfrau mountains. From there we took a "train" straight up the side of the mountain and then a ski lift (in a cabin) two stations to the top. There we rented sleds. We had a lot of fun sledding down the mountain. Unfortunately we only had time for two runs.

We took the last lift down and returned to Aarau. We had a nice dinner at Jane's with her boyfriend, Tino as well. Next morning we took the train to Zurich, where we only had about an hour and a half. We wanted to look around, but Jane told us about a Mexican shop close to the train station. They weren't open for another 20 minutes when we got there so we had a cup of coffee in a nearby cafe. We bought salsa, spices, corn flour (yellow and blue!), black beans, chorizo and jalapeno peppers. Mmmmh! We also wanted to buy some Swiss cheese so headed over to the Coop and bought three different kinds: Guyère, Brie, and Vacherin. Mmmmh!