Of concerts and recitals

I forgot to mention a few other news-worthy items in my last post. Don't know how it could happen. I mean how many concerts have I sung recently? None! My last public performance was shortly before Dante's birth 13 months ago. My next performance will be on Oct. 31st. And no, it will not be an evening of Halloween music (is there such a thing? I must look into this!). I'll be reprising my performance of various pieces by none other than Hildegard von Bingen, one of my most favorite composers and a fascinating figure in History (or Herstory, considering she was a woman doing amazing things in the middle ages). This is the 4th or 5th time I've performed this particular program with the Schola Hildegardensis of Dillenburg, but it's been several years since the last one. It'll be wonderful to do it again and to see the women in the group and work with Joachim Dreher (the organist/choir director at the Herz Jesu Pfarrei in Dillenburg). It feels great to have something to work toward (I work best with a concrete goal) and the voice feels pretty good. Perhaps a little rusty, but not like one would think after months of use solely for lullabies and children's songs.

So, in the unlikely event that you actually live near Dillenburg, Germany and would like to come hear me sing, here are the pertinent details:

Schola Hildegardensis (Direction/Leitung Joachim Dreher) with Diane Severson, Solo
Music by / Gesänge von Hildegard von Bingen
Sunday/Sonntag, 31 October 2010, 17:00 (5:00 pm)
Pfarrei Herz Jesu, Dillenburg (Kirchberg)

Shortly thereafter, I'm providing my singing pupils with an opportunity to perform one of the songs we've worked on for the others. This is not a public performance. It will take place in my studio (at home!) and only those taking lessons from me will make up the audience. I used to do these regularly when I lived and taught in Frankfurt and this is the first one I've organized here in Hannover. Each singer will perform one song and it'll be about half/half classical music and pop/Jazz. A nice mix. At the end, I'll sing a few songs. I hire a pianist for these things, since I am a miserable accompanist and I'd like to listen as well. There will be 8 pupils singing, plus me, so it'll only last about 45 minutes at most, I'd say. Each pupil will have a brief rehearsal on the day with the accompanist.

I think I forgot to mention that my mother-in-law asked me to sing for some of her friends at a Kaffee Klatsch while we were in Italy recently. This is the first time she's ever done so. And I was happy to do so. So many of Magnus' family have never heard me sing and I took that opportunity to repeat the program for the family that came to Dante's birthday. This was the program:

Durante, Danza, danza fanciulla
Caccini, Amarilli mia bella
Giordani, Caro mio ben
Händel, Ombra mai fu (Xerxes)
Händel, Lascia, ch'io pianga (Rinaldo)
Mozart, Ach, ich fühl's (Zauberflöte)
Schubert, An die Musik
Schumann, Widmung
Händel, Oh, had I Jubal's Lyre (Joshua)

I must say, it went extremely well. I had put together a CD of the accompaniment (karaoke style) and stood in front of the TV and sang to about 10 people sitting on the terrace. I suppose the whole neighborhood could have listened too. Needless to say, they loved it. I'll probably do it again. It was fun!

---------------

StarShipSofa Stories Vol. 2 and other news

So, in addition to being my father's birthday (Happy Birthday, Daddy!!!!) and my friend Sandra's birthday as well (Happy Birthday, Sandra!!!) today is the launch of my favorite podcast's 2nd Volume of "Best of" StarShipSofa stories. These are Science Fiction stories that ran on the show this year, since Volume 1 came out. There are some great authors represented including Gwyneth Jones, Nancy Kress, Jeff VanDerMeer and my friend Larry Santoro. A slew of great artists have illustrated each story and Dee Cunniffe and Skeet Scienski have done a wonderful job with graphics, layout and the cover art. Can you tell how much I love that this book is coming out? Have a look at the promo video and more detailed information on contents and how you can buy it here and see for yourselves. Of course, Volume 1 is equally as awesome and if you missed that one you should buy both!! :-)

News on other fronts:

Dante turned one year old!!! We spent a week in Italy with the Nonni (that's grandparents to those who don't speak Italian) and had some relatives over on the day with a cake and everything. I actually gave Dante little bits of the yellow cake part of the cake. The first time he's had anything sweetened with sugar! Of course, he loved it and wanted more, more, more! He got some lovely presents from various people over the last few weeks - thank you everyone, so much! I'll add a picture of us with the cake later...

I attended a wonderful concert with Magnus the other day. Thomas Quasthoff singing selections from his recently released 2nd jazz CD. He's a classical singer of amazing quality and we decided to treat ourselves to this concert to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. I intend on writing a proper review in English and in German, but haven't found the time yet.


------------

Hugos, PodCastle

OK, I'm very slow from the starting line, but my favorite Podcast, the one I narrate for occassionally, StarShipSofa with Tony C. Smith has just become the first ever Podcast to win a Hugo Award! This happened in Melbourne, Australia where the WorldCon was held this year. The award is for Best FanZine. Which means it is an amateur magazine (of sorts) contributed to by fans of Science Fiction. This couldn't describe the StarShipSofa better! Tony is the master mind who gets authors to donate their fiction and herds probably a hundred volunteers to do narrations and articles (on the genre history, science news, online fiction, comics, movies, book reviews, you name it). It's heroic, really. He truly deserves this award. But so do all of us that contribute to it. We are a truly wonderful community that enjoys each other as much as Science Fiction!

Also, my most recent narration to go live is "Kingspeaker" by Marie Brennan. It's over on PodCastle and you can listen to it here: "Kingspeaker" It's a very nice little story, which I think was perfect for me to narrate. It's nothing earth-shattering, but lovely. Definitely not a waste of a half hour, if you have it.

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to my most recent follower, Robyn Bradshaw. She and her husband are members of the aforementioned StarShipSofa family. She did some transcribing for the book, The Captain's Logs (did I mention that here?1?) and her husband is a fabulous musician, (you should google him if you don't know who he is) who's written a couple of songs for the Sofa. The two of them have some narration up their sleeves, too, I'm told. Thanks for subscribing, Robyn!

-----------------

National Buy a Book Day - September 7!

Hi Everyone!

I'm a member of a couple of groups over at GoodReads.com and recently one of the members of Beyond Reality posted an idea of his: National Buy a Book Day.
We all know bookstores (brick and mortar ones anyway) are in trouble. Publishers and authors are having trouble. I love books. I have way too many of them. Wait a minute! Is that possible? Well, I barely have space for all my beloved books. Nonetheless, I would dearly love to support my favorite bookstore (A Room of Her Own) in Madison, my home town, but I'll have to settle with a bookstore here in Germany.

The idea is that you go to a real bookstore on September 7 and buy a new, full-price book. That's all. It's that simple. It can be any book, any price, but it should be new and not a mark-down, so that bookstore, author and publisher all garner the maximum profit from the sale.

If you want to read more go here. And if you want to help the initiative (which is the brain-child of one average Joe - Philip Athans - not anyone who really stands to profit from it), then post about it on your own blog, re-tweet it, link to it and mention it on any forums you might visit between now and then. I'm going to!

Whew! Completed story narration

Yes, in a whirlwind of activity I managed to get the narration of a story, "Kingspeaker" by Marie Brennan completed for PodCastle by the deadline! w00t! I will let you all know when it goes up there. Probably within the next few weeks.

Now I still have a story and 3 million poems to do for StarShipSofa. Magnus is gone all next week, so I should manage to get at least the story done! I've gotten a start on it already, as I mentioned in an earlier post, but then this rush-job PodCastle story came along. Sorry Tony!

And make room for a new follower, people! Well, Larry, I don't know how long you've been following my blog (openly!), but I just saw your mug as my most recent follower, so I'm welcoming you now! Isn't there some sort of notification available?

------------------------

StarShipSofa promo

Two posts in two days! Your cups runneth over! :-)

I just saw the new (actually the first) promotional video for my favorite podcast StarShipSofa. It's very cool. And since I do narrations for the show, you can see my name up in lights! Here it is:

HELLO! Hello? hello? ello? lo?

Is there an echo in here?!? There surely must be since I haven't written a post since New Years, it seems! Wow. Well, maybe this will be the first of many new posts. We'll see...

An update:

My son Dante continues to occupy most of my time. He's adorable and fascinating and funny. And I'm smitten.

I'm continuing to teach, and in January I started teaching again, full-time, so to speak, meaning that I managed to get all of my pupils and a couple of new ones to commit to coming on one of 2 days per week. I'm now teaching Monday and Friday afternoons and usually into the evening. I have a babysitter who watches Dante in the Living Room while I teaching down at the other end of the apartment. It works pretty well. I'm considering changing Fridays to Thursdays, so that we can have a long weekend and I won't necessarily have to reschedule all the lessons.

I recorded another story for PodCastle in March and neglected to blog about it - "Love Among the Talus" by Elizabeth Bear. A nice little story that you can listen to here

They've asked my to record another story for them and Tony from StarShipSofa has also asked for a recording, this one by Gwyneth Jones! I'll be sure to blog more about them when I've finished and when they air.

I had an audition rehearsal with a local cabaret a cappella group here in Hannover called Ferrari Küßchen, which went pretty well. It would be a big commitment, but a great opportunity and something different for me. It would definitely get me out there singing, which is what matters to me at this point. :-) It's not a done deal yet though. We are going to have more meetings/rehearsals, and Magnus, Dante and I are going to spend a performance day with the group to see what it involves. I probably wouldn't start performing with them before January anyway. I'll keep you posted!

So, I'd say that's enough for now! If you are still around drop me a comment, and let me know! Thanks!

--------------