The emails have continued to pour in for the Early Music Hawaii concert on Friday night. When I was at the chamber music concert on Sunday afternoon, the people in front of me were talking about what a fantastic concert it was (and I was just eavesdropping!)

That was a wonderful concert! Such great voices and a chance for everyone to shine. Beautiful music and certainly not what you hear every day! (L. J.)

Hi Carl–The concert was extraordinary. Congratulations and thanks! (M.M.)

Carl–I think this was the best concert you have ever conducted, right up there with the Monteverdi Vespers! (T. H.)

Here’s what Carl wrote to the singers:

Dear EMH Singers,
What a wonderful concert we presented on Friday night. There was so much great music and absolutely stunning singing and playing. I am sure you realize that if we didn’t present this music it wouldn’t be done in Honolulu. We were definitely not over-rehearsed, but you truly “rose to the occasion”. And what a treat to have John Lenti with us to provide that defining harmonic “pluck” that is so essential to this repertoire. He absolutely loved working with us and couldn’t commend EMH enough for presenting such a fine concert.

A special thank you to Georgine, Emily, Naomi, Padraic, Allen, Karol and Keane all of whom did double, triple or quadruple duty with all of the other major performances over the weekend.

I received many e-mail messages and personal expressions of thanks (both after the concert and also from more than a dozen people at the Bach Vespers at LCH last night). They were truly enthralled with the music and deeply touched by its sensitive performance. We also need to be very grateful to St. Theresa’s for hosting us, as there couldn’t have been a more perfect venue for this concert.

Most of all, my sincere thanks to all of you for the tremendous effort you put in to the performances in a very concentrated span of time. I was enormously proud of all of you!

As I move into my “real retirement” in a month or so, I am looking forward to spending some quality time “cooking up” some future programs.

I would like to acknowledge my deepest thanks to Ian and Jeannette, not only for their incredibly hard work behind the scenes organizing everything so well, but also for their extreme patience with me in dealing with the realities of my “professional life” over these past months. But I need to thank them most of all for introducing me to this wonderful genre of music. This concert was another musical highlight of my career.

My sincerest thanks to you all,

Carl