Last Sunday I found myself back in the Chorus Room at Iolani School doing, what else, accompanying the Iolani School Chorus and Hōkūloa Singers in rehearsal for their upcoming concert, “The Long and Winding Road,” this Friday, May 13th at 7:30 pm, which will be held at St. Andrew’s Cathedral. It’s an opportunity to hear… Read More Back to school at the Cathedral
It all started with an inquiry to my Ionian Arts email account last January 28th, 2016: Dear Mrs. Crosier, I found your email address on the Ionian Arts website. I hope it is O.K. to contact you. My wife and I may be moving from Cape Cod MA to Honolulu in the coming months and I am trying… Read More Aloha and Welcome, Todd and Jennifer!
This blog supposedly has the underlying theme of music but sometimes I deviate to include travel, art, and today, food. For seventeen years, Chef George Mavrosalassitis, a James Beard winner whose Honolulu restaurant, Chef Mavro, has been awarded a five-diamond star rating for six years in a row, presented a dinner for supporters of Hawaii Public… Read More Springtime in Provence
For those of you who are Facebook users, you probably have seen the “On This Day” feature which is meant to spark nostalgia by highlighting content you posted to the site in years past. It pops up in your news feed and shows you photos and status updates you posted on the same calendar day a year or… Read More On This Day
It was about a month ago that I attended the Oahu Choral Society fundraiser, “Vivace,” which celebrated that organization’s 20th anniversary. Originally it was formed as the Honolulu Symphony Chorus under the direction of Sydney Rothstein, who was the Assistant Conductor of the Honolulu Symphony. In 1995 it reorganized as an independent non-profit entity called the… Read More Ethereal Masterworks
I just found a fascinating article called “Is Musical Talent Rooted in Genes?” in which author Jillian Rose Lim challenges the conventional wisdom by writing: Practice doesn’t always make perfect when it comes to becoming the next Mozart, a new study suggests. Researchers compared pairs of identical twins, and found that no matter how hard… Read More The music gene
You may recall from previous posts that I’m back to practicing Bach—the so-called German Organ Mass, also called the Clavierübung, Part III. According to Wikipedia, “It is considered Bach’s most significant and extensive work for organ, containing some of his musically most complex and technically most demanding compositions for that instrument.” You know me—I never take the easy way… Read More Listening to my 28-year-old self
Last night before the Joint Evensong with the combined St. Andrew’s Cathedral and Lutheran Church of Honolulu choirs, director Scott Fikse posted on Facebook: “Come hear two of the finest choirs in Hawaii combine forces for Evensong at St. Andrew’s Cathedral. 5:30pm.” As I listened to all those soaring sopranos and lush harmonies in the… Read More Glorious St. Paul’s Service
Last night I had dinner with Michael Kleinschmidt and Marc Aubertin, who are in Hawaii on vacation. You may recall that the first time I wrote about them was in my post “A break from Bach,” in which I recounted their visit to our condo in May 2011 and Carl cooked dinner. Guess what we were doing back then… Read More Discovering Hallock anew
I am a hopeless political junkie and we are once again in one of my favorite news cycles —a presidential campaign. I just love the debates, the polls, and the talk shows. And of course there’s a lot of talk about blue states and red states, liberals and conservatives, progressives and establishment. But this weekend, blue and red will… Read More Blue and red