. . . and to dust you shall return. These words from tonight’s Ash Wednesday service remind us of our mortality. The paraments are black and the mood of the whole service is somber — the only time I played the organ was on the Hallock psalm antiphon (Psalm 103) and two hymns. No prelude,… Read More Remember that you are dust . . .
After last week’s rehearsal of the Bach Mass in B Minor, I would have said the score was: Bach 1, Choir 0 especially because we had some key singers miss the rehearsal due to the opera and other conflicts. This week, I can happily say that we’ve evened the score — Bach 1, Choir 1.… Read More Week 2: the score is even
The LCH Music Library is a treasure trove of some of the best choral and organ music ever published. In the last few days I’ve been working on reorganizing all the instrumental parts — buying new filing pockets and making labels. So far I’ve only made a small dent in the instrumental parts for the… Read More The music library and the future
So proclaimed Carl Crosier yesterday, in reminding choristers about the next Mass in B Minor rehearsal which is tomorrow night (March 8 at 7:00 pm). Some people have already found that the “tessitura” (vocal range) of the work is very high and have asked to be put in a lower voice part. “Everyone will be… Read More The B-Minor Mass isn’t sightreadable!
Seven years ago at this time we were getting ready to perform Bach’s St. John Passion, March 12 and 13th, 2004. After performing Bach’s monumental St. Matthew Passion in 2000, it seemed inevitable that someday Carl Crosier would want to do Bach’s St. John Passion, like climbing Mount Everest (because it is there!) The planning… Read More Another insane project
I opened the newspaper this morning to the headlines, “Hawaii residents most short of Z’s” which says that people here are the most sleep-deprived in the nation. That’s due to the fact that many residents hold down more than one job due to the high cost of living. Carl and I are part of this… Read More Less Sleep in Lent
This Sunday is Transfiguration, the last festival service before the Season of Lent, which means this is the last organ postlude I’ll play until Easter Day! (At LCH we observe the penitential season of Lent by not having postludes.) Once there was a whole Lenten season when I decided I wasn’t going to use organ… Read More Peter Philips and Peter Phillips
Today I was reading a FaceBook post from former LCH chorister, Heidi Hammel, and got inspired to work on a re-design of the postcard we will be sending out to announce the Bach Mass in B minor concerts. Carl had complained that the colors looked too dull, and I thought perhaps he was not happy… Read More Bach and solar flares
“We are going on a journey,” Carl said tonight at the first rehearsal of the Bach Mass in B Minor, “and none of us, including me, will be the same after these performances.” Tonight the choir began with the opening four bars of the Kyrie, then went on to the Gloria in excelsis, Et in… Read More The journey begins
From almost the beginning of Carl Crosier’s tenure at LCH, he included the names of the choristers in the special services bulletins. And what you notice, of course, is that the roster always changes and transitions. I guess that when you live in a place like Hawaii, you see a lot of people come and… Read More The only constant is change