My eye problems (see “Cyclops“) were only the beginning. On Sunday morning when I arrived at St. Mark’s, I started playing the prelude, Bach’s “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659,” one of my favorite chorale preludes for the Advent season. I immediately knew something was wrong because a number of notes were not sounding… Read More Adding insult to injury
Do you remember the Cyclops of Greek mythology? A cyclops (pron.: /ˈsaɪklɒps/; Greek: Κύκλωψ, Kuklōps; plural cyclopes /saɪˈkloʊpiːz/; Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kuklōpes), in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead.The name is widely thought to mean “circle-eyed”. It is upon Homer’s account that Euripides and Virgil based their accounts of the mythical… Read More Cyclops!
No, I’m not talking about people. I’m actually talking about the number of musical services I’m doing just this weekend. I just finished playing the Vigil Mass with Benediction for Advent II, then I’ll play two Sunday morning services — one the monthly communion service at Nuuanu Congregational Church, the other the High Mass for… Read More A quartet plus one
Last night, the First Mondays Chamber Concerts at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu scheduled “A Festival of Carols in Brass.” At the intermission, there was supposed to be a carol sing-along, with Barry Wenger at the organ. However, early yesterday morning, I received this text message from Barry: Here was my answer: I spent the… Read More To the rescue!
Itʻs Thanksgiving weekend as I write this and although the actual day has passed and in the history books, my table is still decorated in fall colors. In case you havenʻt figured it out already, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year — perhaps this is because I generally donʻt have any musical responsibilities… Read More A day of feasting
This week we have been hosting the four players of New World Recorders (Gwyn Roberts, Hélöise Degrugillier, Emily O’Brien and Rainer Beckmann) and it is a real team effort to put all the pieces together. Our Early Music Hawaii president, Scott Fikse, was in Honolulu last weekend to coordinate all the details of the service,… Read More New World Recorders — a team effort
How many of us think about what kind of music we want at our funerals? My husband, Carl Crosier, talked about the music for his funeral for at least twenty years before we finally had to act on it. He had heard women at the Church of the Advent choir sing the Gregorian propers one… Read More Music for a funeral
It was back in August that I received a text message from Jeremy Wong, who thought about me as he wrote: Hi Kathy! Hope you’re well. I’m writing because I have been in touch with a documentarian in Germany named Tilo Krause who is producing and directing a huge 24 hour broadcast of Bach from… Read More Gravity Bach
I had planned to be away for this Diamond Jubilee birthday, so I booked a trip to Japan, to be able to take in the Bach Collegium Japan concert. As it turned out, however, I returned last Monday, several days before my actual birthday because I didn’t want to be gone longer than a week.… Read More Prehistoric!
That’s how I felt when I ordered sushi at Haneda Airport as I was departing Japan. Like many other people, one of my goals was to eat good food while in Japan, and sushi was on my list! In the slideshow below you can see the wide variety of meals we had in a short… Read More Mission accomplished!