Three Choirs Ambassador?! That’s what I feel like, when I discovered the marketing staff had quoted part of my blog from last year’s Festival in Worcester! I had just come from hearing a one-of-a-kind performance of the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony and I was higher than a kite! Here’s the outside of a brochure I found.… Read More Three Choirs Ambassador?!
I have just come from the Three Choirs Festival concert called “The Planets,” in which Gustav Holst’s suite of seven tone-poems was on the second half of the program. It is one of my favorite works, and even though I have heard the work live on several occasions, this is one performance that I will… Read More Pure magic
Okay, raise your hands here. How many of you have heard the music of Dame Ethel Smyth? Last night the Three Choirs Festival programmed her Mass in D on the opening concert and I must confess that I had not heard of nor heard the music of this woman composer. As you can tell, they… Read More Dame Ethel Smyth 1858-1944
I wanted change . . . I got it in spades at the opening day at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. It was the 291st opening day of the Festival which alternates between Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester. We woke up to cold rain and gray skies, which means the heat wave is over, but… Read More Girl power
It is SWELTERING in London and is an inferno! Today set a heat record—it got to 35 C (95 F) and some estimated it was 37 C (98 F) in the subway system, the Underground. That is truly HOT, considering that air conditioning is rare in this city, especially in the subway trains. Oh it… Read More In search of cool
Joan Ishibashi and I made the two-hour train trip to the city of Gloucester from London’s Paddington Station. I can’t believe it has been three years since I came to Gloucester for my first Three Choirs Festival! This time, though, we were here because of the residency of the Duke University Choir at Gloucester, where… Read More Joyful reunion and Evensong in Gloucester
Even though we faced another hot, muggy day, Joan Ishibashi and I toured Kew Gardens today, one of the largest botanical gardens in the world. As we had seen in Green Park near Buckingham Palace, the large grassy areas, normally lush green and verdant, were shockingly dry and brown. News of the heat wave and… Read More Kew Gardens
It was only after I had been here a couple of days that I was contacted through Facebook Messenger, completely by surprise! I did not know these people were in London at this time! Zen Kuriyama is doing research on the composer Gerald Finzi at the Royal Academy of Music. Today was actually only… Read More I didn’t know you were in London!
I am back in London, where my flight from Hamburg was uneventful except for having to endure 1-1/2 hours in the queue entering the UK Border. It is very hot and humid here, unlike my previous trips to London. I can’t ever remember it being so hot and uncomfortable like it is now! My BFF… Read More Outside on St. James’s Day
I saw a tall tree, but when organbuilder Hans-Ulrich Erbsloeh saw it, he said, “I can build a 16′ Bourdon out of it!” Some people see trees, other people see organ pipes! We decided to forego seeing any organs today and instead took the train to downtown Hamburg to take a harbor cruise. Here we… Read More Some people see trees …