People have asked me about my “vacation,” and I feel like saying, “I need a vacation from my vacation!” or “I need to come back to work to relax!” In a nutshell, during my 30 nights away from Hawaii: At the Boston Early Music Festival, I attended two Monteverdi operas, the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610,… Read More Digging out from under
22,285 steps or 9.73 miles–that is how far we walked in the city of Leipzig today! We started out spending 3 1/2 hours traversing the Leipzig Zoo which I had visited with my husband Carl and son Stephen three years ago. I convinced my sister, Margo and husband, Ken, that this was a zoo worth… Read More Oh, my aching feet!
My shuttle to Logan airport came 15 minutes early so in my haste to pick up my luggage, I left my fleece jacket at Edith Ho’s. In the lost and found department I have been hopeless on this trip. After leaving my glasses in the Newark Airport last week, I was overjoyed to have a… Read More Mecca for Bach pilgrims
I remember a few years ago when the pastor, during the children’s sermon, asked the children if they knew who Martin Luther was. Understandably, the children confused the great reformer, Martin Luther, with the civil rights activist whose birthday we celebrated this week, Martin Luther King. Some of you probably saw my Facebook posting about… Read More Martin Luther and Martin Luther King
Do you remember Derek Chester? He was one of three tenors who came to Honolulu in 2010 to sing in our performances of the Monteverdi Vespers, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the work. Derek recently wrote a blog about his experiences in singing in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach spent 27 years as Kantor and I’m… Read More Singing in Bach’s church
It’s the middle of May and our thoughts are turning to our summer travels. And although we’re not going to Germany this year, I did think about the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach was once organist. From 2002 there was a new organ there incorporating much of the previous 1858 instrument… Read More A Porsche in the organ
Today was overcast, cold and windy, and what better way to spend the time but indoors in a musical instrument museum? On the bus yesterday, the historian who gave us the commentary about the town of Freiberg and Gottfried Silbermann was in fact on the staff of the music instrument museum here in Leipzig. Carl… Read More Unusual musical instruments
I guess it was inevitable that we would run into some of our colleagues from the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians in Leipzig. Today we attended the Motetten at St. Thomas, which was performed by the Valparaiso University Chorus under the direction of Christopher Cock,whom we met last year when we attended the Bach Collegium… Read More Americans in Leipzig
Since I’ve been typing the weekly church bulletins for the 10:30 service since last fall when Carl’s computer died, one advantage (?) I’ve had is being able to change the organ music at the last moment. Even though I had already programmed Mendelssohn on the repertoire list, when I saw that the choir was singing… Read More Mostly Mozart