I think Bill Potter and I were most surprised to see so many people in the streets of Worcester — and they were not attendees of the Three Choirs Festival! It’s also possible that none of these people heard of the Three Choirs Festival or for that matter, Edward Elgar! Worcester is the home of… Read More More than a Cathedral
Yesterday was the 10th Anniversary Evensong to celebrate the founding of The American Friends of the Three Choirs Festival. Here’s what Rich Arenschieldt, chair of the American Friends, wrote: This year’s festival is a special one for the American Friends, as we celebrate our tenth anniversary. We are offering something never before done at Three… Read More 10th Anniversary Evensong
In last night’s post, I neglected to write about the concert we heard after Evensong, performed by the BBC Singers. On one hand, it is a human impossibility to attend every single event of the Festival because many events occur simultaneously. On the other hand, it’s impossible to write about every single concert and every… Read More Superstars
It was maybe only a year or two ago that I was made aware of the importance of the organ in the movie, Interstellar. A friend from my Spanish class sent me a link to a YouTube video, and I listened to a short clip. At the time, I liked it but pretty much forgot… Read More Other worldly Interstellar
Maybe you’ve heard of this term before … and maybe not. Here’s what I found about this phenomenon called “musical chills” in a paper written by Emily Nusbaum and Paul Silva. Have you ever had the experience of listening to a favourite piece of music and suddenly you get a little spikey feeling running down… Read More Frisson
Yesterday was a huge day here at the Three Choirs Festival, starting with a Festival Eucharist in Worcester Cathedral where Charles Marie Widor’s Messe à deux chœurs & deux orgues was the communion setting—set for two choirs and two organs. After lunch we attended a concert by the Corvus Consort, then rushed off to Choral… Read More Saxophone Brunch and Saxophone Byrd!
Question: What’s the only word in the English language with four silent letters? Queue nouna line or sequence of people or vehicles awaiting their turn to be attended to or to proceed. verbtake one’s place in a queue.”in the war they had queued for food” At the Three Choirs Festival, they queue for daily Evensong, one of several… Read More Queue for Evensong
Yesterday was another travel day, another day of schlepping our luggage on and off trains, up and down elevators, and through the London Underground, to travel from Cambridge to Worcester. It meant returning to Kings Cross train station, navigating our way through the Underground to Paddington Station where we could take a train to Worcester.… Read More Three Choirs Festival, here we come!
Thrilling. Exhilarating. Hair-raising. Those were some of the reactions to last night’s performance of Mendelssohn St. Paul at the Three Choirs Festival Worcester. Wha-a-a-t? Mendelssohn? I must confess, that until last night, and only knowing Mendelssohn Elijah, which I consider a sleeper, I wouldn’t think of Mendelssohn as exciting. Over and over again I heard… Read More Mendelssohn St. Paul
I took the train into Worcester yesterday, the site of the Three Choirs Festival this year. I booked my hotel, The Cardinal’s Hat Inn, a year ago at the end of last year’s Festival in Gloucester, because I so enjoyed the high caliber of the musical performances. The hotel is above a pub of the… Read More Back at the Three Choirs Festival