mail call

This would be the time to get addresses from any of y'all as wants New Year's cards from me. (Some of you will get these whether you comment or not, but unless you are one hundred percent positive I have your mailing address, you might want to leave it here. Note: you should probably not be one hundred percent positive I have your mailing address.)

I used to do this with an invisible poll, but with the crossposting these days that's probably harder than it needs to be, so we'll have to make do with Comments Are Screened.

an advertisement (pronounce it adVERtisement; it helps)

DCfolk (or anyone who will or may be in town twelve days from now), allow me to draw your attention to the Joy of Christmas program we've been rehearsing for several weeks, which is on next Saturday December 12 and Sunday December 13. You'll want the 4pm performances unless you intend bringing small children, in which case the abbreviated family concert at noon on Saturday might be more your speed. In any case, though, this year's program is pretty uniformly good -- even the schmalzy Rutteresque stuff that sings itself is better this year than the schmalzy Rutteresque stuff has been in other years. Plus, for an added bonus, you will hear me sing a solo. (Full disclosure: it's one note held for three bars at the end of a piece; but by god I'm the only one singing it, so there.) Buy your tickets here.



Tonight's rehearsal featured an entertaining series of tantrums from the director - which, I mean, they were entertaining because they were (a) so unexpectedly over-the-top and (b) not directed at me or my section, but still. Notes included "You did that beautifully about a month ago", "I admit I didn't give you any sort of signal, so naturally nobody sang - I suppose it's good to know you depend on me", and "I know I was harsh earlier this evening, and I'm trying to be more mellow now, but a moment ago when I got upset at you I think the piece really improved". All true, is the thing, so no matter how frustrating it is that he mumbles and doesn't finish sentences and doesn't always know what information we've received from his minions, you can't argue that he doesn't know what he's doing musically. I think some people find the artistic temperament insufferable, but I was trained up right in Cleveland and am thus often annoyed by e.g. people who are talking to their friends and thus not listening when we're told where we're about to begin, so they have to ask for every. single. direction to be repeated (or, to take another example, people who ask week after week whether we're pronouncing "angeli" with a hard or a soft g, or whether we're releasing a note on the beat or on the rest - all of which they'd know if they'd written them down any of the previous times we've been told these things [though admittedly sometimes the boss does change his mind]), and therefore I find the artistic temperament ... 80% justified, I'd say. Anyway. Come hear us! This morning I was apprehensive about this concert, but now I feel positive about it. National Cathedral. What's not to love?

Another note, this from Chorus Master T, w/r/t Rachmaninov's Cherubic Hymn from the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (which I had previously called the Hymn of St John the Baptist, not quite a correct rendering): "These are Newtonian dynamics. They do not change until acted upon by another dynamic. Mezzo-forte all the way to the page turn, please."