GRECCHINOIS
CAIC DAYDREAMS
“I spent much of today sitting in my friend Henry’s studio, editing the footage of what will compromise CAIC’s upcoming Winter Lieder Lounge recital which airs March 5-7. The recital features two colleagues and friends of mine, baritone Edward Nelson and pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg. We filmed their performance a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been pondering how much I enjoy producing since that session…”
PRACTICE
“Yesterday I briefly mentioned that part of the goal of this exercise is to try and make my practice of writing more regular, as I attempt to push past the inner critics that paralyze me. It’s tempting to describe this phenomenon as ‘writer’s block’, but I’m not quite sure I am willing to dignify it with such iconic terminology. It feels more like paralysis than a block, and it never feels like I can’t write. It’s just too easy to find any excuse not to write…”
AN EXPERIMENT
“When I began blogging back in May of 2006, the online landscape was a drastically different and perhaps simpler place. My life was in a simpler place, too. I was still relatively fresh out of a young artist program at the Houston Grand Opera, on the cusp of making my European operatic debut with Oper Frankfurt in a production of Mozart’s La finta semplice. At the beginnings of a professional career without the training wheels of an apprenticeship…”
UNKNOWN SOLDIERS
In the spirit of mourning those who are lost, Myra and I offer this Benjamin Britten arrangement of a song by Charles Dibdin called Tom Bowling…Whatever the truth of the story behind the song, it’s a beautiful remembrance of a lost friend, colleague and family member who was clearly beloved by many. Thinking of the song in the context of today, there is something about it that feels like a sort of musical Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – a memorial to those who have died, but haven’t been identified.
SINGING ALONG
In any other year, the moment Thanksgiving arrives I’m staring down a five week tunnel of constant travel and performance, hopping from city to city singing Handel’s Messiah. There have been many years where I’ve missed Thanksgiving with my family in order to begin a run of Messiah performances on Black Friday….
BRITTEN BIRTHDAY
I was first drawn to Britten’s music partly because of the lifelong romantic partnership that inspired him to write all of this incredible music for the tenor voice...The idea that love between two men could produce such incredible beauty still inspires me to this day, and I feel so privileged to be able to sing Britten’s music as much as I do. It’s a testament to me about how much representation matters, and how art combined with living openly can change lives for the better...save lives, even…
WHAT CAN ONE WOMAN DO?
This post is the program note I wrote for the first concert of CAIC’s 2020 Collaborative Works Festival, Modern Women, which will be broadcast October 23-25, 2020.
“Women composers continued to persevere as the 20th century ambled along, but misogyny and racist ideas about music stubbornly stuck. The classical music world increasingly worshipped the hallowed canon of repertoire composed by white men it had placed on pedestals that grew higher and higher with each passing decade…”
For posts from 2006-2018, please visit grecchinois.blogspot.com
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