Hey gang,
On Sunday, Sept. 18, the churches of the Memphis Conference are celebrating Lambuth Day - PR effort of the school to further connections with the United Methodist churches. I was asked to see if we could provide an ensemble or ensembles to one or more churches for that Sunday morning. I know a lot of you already have positions in area churches so I don't like to take the choirs out on Sunday mornings more than once a semester--sort of defeats the church PR purpose if you're taking musicians out of several churches all the time to sing at one church. And we're already going out on Nov. 13 for choir tour (probably a St. Louis "megachurch").
However, I think we could put together some small ad hoc ensembles to do this, particularly since we're going to do some small ensemble stuff on the fall tour program anyway. Those of you already working in area Methodist churches could stay where you are, and we could add folks to you. I think I know the churches where most of you are working, but if you could drop me a note to remind me, that would help us in planning--this Sunday is only 3 weeks or so into the semester.
Please pass this on to your choir friends if you hear from them. I'll send out a mass e-mail to everyone too. Thanks!
RCB
Friday, July 29, 2005
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Occupational hazards of the musician
Hi all,
Interesting story from Yahoo News:
You can read the whole story by clicking the link below:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050728/ap_on_fe_st/pianist_lawsuit
Interesting story from Yahoo News:
BRIDGETON, N.J. - A teenage pianist has sued a music teacher, claiming the woman confronted him on stage during a Carnegie Hall performance and slammed a piano keyboard cover on his fingers after they argued over what piece he would perform at the event.Moral of the story: don't make Dr. Huneycutt mad! :)
You can read the whole story by clicking the link below:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050728/ap_on_fe_st/pianist_lawsuit
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Numbers update
I went by the Registrar's Office today and had them look up class enrollment for Concert Choir. We have 55 pre-registered already! There are some that I know haven't registered yet, so we should hit the 60 mark pretty easily.
RCB
RCB
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Our numbers are growing!
Howdy,
I was talking with Rich Mullin (VP for Enrollment) during our latest SOAR session this past week, and he told me that for this fall, in terms of number of students majoring, music is the second or third largest major on campus! I'm stunned but thrilled...there were only about 4 majors when I came here 10 years ago!
Concert Choir pre-enrollment is already more than we had in the ensemble last year, and the second SOAR session and fall registration will add a bunch too. Looks like we have 7-8 new tenors coming in, 5+ basses, and scads of really good sopranos and altos. Our total choir enrollment should hopefully be back around 60, where it has traditionally been. Instrumental additions look healthy as well. There are always people that "slip through the cracks" and arrive on campus in the fall without us knowing they have music experience. If you all could keep your eyes and ears open when the freshmen get here, I think we could pick up a few more.
I have our fall tour program MOSTLY planned out. It's a "psalms, canticles, and sonnets" theme with lots of variety. We'll be doing some Brazilian pieces, Stanford "Beati Quorum Via", Mathias "Let the People Praise Thee, O God" (big piece with organ, written for the wedding of Charles and Diana), etc. etc. I want the middle of the program to be small-ensemble (4-8 singers) stuff - a cappella doo-wop, vocal jazz, perhaps a barbershop number. I'll wait to plan that portion out until I get a feel for our incoming student interest, experience, and skill in these various genre.
See you later!
RCB
I was talking with Rich Mullin (VP for Enrollment) during our latest SOAR session this past week, and he told me that for this fall, in terms of number of students majoring, music is the second or third largest major on campus! I'm stunned but thrilled...there were only about 4 majors when I came here 10 years ago!
Concert Choir pre-enrollment is already more than we had in the ensemble last year, and the second SOAR session and fall registration will add a bunch too. Looks like we have 7-8 new tenors coming in, 5+ basses, and scads of really good sopranos and altos. Our total choir enrollment should hopefully be back around 60, where it has traditionally been. Instrumental additions look healthy as well. There are always people that "slip through the cracks" and arrive on campus in the fall without us knowing they have music experience. If you all could keep your eyes and ears open when the freshmen get here, I think we could pick up a few more.
I have our fall tour program MOSTLY planned out. It's a "psalms, canticles, and sonnets" theme with lots of variety. We'll be doing some Brazilian pieces, Stanford "Beati Quorum Via", Mathias "Let the People Praise Thee, O God" (big piece with organ, written for the wedding of Charles and Diana), etc. etc. I want the middle of the program to be small-ensemble (4-8 singers) stuff - a cappella doo-wop, vocal jazz, perhaps a barbershop number. I'll wait to plan that portion out until I get a feel for our incoming student interest, experience, and skill in these various genre.
See you later!
RCB
Monday, July 18, 2005
"Are We Together?" - thoughts from Oregon Bach Festival
Hi gang,
I just returned a few days ago from 3 weeks performing with the choir of the Oregon Bach Festival, held on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene. I had intended to post regularly during the festival to give you an ongoing view into the professional music world. However, the rehearsal and performing schedule ended up being so intense that I barely had time to check my e-mail! But now that I’m back, I’d like to share some of my festival experiences with you here.
This festival is ranked as the top summer classical music festival in the United States. Each summer 50 professional singers and an outstanding group of professional instrumentalists from all over the world are hired to perform major choral and orchestral works by Bach, Mozart, and other great classical composers. The artistic director is Helmuth Rilling, head of the International Bach Academy in Stuttgart, Germany, and the world’s leading authority on the choral music of J.S. Bach. The OBF choir received a Grammy a few years ago for the premiere of Penderecki’s Credo.
This summer’s schedule was rather brutal. For the first 5 days, we had 7½ hours of rehearsal per day–three 2½ hour sessions in the morning, afternoon, and evening–with barely enough time to eat. The first week was really tiring, but the schedule slacked off a bit towards the end. We performed an ENORMOUS amount of music! We performed three major works (1½ hours each)–Haydn’s Creation, Handel’s L’Allegro, and a Mendelssohn opera called Der Onkel aus Boston (“The Uncle from Boston”). That was the first time the Mendelssohn has been performed in North America, and we were only the second group to perform it since Mendelssohn wrote it in 1824, when he was only 14 years old. In addition, we performed six Bach cantatas (each about a half hour long) for a lecture-recital series led by Rilling and a conducting master class.
Helmuth Rilling is simply an amazing musician! When he rehearses, he only looks at his score to be able to give starting measure numbers. In performance, he conducts completely from memory. He had every player’s melodic line, articulation, and chord structure memorized for the ENTIRE vocal and instrumental ensemble! Yet he is a very humble, kind, and gentle man–going against the common notion that you have to be arrogant and condescending if you want to stay at the top of the musical ladder.
I can’t stress enough how important sightreading skills are in the professional life of a musician. To be able to sing that much music in 3 weeks, your skills have to be really sharp or you won’t keep up. The people with whom I perform have amazing musical skills and fantastic voices. To give you an example of the skill, click on the link below and listen to a recording session by the women of the OBF choir.
DREAMLAND - composed by Debra Sowerwine
The recording is of the second read-through of the piece! (It was written by a choir member in memory of another member who died of cancer this spring. Our women are going to do this piece this fall on our tour program.)
I went to a patron fundraising dinner at which they raised $77,000 for the Youth Choral Academy (high school choir camp associated with OBF). The theme of the fundraiser was “Are We Together?”–or as Helmuth would say, “Are vee togezer?” He spoke at length about how, even though the whole choir and orchestra knows the music at the first rehearsal, we still spend a lot of rehearsal time because we need to learn how to work together to pull off a good performance.
“Are We Together?” is going to be the theme for our choral year at Lambuth as well. We have a wonderfully large number of new students entering our program this fall, and they will need to learn how to fit their voices with the veterans and adjust to my style of conducting and teaching. And you veterans will need to rediscover how to sing with each other!
Being “together” implies more than just vocal technique. One of the things I noticed when the Alma College choir performed here was that they projected a sense of common purpose and goal. I think that we lose sight of that sometimes, and I want us all to work hard to keep that in the forefront all through the year. We need to make everything we do in our rehearsal time be focused towards the betterment of the ensemble.
I’m really pumped about this year! We didn’t graduate many people, and we have a large group of outstanding freshmen and transfers joining us. I have most of the fall tour program planned out (I’ll post a tentative program here soon), and I’m starting to work on concert venues. Block off November 11 through 15 on your calendar (Friday through Tuesday) for the tour. We’ll be going up to St. Louis, other parts of Missouri and Illinois, and back down to west Tennessee.
Stay well and keep your voices healthy! Chime in here and let me know what you all are up to this summer. See you soon!
RCB
I just returned a few days ago from 3 weeks performing with the choir of the Oregon Bach Festival, held on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene. I had intended to post regularly during the festival to give you an ongoing view into the professional music world. However, the rehearsal and performing schedule ended up being so intense that I barely had time to check my e-mail! But now that I’m back, I’d like to share some of my festival experiences with you here.
This festival is ranked as the top summer classical music festival in the United States. Each summer 50 professional singers and an outstanding group of professional instrumentalists from all over the world are hired to perform major choral and orchestral works by Bach, Mozart, and other great classical composers. The artistic director is Helmuth Rilling, head of the International Bach Academy in Stuttgart, Germany, and the world’s leading authority on the choral music of J.S. Bach. The OBF choir received a Grammy a few years ago for the premiere of Penderecki’s Credo.
This summer’s schedule was rather brutal. For the first 5 days, we had 7½ hours of rehearsal per day–three 2½ hour sessions in the morning, afternoon, and evening–with barely enough time to eat. The first week was really tiring, but the schedule slacked off a bit towards the end. We performed an ENORMOUS amount of music! We performed three major works (1½ hours each)–Haydn’s Creation, Handel’s L’Allegro, and a Mendelssohn opera called Der Onkel aus Boston (“The Uncle from Boston”). That was the first time the Mendelssohn has been performed in North America, and we were only the second group to perform it since Mendelssohn wrote it in 1824, when he was only 14 years old. In addition, we performed six Bach cantatas (each about a half hour long) for a lecture-recital series led by Rilling and a conducting master class.
Helmuth Rilling is simply an amazing musician! When he rehearses, he only looks at his score to be able to give starting measure numbers. In performance, he conducts completely from memory. He had every player’s melodic line, articulation, and chord structure memorized for the ENTIRE vocal and instrumental ensemble! Yet he is a very humble, kind, and gentle man–going against the common notion that you have to be arrogant and condescending if you want to stay at the top of the musical ladder.
I can’t stress enough how important sightreading skills are in the professional life of a musician. To be able to sing that much music in 3 weeks, your skills have to be really sharp or you won’t keep up. The people with whom I perform have amazing musical skills and fantastic voices. To give you an example of the skill, click on the link below and listen to a recording session by the women of the OBF choir.
DREAMLAND - composed by Debra Sowerwine
The recording is of the second read-through of the piece! (It was written by a choir member in memory of another member who died of cancer this spring. Our women are going to do this piece this fall on our tour program.)
I went to a patron fundraising dinner at which they raised $77,000 for the Youth Choral Academy (high school choir camp associated with OBF). The theme of the fundraiser was “Are We Together?”–or as Helmuth would say, “Are vee togezer?” He spoke at length about how, even though the whole choir and orchestra knows the music at the first rehearsal, we still spend a lot of rehearsal time because we need to learn how to work together to pull off a good performance.
“Are We Together?” is going to be the theme for our choral year at Lambuth as well. We have a wonderfully large number of new students entering our program this fall, and they will need to learn how to fit their voices with the veterans and adjust to my style of conducting and teaching. And you veterans will need to rediscover how to sing with each other!
Being “together” implies more than just vocal technique. One of the things I noticed when the Alma College choir performed here was that they projected a sense of common purpose and goal. I think that we lose sight of that sometimes, and I want us all to work hard to keep that in the forefront all through the year. We need to make everything we do in our rehearsal time be focused towards the betterment of the ensemble.
I’m really pumped about this year! We didn’t graduate many people, and we have a large group of outstanding freshmen and transfers joining us. I have most of the fall tour program planned out (I’ll post a tentative program here soon), and I’m starting to work on concert venues. Block off November 11 through 15 on your calendar (Friday through Tuesday) for the tour. We’ll be going up to St. Louis, other parts of Missouri and Illinois, and back down to west Tennessee.
Stay well and keep your voices healthy! Chime in here and let me know what you all are up to this summer. See you soon!
RCB
Monday, July 04, 2005
Overload fee update
Hi all,
I talked with Drs. Huneycutt and Weimer to see what they had heard and, according to the information given out at the first SOAR, applied music is not going to be charged overload fees. The catalog already states that ensembles like band and choir are exempt from overload fees, and I think I can take care of the brass ensemble issue Jack brought up. I'll keep you updated as soon as I hear anything more, but it looks like we're OK. What a relief! I had a GREAT letter all drafted out and ready to forward to the administration, so I'm glad I probably won't have to use it.
I agree with Jared - it would not only be a major drain on the ensembles, but would really decimate them. We depend so much on the non-majors in our ensembles, as well as those music majors (virtually all of you!) who are in multiple ensembles, particularly those who are both vocal and instrumental musicians. I'd hate to see any student have to choose between them, since participating in both is SO valuable for your education. I'm a much better singer and conductor than I would be if I hadn't also had a good instrumental education.
I hope you know how much I and the other music faculty value and appreciate your contributions to our department. We are here to be your advocates, so if any issues like this concern you in the future, please don't hesitate to let us know so we can put our collective heads together to figure out solutions that will help you. That's why we're here!
I just got back from performing in the North American premiere of a Mendelssohn comic opera, "Der Onkel aus Boston" (the uncle from Boston). It's only the second time it's been performed since 1824, when the composer was only 14 years old! I'm having a great experience performing with the Oregon Bach Festival. I'm drafting a lengthy post on my experience here which will be loaded ASAP. The weather here is GORGEOUS - nice cool evenings, only in the 80s during the day!
Happy 4th!
Dr. B
I talked with Drs. Huneycutt and Weimer to see what they had heard and, according to the information given out at the first SOAR, applied music is not going to be charged overload fees. The catalog already states that ensembles like band and choir are exempt from overload fees, and I think I can take care of the brass ensemble issue Jack brought up. I'll keep you updated as soon as I hear anything more, but it looks like we're OK. What a relief! I had a GREAT letter all drafted out and ready to forward to the administration, so I'm glad I probably won't have to use it.
I agree with Jared - it would not only be a major drain on the ensembles, but would really decimate them. We depend so much on the non-majors in our ensembles, as well as those music majors (virtually all of you!) who are in multiple ensembles, particularly those who are both vocal and instrumental musicians. I'd hate to see any student have to choose between them, since participating in both is SO valuable for your education. I'm a much better singer and conductor than I would be if I hadn't also had a good instrumental education.
I hope you know how much I and the other music faculty value and appreciate your contributions to our department. We are here to be your advocates, so if any issues like this concern you in the future, please don't hesitate to let us know so we can put our collective heads together to figure out solutions that will help you. That's why we're here!
I just got back from performing in the North American premiere of a Mendelssohn comic opera, "Der Onkel aus Boston" (the uncle from Boston). It's only the second time it's been performed since 1824, when the composer was only 14 years old! I'm having a great experience performing with the Oregon Bach Festival. I'm drafting a lengthy post on my experience here which will be loaded ASAP. The weather here is GORGEOUS - nice cool evenings, only in the 80s during the day!
Happy 4th!
Dr. B
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Overload fee policy
Hi all,
I saw your comments regarding the change in overload fee policy for ensembles and, believe me, I'm just as concerned about it as you are. I had heard that the administration was considering this, but hadn't heard anything firm. I fear that it will have a severely negative impact on enrollment in ensembles, particularly by non-majors.
I called the Dean's office this afternoon but found she was on vacation. I'll call the President's office on Monday to find out what the official word is and will let you know what I find out. If this is really what's planned, I will be pushing HARD to have this overturned.
I'm having a wonderful time performing at the Oregon Bach Festival. I'll submit another post this weekend to tell you about it. I'm finalizing repertoire for our fall tour program and am really excited about the fall!
Dr. B
I saw your comments regarding the change in overload fee policy for ensembles and, believe me, I'm just as concerned about it as you are. I had heard that the administration was considering this, but hadn't heard anything firm. I fear that it will have a severely negative impact on enrollment in ensembles, particularly by non-majors.
I called the Dean's office this afternoon but found she was on vacation. I'll call the President's office on Monday to find out what the official word is and will let you know what I find out. If this is really what's planned, I will be pushing HARD to have this overturned.
I'm having a wonderful time performing at the Oregon Bach Festival. I'll submit another post this weekend to tell you about it. I'm finalizing repertoire for our fall tour program and am really excited about the fall!
Dr. B
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