The ideal facilities of Darien High School, and their energetic Choral Director Chris Andrade, again played host to a Chanticleer Youth Choral Festival – the 5th at Darien High School. Four groups participated ( a total of about 150 high school students) from Darien, Wilton, and New Fairfield High Schools. Ben Johns, Chanticleer Education Director, led the day, conducted the tutti numbers, and even demonstrated clog dancing and taught a few steps ( he was a dance major in college) despite having recently broken his right shoulder and having limited use of his right hand! He forged ahead nevertheless, with his customary high and positive energy. We warmed up, listened to each other sing, had workshops, and rehearsals, and sang a concert for friends and family in the evening.

The three hour drive from Boston was perfectly pleasant and did NOT offer the opportunity for Matt Knickman’s luggage to get lost – which it did ( AGAIN – you’ll remember that it went missing on the way to our last European stop in February) on the way to Boston. Some aspects of our life are very regular ( like Christmas) and some are not – like our last Bay Area program “What do you think I fought for” about which just about everything was different. Something familiar and regular is our annual appearance at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Canaan, followed by a Youth Choral Festival at Darien High School. All of this was the brainchild of our Board member Dudley Roski, who is the impresario and also ticket taker. This seemed to be the best sold yet, including about 100 high school students, many of whom we will see tomorrow at the festival. The church has a really nice acoustic, and the audience was warm. We can’t remember being surrounded by quite so many hyacinths and lilies quite so close. Pharmaceutical measures had to be taken by some!

Our wonderful friends Taylor and Willa Bodman of Cambridge, Massachusetts decided to have a party, just because, and invited us to sing for several hundred of their friends in the new space at the Gardner Museum in Boston. The party started in the original museum – reminding many of us of our blissful day in Venice in February- and continued on to dinner in the new addition. The little concert hall designed by Renzo Piano is unusual – a high box with wraparound seating on four levels requiring us to put our show in the round in order to see everybody. It was very enjoyable to sing in, and the Bodman’s guests were extremely welcoming and appreciative. Taylor’s moving remarks to his guests reminded us all to celebrate beauty and friendship- just because.

We're pleased to be part of the heightened interest in silent film these days.  Abel Gance's epic "Napoleon" played in Oakland, with live orchestral accompaniment, over the weekend.

And we continued with our presentation of DW Griffith's "Leatherstocking", last night in Berkeley.  It's great – and really helps us -that audiences figure out that Brent Michael Davids' tongue was firmly in his cheek. In the first place, Brent ( a member of the Stockbridge Mohican Nation) is living proof that there hasn't yet been a last Mohican. In fact,  Brent once wrote something called "The Last of James Fenimore Cooper."

The whole program was reviewed in SF Classical Voice  yesterday.

 

 

"Leatherstocking" in Berkeley's First Congregational Church.  

Last chance to see it – tonight at the Menlo Atherton Performing Arts Center.

This concert was complicated in a few ways – a hall we’d never been in – which sounded better than we’d thought, an audience that went with the serious and questioning nature of the program, and various bits of technical stuff which, as we’ve said, we don’t ordinarily have. In addition the program had three music directors – Kristina Boerger for Credo, Elena Sharkova for Jerusalem and Leather Stocking and Jace Wittig for the eponymous song, and Shawn Crouch’s Garden of Paradise. We were repeating Garden of Paradise and Credo, in its entirety after several years. It’s always rewarding to bring back new pieces. Shawn Crouch, Melissa Dunphy ( who wrote “What do you think I fought for?”, and Brent Michael Davids were there, all of them right on the front row. So there was a certain amount of excitement in the air. We had always joked about being prepared to stop and start over in the matter of the film score. Elena started with the click track in only one ear, but carried on, and we didn’t even know. No stopping and starting over! We will repeat tomorrow at the Koret in San Francisco, Tuesday in Berkeley and Wednesday in Atherton. The program seemed to provoke thought in the audience, and that’s what we wanted!