Everything a composer could want. The performance was right on! The choir, the soloists, the accompanists played every bit of soul that this piece had to offer (and a little more than I expected in some cases!). But that wasn’t all. The church was packed. By some estimates, there were upwards of 500 people there….
New music will be performed tonight and tomorrow in Saranac Lake and North Elba as part of the John Brown Day events. Voices of Timbuctoo is a new work based on the Adirondack settlement of Black farmers in the mid-1800’s designed to secure voting rights. Abolitionist Gerrit Smith gave away 120,000 acres of his land,…
After a wonderful day of good food and conversation with Helen and her husband Joe, we headed to St. Bernard’s Church in Saranac Lake for the rehearsal tonight. What a marvelous choir! It is made up of singers of all kinds, including some that have sung at the Met and others that are just learning….
Paula and Francesca and I hit the road today for Lake Placid. We are so excited about hearing the new Northern Lights Choir that Helen Demong has put together. They will be singing some spirituals and also premiering my “Voices of Timbuctoo.” Of all the new works in my Emancipation Again Series, this one is…
My thanks to Gerry Floriano and the Spectrum Women’s Choir, Gwendolyn Gassler and the Concentus Women’s Choir, baritone soloist Jon Turner and drummers Jon Canning, Ted Canning and Yahaya Alhassan for a wonderful premier of the new Dante piece! Earlier in the concert, the two choirs performed a setting of an excerpt from Dante’s “Paradiso”…