...since I last posted here but, honestly, who can keep up with all the various Tweeters, Facebooks, Blogs, etc, etc. during the season? I am just glad I get out the door to my next gig with the right clothes packed and a clean set of shirts, my dog all boarded with friends and all my bills paid so I won't return to complete bill-collector mayhem.......:-)
But, given the state of the arts, who am I to complain? These days ANY work is good work. Well, almost any. There still is stuff I have to grit my teeth in order not to just get up and walk out.....:-)
Good news is, WCP is in good shape and we are looking forward to a very busy next season. So, now it's on to working on 2010/2011 which means that it never stops. But that STILL beats by a VERY LONG SHOT having to sit in an orchestra with the conductor being to only one allowed to be creative.
There, I said it.........
CH
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Friday, August 1, 2008
Catching up
Wow, has it really been almost 2 months since my last post? Well, it has been very busy and this weekend is the first time I am able to be at home and catch up with a lot of stuff, including blogging! This summer has been just a mad-dash.........I put 5000 k miles on my car in 4 weeks +!
Augusta Read Thomas (composer) Brian Peters (engineer) and I finished the painstaking editing process of our new cd "Sun Threads". I think all the careful and loving care we lavished on this cd will really show in an outstanding "product". Augusta is really excited about having an entire cd of her previously unrecorded works out. We anticipate the release-date to be about the end of August 2008. Look for it on i-tunes, amazon, etc, etc. Augusta is just a really GREAT composer and that becomes obvious when one listenes to her music intently.
The pain at the pump is really starting to affect also our touring, as we look forward to next season. We do a fair bit of our travel by car and the cost of driving has almost doubled since last year. What is truly amazing though (and highly unusual in this business) is that several presenters, out of the goodness of their heart, contacted us AFTER we had already negotiated the contract and told us that they would up the fee because they realized that traveling had become so expensive! I was very impressed!
More later!
Augusta Read Thomas (composer) Brian Peters (engineer) and I finished the painstaking editing process of our new cd "Sun Threads". I think all the careful and loving care we lavished on this cd will really show in an outstanding "product". Augusta is really excited about having an entire cd of her previously unrecorded works out. We anticipate the release-date to be about the end of August 2008. Look for it on i-tunes, amazon, etc, etc. Augusta is just a really GREAT composer and that becomes obvious when one listenes to her music intently.
The pain at the pump is really starting to affect also our touring, as we look forward to next season. We do a fair bit of our travel by car and the cost of driving has almost doubled since last year. What is truly amazing though (and highly unusual in this business) is that several presenters, out of the goodness of their heart, contacted us AFTER we had already negotiated the contract and told us that they would up the fee because they realized that traveling had become so expensive! I was very impressed!
More later!
Saturday, June 7, 2008
letter from Japan
I am currently on a tour of Korea/Japan with my "other ensemble", the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Of course, the Walden "business" never stops so one of the challenges is to keep up with the many things that pile up while I am on tour. An exciting new development is that we will be the ensemble-in-residence at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, starting next season. Speaking of next season - it's going to be an incredibly busy one - more so than ever for WCP. We even have already concert bookings for season 2009/21010!
Waiting to find out whether we got a matching grant from the Argosy Foundation in order to move forward with a commissioning project with composer Alvin Singleton. Fairly certain that the letter letting us know of the decision sits in our PO Box at home......yet another thing that is waiting to be taken care of!
Waiting to find out whether we got a matching grant from the Argosy Foundation in order to move forward with a commissioning project with composer Alvin Singleton. Fairly certain that the letter letting us know of the decision sits in our PO Box at home......yet another thing that is waiting to be taken care of!
Monday, April 28, 2008
an attempt at levity in D.C.
We have been trying various ideas over the last few years in order to make our concerts less formal and more accessible, with the guiding principle that the days of the musicians as the "high-priests" of music are long over. These ideas have included various attempts at "fashion", ad-hoc discussions with the audience during the course of a concert, as well as the avoidance of program-notes in favor of a running narrative during the concert.
At our recent concert at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., however, we made a new, yet unplanned attempt, to bring the audience in closer. We had just begun the second piece on the program, the "Garten von Freuden und Traurigkeiten" by Gubaidulina when we suddenly started to hear some very strange noises in the hall - it sounded like a space-ship was about to land. We couldn't continue playing the piece by Gubaidulina which features some very delicate passages of music. So, we stopped and waited for the staff of the hall to fix the problem. Marianne Gedigian, our flutist decided it wouldn't do just to sit there and wait in uncomfortable silence and proceeded to ask the audience whether they would like to hear a viola-joke. Of course, they did and so that's what we did for the next few minutes. The audience loved it!
Here is one of the jokes we told:
Violist sits in an orchestra, last stand, last chair and is completely miserable. Suddenly he feels a tap on his shoulder and the personnel manager signs him to follow him off-stage. The personnel manager explains to him: "I am very sorry to tell you this but our music director came to your house, kidnapped the children, burned the house, abducted your wife and killed the dog!"
Violist's response: "The Maestro came to my house?"
At our recent concert at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., however, we made a new, yet unplanned attempt, to bring the audience in closer. We had just begun the second piece on the program, the "Garten von Freuden und Traurigkeiten" by Gubaidulina when we suddenly started to hear some very strange noises in the hall - it sounded like a space-ship was about to land. We couldn't continue playing the piece by Gubaidulina which features some very delicate passages of music. So, we stopped and waited for the staff of the hall to fix the problem. Marianne Gedigian, our flutist decided it wouldn't do just to sit there and wait in uncomfortable silence and proceeded to ask the audience whether they would like to hear a viola-joke. Of course, they did and so that's what we did for the next few minutes. The audience loved it!
Here is one of the jokes we told:
Violist sits in an orchestra, last stand, last chair and is completely miserable. Suddenly he feels a tap on his shoulder and the personnel manager signs him to follow him off-stage. The personnel manager explains to him: "I am very sorry to tell you this but our music director came to your house, kidnapped the children, burned the house, abducted your wife and killed the dog!"
Violist's response: "The Maestro came to my house?"
Friday, April 18, 2008
another first.......
Well, this is an exciting moment in WCP's history - we are actually blogging now! What a long journey it's been from our start 11 years ago with a few concerts around Walden Pond. "Job satisfaction" is definitely 100% and I never seize to marvel at all the things I am constantly learning as we continue to grow........
Latest truly exciting news is that we got a grant from Chamber Music America to do a Chamber Music Institute next fall in Nyack, NY. This should be a really wonderful project!!
More later,
CH
Latest truly exciting news is that we got a grant from Chamber Music America to do a Chamber Music Institute next fall in Nyack, NY. This should be a really wonderful project!!
More later,
CH
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