Here are the three madrigal songs recorded at the festival on April 1, 2011. It's a raw recording, unedited. The first is Fire, Fire, My Heart by Thomas Morley 1557-1602), arranged and edited by Linda Spevacek:
The second selection is Your Lovely Face by Adriano Banchieri (1568-1634), arranged by Patrick Liebergen:
And the final selection that day was All at Once, Well Met Fair Ladies by Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), also arranged by Patrick Liebergen:
The scoring was fair from the three clinicians but not always consistent; yes it came out about where it should - an 85/100 average from three judges and earned a Silver rating. 90 points would have earned a Gold plaque. We did very well and were happy with this rating of unknown music and genres. Also this group has an eclectic repertoire, from classical to Broadway. They sang against school madrigal groups who meet everyday and specialize in that music. We started rehearsing this music at the end of January after our Night of Broadway show wrapped up. Oh about the "crowd". Our group was the first up on the first day, so no one was in the audience, except for the judges, one of whom obviously was a fan! Please enjoy!
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
SHS Chorale Trip Update
Here are some images from our Heritage Festival trip to Anaheim March 31 to April 3. I'll have some You tube footage to upload at a later date. The kids sang well this weekend and deserved some down time for the work they put into the performances. I'm just the patrolman after the music is done.
Saturday (April 2) we'll be in Disneyland all day. Woe to my poor feet!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Everytime We Say Goodbye - Ella Fitzgerald
The music of Cole Porter is so special to me, and in the hand of Ella Fitzgerald, it was pure magic. Here's one of my favorite Cole Porter songs of all time, and Ella brings tears with her delivery!
Something's Gotta Give - Ella Fitzgerald
Oh and could she swing! Here's another great performance of a wonderful Cole Porter tune.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
SHS Chorale in Anaheim
My 12-member madrigal singers will be performing at Fullerton College on Friday morning in the Heritage Music Festival. We'll be departing school on Thursday morning and will travel most of the day, arriving by five that afternoon.
My group leads off the festival in the morning and after it receives its clinic from three college choral directors we'll leave for the day and hit the beach.
Saturday we'll spend at Disneyland and will attend a 9:30pm awards ceremony. Sunday morning we are back on the road and at school by five that afternoon.
I'll have lot's of pictures and videos to post after the weekend. Watch for updates!
My group leads off the festival in the morning and after it receives its clinic from three college choral directors we'll leave for the day and hit the beach.
Saturday we'll spend at Disneyland and will attend a 9:30pm awards ceremony. Sunday morning we are back on the road and at school by five that afternoon.
I'll have lot's of pictures and videos to post after the weekend. Watch for updates!
Friday, March 25, 2011
The Adventures of Bun Bun and Tisa
Sometime in the early 1960’s, I want to say 1962 but I can’t remember precisely, my sister and I received two stuffed animals on that Christmas day. Bun Bun was a white and pink-stripped rabbit who was delivered by Santa to our meager tree, and Tisa was a gray and black tiger. He was sitting in a blue plastic Model T type toy car. Both were tied with ribbons.
Now in those days we lived in a four story apartment building at 1340 S. Newberry in Chicago. The area was called Maxwell Street back then and in its early history a large number of Russian-Jewish immigrants settled into this neighborhood with its brick apartment buildings at the turn of the century. Many famous people came from Maxwell Street, including William S. Paley, the founder of CBS TV.
By the 1960’s most of the original inhabitants of the neighborhood were long gone, though many still owned the apartment buildings. In their place blacks and Mexicans had replaced the Jewish families, and with them came the attendant problems of poverty, drugs, gangs and violence that were reflective of our society in general, then and now. Little has changed, except how we perceive it.
The apartment building that we lived in on Newberry Street was practically taken over by our extended family. Each floor contained a two bedroom apartment in the front and a one bedroom apartment behind that. We lived on the third floor rear. My mom’s sister, Opal and later their brother Charlie were on the fourth floor rear. On the second floor front apartment front lived my dad’s sister Marie and her long-time companion Pep, who we called Uncle Pep. And on the first floor rear lived my dad’s father and his older brother John. In the first floor front apartment lived yet another brother, Peter, with his wife. So as you can see, the Herrera’s and the Johnson’s practically lived in the entire building, save for three apartments.
We generally had Christmas celebration in Aunt Marie’s 2nd floor apartment; Santa was sure to have left a stockpile of presents there under their huge tree. But he also would leave some toys in our tiny apartment. Naturally Christmas morning my sister and I were in a constant state of agony waiting for our parents to get ready to go downstairs to Aunt Marie's place. It wasn’t extravagant, but it was obvious that people of little means did all they could to make our Christmas memorable. For a long time we were the only kids in the building. My sister is one year younger than I am.
But this Christmas Bun Bun and Tisa enthralled us! It was love and first sight! And indeed we began to give these animals their own persona – and they in turn helped to shape the course of our own lives by enabling us to mimic and act out the attitudes and behaviors of people all around us, though at the time we knew little of that.
Our imagination and fantasies lived abundantly through the persona of these guys, for whom we invented our own language and speech accents. Bun Bun was shortened to “Byne” while Tisa kept his moniker. We invented elaborate societies with our collection of other stuffed animals that Byne and Tisa would teach in made-up school classrooms, perform surgery on as hospital surgeons, arrest as police officers, host in elaborate dinners in intricate homes made of large cardboard boxes cut and altered for the purpose, order around as army and navy officers, play as baseball and basketball players, or entertain as band members (to music of the Supremes, early Beatles, and LP’s our parents made professionally). There were both married from time to time to Barbie Dolls. Some life! There were so many scenarios every day that I have forgotten. I do recall though that they wrote short stories and made bound “books” in their characters and in other characters. I am sure that is where I earned my love of writing.
Oh and they soon lost their fluffy wholesome look. They fell into grime, were burned by too hot space heaters, fell in toilet water, grabbed by our dogs, dropped from 3rd story windows into the alley below, and torn and repaired so often that I actually learned how to make quick repairs to clothing years later in life with needle and thread work that I applied to my Tisa.
It was rich, wild and insular; our play with “Byne” and Tisa kept us safe from the raging currents in the neighborhoods, including the riots if 1968, that tore so much of Chicago apart. And they kept doing that for us all the way up to middle school, when we moved out of the neighborhood after Aunt Opal and Uncle Charlie both passed away at end of the mid-sixties and then our grandfather died in 1969.
We didn’t go very far, just on the other side of the train viaducts, purchasing a two-flat house in Pilsen, a Mexican and black neighborhood to the south of Maxwell Street. It seemed a world away to us. Bun Bun and Tisa of course came too, and enjoyed a sort of Renaissance, with even more new adventures in the new house, for which we had great space (7 rooms, three bedrooms and a huge back yard).
But these were our junior high years and our friends began to see more and more days when they were never touched. Yet we always remembered their lessons, their philosophy of life – fun tempered by and an attitude of eager role play. By high school they were in plastics bags and in drawers, out of sight but not forgotten.
As an adult I would sometimes think about those guys and how they were holding up. I knew that my sister, who still leaves in Chicago, had them with her at her place. Then a few days ago she sent me this picture and a flood of wonderful memories came back all at once and I knew I had to write about them! What we learned on our path to adulthood! Bun Bun and Tisa, we love you!
Now in those days we lived in a four story apartment building at 1340 S. Newberry in Chicago. The area was called Maxwell Street back then and in its early history a large number of Russian-Jewish immigrants settled into this neighborhood with its brick apartment buildings at the turn of the century. Many famous people came from Maxwell Street, including William S. Paley, the founder of CBS TV.
By the 1960’s most of the original inhabitants of the neighborhood were long gone, though many still owned the apartment buildings. In their place blacks and Mexicans had replaced the Jewish families, and with them came the attendant problems of poverty, drugs, gangs and violence that were reflective of our society in general, then and now. Little has changed, except how we perceive it.
The apartment building that we lived in on Newberry Street was practically taken over by our extended family. Each floor contained a two bedroom apartment in the front and a one bedroom apartment behind that. We lived on the third floor rear. My mom’s sister, Opal and later their brother Charlie were on the fourth floor rear. On the second floor front apartment front lived my dad’s sister Marie and her long-time companion Pep, who we called Uncle Pep. And on the first floor rear lived my dad’s father and his older brother John. In the first floor front apartment lived yet another brother, Peter, with his wife. So as you can see, the Herrera’s and the Johnson’s practically lived in the entire building, save for three apartments.
We generally had Christmas celebration in Aunt Marie’s 2nd floor apartment; Santa was sure to have left a stockpile of presents there under their huge tree. But he also would leave some toys in our tiny apartment. Naturally Christmas morning my sister and I were in a constant state of agony waiting for our parents to get ready to go downstairs to Aunt Marie's place. It wasn’t extravagant, but it was obvious that people of little means did all they could to make our Christmas memorable. For a long time we were the only kids in the building. My sister is one year younger than I am.
But this Christmas Bun Bun and Tisa enthralled us! It was love and first sight! And indeed we began to give these animals their own persona – and they in turn helped to shape the course of our own lives by enabling us to mimic and act out the attitudes and behaviors of people all around us, though at the time we knew little of that.
Our imagination and fantasies lived abundantly through the persona of these guys, for whom we invented our own language and speech accents. Bun Bun was shortened to “Byne” while Tisa kept his moniker. We invented elaborate societies with our collection of other stuffed animals that Byne and Tisa would teach in made-up school classrooms, perform surgery on as hospital surgeons, arrest as police officers, host in elaborate dinners in intricate homes made of large cardboard boxes cut and altered for the purpose, order around as army and navy officers, play as baseball and basketball players, or entertain as band members (to music of the Supremes, early Beatles, and LP’s our parents made professionally). There were both married from time to time to Barbie Dolls. Some life! There were so many scenarios every day that I have forgotten. I do recall though that they wrote short stories and made bound “books” in their characters and in other characters. I am sure that is where I earned my love of writing.
Oh and they soon lost their fluffy wholesome look. They fell into grime, were burned by too hot space heaters, fell in toilet water, grabbed by our dogs, dropped from 3rd story windows into the alley below, and torn and repaired so often that I actually learned how to make quick repairs to clothing years later in life with needle and thread work that I applied to my Tisa.
It was rich, wild and insular; our play with “Byne” and Tisa kept us safe from the raging currents in the neighborhoods, including the riots if 1968, that tore so much of Chicago apart. And they kept doing that for us all the way up to middle school, when we moved out of the neighborhood after Aunt Opal and Uncle Charlie both passed away at end of the mid-sixties and then our grandfather died in 1969.
We didn’t go very far, just on the other side of the train viaducts, purchasing a two-flat house in Pilsen, a Mexican and black neighborhood to the south of Maxwell Street. It seemed a world away to us. Bun Bun and Tisa of course came too, and enjoyed a sort of Renaissance, with even more new adventures in the new house, for which we had great space (7 rooms, three bedrooms and a huge back yard).
But these were our junior high years and our friends began to see more and more days when they were never touched. Yet we always remembered their lessons, their philosophy of life – fun tempered by and an attitude of eager role play. By high school they were in plastics bags and in drawers, out of sight but not forgotten.
As an adult I would sometimes think about those guys and how they were holding up. I knew that my sister, who still leaves in Chicago, had them with her at her place. Then a few days ago she sent me this picture and a flood of wonderful memories came back all at once and I knew I had to write about them! What we learned on our path to adulthood! Bun Bun and Tisa, we love you!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Who Are We?
That is a fundamental question that we find ourselves asking every day. We are a compilation of so many things in the totality of our life experiences. We are man and woman; wife, husband, father, daughter, son. It is a whole spectrum of viewpoints from the theological down to the most earthy. And not one of them can give a true complete picture of who we are.
Of course there is also our own self-image. And I should be so bold as to suggest that self-image is the most important of all, because it determines so much of our behavior towards ourselves and towards others in our lives.
Our parents have a fundamental role in helping us to form that initial picture of who we are. If that structure is sound, we have something significant to build on in our formative years and after. Today I see so many who are the products of single parent homes, broken homes, careless, indifferent or neglectful parenting that I wonder just how some kids emerge as successfully as so many do. And I do not suggest for a moment that single parents cannot raise a child properly, with the foundation children need to be a balanced, successful adult. It is just a little harder.
I owe so much to my own parents. In fact in my own self-image they are responsible for shaping the person that I am, with all my many good and bad attributes. They taught me so many things, but nothing more important than to love, cherish and protect my family. I live that motto every day.
But they taught me much more than that. As poor, working musicians they made do with so little that to me now it seems shocking. They could turn the most meager meal into a celebration; the most humble gift into a treasure. The poorest living conditions into a sanctuary filled with books, lively discussions and keen political conversation. Looking back, it was wonderful really, despite my memories of dreary, drafty, broken down and pest infected apartments and endless winter colds.
Medical care did not exist, and my parents were too proud to accept government assistance, though they surely qualified. They chose to do it alone, be independent, and raise their children properly and carefully, in their own way. As a young adult I worked not to buy cars, jewelry and date girls; my money was spent on extensive dental work my parents could not afford to take care of. My sister had similar issues as a young adult.
Was it a perfect household? Of course not. Mistakes were made; there were arguments, and sometimes their personality flaws were manifest more often than not. My sister and I grew up sometimes with much anger at these flaws but as we matured we realized that we all have them and no one is perfect. What we came to realize was that their efforts to give us all they had was genuine and from their hearts. In the end that was all that mattered.
Sitting now as I am, typing this and making use of wealth and technology that they could never dream of, I wonder if I am truly worthy of their greatest efforts; if I love my family as deeply as they did; if I value the smallest things in life as greatly as they did. I believe that I have, but the challenge is immense; every day I struggle to live up to their standards. That struggle is the crucible which has turned me into the person that I am, for better or worse. I think they would approve and be pleased. And based upon my observations of what is going on in this country today, I must say we were blessed.
Of course there is also our own self-image. And I should be so bold as to suggest that self-image is the most important of all, because it determines so much of our behavior towards ourselves and towards others in our lives.
Our parents have a fundamental role in helping us to form that initial picture of who we are. If that structure is sound, we have something significant to build on in our formative years and after. Today I see so many who are the products of single parent homes, broken homes, careless, indifferent or neglectful parenting that I wonder just how some kids emerge as successfully as so many do. And I do not suggest for a moment that single parents cannot raise a child properly, with the foundation children need to be a balanced, successful adult. It is just a little harder.
I owe so much to my own parents. In fact in my own self-image they are responsible for shaping the person that I am, with all my many good and bad attributes. They taught me so many things, but nothing more important than to love, cherish and protect my family. I live that motto every day.
But they taught me much more than that. As poor, working musicians they made do with so little that to me now it seems shocking. They could turn the most meager meal into a celebration; the most humble gift into a treasure. The poorest living conditions into a sanctuary filled with books, lively discussions and keen political conversation. Looking back, it was wonderful really, despite my memories of dreary, drafty, broken down and pest infected apartments and endless winter colds.
Medical care did not exist, and my parents were too proud to accept government assistance, though they surely qualified. They chose to do it alone, be independent, and raise their children properly and carefully, in their own way. As a young adult I worked not to buy cars, jewelry and date girls; my money was spent on extensive dental work my parents could not afford to take care of. My sister had similar issues as a young adult.
Was it a perfect household? Of course not. Mistakes were made; there were arguments, and sometimes their personality flaws were manifest more often than not. My sister and I grew up sometimes with much anger at these flaws but as we matured we realized that we all have them and no one is perfect. What we came to realize was that their efforts to give us all they had was genuine and from their hearts. In the end that was all that mattered.
Sitting now as I am, typing this and making use of wealth and technology that they could never dream of, I wonder if I am truly worthy of their greatest efforts; if I love my family as deeply as they did; if I value the smallest things in life as greatly as they did. I believe that I have, but the challenge is immense; every day I struggle to live up to their standards. That struggle is the crucible which has turned me into the person that I am, for better or worse. I think they would approve and be pleased. And based upon my observations of what is going on in this country today, I must say we were blessed.
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