I missed this status update from the Lyric Opera last week (posted on their Facebook page on Friday, January 6, 2012 at 4:00 pm):
Please join the Lyric Opera of Kansas City to celebrate 20 years of educational programming this Sunday, January 8th at 2PM at Rockhurst High School. We are honoring those that have made our programming a success. All are welcome to attend this presentation and reception.
I also missed a similar Tweet sent out by them sent out at about the same time. So, Sunday afternoon, as Terry and I prepared to make home-made Chicken Pot Pie (first attempted successfully back in March 2011), my daughter woke up, read her e-mail and promptly rescheduled my entire Sunday afternoon.
And if I had paid attention to the Kansas City Star, I might have caught the article they published Saturday about both the Giver and the 20 year celebration.
Obviously, my performing arts radar malfunctioned this past week.
Lyric Opera Campers (Current and Alumni) gather onstage to honor and celebrate 20 years for the Education Program and it's Director, Paula Winans
While Rachelle scrambled to find something appropriate to wear for performing (slim pickings since most of her clothes are back at her home-away-from-home in Denton, Texas), Terry and I got the first stage of the chicken pot pie completed and stored the results in the refrigerator until our return from the celebration. Rachelle and I traveled to Rockhurst High School (my first time to visit this facility) and spent a pleasant afternoon. Rachelle joined current Lyric Opera Camp attendees and alumni (she is both an alumnus and a past counselor for the camp) on stage to sing a song they all learn during camp.
After refreshments were served, Rachelle also had an opportunity to perform a piece from Così fan tutte. She spent a few minutes (before and after her performance) providing an update to the staff and students on what she’s been doing the last couple of years at UNT. If Rachelle wasn’t returning to Texas this Thursday, she and I would probably attend the world premiere of The Giver opera this Saturday at 2:00 pm.
We returned home and finished crafting our Chicken Pot Pies. We popped them in the oven and enjoyed them for a late supper. A good thing that recipe is very filling, as supper was the only meal either of us (Rachelle or I) ate Sunday.
I spent Black Friday attempting to avoid shopping. Our one foray out in the late morning gleaned no deals we couldn’t walk away from. Derek and Royna found a couple of items for her Ipad 2 and wandered around a mall for an hour while Terry and I snoozed in the Bonneville. After all that excitement, Terry and I headed back to Denton to help Rachelle transport her new Yamaha keyboard to the Abbey Underground for that evening’s performance of “All in the Family: Putting the ‘FUN’ in Dysfunctional” by the North Texas Opera on Tap performers.
I had planned that my twenty-fifth installment in my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ would be about family vacations, but instead I feel very thankful for live music. The Abbey Underground venue provided a fantastic atmosphere to enjoy the company of friends and family, relax with your favorite beverage and appreciate the talents of local vocal performers, including my daughter (an under-graduate at UNT), graduate students, doctoral candidates, UNT faculty and Dallas Opera regulars. The selections consisted of arias, duets and ensembles from several operas, including Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte (Rachelle sang a Dorabella aria) and the Marriage of Figaro; Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck; Handel’s Serse (or Xerxes); Verdi’s MacBeth and La Traviata; Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.
My husband noted the nice stage size and excellent sound system available for live performances. Compared to some of the places his band, WolfGuard, has performed, the Abbey Underground facilities shined. And even though we were in the basement, everything was well lit and clean and the patrons refrained from smoking (at the courteous request of the vocal performers) so we were spared the usual night club haze and miasma. The only thing that keeps me from attending more local live music venues is whether or not the club hosting the concert allows smoking. I refuse to subject my lungs to the second hand smoke.
Another aspect of live performance in a small venue that I love is the opportunity to meet performers and experience the energy often generated in the feedback from the audience to the performance. It’s live, it’s impromptu at times, and it’s definitely not Memorex, even though I did capture a couple of the numbers with my video camera. I’ll get those uploaded to YouTube later this weekend (the camera is in Denton and I’m currently at my son’s apartment in the Colony).
Opera on Tap finished off a great week and and put paid to Black Friday, bringing great opera performances to the masses congregating underground in Denton.
North Texas Opera on Tap (Abbey Underground, Black Friday Show, Nov 2011)
I am thankful for my sense to hearing, and specifically music, which will be the focus of the fifteenth day of my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness.’
At age five, I started taking piano lessons from a close neighbor (close being a relative term out in the wilds of northwestern Leavenworth County). Reading music came to me just about as easily as reading words. Oddly (because I love mathematics), my only long-standing issue is my (un)willingness to count out a song in my head so that I get the rhythm and tempo correct. I didn’t spend much time in a band environment (only played flute for two years before middle school), so I rely heavily upon a percussionist if I play and/or sing in a praise band. And my audio memory of how a song should sound. Yes, I’m lazy. Probably why I’m not a professional musician.
As I’ve mentioned before, my husband is a hundred times, or more likely, a thousand times better musician than I will ever be. He has impeccable timing and near perfect pitch. He has the patience and technical skills to practice a piece to perfection.
Rachelle posing as a diva a couple of years ago
My daughter inherited most if not all of her musical ability and talent from him (I can still play piano better than her, but she knows more music theory than I’ll ever understand).
Rachelle started singing about the same time she learned to talk. She surpassed my measly vocal abilities way back in early high school. Along the way, she learned how to play violin, guitar, saxophone and piano. However, her voice is her most finely honed instrument. As she approaches her final semester as an under graduate at UNT’s College of Music, I look forward to attending her senior recital, which will include all of the following songs Rachelle recently recorded for her graduate school auditions (click on the song title link, then click on the play button):
Ah scostati!
Paventa il tristo effeto
d’un disperato affeto!
Chiudi quelle finestre
Odio la luce, odio l’aria, che spiro
Odio me stessa!
Chi schernisce il mio duol,
Chi mi consola?
Deh fuggi, per pietà, fuggi,
Lasciami sola.
Smanie implacabili, che m’agitate
Dentro quest’anima più non cessate,
Finchè l’angoscia mi fa morir.
Esempio misero d’amor funesto,
Darò all’Eumenidi se viva resto
Col suno orrible de’ miei sospir.
English Translation:
Ah, move away!
Fear the sad effect
of a desperate affection!
Shut those windows,
I hate the light, I hate the air that I breathe
I hate myself!
Who mocks my pain,
Who will console me?
Oh, leave, for pity’s sake, leave,
Leave me alone.
Implacable restlessness, that disturbs me
Inside this soul, doesn’t cease,
Until it makes me die.
A miserable example of fateful love
I will give to the Furies, if I live,
With the horrible sound of my sighs.
Der Tag ging regenschwer und sturmbewegt,
Ich war an manch vergessenem Grab gewesen,
Verwittert Stein und Kreuz, die Kränze alt,
Die Namen überwachsen, kaum zu lesen.
Der Tag ging sturmbewegt und regenschwer,
Auf allen Gräbern fror das Wort: Gewesen.
Wie sturmestot die Särge schlummerten,
Auf allen Gräbern taute still: Genesen.
English Translation:
In the churchyard
The day was heavy with rain and disturbed by storms;
I was walking among many forgotten graves,
with weathered stones and crosses, the wreaths old,
the names washed away, hardly to be read.
The day was disturbed by storms and heavy with rain;
on every grave froze the words “we were.”
The coffins slumbered calmly like the eye of a storm,
and on every grave melted quietly the words: “we were healed.”
My least favorite forecast includes ‘wintry mix’ concatenated with ‘winter storm warning’ culminating in excruciating commute times. My vanpool dodged that bullet (barely) on the return trip home last night, for which I am very grateful. It allowed me to watch and listen to my daughter’s first concert of the year, as a member of the Chamber Choir at the UNT College of Music. While she is also a member of the Collegium Singers, she enjoys the challenge of increasing her repertoire in those two choirs and in her vocal performance studies individually as well. Musicology is her primary focus as an undergraduate for the next year or so. Living eight or ten hours north (by automobile) from her concerts would be torture if it weren’t for the appeasement offered by the College’s live streaming of most of the concerts.
Even though the concert only lasted thirty minutes, Terry and I enjoyed hearing Rachelle’s voice across the aether of cyberspace.
Immediately prior to the concert, while I shook off the last dregs of the work day, Terry tried a new recipe for stuffed tomatoes, which we barely got in the oven before the singing started. Twenty minutes later we sampled his latest savory culinary comeuppance. Delicious!
We opened the front door to near white out conditions. We couldn’t see across our court to the houses on the opposite side. Thick snow blanketed the steps and driveway, even though just ninety minutes prior there had been less than a half inch of icy, slushy, sleety mess. We promptly closed the door and return to our regularly scheduled DVR programming.
Snow Accumulation in just 90 minutes Thursday evening
Due to some systems maintenance performed overnight, I overslept by thirty minutes, awaking at 5:30 a.m. Barely stopping to slap on some socks, I jammed on my boots, grabbed my coat and gloves and opened the garage door to an even thicker blanket of snow. And while it looked fluffy and airy, it proved to be heavy and wet. I began to doubt my ability to shovel just half the driveway to the street in the thirty minutes before I needed to dress for work. My white knight came to my rescue and helped vanquish the snow dragon. He even volunteered to do the steps while I finished my morning ablutions.
Terry drove me the two miles north to the Hallmark plant in Leavenworth so I could catch my ride to work. As we were passing by the IHOP in Lansing, I commented that we should have had breakfast when I was awake between two and four o’clock earlier this morning. Being such a considerate husband, he drove in a circle around the van chanting ‘na na’ at me because he planned to stop at said restaurant for breakfast on the return trip home. True to his taunting, we saw him parked front and center at the IHOP as we headed south on K-7/US-73 (aka as Main Street in Lansing).
Our commute to Kansas City’s Midtown and Plaza regions remained uneventful, if a bit slow. We observed several cars languishing in the medians and ditches, but we deigned to join them. And for once, I made it to work when some of my team members decided to turn around a go home due to the icy road conditions in their part of the metro area.
Finally, and in closing, in perusing the blogs I follow as part of my morning tea sipping ritual, Modesitt posted a rebuttal to his previous blog (from earlier this week). The earlier post, entitled ‘The Problem of Truth/Proof” generated several comments (a couple of which were mine), which then spurred Mr. Modesitt’s posting this morning, entitled “True” Knowledge is Not an Enemy of Faith. I will monitor this blog throughout the day to follow the next wave of comments, but will probably refrain from commenting myself.
After meeting a friend for dinner last night at Jazz at the Legends, I rushed home, changed clothes and cars and headed to exciting downtown Leavenworth to Sweetwoods Bar & Grill to listen to various local bands, including WolfGuard, perform during open mic night. I got there in time to hear Smoking Gun’s version of Dreams (one of my all-time favorite Molly Hatchet songs) with Chuck Ebbe as guest bassist. Also got to sing along with the great Janis Joplin classic Mercedes Benz.
Terry had just ordered some appetizers when Smoking Gun introduced WolfGuard so he abandoned his boneless hot wings and pepper poppers to setup to perform.
So why did I entitle this post ‘Revisiting My Purse’s Contents’? Because, Chuck Wiley, WolfGuard’s drummer, wasn’t using his electronic drum set. Oh, no! He was using an accoustic drum set. And, I know it’s hard to believe, that two amplified guitarists and one amplified bassist (all set to 11 on their amps no doubt), playing heavy metal and hard rock, can be completely overwhelmed by an accoustic drum set. And the one thing NOT in my purse was my ear plugs.
So if I don’t respond quickly to phone calls today, it may be due to the excessive ringing in my ears this morning. But the guys did great, playing some BOC, STP, Rush, Alice in Chains and Def Leppard. Looking good, and sounding good!
Good news for Wolfguard fans this week. The band shook off the rust tonight at rehearsal. Terry will be taking it very easy, as his back, ribs and ankle are still not fully recovered.
Tomorrow night, come out and hear them play a few songs for open mic night at Sweetwoods Bar & Grill in Leavenworth.
After refreshments were served, Rachelle also had an opportunity to perform a piece from Così fan tutte. She spent a few minutes (before and after her performance) providing an update to the staff and students on what she’s been doing the last couple of years at UNT. If Rachelle wasn’t returning to Texas this Thursday, she and I would probably attend the world premiere of The Giver opera this Saturday at 2:00 pm.
