A colleague asked me this morning, “So how are things in the blogosphere?” I shook my head, feeling that Wordsworthian twinge: “the world is too much with us.”
With the holidays upon us all, I am sure you know the feeling. In particular to the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra there is the Pulitzer concert tonight and the Polish Dances Detours concert tomorrow night and Stravinsky/Szymanowski/Mozart with Christian Tetzlaff and David Robertson this weekend and Gospel Christmas with the Blind Boys of Alabama and Holiday Songbook and Classical Christmas and Modern Times and New Year’s Eve. There's the United States premiere of John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony in St. Louis and a trip to Carnegie in February too.
Plus, many of us are engaged in preparing for the 0809 season, so there is this sense of being barely present with the future barreling down.
Then I was speaking with Saint Louis Symphony Chorus manager Richard Ashburner, who showed me the women’s chorus parts to Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds (on the "Shadows and Light" program January 25-26). “A lot of notes!” was the best I could respond. In fact, so many notes so close together that they did a Xerox enlargement of the parts to better understand what exactly they needed to be singing. Devilishly difficult rhythmically. Richard told me that for approximately 13 minutes of music they will have rehearsed some 17 hours.
Which is enough to make anyone want to just write about the pretty sunset and the extraordinary December rainbow.
Or to put a shout out to the moms of the SLSO out there who keep tabs of their musician children via this blog. Many thanks to the moms of Andrea Kaplan, Jen Nitchman, and, of course, Amy Oshiro, for sending me fond wishes via their talented offspring.
