Summer is Over

Our summer at the “prairie house” near Chicago was full of trips into the city, favorite restaurants – new and old, visits to the Art Institute and Grant Park music festival, a performance of Bernstein’s MASS at Ravinia, conducted by Marin Alsop, a week of teaching as Composer-in-Residence at the Choral Music Experience institute at Michigan State University, and several weekends in a new favorite destination, the artsy village of Saugatuck, Michigan, on the shores of the Great Lake.  

Since the last posting I attended a weekend immersion in the poetry of Kabir and Dogen with scholars Linda Hess and Kazuaki Tanahashi at the Upaya zen retreat center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  At the invitation of Doreen Rao, it was a profound weekend of zazen meditation, gorgeous vegetarian meals, the high desert, meaningful poetry and deep silence, in preparation for starting a large-scale work on the poetry of Kabir.

Later in the summer I wrote HALLELUJAH FROM THE HEART OF GOD for three colleagues’ choirs and our biennial ChorFest, and this fall CHANTONS, MES AMIS, for the finale of the Association for Music in International School (AMIS) 2019 Honor Choir festival in Beijing, and a mixed chorus version of SPIRITUAL MUSICK, on text by Christopher Smart (as used in Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb).

Another highlight of the summer was a wheel-thrown pottery course at the Chicago Ceramic Center in the historic Bridgeport Art Center, the old Spiegel catalogue warehouse repurposed with gallery and studio spaces.  Fantastic!