December in Chicago

This month I've enjoyed the new production of the Goodman Theatre's A Christmas Carol (before the remaining performances of the run were cancelled due to a rise in Covid cases), Barbara Kruger's overwhelming and powerful installation at the Art Institute (and the annual unveiling of the mid 18th c. Neopolitan Creche), the William Ferris Chorale's first performance in 20 months, and a performance of the Rutter Gloria in my old neighborhood of the south suburbs.  What a great city for music and the arts!

Illinois ACDA conference returns!

The Illinois state conference of the American Choral Directors Association last weekend was only the second live ACDA event since the beginning of the pandemic.  I was delighted to present the opening address, "To Bless the Space Between Us", after a little book of blessings by Irish poet John O'Donahue. It was wonderful to see old friends and new colleagues and hear (masked) choral singing again in the lovely Holtschneider Performance Center of DePaul University in Chicago.

Music in the Air

On July 9th I heard my first live music in a year and four months.  What an extraordinary time of separation from what we do and love.  On that Friday night on Chicago's front lawn of Millennium Park, I heard the Grant Park Symphony and chorus perform music of Vivaldi and Barber and Brahms.  And in the following weeks, performances of Hadyn and Beethoven, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Britten, Broadway classics, traditional folk and contemporary Irish music, rising young stars of the Lyric Opera, and Chicago's famed Music of the Baroque.  All free.  Oh, and food and wine.  What a summer!

Great Trees

I have long been attracted to Wendell Berry's poetry and have set his words to music a number of times: THE CIRCLES OF OUR LIVES, THE WHEEL, WE CLASP THE HANDS, THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS, and A MUSIC IN THE AIR. There is a strong connection to the earth, to generations, to cycles and seasons, to each other. I'm right now immersed in three poems about great trees: A Timbered Choir, I Go Among Trees, and Sabbaths 1998, for a song cycle project for tenor and orchestra for the University of Central Florida Symphony Orchestra, soloist Jeremy Hunt, and conductor Chung Park.  There's something profound about sitting still among great trees that "uphold weightless grace of song, a blessing on this place".

Hibernation

What an unusually extraordinary time we've been living through the past year!  I retired from the University of Central Florida the end of February of last year, after 30 years on the music faculty, and returned to Chicago.  Four days later, I attended my new division ACDA conference in Milwaukee and the next week... everything shut down.  My plans for reconnecting with friends and colleagues, attending concerts at Ravinia, Grant Park and the Chicago Symphony, traveling to teach, perform and adjudicate were all canceled. And still, this spring.  The rhythm of retirement from academic life has yet to settle in and the activity of composing has also taken on it's own, somewhat unpredictable, rhythmic contour.   

It's been a very long time since we've experienced music together, as creators, performers and listeners.  And, although teachers have found new ways to re-imagine what it is we do and how to do it in meaningful ways, it's not the same.  Because of the pandemic, masking and the 6-foot rule, we've been sequestered, secluded and isolated.  But I actually like the term cloistered, meaning "kept away from the outside world" or "sheltered". And, in a very real way, we've all been hibernating -- a state of minimal activity to conserve energy to survive adverse conditions. With the coming of a new spring (though there's snow again in Chicago today) there is a hopefulness that we'll begin to emerge soon from our hibernation to a sense of normality, a new appreciation for each other, and the music in our lives.