Music

Pro Musica

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Yesterday I went to see (and listen to) a performance of Pro Musica, the women’s choir from a few towns over. They celebrated their 25 year jubilee with a concert in the church in their town. To help them celebrate, they invited a number of guest performers to sing with them. Among them, a number of men of the choir my uncle sings in, including said uncle. Because of that, Mom and I decided to go, and it would be more fun for my aunt to have company in the audience.

They started with Alta Trinita Beata before the opening words and followed this with a top five of their favourite songs, as chosen by the members themselves. Then they introduced the Roder Boys’ Choir. A highly trained and well respected choir in the English tradition, robes and all. They sang a few songs and the director explained some things about the English choir tradition and how progressing through the choir works, as two of the boys present were new members of the choir itself (probationers).

This was followed by their regular pianist playing two instrumental duets with an organist playing the small church organ.

Then, it was time for the main piece, the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré. It had long been their dream to sing this, but, as a women’s choir, they lacked the male voices required. So, for their jubilee, they decided to ask a number of project singers to come and help. They rehearsed for months, and it culminated in a beautiful performance of a beautiful piece of music. The only thing I found intrusive occasionally, was the piano. It had a tendency to be too loud, and too persistent in a melody which, to my ear, didn’t quite match the vocals. However, seeing as this was their regular, professionally trained, pianist, I assume this was due to acoustics and my less than optimum seat.

All in all, I enjoyed it, musically, but seating was sub-par.

Programme:

Pro Musica

  • Alta Trinita Beata

Opening Words

Pro Musica

  • In Humility our Savior (M.J. Gabbott, T.H. Prichard)
  • I Will Sing With the Spirit (J. Rutter)
  • Pater Noster (A. de Klerk)
  • Nigra Sum (P. Casals)
  • Cantique de Jean Racine (G. Fauré)

The Roder Boys’ Choir

  • Wohl mir, das ich Jesum habe (J.S. Bach)
  • Wash Me Thoroughly (S.S. Wesley)
  • Nunc dimitis (from the canticles in G) (C.V. Stanford)
  • If Thou Shalt Confess (C.V. Stanford)

Liesbeth Wildeveld & Jan de Roos

  • Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit BWV 106 (J.S. Bach)
  • Slavische Dans opus 72 nr. 2 (A. Dvořák)

Pro Musica with Project Singers

Requiem by Gabriel Fauré

  • Introit et Kyrie
  • Offertoire
  • Sanctus
  • Pie Jesu
  • Agnus Dei
  • Libera Me
  • In Paradisum

All-Night Vigil

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St. Petersburg Chamber ChoirThe concert last night was fantastic!

The St. Petersburg Chamber Choir was founded in 1997 by Nikolai Kornev who is still its main conductor. The repertoire is wide, ranging from renaissance to more contemporary; and the singers, 20 men and 20 women, are trained at top musical institutions in Russia. They have won many prizes, even a Grammy, and made a number of albums.

The programme for the night was to sing a number of parts of the All-Night Vigil, which is a part of the Vespers of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). They started off, however, with some other pieces that offered context for Rachmaninoff and his work.

The first were four pieces of A Russian Requiem, by Alexander Dmitriyevich Kastalsky (1856-1926). Kastalsky, who studied under Tchaikovsky, was a prolific composer, writing at least 130 choral pieces between 1896 and 1917 and as such greatly influenced, among others, Rachmaninoff. Then came six pieces of the Liturgy of St. John Crystostomus by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). His work in composing these pieces allowed others to also write new music to known hymns. People such as his student Kastalsky, and Rachmaninoff. Combined,  Tchaikovsky greatly influenced Russian sacred music, and Kastalsky influenced, and advised, Rachmaninoff. Together, this brings us the masterpiece that is the Vespers.

The Vespers are a complicated work, with melody lines and dynamics that go all over the place, from serene to exuberant. It hearkens back to older church traditions, even though Rachmaninoff was fairly ambivalent towards the church, by using older melodies and an occasional more recitative style. Vocally, the Vespers ask a lot from the singers, with extreme highs and lows, and complicated techniques.

Now, I’m not well-versed, or versed at all, in classical singing so I have no words to describe what they did and how they did it. I just know I loved it. And based on the standing ovation, so did the rest of the audience.

The only shame was that there were so many empty spots in the room. The performance was in the great hall of the Oosterpoort, and it can seat a great many people, but that great many people weren’t there. It almost felt a little disrespectful 🙁 Although I can imagine that the accoustics of the great hall are better for a work like this.

Programme:

Alexander Dmitriyevich Kastalsky: A Russian Requiem

  • Requiem aeternam
  • Ingemisco
  • Confutatis
  • Hostias

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Liturgy of St. John Crystostomus

  • Symbol of belief
  • After the symbol of belief
  • After the exclamation “Thine from Thine”
  • After the words “Especially for our most Holy”
  • The Lord’s Prayer
  • Communion hymn

Intermission

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Vespers op. 37 “All-Night Vigil”

  • 1. O come, let us worship
  • 2. Bless the Lord, o my soul
  • 3. Blessed is the man
  • 4. O Jesus Christ
  • 5. Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant
  • 6. Virgin, Mother of God
  • 7. Glory to God in the highest
  • 8. Praise ye the name of the Lord
  • 9. Blessed art thou, o Lord
  • 10. Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ
  • 11. My soul doth magnify the Lord
  • 12. Glory to God in the highest
  • 13. Today is salvation come
  • 14. Rising from the tomb
  • 15. To thee, o Mother of God

If you want to listen to the Vespers yourself, the album they  made of it a few years ago is available on Spotify.

Movies Galore! Also Lego! And Theater!

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Did a bunch of movies this week, by myself and with others. Monday after work I went to see Edge of Tomorrow. It was a much better movie than I was expecting. I really like Full Metal Bitch and I didn’t even mind Tom Cruise in the movie 🙂

I also ordered tickets to go see War Horse with Mom. We’re going January 14!

Tuesday I finally went to see The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. The movie is hilarious! It’s been a long time since I laughed out loud at a movie that much. It’s been compared to Forest Gump, but it’s better than that. The titular character, Allan, gets put in a home when he blows up his hen house. Then on the day of his 100th birthday he decides to escape the coming party and attention and climbs out the window and walks off. As he goes to buy a bus ticket at the station, he gets asked to watch a suitcase for a minute and decides to walk off with it. It turns out the case is full of money. Criminal money. Cue an awesome road trip where he meets all kinds of people while being tracked and followed by the criminals that want their money back, interspersed with flashbacks to Allan’s long life where he experienced important events and met important people all the while being mostly oblivious to the importance of it.

Wednesday I had my shot again. Had it done in my arm because I still had some movies planned. Am never doing that again, though. My arm hurts like hell now still, and it’s Sunday. A quick Google has taught me that arm muscle is just not big enough. The way T. shots work is that the fluid bubble sits in your muscle and is slowly absorbed over the three weeks until the next shot. A leg muscle (or your ass 😀 ) is big enough to stretch around the fluid bubble, but arm just isn’t.

I also went to Bedum and Uithuizen with Mom to check for World of Warcraft Lego (Megabloks technically) at the Action10173768_10152193319638155_281758145161566397_n. Nico had seen it there, they had a big Stormwind Demolisher Set, a smaller Goblin Shredder (which I already have), about six or seven mounts+riders and eight single character figures with a small piece of scenery. They didn’t have all of them anymore, but I got a fair bunch

At the end of the afternoon I headed for the city to meet Gert. First we saw Grace of Monaco. It took me a while to get into but that’s mostly because I had the wrong idea and expectation beforehand. I’d seen trailers of the movie before, and that gave me the idea it was more a biopic of her life from marriage on and further. Until her death basically. But instead, it focuses on a specific period (early sixties) and shows how it was difficult for her to get used to life as Princess, torn between acting (Hitchcock offers her the lead in Marnie) and her family and duties, and how she could influence people, both behind the scenes, as well as the general populace. Once I figured that, the movie fell into place and things like pacing made sense.

Afterwards I had planned to go home, but we sat and talked for a while and decided on a whim to also see A Million Ways to Die in the West. I won’t dignify that movie with too many words. Suffice it to say that it is a stereotypical American comedy that runs on sex and poop jokes. The basic plot is fun, and there are occasional good, clever, jokes. So if it had been more of that, it would not have been so bad.

Thursday I also had the day off since I had to work yesterday. Nico was off early, so we decided to go see X-Men: Days of Future Past. It’s a good movie, I really liked that we got to see the merging of the old trilogy and these new films. Even though the timeline of the old trilogy is fairly effectively wiped by the events of this film, I like that they didn’t just go fingers-in-your-ears-it-doesn’t-exist-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you 😀

Back home, I finally ordered my theater tickets. As I said on Facebook, it cost me three organs and some change. But I have seven shows (in addition to the earlier mentioned War Horse) to go see in the new season two of which Mom will join me for.

  •  Chamber Choir of St. Petersburg: Vespers of Rachmaninoff ( 25-09-2014)
  • Toneelgroep Amsterdam & Toneelhuis: Maria Stuart (10-12-2014)
  • Musictheater Transparant & Claron McFadden: Lilith (05-02-2015)
  • Sara Kroos: Van Jewelste (25-03-2014) with Mom
  • Toneelgroep Amsterdam: Koningin Lear (03-04-2015)
  • Various Comedians: Onceuponatimethegodfatherflewoverthecuckoosnest (29-05-2015) with Mom
  • Marrugeku: Gudirr Gudirr (dance performance) (06-06-2015)

Friday, after work, I spent the evening reading and avoiding football. Not very lucky with that as I sat in my bedroom with the window open so I could hear the whole street erupting every time we scored. And we scored a lot.

Then, yesterday. I had a late shift, which I can normally do at home. But I realised this too late and since Kim was also working, I came to Groningen. Got a message from Gert half way through, he was at the Action, did I need any more Lego? I was indeed missing some, so I had him take a picture and saw they had ones I didn’t have yet. He was so kind as to buy them and bring them to work for me. I took my break and met him at Starbucks. I had just enough time to get a drink and chat briefly, before having to head back.

Today I slept in, and just as I was gonna go to the Parents for Father’s Day, Mom rang the bell. Dad was out cycling, so she came to ask if I wanted to take a walk with her. I joined her, and then after went back to their place for coffee and merriment 🙂

Lohues

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I’m back from a glorious night out with Mommy dear. We had dinner at Het Feithhuis on their back terrace. It was a lovely place to sit, but it got a bit chilly quicker than expected. We had an amuse with potato cream and paprika and something, it was quite tasty. For the main course, I had steak and Mom went with chicken. The dessert was the best, it was a platter for two with seven or so (per person) tiny dessert items like pastries, ice cream, fruit and combinations thereof.

After that, we walked towards the Schouwburg to go see Daniel Lohues perform. He writes and sings beautiful songs about life in the dialect of Drenthe. Songs that are deceptively simple and straightforward and can hit you like a brick. Between the songs he told stories and anecdotes in typical Lohues fashion. All in all, it was a wonderful performance.

Out, Out With His Head

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After going to bed waaaayyy too late after rewatching the Eurovision Semi-Final, Friday was a bitch. I managed to get through work, but after work I had the last team outing with the emailteam. We ate, which was delicious, and it was nice to spend some time with the people I’ve been in a team with for years. After dinner we had a pub quiz scheduled. But I was so tired by then, and since the pub quiz wasn’t until pretty late, I left after dinner and skipped the quiz.

Consequently, I slept in gloriously the next morning 😀 In the afternoon more good times at my uncle’s birthday. We made it pretty late, but I was home nicely in time for the Eurovision final, wheee!

My favourites were Azerbaijan (lovely dress, too), Norway (although he needs to enunciate more), Montenegro (the intro sounds like 2007’s Lane Moje from Serbia), Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Malta, and of course Netherlands. I’m ecstatic that we managed to get to second place, that’s the best we’ve done in decades. And I’m glad that, if we had to loose, we lost to Austria.

Today it’s Mothers Day, so this morning I headed over to the Parents for fun times, and food 😀

The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway

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Tuesday I went to the movies with Gert. We saw Frozen. It is one of the awesomest movies I’ve seen in a long time. I’m already a fan of Disney movies (particularly animated) but I love this one so much. I watched it again yesterday and am waiting for it to be released on bluray 😀

Yesterday, my bed also came. I bought it late december, but with the holidays and all my room wasn’t ready for it. So they stored it for a while longer until I made an appointment to have it delivered yesterday. It didn’t go quite as I expected. Turns out that, it being a boxspring, the bottom is one giant piece. The only separate things about it are the mattress and the headboard…

So now it stands in the hallway, shuffled in a corner fenced in by a cabinet and the coat rack 😀 I first need to finish upstairs, and then get some help to move it up the stairs.

Blog About Me [5/52] Ten Songs I Love

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In no particular order, these are all songs that move me deeply. Mainly through the lyrics, but they would obviously not be the same without the music.

Fort Atlantic – Let Your Heart Hold Fast

Defying Gravity from Wicked, as sung by Chris Colfer on Glee

Omnia – The Raven

I See The Light from Tangled, sung by Mandy Moore & Zachary Levi

Lene Marlin – Flown Away

Leonard Cohen – Anthem

Evanescence – Imaginary

Omnia – Old Man Tree

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables from Les Misérables as sung by Eddie Redmayne in the 2013 movie

Ronan Keating – I Hope You Dance

 

Off to the Theater: C3

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A few weeks ago Mom saw a review in the paper of a show by C3, called ‘Wil je in ons groepje?’ (Do you wanna be in our group). She mentioned it to me and indicated she’d like to see it. They were doing one show near here, and that was exactly on her birthday. So I asked her, for confirmation, if she wanted to go, and got us tickets.

Since I did have to work before hand, and the show didn’t start until 20:15, we decided to go out to eat as well. For ease, we decided upon the restaurant at the theater.

So, last night was the night. Mom picked me up at work, and we drove the short distance to the Oosterpoort theater. After parking we headed inside. We were a bit early for our reservation, but we could get seated early. After getting drinks served, the waiter discussed the menu with us. Because Cristina Branco was also performing at the Oosterpoort yesterday, they were having a Portuguese menu and were there any dietary things we needed. We both let him know that the starter, a fish soup, was not something we would like. Fortunately, the vegetarian option sounded great so we opted for that.

Shortly after, the starter was served, a truly delicious courgette soup with cheese and cream.  The main course was a skewer with chicken, beef and pork served with roasted veggies, skin-baked potato and salad (nom nom nom!). While we were eating, I decided to check our tickets to see which of the halls we had to be. That’s when I realised something. We were in the wrong theater…

Instead of the show being at the Oosterpoort, it was at the Stadschouwburg, the theater they’re connected with. We had a good laugh about it, what else can you do. I’d had the tickets for a few weeks already but never really bothered to read them properly, and we’d only seen mentions of Oosterpoort near the review so we totally missed it.

Fortunately our dessert (melon slices with orange flavoured ice cream and a vanilla pastry with cream) arrived shortly so that, combined with our arriving early to begin with, gave  us enough time to walk to the Stadschouwburg. We arrived there with about twenty minutes to spare. Had we been on time for dinner, we’d have been late for the show 😀

The show itself was quite good. C3  is a a cabaret/comedy group consisting of Mike Boddé, Onno Innemee and, this theater season, Jelka van Houten. They sang songs, some more comedic in nature, some more serious. It started off with Jelka singing a love song about New York. Not because New York is that great, but because the person she loves comes from New York. Onno sang a great comedic ‘cuntry’ song about being a cowboy. Halfway through the song it became clear through the lyrics that instead of being a real cowboy singing, it was a boy singing about playing cowboy and the patrons of the local cafe getting quite sick of his repeated Hyippi-ya-yays.

Mike played the piano throughout the evening (he is absolutely great at that) to accompany the songs. At some point Jelka sang a lovely song about not being able to sleep and begging Mr. Goldberg to help her. This led to Mike explaining to her the story behind it, and how it had led to this beautiful piece of music, the Goldberg Variations. In short: there was this count who had trouble sleeping so he went to Johann Sebastian Bach and asked him to compose him some music that he could have played by his court harpsichord (klavecimbel) player, Mr. Goldberg.

Mike then elaborated that the Goldberg Variations are basically the hardest thing to play for a pianist, and that he could not play it all. However, he knew the basic chord structure, so he could make his own Variations. Which he then did: Goldberg à la blues, Goldberg à la Mozart, Goldberg à la Chopin… It was very awesome.

He also dit a dramatic reading about a nice smelling man in a language built of archaic words, screwed around current words and screwed around translations of english words. The way in which he read this (as if he were preaching) and the speed with which he could speak all those out of the ordinary words is a total turn-on for me (I looooove words and language).

Too bad there’s no videos of this, or his Goldberg Variations online, even to just show a hint. Mike Boddé is brilliant with a piano and words.

There were also sketches. This was for me a much more mixed bag. I did not much care for most of them. I just found them unfunny and I had trouble finding the through line of the show and I do like me a through line. Random assortments of things without a discernible connection throw me off, especially when a show’s description makes me believe there is supposed to be a through line.

After the show, we quickly headed back to the car and went home for today was an early start. We had a great night.

 

The Week in Review: 2012-10

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I’m grateful for the fairly quiet times at work that enabled me to take two extra days off so my one week off turned into a glorious week and a half.

I’m happy with my new tablet (a Qware pro 3, 10″). I ordered it online last week after I’d been to the Intertoys for the 7″ version for the third time and they still didn’t have it. This one was more expensive, but the added screen real estate makes it worth it. I spent the weekend loading it up with apps and am contemplating adding a custom rom to update it to Android 4 (it has 2.3 now). And, I’m blogging from the tablet now. Which is showing me one thing very clearly: I need to get a dictionary imported here somewhere because I spend way too much time correcting myself.

I was annoyed with the reflection essay I needed to write to finish the education track at work. I hate those sort of essays with a passion so when I finally sat down for it I spent two hours hatefully avoiding it and complaining about it ( 🙂 ) and then decided to go all the way in, over the top and all. So an hour later I had three pages with artfully inserted quotes and section headings and all that jazz.

I learned that I’d been playing my ukelele wrong (and slightly cheating here since this was actually yesterday and thus already week 11). Turns out I’d been counting my strings wrong. I started at the top (near my chest) with one and then went down, while in fact the top one is string four. So the c and d that play on the third string I was actually playing on the second. And the e, f and g that play on the second string I was playing on the third. No wonder the Frere Jacques sounded off. Got this fixed now so I’ll be spending this week getting the fingerings on the right strings under control, as well as practising the two beginner tunes on the next page: Frere Jacques and Mary Had a Little Lamb.

I discovered I still have some residual unresolved sort-of-jealous feelings about something (and yes being vague on purpose). I thought I worked through this, rationally I understand the choice, but feelings can be a bitch sometimes.

The Week in Review: 2012-09

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I’m grateful for the many supportive comments last week’s blog got, both here and on Facebook. I’m also grateful that the scratches Milo gave me were not that deep and are healing nicely (even though the itching is driving me nuts).

I’m happy my ukelele books arrived. I’ve decided to approach this learning how to play thing fairly seriously so I’m assigning myself two or three pages of the book per week so I have enough time to practice before I move on. This will hopefully prevent me from rushing through it and not really retaining any of the stuff I read or play. I’m also happy with the end-of-year review I got at work.

I’m slightly annoyed that it’s hiatus season for many of my favourite US TV shows (especially Glee), although it does give me a chance to catch up on others I’ve missed. (This is what you get when I have no proper things to be negative about 😀 )

I learned notes on the c and e string of the ukelele this week. Expect many ukelele related learnables in the coming weeks 😀

 

I’ve decided to add a fifth point to this thing to turn it into a bit more of a full fledged blog post since I don’t always blog in between, and as the (internet) saying goes: “Five things make a post.”

 

I discovered Postcrossing and DrawSomething. I knew Postcrossing, I looked into it a couple years ago, and was intrigued but then I forgot about it. This week I saw it come up in my news feed on Facebook and remembered again. So I decided to sign up for it, and I’ve requested my first five addresses. I’ll be getting cards and stamps this week so I can send then to Russia, Taiwan, Belarus, Germany and the US. I’m excited already about the cards I’ll be getting back.

DrawSomething is a game I downloaded on my iPhone tonight and even though I’ve played it for like ten minutes, I love it. I believe it can also be played on Facebook. The point of the game is to draw one of three words you’ve been given and then your opponent has to guess what it is you drew. After that, the roles reverse and you guess the opponents drawing.