When Augustin Hadelich and Joyce Yang played Manuel Ponce’s “Estrellita” as an encore at a Schubert Club International Artist Series recital in Saint Paul last week, I remembered that the song had also graced Renée Fleming’s IAS recital in October. In that program...
BOBBY VEE IS DEAD I didn’t know he was a Minnesotan, born in Moorhead. According to Chris Riemenschneider’s obituary in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Robert Thomas Velline and his band “were recruited to fill in for Buddy Holly at the Moorhead stop of the Winter...
August, 2016 As a kid, I enjoyed the syndicated column of Sidney J. Harris (1917-1986), which appeared on the same page with Ann Landers and Erma Bombeck. Like those writers, Harris helped you navigate the real world with insight and humor. One of his regular features...
From The Schubert Club David Evan Thomas received the An die Musik Award “in recognition of outstanding dedication and commitment to the work and mission of The Schubert Club” at The Schubert Club Annual Luncheon on June 8, 2016 at the Ordway Center for...
Now! Hear the songs! I know not what are the words But they sing in my soul of the things our Fathers loved. A number of the American modernists developed their art under the aegis of another profession. Poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a physician....
Recently I attended a memorial service, a beautiful service for a man I didn’t know. That was my loss. He was dear to all present, had died suddenly and too young, and I wish I had known him. I knew his widow but a little; we had sung together in a choir. On this day,...
This coming Wednesday, April 20, 2016, The Schubert Club will welcome the Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel back to Saint Paul. There is no better ambassador for Welsh song—for song, period—than Terfel. That’s “Terrrvel.” (For pronunciation help from actual humans, I go...
. . . I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be. (Shelley, Julian and Maddalo) Before a concert on the campus of what used to be called Northwestern College, in St. Paul,...
How one American embraced, forsook, embraced, forsook, and ultimately EMBRACED… …the tonal processes that drive us all! Sylvester Stallone is cast against type as the mild-mannered Copland. With Harvey Keitel as the inscrutable Roger Sessions, and as Nadia Boulanger…...
At a recent Schubert Club concert… Barry Kempton and I agreed about the Howells Clarinet Sonata: as a piece it is not quite satisfactory. Barry mentioned a recent conversation with pianist Michael McHale in which McHale compared editors of music and the word. Writers...
Clarinetist Michael Collins and pianist Michael McHale will give the second of two recitals at the Ordway Concert Hall in Saint Paul tonight. It’s the first clarinet recital on the Schubert Club International Artist Series, and it’s a doozy: four sonatas and two...
I entered the party on eagles’ wings. A noted Constitutional originalist had received the ultimate justice that awaits us all. But a disapproving look from my more judicious friend Haley quickly brought me back to earth. After all, who am I to enjoy the demise of...
As I was hauling groceries to my car, I passed a small, over-bent woman pushing a vertical cart—inches at a time—away from the store into the vastness of the lot. She hesitated, poised as if ready to dive from a great height. I turned back, asking if she needed help....
I am a latecomer to the piano and to piano chamber music, but that hasn’t diminished my zeal. After years of playing in brass quintets and singing in choirs, I’m exploring the challenges of anchoring a piano-string chamber ensemble. I’m also a big fan of little...
I come from New York, but Upstate. Only after living in Saint Paul, Minn. did I realize that my hometown of Rochester, N.Y.—which was first nicknamed “The Flour City,” then “The Flower City” when the mills moved west—was essentially a...
We lost Alan Rickman yesterday. The younger generation knows him as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, but he was a subtle and versatile actor, equally adept at playing characters or leads. His deep voice, warm with affection or dripping with malice, was perhaps...
