by David Evan Thomas | Apr 19, 2025 | My Blog |
Factitious: Not genuine, intrinsic, natural, or spontaneous; inauthentic. (Oxford English Dictionary) The melancholic wisps of Brahms’s Intermezzo in B-flat minor, Opus 117, No. 2 are pianistic in a way that Brahms is often not. It feels like harpsichord music, which...
by David Evan Thomas | Dec 3, 2022 | Composition, My Blog, Recording |
Music of David Evan Thomas on Spotify I‘ve created a Spotify playlist as a convenient way to hear my commercially recorded music. It gives a pretty fair overview of my work, approaching from afar with the newest release, From the Land of Song, on the album,...
by David Evan Thomas | Jul 3, 2022 | Composition, Music Theory, Musicianship, My Blog |
For Liz Pauly Today’s the fourth of July Another June has gone by And when they light up our town I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky. (Aimee Mann, “4th of July”) Some years ago, I sang in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration at the...
by David Evan Thomas | Jun 13, 2022 | My Blog, Organ, Publications |
Augsburg Fortress has published my new collection: A Time to Dance: Settings for Organ, To play the organ is to dance. The definition of dance in the Oxford English Dictionary —“to leap, skip, hop, or glide with measured steps and rhythmical movements of the...
by David Evan Thomas | Nov 12, 2019 | Composition, My Blog |
“Our engraver had a strong opinion against word extensions.” Each musical family has its own technical language. A slur is a universal and effective symbol, but slurs mean different things to different families. To a string player, a slur means “play all the notes on...
by David Evan Thomas | Sep 29, 2019 | Composers, Musicians, My Blog, Performers, Poets, Singers |
Listening to Anna Tivel Idon’t remember how I discovered the songs of the Portland-based folk-singer Anna Tivel. It was probably through Folk Alley, an internet radio station that keeps me company while I’m doing computer work. I admired the clear harmony and...
by David Evan Thomas | Mar 20, 2019 | Composers, Friends of DET, My Blog |
One month ago, on February 20, 2019, we lost master composer Dominick Argento. The affection I felt for the man and the respect I had for his art can’t be neatly summarized, but here is an appreciation adapted from words at a concert of his music at Hill House in...
by David Evan Thomas | Jun 25, 2018 | My Blog, Poets, Public figures |
I had been thinking about Donald Hall, wondering how he was getting on. That usually means: pay attention. Twenty years ago, I wrote a song cycle for soprano and piano based on Hall’s baseball writings. In the Country of Baseball, a title I borrowed from one of...
by David Evan Thomas | May 6, 2018 | Composers, Concerts, My Blog, Performers |
In two recent and marvelous Schubert Club International Artist Series recitals with harpsichordist Richard Egarr, cellist Steven Isserlis played Bach’s 5th Cello Suite, BWV 1011. That work includes a singular sarabande, shown here in in Anna Magdalena Bach’s...
by David Evan Thomas | Oct 29, 2017 | Concerts, My Blog, Psychology, Singers |
Jeremy Huw Williams and Paula Fan Present Clare Cycle October 30, 2017 6 PM Ultan Recital Hall, University of Minnesota Acclaimed Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams (Welsh National Opera) and pianist Paula Fan (University of Arizona) will present a recital of...
by David Evan Thomas | Dec 5, 2016 | Concerts, movies, My Blog, Performers |
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...
by David Evan Thomas | Oct 25, 2016 | My Blog, Public figures, Singers |
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...
by David Evan Thomas | Aug 30, 2016 | Composers, Concerts, Musicians, My Blog, Public figures |
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...
by David Evan Thomas | Jul 12, 2016 | Awards, My Blog |
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...
by David Evan Thomas | May 13, 2016 | Composers, Concerts, Friends of DET, My Blog |
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....
by David Evan Thomas | May 8, 2016 | Friends of DET, My Blog, Psychology |
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,...
