Don't Look Now

Sound is the messenger. Previewing Wesleyan University's Alvin Lucier celebration.
Boston Globe, October 30, 2011.

Cathedrals, castles, making up rules

New England's Prospect: When the Working Day Is Done. Poe Night, Amanda Palmer, and Laurie Anderson.
NewMusicBox, October 27, 2011.

Cabinet of wonders

Reviewing The English Concert and Andreas Scholl.
Boston Globe, October 25, 2011.

I also forgot this one, from Sunday:

Galleries and the Art of Music. On concerts in museums.
Boston Globe, October 23, 2011.

The triumph song of Heav'n

Last week, the church that has provided me with much of my gainful employment for the past decade, The Presbyterian Church in Sudbury, celebrated its 50th anniversary, so I wrote an anthem for the occasion. Score below, where also, behind some ambient Presbyterian noise, you can hear the premiere (thanks to Doug Nicholls for the recording).

We Love the Place (2011), SATB chorus and organ (PDF, 170Kb)



The words are by William Bullock, Anglican missionary to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Numerous versions of Bullock's poem were already floating around by the end of the 19th century; I mixed and matched stanzas I liked. Supposedly, when asked why there wasn't a stanza of "We Love the Place" devoted to the church's pulpit, Bullock replied that he would have been compelled to write:

We love thy pulpit Lord,
For there the word of man
Lulls the worshiper to sleep
As only sermons can.

The winter of our discontent

I considered making an actual bumper sticker of this, until I decided that the people I'd most often end up explaining it to would be the people I'd least often want to talk to.

Eastern Promises

Reviewing the Boston Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players.
Boston Globe, October 17, 2011.

Incidentally, by the measurements of Sabrina! this was an ill-behaved audience. The season's started, Boston—brush up on your etiquette.

Don't be that ickeroo, get rep and follow through

Hire Learning.
NewMusicBox, October 17, 2011.

In which Critic-at-Large Moe and I regard the Boston Symphony's new-music mug as half empty.

Acts of respiration

Reviewing Audra McDonald.
Boston Globe, October 4, 2011.