This evening, my wife and I had a chance to attend a concert of the Larimer Chorale, our local and extremely talented choral group based in Fort Collins. The program was Rachmaninoff’s Vespers (All-Night Vigil), Opus 37.
Sung entirely in Russian, it was an amazing experience! And more unexpected – a capella!
Continue reading Rachmaninoff Vespers!
My wife and I had a chance to go to a local Amy Grant concert Friday night. This was a benefit for Lutheran Family Services, and included a limo ride down to Denver, and a meet-and-greet with Amy after the show.
It was a truly fantastic evening, in so many ways.
Continue reading A long strange path!
Back in November we got people from all the parishes in Fort Collins together to sing sacred music for Mass. That was so wonderful, we’re going to do it again! We’re looking at the end of February, at my home parish.
Continue reading Trust is the word, again
A colleague today raised an interesting question which caused me to start thinking pretty deeply. Here’s the problem: How do we get someone to fix something that they’re satisfied with, but we’re not? If they have control of the situation, and they’re satisfied with it, it’ll take a lot of concerted effort to get them to change.
This can be especially true in a church context, because there are significant power relationships at work, and deep emotions. Both of these are even more exaggerated for church musicians.
Continue reading Honey or vinegar
After a busy week of training, I had the opportunity to attend another wonderful Mass on a soggy London Sunday. This was at the highly-recommended Brompton Oratory. Full Novus Ordo, Latin, ad orientem.
Continue reading Mass at Brompton Oratory, London
Going on the advice from some friends over at the CMAA forum, I had the opportunity to attend Mass at St Etheldreda’s Church in Ely, London. This was a Latin Mass, complete with chant, polyphony, accompanied by a small chamber orchestra. When I get a chance, I’ll try to upload all the photos.
Continue reading Incredible Mass at St. Etheldreda’s
In my last post, I talked about the first city-wide chant scholae Mass that we put together. Well, the Mass was last night, and…
Continue reading Trusting the Holy Spirit
Last time I talked about the upcoming big chant gathering we have next Sunday. Well, we had our practice yesterday, and finally got a chance to meet and find out what we’ve learned, and whether it was the same thing.
Continue reading Trusting the Holy Spirit, big time!
We now have less than two weeks to go until we have the scholas from 3 Fort Collins parishes join together to sing a single Mass on November 15th. Actually, I found out that we can claim four parishes, because a gentleman has joined us from Greeley who is the “one person schola” for his parish.
Continue reading Gearing up for the Big Event
I’ve felt quite guilty about my inexperience as regarding Sacred Music:
- I’m a convert to Catholicism, so I have no first-hand knowledge before about 1980.
- I didn’t know chant until I started with this schola about five years ago.
- I didn’t know Latin, and my knowledge is still quite sketchy.
Continue reading You work with what you have
2010 Colloquium