We played:
We meet Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, as
long as enough people have told me by Monday night that that want
to come.
We played all Dowland, all the time:
We meet Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, as
long as enough people have told me by Monday night that that want
to come.
It’s a dropin group, and you are welcome to come for as much or
as little of as many meetings as you want to.
However, I do want to know as much as possible about your
plans, since I need both to organize my own time, and to plan the
meetings so that the people who come can get what they want out of
them. I am grateful to all the poeple who consistently let me
know what they’re planning do.
Last Tuesday’s meeting was a brilliant success in terms of
people getting together and playing music they love. I kept
remembering the 1993 Boston Early Music Festival Exhibition, where
I stood at the Braude Brothers booth wistfully looking at the
Dowland facsimiles and wondering if I’d ever have a group that
could play that music. It’s been almost a quarter of a century,
and a lot of hard work, but now we have one. Many thanks to all
the people who have given their time and skill to make that
happen, including the ones who are no longer with us.
In terms of
planning and organization, however, it was a flat failure.
This is because, based on what I had been told about who was
coming, I spent several hours on Tuesday transcribing something
that really needed those specific people to look at it for half
an hour or so.
Then, at 5pm, someone else called and asked if it made sense
for him to come, and said he’d be happy to take a break if there
was something we needed to do that he couldn’t help with.
At about 9, he reminded me that I’d promised him a break, and I
said he could have one when the third person arrived. He’s just
getting back into playing his instrument, which he’s had physical
problems with in the past, so he’s trying hard to not play for too
long at a time.
The third person finally arrived at about 20 minutes to 10, and
we decided to just go on with what we were doing, instead of
trying to rush through reading the new transcription.
So I spent several hours doing something that didn’t benefit
the Tuesday meeting, when there were other things of more
immediate benefit I could have been doing, and I failed to get
someone who’s working hard at learning his instrument the break
he might have really needed.
The moral of the story is that if you’ve said you’re coming,
and it turns out that you won’t be there for a substantial part
of the meeting, it would be good if you could call and tell me that.
We played:
We meet Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, as
long as enough people have told me by Monday night that that want
to come.
We played:
We meet Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, as
long as enough people have told me by Monday night that that want
to come.
We played:
Reminder, we will not meet this week, July 18.
After that, we resume our regular schedule of meeting every
Tuesday, as long as enough people have told me they want to come.
Reminder: we are not meeting tomorrow, July 4. Go see
fireworks.
We will meet as usual next week, July 11, at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge.
We will not meet the following week, July 18.
After that, we resume our regular schedule of meeting every Tuesday, as long as enough people have told me they want to come.
John Tyson’s annual student recital will take place on Thursday, July 6, at 5:30pm at the Congregational Library, 14 Beacon St. Boston. This year the recital had to split in two, and this is the shorter half, so it isn’t quite the recorder playing
marathon it sometimes is. I’ll be playing 17th century duets with John, a Morley duo with a potential group member, and a trio with John and Ishmael.
There will be no meeting tomorrow, June 27, 2017. Too many of
us are sick.
We also will not meet next week, July 4. It’s too hard for
people who need to use cars to get here, or to get home if they
manage to get here and park.
The following week, July 11, we will meet as usual, if we all
live that long.
The week after that, July 18, we will not meet at my place,
since I will be out of town.
After that, we should resume meeting as usual, every Tuesday at
7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge.
We generally meet every Tuesday, at 7:45pm, at 233 Broadway, as
long as enough people have let me know by Monday night that they
want to come.
There will be two Tuesdays in July where this will not be
true. July 4 is not a good day to drive here, as you would be
competing with hundreds of thousands of other people who want to
see the Pops concert and the fireworks, so if we meet that week,
it will be on some other night. The week that includes July 17, I
will be at The
Amherst Early Music Festival, so there will not be a meeting
at my place.
![[King's Singers]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kingssingers.com/wp-content/themes/thekingssingers/_assets/img/bg-intro-mobile6.jpg)
I had a favorite note on this concert. This occasionally
happens when I’m playing or singing — altos especially tend to
end up with mostly boring parts, with one note that changes the
whole harmonic landscape. But I don’t remember it happening in
a performance I was just listening to before.
In this case, it was at the very end
of the Schütz
Das
ist je gewißlich wahr. As you can see, just before the
resolution to the A major chord at the end, the top line hits
the already established “A” harmony with a “B”.
![[Amen]](https://blog.laymusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/amen1.jpg?w=840)
Most experienced singers and instrumentalists can make that
final chord “ring” on a good day. But this one “rang” on that
dissonant note. It sent chills up my spine. I asked a number
of very experienced musicians who were at the concert if they’d
noticed it, and none of them had.
There are a lot of similar cadences in the repertoire they were
performing, and I listened to see if it would happen again. The
Josquin Baisez Moi
had two of them near the end, and they almost had
that effect on the first one, and didn’t have it at all on the
second one.
So I don’t know whether this was something they try to do
consciously and only succeed some of the time, or just a strange
effect of the acoustics of Jordan Hall, or even that seat (N20) with
that arrangement of performers in Jordan Hall. But it was
definitely worth the price of the ticket.
The concert as a whole was good but the program was less
tightly focused than I’ve sometimes heard from the King’s
Singers. The commentary from the stage tended to border on the
sophomoric, as if they’d spent a little too much time playing to
college audiences. In general, I think BEMF should not let groups
get away with “greatest hits” programs as much as they do. I
thought
the same thing when the Hilliard Ensemble played in
2013 as well.
.jpg)
Reminder: we are not meeting tonight, June 13, because of the Boston Early Music
Festival.
We generally meet every Tuesday, at 7:45pm, at 233 Broadway, as
long as enough people have let me know by Monday night that they
want to come.
There will be two Tuesdays in July where this will not be
true. July 4 is not a good day to drive here, as you will be
competing with hundreds of thousands of other people who want to
see the Pops concert and the fireworks, so if we meet that week,
it will be on some other night. The week that includes July 17, I
will be at The
Amherst Early Music Festival, so there will not be a meeting
at my place.
LayMusic.org 