Celebration at the Station LIVE

Watch the outdoor concert at Union Station in Kansas City tonight (Sunday, May 27) at 7:30pm CT.  Tens of thousands of people gather for this special Symphony concert of Americana, fireworks, and cannons.  This PBS broadcast will be shown nationally on July 4th.  WATCH LIVE TONIGHT 7:30!

Eclipsed

If you missed it last night, there was a magnificent solar eclipse across much of the US.  My wife and I went out to watch it at sunset and it was amazing.  My dad captured some of these amazing images.  Pictures are incredible, but it is such an amazing sight in person!

Since my last update - I have been "vacationing" at home, learning TONS of music.  Some of it will be amazing music, and some of it is really frustrating and annoying to learn, but that is the life of a musician.

But before I get to that I must first mention that last week one of the most significant classical singers in history died: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He was a baritone who is universally recognized as the greatest lieder singer in history. For those who don't know, "lied" is German for "song", and in classical music, lieder are German art songs. Here is one of the most glorious songs in music history - Der Erlkönig - music by Schubert, poem by Goethe about a sick boy being carried by his father on horseback as they race home. During the ride, the boy sees and experiences images and sounds that the father does not. In the end the boy screams that he's being attacked by an Elf King.  When the father reaches home he finds that the boy is dead. The song is very exciting, you hear the horse galloping in the piano, and the singer must play the part of the boy, father, and narrator - at times quickly going between the three.

This week, as I have mentioned, I have a lot of music to learn! I am preparing to make a recording with the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers next week, and we will have several live performances in the area as well. If you don't know, Simon Carrington is one of the most influential choral conductors in the world, and I am THRILLED to be part of his professional choir - a handful of singers have flown in from all across the US to do this, and we have high hopes for the recording!

I am also planning the 34th Summer Choral Institute which begins June 3 at Kansas State University. It will certainly be the best Institute ever, and the students and staff are absolutely incredible. SCI is a summer program for gifted high school Sophomore and Junior singers. They come from across the US to make music, sing in concerts and recitals, and train at the highest professional level for one week every summer. Students who were accepted received a full scholarship to attend, courtesy of K-State and The Master Teacher Institute for the Arts. It is one of the most amazing weeks of my year!

I am also learning my role for an opera in Pennsylvania late next month. I will have much more about that as the time nears, however this weekend is the annual Celebration at the Station here in KC. Last year, I was SHOCKED that 60,000 people attended this outdoor symphony concert of Americana, fireworks, canons, etc. in the area between the National World War I Memorial and Union Station in KC. If you are in the area and decide to come, you will find me and wife and some friends on the lawn with a cooler full of beer, watching the events - classical music would be more popular if tailgating were a vital part of its tradition.

Finally, last week I surprised my mom for Mother's Day by driving 4.5 hours to their home. They were renovating their house, so I helped move all kinds of furniture. While I was there, I filmed my puppy Kiah doing her tricks.

Remembering...

Last night, my wife and I went to Celebration at the Station in Kansas City.  And it was so incredibly awesome, that we have decided to make it an annual tradition.  Essentially it was a classical patriotic concert, with over 60,000 people packing a quarter-mile swath from the amazing Union Station, to the National WWI Museum.  Plus, the weather was nice!   I really can't describe it, or how big it was, but it was certainly the largest outdoor classical concert that I've ever been to.  And, it made me very proud to be in Kansas City.  The music culture of this place is great.  This was a huge event after all; I only see PBS specials like this from Vienna, New York, or Washington D.C.  The architecture is amazing; we visited Union Station for the first time and it's beautiful - certainly in the same kind of majesty as New York's or D.C.'s Grand Central Stations.  Plus the WWI monument is great as well.

As you watch this, you cannot really tell the distances between the stage and WWI monument because of a small cliff in the middle of the lawn, but they are a quarter-mile away from each other.  Below is the playing of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.  Some musicians think this piece is corny (the canon firings in this piece are actually written in the music) but I think it is incredibly exciting!  Oddly enough, it is a piece glorifying Napoleon's defeat to the Russians.  It has nothing to do with America.

It is of course Memorial Day.  Please sit up in your chairs, take your Brunhilde horned helmets off, and observe a caesura in remembrance of the opera stars who have been chosen by the Valkyries to spend the afterlife in Operatic Valahalla.

In chronological order beginning Memorial Day of 2010. (Age at death)

Giuseepe Taddei (93), Christine Johnson (98), Giacinto Prandelli (96), Maureen Forrester (79), Peter Sliker (86), Cesare Siepi (87), Luo Pinchao (98), Laszlo Polgar (63), Dolores Wilson (82), Ulrik Cold (71), Richard T. Gill (82), Shirley Verrett (79), Peter Hofmann (66), Gianna Galli (75), Armando Chin Yong (53), Antonin Svorc (77), Robert Tear (72), Donald Shanks (70), Anthony Rolfe Johnson (69), Dame Joan Sutherland (83), Roxana Briban (39), Hugues Cuenod (108), Frances Ginsberg (55), Solange Michel (98), Helen Boatwright (94), Dame Margaret Price (69), Sona Aslanova (86), Vincenzo La Scola (53), Alda Noni (95)

Deaths of note - how appropriate for opera

Roxana Briban (39) - Romanian opera singer, committed suicide.  She was a very famous soprano, who starred on many of the main stages in Europe.  Her death was also a world-famous tragedy that played out on facebook.  On the day of her suicide she posted to her facebook page a disturbing youtube clip of herself singing "Addio del passato" (so closes my sad story) from Traviata. It is Violetta's aria right before she dies from disease. Click Here to Watch.  But that's not the shocking part, her last facebook profile picture was a picture of her bloody hand (from an opera production I'm assuming). Click Here to See.  She died several hours after posting this by cutting her wrists.

Dame Joan Sutherland (83) - Australian soprano, died of heart failure. One of the most celebrated opera singers in history.

Hugues Cuenod (108) - Swiss tenor.  He was the oldest person to debut at the Metropolitan Opera when he sang the role of the Emporer in Turandot in 1987.

Vincenzo La Scola (53) - Italian tenor, died of a heart attack.  He was one of the world's leading operatic tenors who sang at most of the world's most prestigious houses including the Met and La Scala.