The Other Mary, The Grim Reaper, and SuBo fans

Hopefully you all enjoy the new layout of my blog!  It is simple and should be quick and easy to use.  Last week I started my annual Opera World Premiere Reviews.  And boy did I get some nasty responses!  First of all, I am jealous of Susan Boyle.  She is one lucky person.  But leave it to Susan Boyle fans to write me some horrible and hilarious hate mail!  If you are one of the multitude that criticized me, thank you for providing legitimacy to my egocentricity.  I wonder why people understand if Mozart would annoy me, but not Susan Boyle or...(sigh)...Josh Groban.

Oh well, hopefully I can continue my controversy with this next World Premiere!

"The Gospel According to the Other Mary"
John Adams

I cannot fully express my excitement for this piece.  John Adams is one of the most influential and most important composers in music history.  He is most famous for Nixon in China, but has had several incredible works like Dr. Atomic (opera about the making of the atomic bomb) and Transmigration of Souls (Pulitzer Prize-winning composition).  As Adams describes, this piece is a reaction to his piece on the nativity of Jesus, which is called El nino.  It is designed like a Passion oratorio - something Bach was very famous for.  A Passion restates the events of Christ's death.

This initial production will be performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and everybody's favorite conductor, Gustavo Dudamel (who is only slightly older than I am!).  It is actually an Oratorio, but Peter Sellers will stage the production beginning next year in a style reminiscent of the traditional Mexican funeral rites.  Staged oratorio - opera...eh, what's the difference?

Besides the bible stories of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus, the libretto is completely based on the poetry of prominent female writers including Dorothy Day, June Jordan, Louise Erdich, and Rosario Castellanos.  The narrators are three countertenors!  (which already implies that only the biggest houses in the world may be able to afford to stage this)  Of course there are other soloists, including Mary Magdalene, orchestra, and a large chorus.  The piece is only 90 minutes long!

Now, if you don't know much about Minimalism, this piece may be a shock to you.  But unlike other minimalist or post-minimalist composers like Glass or Reich, Adams generally composes with great excitement and with HUGE bombastic complexity.  It is kind of like the excitement of John Williams (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) if he were only able to work with 5 chords and a car alarm going off.

Fortunately for us, the Mary Magdalene in this premiere is making a couple of video blogs - they aren't followed by many, so we're going to give her a little boost!  Take a listen to a couple of them, you get to hear two 5 second clips of the music...

As for the rating - this one definitely gets my highest rating of 2 Pav hankies!  I am so excited to hear it!

Last week, I sang the National Anthem at the US Olympic Volleyball Championships.  It was quite incredible.  They had 48 courts, end to end, with bleachers and all - several thousand competitors!  I was honored to sing!

Also, I went to a Sporting KC soccer game FOR FUN!  I don't normally do things just for fun, so I had a great time tailgating with my wife and her cousins.

Shameless promotion for Bud Light
(I will promote other brands if I get free stuff, by the way!)

I cannot help but mention the incredible music I was a part of at the Easter services at Village Presbyterian Church.  Giant choir, brass orchestra, organ reed stops, Celtic Alleluia, Lift High the Cross, Hallelujah Chorus, several thousand people in the congregation, etc., etc. I feel so lucky to be a musician there; the largest church in the entire denomination!  If you love music and live in Kansas City, you MUST experience Village Presbyterian Church sometime!

Next week, we premiere The Little Match Girl Passion at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art - one of the world's greatest art museums.  It is post minimalist and the saddest thing that you have ever heard - but beautiful.  I have a solo in it;  believe it or not, my part is to sputter the word "come" as fast as I can for about 5 minutes.  It is intended to be the voice of a freezing little girl dying on the street corner.  Like I said, it is horrifically sad, but absolutely beautiful.

Finally, here is the last of John Mueter's Three Volga German Songs - Der Zecher.

Mary Magdalene Wars

Life is back to normal, for at least two days.  My Doctoral Recital was a couple of weeks ago, and I will be posting more about that next week, hopefully with recordings.  Now that the opera is finished, I enjoyed a nice evening with some of my family and after they left, my wife and I opened a bottle of wine and watched the Discovery Channel's new show "Frozen Planet".  It's pretty incredible by the way.

Tomorrow, I have the honor of singing the Star Spangled Banner at the National Championship game of the NAIA Men's Division I tournament. If you read this and want to go, let me know. I have an extra guest pass!  The game will be played tomorrow (Tuesday) at 8pm at Municipal Auditorium featuring the winners of Shorter vs. Concordia and Oklahoma Baptist vs. Mountain State.  Those games are played tonight.  As a side note, Kansas City's Municipal Auditorium has hosted more NCAA final fours than any other site - 9.  Second is Madison Square Garden with 7.

Then on Wednesday, I'm off to Chicago.  I will be competing in the NATSAA (National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Awards) District and Regional Finals.  It is a prestigious competition, but it is incredibly difficult for several reasons.  

1.) All the singers are ridiculously good  

2.) Men must compete against Women

3.) We must submit a horrendously specific conglomeration of songs:

1 Operatic Aria

1 Aria from a mass, oratorio, requiem, or cantata

3 American, Canadian, or British art songs in English

2 songs or arias but no more than 2 arias that were composed before 1800

2 German Lieder or French Melodies

2 National art songs that are not German, French, American, Canadian, or British

AND an additional 3 songs or arias that fit within any of the previous four categories

AND 1 of these must have been written after 1950, and it cannot be an arrangement of a folk song

So, I have a collection of 14 songs - an entire recital of music (memorized of course).  If I were to sing the entirety of it, it would take me about an hour.  But in this competition, we are given 15 minutes, and the judges keep selecting songs that they would like to hear until I run out of time.  Only one person from our region of several states advances to the finals.

In case this is new - art songs are classically sung songs that aren't a part of a larger work (like an opera).  If they are from a larger classical work like an opera or an oratorio, they are generally called arias.  There are exceptions, but musical theater (broadway tunes) aren't a part of this competition.  Needless to say, in the world of "cultivated music", this is one of the biggest competitions.

By far the most annoying part of it all isn't the memorizing, but finding original scores for everything.  Even if it is something 400 years old and it is in public domain, you can't simply print it off.  All this means is that instead of fitting everything in a small black folder, I have to carry around a red Radio Flyer wagon with fifty pounds of music instead.

This brings me to an exciting topic.  It is almost April!  That means that it is almost time to begin one of my most disturbing and most ridiculed parts of my blog.  In April, I start looking at the upcoming opera season, since most companies are winding down for the summer.  I get really excited about World Premieres and rate them from worst (2 Susan Boyles) to best (2 Pavarottis).  I get excited about it just as most get excited about movie trailers.

Of course, there are certain types of movies that you would always love to see, and then there are the chick flicks that are just a waste of time.  So too is the world of opera.  There are some concepts that I flat out love, and then there are some that don't get me excited at all.  That doesn't mean they're not good - chick flicks regularly win at the Golden Globes (not the Oscars though) - it just means that I get to post some funny pictures of Susan Boyle.

But the big story this year is all about Mary Magdalene.  Two of the most famous composers on earth are producing pieces in a war of Marys (Maries?).

John Adams' Oratorio "The Gospel According to the Other Mary" being premiered by Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil 

VS. 

Mark Adamo's "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene" being premiered by San Francisco Opera

I'll be tackling that Goliath in a couple of weeks, but until then, here's a short video on what the Gospel of Mary Magdalene is:

6 Classical Music Pieces to Commemorate 9/11 - #2 On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams

We're down to the final two pieces that I wanted to feature.  Both of them are equally amazing, but completely different.  Today, I have a very special treat for you (musicians MUST listen to this) - not only is this piece inspired by 9/11, but it is one of the most important pieces of the 21st century.  It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and the original recording won 3 Grammy Awards in 2005.

On the Transmigration of Souls
by John Adams

How it was influenced by September 11:  It commemorates those who lost their lives on the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. It also mourns on behalf of those of us left behind. It is about the nature of death. According to Adams, "Transmigration means 'the movement from one place to another' or 'the transition from one state of being to another.' But in this case I mean it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don't just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience transformed."  This work is a musical space for reflection; a meditation on an unanswerable question.

What to listen for: The stories.  The piece combines city sounds and live performances by a children's chorus, an adult chorus, and a large orchestra - with choral texts, a litany of victims, taken from newspaper memorials and the desperate missing-person fliers pervading lower Manhattan in the months following the attacks. As the piece continues to the second part, it hauntingly reveals the stories of those mundane moments in the lives of those lost in the attacks, and sets the stories of the children and families in their grief.

To me, personally, this is one of the greatest expressions of life.  What a remarkable way to describe the unknown...and it certainly is one of the greatest achievements of Minimalism.  It is one of the most intriguing and exciting pieces of our generation!