Category Musical Passion
You Gotta Have Strings
Well it’s been a terrible few days for me in violin land. I have not played since Saturday, when I got in a quick 45 minute practice session. The main reason is my broken A string, compounded by the blizzard – I wrote I would head to the burbs to visit the luthier on Tuesday, […]
O’Connor in a Haystack at the Jazz Record Mart
Supremely Gifted Musical Sister and her husband, also Supremely Musically Gifted, are in town for a few days, and we’ve had a great time. One to-do on their Chicago list was a trip to Jazz Record Mart – a little bit of heaven for enthusiasts like my brother-in-law. Their hotel is within easy walking distance […]
Pentatonix Got Talent
I’ve always enjoyed music a cappella. From barbershop quartets to chorale music, unaided voices can really get the musical job done. One group I’ve had my eye on for the past couple of years is Pentatonix. They do covers of others’ music, and they’re upbeat and peppy and seem to have a lot of fun […]
Fanny Crosby
I’ve written before about my background making music for God when I was a child – my church life was my real life, while school and the rest of the world were secondary passions. One of my favorite things to do at church was sing – whether it was congregational worship choruses, The Great Hymns […]
A Lesson at Last
Another lesson, another gavotte – I told Teacher yesterday that I’m trying to get into the gavotte groove rhythmically – feel the gavotte. The French dance form is now represented in three pieces I’m playing – Gavotte by Gossec, Gavotte from Mignon, by Thomas, and the new Gavotte by Lully. All three are indeed French, […]
And All the Boys Sing Mahler Eight
While in Wichita last week, I mentioned my interest in digging up more information on the boys choir in which I participated when I was about ten years old to my mother. So on Christmas morning we took a few minutes to go hunting through our family ephemera for whatever we could find. Though we […]
Learning Wards off Stodgy
The other day I wrote about how happy I’ve been to fill in a couple of blanks of the “I’ve always wanted to ________” variety. I mentioned a friend who’s always wanted to play the cello. Well, I’m happy to report that she went out and rented a cello last weekend, and will start lessons […]
Puff the Magic Dragon
I don’t know much about the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, except to know that they were part of the counterculture of the 1960s and they recorded Puff the Magic Dragon. My dad loved “oldies,” and it’s the genre with which our household was the most familiar as I was growing up. When I […]
The Nutcracker
It was a normal Monday off for me yesterday, so I took the opportunity to put up our Christmas tree. Doing so as a child, we always put on Christmas music and made it a family affair – even so, I think we managed, in our incredibly musical household that loved Christmas more than just […]
Ryan Libel 