WINTER IS HERE!!!!
Well, despite recent national weather trying to advance the calendar, Saturday is the official "start" of winter! Our longest night of the year, our shortest daylight....the deepest dark days of the year......the Winter Solstice (click those words!).....just right for music and lights!
Although I promised all of December's Wednesday posts would be about singing and caroling, I must veer a moment from that course to express my complete delight at the listening of (instrumental) The Skaters Waltz (or Les Patineurs) written by Emile Waldteufel in France in 1882 where, according to WikiPedia, Waldteufel was inspired by the Cercle des Patineurs or 'Rink of Skaters' at the Bois de Boulogne in Paris . I heard the piece on our local public radio station on my way home from work last Friday, and despite my fatigue, the waltz's lyricism and lilting rhythm perked me up and reminded me of how I enjoyed practicing it even in its "intermediate" level piano form (thanks, Thompson's!). Click HERE to see what version I heard! I challenge you to play a waltz anytime you're feeling down!
Speaking of public radio......(and here's where we pointedly veer back to our singing theme!).....growing up, public radio's music seemed to always be on in our home, not only daily (Santa's Twin on Boston public radio... SEE HIS PHOTO HERE; LEARN MORE about this Renaissance man HERE!), but especially around Christmas time!
I'll never forget how my first hearing of the Kings College Chapel's "A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols" made me stop completely and revel in the ethereal harmonies of those boys reaching notes in what seemed like the stratosphere. The purity of their voices! When I spent my junior year in London and sang with the University of London Union community choir, I was again exposed to the richness of the British holiday choral tradition....the beautiful harmonies, wonderful arrangements, and articulate lyrics! Once In Royal David's City, Ding Dong Merrily on High, the brilliance of the arrangements and compositions by John Rutter and David Willcocks ....something about Christmas in England....you just feel part of an "olde" tradition! (Dickens, anyone?!). The Brits DO know how to do Christmas in a grand manner....check out some British Christmas tidbits in the RESOURCE section belowSo, back to boys choirs - as I mentioned in last Wednesday's blogs, I was going to highlight a few fab boy singing groups (of the choral variety!).
I'm sure most of you are familiar with The Vienna Boys Choir, The Boys Choir of Harlem, the Kings College Choir ("perhaps the most famous choral foundation of its kind. It is made up of fourteen adult male Choral Scholars and sixteen boy Choristers" ), Libera, and I'm sure many others, but did you know about this RALEIGH GROUP? A member kindly wrote in to let us know about her boys' choir, saying:
I'm sure most of you are familiar with The Vienna Boys Choir, The Boys Choir of Harlem, the Kings College Choir ("perhaps the most famous choral foundation of its kind. It is made up of fourteen adult male Choral Scholars and sixteen boy Choristers" ), Libera, and I'm sure many others, but did you know about this RALEIGH GROUP? A member kindly wrote in to let us know about her boys' choir, saying:
I find that exposure to music sung by Boychoirs, including Harlem, Libera, St.Thomas, and of course, our boychoir helps boys enjoy and "find" their treble voices. As well, we hear Men's singing groups including University of NC Cliffhangers, Chapter 6 men's acapella group, Lettermen, etc., to expose our students to men's choral sound. When solo opportunities are available for programs/assemblies I find 50% of my boys audition or volunteer. I'm hooked on boy treble voices!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It's such a joy to have a local public radio station that will play a plethora of Christmas and holiday music....see how the DC station does it - click HERE For WETA's seasonal playlist, and click HERE for WETA's Holiday programming on Christmas Eve day and Christmas day! The Nine Lessons and Carols, Messiah, The Nutcracker Suite, and the Bach Christmas Oratorio all will be aired! Check with your local public radio station see if these stellar concerts will be broadcast in your area! (see more about this below).
RESOURCESAMERICAN PUBLIC RADIO links/list
MORE MESSIAH!
(more below!)
(more below!)
Carol of the Bells Warm Up from Kathee Williams, MENC mentor 
Oldest Christmas Carol; just for fun, I decided to look: and
History of Gingerbread !!
MORE ON SANTA's TWIN, Public Radio's Robert J. Lurtsema (click)
Here's an excerpt:
John Harbison, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, noted that Mr. Lurtsema stood out in a radio environment where individual taste and commitment to music are increasingly made to defer to homogenized programming.
''Morning Pro Musica,'' Harbison said yesterday, ''was one of the last bastions of playing complete, challenging pieces from beginning to end. We'll miss him.''
Lurtsemaheld a truly impressive array of jobs: lumberjack, construction worker, trapeze artist, carpenter, encyclopedia salesman, diving instructor, commercial artist, and for five years presided over a folk music program on WCRB. He lived in New York for three years, working in advertising and publishing, and managed a national chain of teenage discotheques, the Hullabaloo Clubs.
In 1968, he returned to Boston and took up painting. He was in his studio one day when he heard a WGBH announcer misidentify a Mozart composition. Phoning in a correction, Mr. Lurtsema was informed there was an opening for a weekend classical music announcer. He got the job and began at the station in June 1971. Asked to switch to a Monday-Friday schedule, Mr. Lurtsema proposed he handle the announcing chores for all seven mornings. He thrived on the resulting 70-hour work week.
Mr. Lurtsema would generally take five hours to prepare each five-hour program, doing the scheduling three months in advance. He tended to program the early hours chronologically, with music of the medieval, Baroque, and Classical eras predominating (''Nothing too jarring before 9 a.m.,'' he liked to say). He would key his programming to composers' birthdays, holidays, historical events, the change of seasons, and the like. Sunday mornings he would broadcast a Bach cantata and he delighted in programming various musical cycles - each of Haydn's symphonies, say, or the complete works of Mozart played in the order of their composition
John Harbison, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, noted that Mr. Lurtsema stood out in a radio environment where individual taste and commitment to music are increasingly made to defer to homogenized programming.
''Morning Pro Musica,'' Harbison said yesterday, ''was one of the last bastions of playing complete, challenging pieces from beginning to end. We'll miss him.''
Lurtsemaheld a truly impressive array of jobs: lumberjack, construction worker, trapeze artist, carpenter, encyclopedia salesman, diving instructor, commercial artist, and for five years presided over a folk music program on WCRB. He lived in New York for three years, working in advertising and publishing, and managed a national chain of teenage discotheques, the Hullabaloo Clubs.
In 1968, he returned to Boston and took up painting. He was in his studio one day when he heard a WGBH announcer misidentify a Mozart composition. Phoning in a correction, Mr. Lurtsema was informed there was an opening for a weekend classical music announcer. He got the job and began at the station in June 1971. Asked to switch to a Monday-Friday schedule, Mr. Lurtsema proposed he handle the announcing chores for all seven mornings. He thrived on the resulting 70-hour work week.
Mr. Lurtsema would generally take five hours to prepare each five-hour program, doing the scheduling three months in advance. He tended to program the early hours chronologically, with music of the medieval, Baroque, and Classical eras predominating (''Nothing too jarring before 9 a.m.,'' he liked to say). He would key his programming to composers' birthdays, holidays, historical events, the change of seasons, and the like. Sunday mornings he would broadcast a Bach cantata and he delighted in programming various musical cycles - each of Haydn's symphonies, say, or the complete works of Mozart played in the order of their compositionHEAR LURTSEMA's SONOROUS VOICE! (click this!)
"Hearing the news read in Mr. Lurtsema's magisterial tones - The New York Times once described his voice as having ''the texture of warm fudge'' - was a unique experience. Indeed, a listener once wrote him, ''If the end of the world were coming, I'd want to hear it from you. I can hear you saying, `Well, there has been an announcement that the world will end in 28 minutes. That gives us just enough time to hear Telemann's Sonata in F for Recorder, Oboe and Continuo.''
(Taken from THIS site HERE!)
Santa's Twin Reads Christmas Stories! (click here!) (just a little more, below!)
MERRY CHRISTMAS! Enjoy your holidays and til next time, SR
