It’s 20 days until the off-book rehearsal, and I’ve almost got the large chorus first movement portions of the MacMillan St. John’s Passion memorized, including that nasty tone cluster part for the movement-concluding reflection.  It was in that reflection that I gained yet new appreciation for the composer’s ingenuity as I uncovered more hidden gems.

The Latin text of this first movement (or at least its translation) is familiar to any Catholic.

Accipite, comedite:
Hoc est enim Corpus meum quod pro vobis tradetur.
Accipite et bibite ex eo omnes:
Hic est enim calix Sanguinis mei novi et aeterni testamenti qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum.
Hoc facite in meam commemorationem

Which translates to what even the least faithful Catholic will recognize from going to Mass: “Take this, and eat it — this is my Body.  Take this, and drink, this is my Blood, of the new and everlasting Covenant, shed for you and all sinners.  Do this in memory of me.”

For the non-Catholics, some background.  The transubstantiation mystery, a.k.a. the celebration of the Eucharist, is pretty much the whole point of the Mass, and one of the central tenets of Catholicism.  How can one treat this epic event musically?

Ta da — we have the tone cluster.  Each individual part in the diviso, starting with the low basses and up to Soprano 1, sings each successive syllable of the ”take this and eat it” or “take this and drink it” text, and sings it one half-step higher.  In the end it’s the equivalent of mashing your face on the piano keyboard.  The effect is mysterious and spooky, like when John Williams asks the chorus to do it at the beginning of his Close Encounters of the Third Kind score.  Then we all sing the same melody, if you could call it that, except we’re each singing it from our base starting note.  This is like rolling your face around on a keyboard… or perhaps picking it up and mashing it down in a very set pattern.

And you know what?  It works.  It certainly conveys that something funky is going on, that this is unlike anything else you’ve experienced, that you should pay attention because something magical and mysterious just happened right in front of you.  It’s like the altar bells, only much more in your face.

Now for the rest of it… all the stuff about the new and everlasting Covenant, and so forth.  It’s all chanted pretty regularly by the whole chorus in a solid chord.  But whenever the text mentions the people being saved, it drops to an out of place, discordant chord that is at odds with the rest of the chant.  This happens for “vobis et pro multis”, meaning “for you and for many.”  It also happens for the word “peccatorum”, or “sinners.”  This is quite consistent with the general Catholic approach, which is to say we’re all sinners and aren’t worthy to even glance at the big toe of God or Jesus, but if we pray hard enough and seek forgiveness and healing through the Sacraments then maybe, just maybe, we might be deemed worthy of God’s grace.

All that conveyed in the 60 seconds or so of this passage.  Brilliant.  I love it.

I went into the Kids Matinee this year with a sense of dread.  We had several “kids songs” that didn’t feel like very good kids’ songs.  “Christmas Time is Here” from A Charlie Brown Christmas?  (Do kids even watch that any more?)  “Must Be Santa?”  They say kids learn this one in school but I had never heard of it until this year.  (Then again, I had never heard “The Man with the Bag” until our Santa Medley included it.)  Plus “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” for which I think everyone expected a soloist who was a stereotypical Big Black Woman with some gospel soul in her heart… only to see the diminuitive, perky, and very white Maureen Brennan make an appearance at the orchestra rehearsal.  She would be the guest soloist for all the kids’ shows this year.  It was a  facepalm moment.  I was so happy I only had one kids’ matinee on my concert schedule.

Fast forward to last Satuday at 11am.  The concert’s about to start.  The chatter in the crowd was decidedly in a higher register as I saw all the kids in the crowd clearly excited to be there.  When the opening piece started, one 3 or 4 year old in the 1st balcony stood on his mom’s lap and waved his arms frantically trying to imitate Keith conducting.  When Maureen came out all perky and bouncy with her hi-boys-and-girls attitude, it felt very genuine and really engaged the audience, young and old.  (As opposed to when she turned it on briefly at the orchestra rehearsal a few weeks earlier, all she really got was a lot of eye rolls from the choristers.)  When Keith announced that we’d be doing an excerpt from A Charlie Brown Christmas there was definitely an oooh from the crowd as they recognized it — even though, as Keith jokingly pointed out, when he was little it was only on once a year.  If you missed it you had to wait a whole ‘nother year to see it.  There were no DVRs, no On Demand, no cable.  Didn’t matter, it was a hit.  And don’t get me started on when Santa came out, and stayed for all of Must Be Santa (with everyone singing along).  In fact, the whole show was a hit.  It really put me in the Christmas spirit and left me quite energized.  It was nice to remember that THAT was why I sang at Holiday Pops!

So I almost feel bad that we didn’t drag our older son Jack along to a concert this year.  Almost.  Last year the big sing-through piece was The Polar Express and that was a big hit with him at 3-1/2 years old.  This year it was a medley of Christmas carols telling “the original Christmas Story” with Robert Honeysucker or our old pal Jim Demler narrating and singing.  No one was foolish enough to think that would keep the kids engaged, so it wasn’t even on the children’s matinee program.  Yet at almost a full 90 minutes this year (with no intermission!) I think there were enough fun things that Jack and his attention span would have made it to the end.

Interesting lunch conversation the other day with other TFC chorus members between Holiday Pops performances.  We talked about how, as much fun as the Holiday Pops is, in truth the Pops Orchestra would find very few volunteers from the chorus from the TFC if it wasn’t a requirement for staying in the chorus.  Oh, sure, nothing is ever written out to this effect, as far as I’ve seen.   But there’s very much an attendance and participation requirement as for being part of the chorus — stories abound of people not making later rosters after cancelling out last minute or missing too many rehearsals.  A lot of us are part of the TFC because we love the higher level of performance (and accountability!) that comes with the pieces we do as well as the thrill of getting to perform at Symphony Hall or out in the Berkshires.  So it’s understandable that the BSO/Pops require us to sing the Holiday Pops concerts — there are a lot of good singers, and why not judge just on your voice but also on your attendance, reliability, and availability? 

It also made me feel bad for one singer who missed the morning concert that day; he had written down that he was doing 2 concerts but thought it was the 3pm and 7:30pm.  He knows it’s a black mark that may come to haunt him some day when rosters are chosen!

Now, mind you, I love singing for the Holiday Pops.  It’s been a part of my life for… 13 years?  14?  I’ve lost count.  But by the time you hit that 6th and 7th concert, you’re mostly Pops’d out.  Especially given how busy December is for everyone anyways.  There was a stretch of several years during which I was ONLY on the Holiday Pops roster, sort of the TFC Junior Varsity team.  If you’re on that side roster, then you are very excited to be doing Holiday Pops!  It’s your one chance all year to get on stage and be a part of the spectacle that is a Symphony Hall performance.  I took great pride in those appearances.  It helps to remember that.  But that was a man in the desert happy to find an oasis.  When you’ve got running water, the oasis pond looks kinda muddy… are you really gonna drink that?

We noticed that this year they stopped saying that we “sing for the joy of it” and that we were a “completely volunteer chorus” during our introduction.  Now Keith Lockhart simply says that we “give freely of our time” during this busy season.  Definitely more accurate.  We give for free because we want to be a part of this chorus, and committing to 6-8 Holiday Pops concerts is the de facto admission price.

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The rehearsal schedule was rejiggered… and the off-book date was moved up.  To January 11th.  Yikes!  That’s not such a big move, but the reality of that date finally hit me.  That’s about three weeks away!

For the uninitiated, the TFC memorizes the music for all of its performances.  That’s always been one of the things I love about singing with the chorus, for two reasons.  First of all, it means you really get to know the music inside and out.  Secondly, it means most of the “work” of being the chorus is shouldered by the individual members on their own time and pace, rather than by grinding it out through weekly evening 2-3 hour rehearsals to work on notes together.  Typically the last piano rehearsal before we rehearse with the conductor on concert week is known as the “off-book” rehearsal.  You can have your music with you, but you’re expected to have it memorized by that point. 

There was a time when people didn’t take that off-book date too seriously.  We would make note cards with text on it as reminders, or little cheat sheets to get through some of the tough parts.  A few years ago John Oliver came down hard on that.  “Off book is off book,” he admonished us, specifically calling out note cards and cheat sheets as signs you were not ready.  Some of us still sneak a few notes or peeks at the music to confirm what we think we know.

This piece is certainly going to be one of the harder pieces we’ve had to memorize — though I’m told by most accounts that Moses und Aron, the Schoenberg opera, probably tops the list.  I expect we’ll have a lot of people sneaking peeks at music on January 11th.

Right.  January 11th.  Holy crap!  Did I mention that’s only about 3 weeks away?  I’ve been soaking up the music but I’ve only sat down and truly studied a few movements, trying to imprint both the notes and the text in my brain.  Time to step it up!

On December 5, 2009 Revgear sponsored  Ryan Ford defeated John Walsh by KO in 13 seconds at TFC 9: Total Chaos  at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (video):

want to listen?

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Sometimes I get annoyed when Prince Charles bangs on about how everyone should eat properly. It’s easy for him to say, isn’t it? I’d eat pretty well too if I owned half the bloody West Country. And don’t get me started on Poundbury.
Yes, yes, I know I should only shop at local organic butchers and fishmongers, and only buy seasonal veggies, and Tesco is the root of all evil. But sometimes I don’t have time to go to the local butcher and I’m still scarred by the experience of being charged 11 quid for some bacon and a few sausages at an organic butcher. I asked him to check and he said, oh, yes, my mistake, that should be six pounds*. And some of them only take cash. And quite frankly the checkout staff at Sainsbury’s are often a lot friendlier than some of these local organic our-chickens-are-freerange-and-have-half-an-hour-of-internet-access-a-day butchers. Having said that, some are excellent, like the Ginger Pig in Victoria Park and the ones at Broadway Market who sell pork & apple cider brandy sausages.

But… supermarkets are convenient. You can get everything you need for dinner in ten minutes with no cash, something that cannot be underestimated when blood sugars are plummeting and you’ve forgotten your umbrella. I don’t go to Sainsbury’s to hang out or anything – well, not very often – but you have to be realistic. And everyone loves a bit of shopping-basket observation, don’t they?

However, I also like going to TFC, which is a Turkish supermarket just off Ridley Road market.

Here, the meat comes as lamb shoulders, whole corn-fed chickens, trays of delicate chops and buckets of chicken livers. The ricotta is wrapped only in paper and there are about fifty yogurt varieties, and least ten tahinis and more halloumi than you could poke a hot tong at. The fruit and veggie section is full of dark red vine tomatoes and unwaxed lemons and rocket and quinces and sorrel and clementines still with the leaves on. There are no farmers’ names on anything.

And then there’s the bakery. When my parents come to visit it’s one of their regular haunts, with freshly baked flatbreads, baklava and all sorts of syrup-drenched almondy cakes. Lahmacun at lunchtime. Plus they have vats of olive oil and big bags of jasmine rice. A million different packets of beans. And an ongoing multi-buy discount on chickpeas and flatbread.

There’s lots of things I like cooking from here, but my all-time favourite, which is great for breakfast, is Morrocan eggs (from the Moro cookbook, but adapted by me). It’s good on weekends, especially in summer when tomatoes are so good. And I don’t like to be a snob about it but it’s worth getting decent (organic) eggs. I’ll add a photo the next time I make them, but here’s one to give you an idea of how they should look.

You will need:

A dash of olive oil
A clove of garlic, thinly sliced
half a teaspoon or so cumin
half a teaspoon or so of ground coriander
three or four fresh tomatoes, depending on size.
a pinch of sugar
four eggs
pepper
fresh coriander if you have it
yogurt and flatbread to serve

Get some coffee on. Slice the garlic thinly (you can also use spring onion) and fry gently in the oil while you chop the tomatoes. Sprinkle over the cumin and coriander and salt, sizzle for a moment, then tip in the chopped tomatoes and bring to a boil.

Let it cook for five minutes or so, adding water if it looks dry, and a little sugar if the tomatoes are acidic. Then make four little holes in the sauce with a wooden spoon and gently break in the eggs, frilling out the whites so they cook on top of the sauce. Cover with a lid (a small, heavy-based deepish frying pan works best) and leave the eggs to poach while you toast the flatbread, pour the coffee and get your bowls ready.

When they look cooked, sprinkle with pepper and fresh coriander and spoon over the toasted flatbread. Season with salt and pepper, add some fresh yogurt (TFC also sell labne which is a very thick version) and eat immediately, although be careful as the tomatoes can be very hot.

• PS It was the butcher in the caravan at the Hackney Road end of Broadway Market if you’re interested.

(mmacanada.net)

I think the article on Much Music no longer airing videos that contribute to Canadian culture is a good place for me to start featuring music videos that contribute to Canadian culture. Someone has to pick up the slack.

Ryan “The Real Deal” Ford, 27, is from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His MMA record is 10-2 and his fighting style is aggressive. During his TFC 7 fight in Canada on May 30th 2009, he submitted Dave Mazany by TKO (you can watch it on youtube>>>)

“MMA Authority” magazine writes about Ryan: “It’s obvious that with a few more years under his belt, Ryan Ford will have the physical tools to be the next great Canadian fighter…” (read the whole article from MMA Authority magazine)

On December 5, 2009 Ryan “The Real Deal” Ford will face off with John Walsh (10-4), California, USA for the vacant TFC Welterweight World Title.

Revgear is proud to sponsor Ryan – we know he is “The Real Deal”!

With the recent signing of Predrag (Preki) Radosavlijevic, Mo Johnston finally got one right when it comes to hiring a head coach for TFC.

I’ve been noting for over a year that TFC needed a head coach with: 1) experience, and preferably MLS experience and 2) a proven winning record.  Neither Carver or Cummins had this.  Preki on the other hand has an impressive 40-29-21 record as head coach.  In addition to his MLS experience as a head coach, Preki has also played in the Premiership (Everton and Portsmouth), in the MLS (Kansas City and Miami- twice winning the MLS MVP award) and the World Cup.

Is Preki perfect?  No.  He is 0 for 6 as a head coach in the playoffs.  Is this a concern?  Sure, a minor concern.  I’d prefer Bruce Arena.  But, he’s not available, and what TFC needed was a good competent coach, not the perfect head coach. 

Under both Carver and Cummins I questioned what “system” TFC were using.  Frankly, it appeared there was no system.  Preki has made it very clear that  he has a specific system.  This system will start with good defence and every player on the squad will know his role within the system, which will be played as a 4-4-2.  The players are going to be on board with the system or they aren’t going to be playing for TFC.  This is the opposite of what TFC had for the past few seasons- which was a bunch of individuals whose occasional bouts of ability resulted in some good results, but for the most part inconsistency and no clear team vision aside from:  “Our goal is to make the playoffs”.

TFC has some good players currently.  Some changes will be made to mould the squad into Preki’s vision.  Once this happens, and with Preki at the helm, my prediction for next season is TFC will make the playoffs with 45 points, and something similar to the following record:  12-9-9.

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