Hugo Alfvén: Skogen sover

Hugo Alfvén: Skogen sover

Happy summer! Today is the summer solstice and here in the northern hemisphere we will see the most daylight hours we’ll have all year. I remember being enchanted by Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night and marveling at how special the light seemed in the...
Joseph Schwantner: Black Anemones

Joseph Schwantner: Black Anemones

When I was in college I had my first encounter of actual “contemporary” music that was written for a singer. A graduate student was performing Joseph Schwantner’s Two Poems of Agueda Pizarro and I was mesmerized. Up to that point I had only heard the usual “classical”...
Francis Poulenc: Sanglots

Francis Poulenc: Sanglots

I used to practice yoga regularly but I’ve fallen out of it in recent years. I guess this is a gentle reminder to myself that I want to get back into it. I reaped multiple benefits from practicing yoga: physical, mental, and spiritual. The word “yoga” literally means...
Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash: That’s Him

Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash: That’s Him

Today is the first day of rehearsals for the revival of the upcoming Manning the Canon concerts. Several years have passed since our last performances and I am excited to come back to it; it’s always an enlightening experience revisiting a program after some...
Emmanuel Chabrier: L’île heureuse

Emmanuel Chabrier: L’île heureuse

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a Francophile and that French is my favorite foreign language to sing. I have visited and performed in France almost yearly since the 1990s. On my first trip to Paris, Tobé Malawista, my beloved friend and colleague in The...