Friday, January 20, 2012 7 PM The Atlas Performing Arts Center The presence of an art center is a known catalyst for the renaissance of a neighborhood on the down and outs. It attracts peaceful, benign folks (artists, families) ; it fertilizes parallel businesses like restaurants, and when well considered, it serves the community, from young to old. The Atlas is a perfect example. Opera Lafayette chose the Atlas as a rehearsal home many years ago and the members of the orchestra have watched the community move from slightly frightening to … [Read more...]

January 19, 2012 For the chamber musician (and the orchestra of Opera Lafayette consists of chamber musicians), the pit is a torturous music chamber, an uncomfortable dream come true. After two days of preparing the score of Monsigny’s Le Roi et le fermier with instruments and singers in a large rehearsal room at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, we are ready to put the singers on stage and work the magic of theater. For the instrumentalists, this means becoming invisible. It is part of the magic. We have examined and rehearsed each … [Read more...]

January 17, 2012 at 2 PM The Atlas Performing Arts Center We are about to play the music. This is the first rehearsal. We are in our places and tuned up. Loretta O’Sullivan makes sure her cello strings are exact with the harpsichord’s—A, D, G and C. She hands that A to the violins who toss it over to the violas. The winds come last and the orchestra plays an E flat major chord so that each one of us is in harmony with the first notes of the first aria. We are ready to make this Monsigny score come to life. Against the studio room … [Read more...]

January 17, 2012 On the train from New York to Washington DC In the 16 years I have worked with Opera Lafayette I have, with few exception, driven from my home in New York to Washington DC. This is a repeated pilgrimage, three or four times a year, and certain stops along the way are woven into the tapestry. Maryland House is a preferred rest stop, and how happy we were when a crab cake restaurant opened there! Starbucks, YES! Roy Rodgers, NO! Crossing the Chesapeake water gap always beautiful, the light, water, cliffs never fail. … [Read more...]

Friday, January 13, 2012 I’ll be spending the weekend in New York City at Chamber Music America’s annual conference. When I’m not playing the harpsichord, I serve as President of the Board of Trustees for this national service organization that tries in every way to make the lives of classical and jazz musicians who play in small groups, workable, acknowledged, sane! There is so much to keep me thinking and on my toes surrounded by people doing important work brilliantly. Clouding my focus however is that Monsigny score on my music … [Read more...]

New Year’s Day--most of the musicians of Opera Lafayette have played our New Year’s Eve gig (Strauss waltzes?), or have spent the night with friends at parties toasting in the New Year, or as I, have chosen to spend the evening and morning alone with loved ones, husbands and wives, lovers, children, dogs and cats. Yet, on our music desks, all of us have the score or our part to Le Roi et Le Fermier, an opera by Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny that will bring us to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Rose Theater in New York City, and … [Read more...]