I am pleased to announce that I have accepted a part-time position at First Lutheran Church in Waterbury, CT, where I will serve as their organist and choir director. Believe it or not, this is my first time serving as the musician in a Lutheran Church (in spite of my heavily Lutheran heritage)! I received a very warm welcome this past Sunday and am excited for this new adventure.
I am honored to be singing this evening in a performance of Susan Botti’s Cosmosis. This piece for wind ensemble, solo soprano, and women’s voices was written in 2004 for the University of Michigan. Tonight, I will join 8 other young women to perform this piece at The Hartt School, with Susan Botti singing the soprano solo. Cosmosis is 22 minutes of magical, mythical storytelling about a spider named Arabella. The text is from a poem by May Swenson called, “The Cross Spider,” which was written in response to the news of a Skylab experiment in which a student project proposed to see whether a spider could spin a web in space. Botti’s musical genius instructs our female chorus to sing, shout, stomp, clap, and make every other sound imaginable to convey Arabella’s weaving through space. Come hear it yourself: Tonight, 7:30pm, Millard Auditorium, Hartt School, 200 Bloomfield Ave, West Hartford, CT.
Blessed that the piece I co-conducted on Wednesday was reviewed both by the NY Times and BLOUIN ARTINFO. The latter review gives great detail of the experience of the Brant piece, including my favorite sentence:
This was a community — 52 strong, plus followers, showing its power and diversity, alloyed through the possibilities of the trumpet.
As far as I’m concerned, this piece was for a trumpet choir, and there’s nothing better than making music in community with others!
amanda kate weber 