This Saturday, I will be performing with Voce for our second concert of the season, East Meets West. The Hartford-based ensemble will be singing several American songs as a continuation of the season’s theme, “Full Circle.” This concert features pieces by Copland, Gershwin, Whitacre, Lauridsen and more. Ticket information can be found on Voce’s website; the concert is at 7:30pm at Immanuel Congregational Church in West Hartford. I’d love to see you there!
The concert in which I both sang and conducted this past weekend was reviewed in the NY Times, though not so favorably. It was a wonderful experience and in many ways, the most bizarre concert I have been a part of. I sang in two pieces – one an operetta about zombies, the other an early music-influenced doom trio about reanimation of the dead. The piece I was asked to conduct opened the concert with lots of breathing, shoulder shrugging, and yawning (from the singers, hopefully not the audience!). Of course any musician would prefer a fantastic review, but to get one at all is exciting. I have had a surprising fall filled with opportunities to perform new music. It’s a small, invigorated world that I’ve been honored to be a part of! Here’s hoping for more strange gigs to come…
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.
amanda kate weber 