Here we are: Saturday, and the day of at least the first of the concerts about which this email purportedly gives you advance notice.  This past week has been one of those where life is busy enough — in no small part with rehearsals, church services, lessons, and practice — that I barely have (edit: have not at had) time to write the email to tell you all about the upcoming concerts related to all of the above.  But I’ll take busyness over the opposite, so: while this early-evening, pre-concert dinner is in the oven, before my timer goes off 🤞🏻, please accept both my apologies and a quick run-down of what has been and soon will be up.

December: Four Messiah performances!  One with Epiphany; two with Harmonia; one as both the alto soloist (and also member of the chorus) at Blessed Sacrament.  All of them were differently fun, but especially the latter was such a treat — throwing my voice into the soaring, candlelit sanctuary, with a handful of strings and a harpsichord dancing along: just so fun.  And there are videos!  Click below if you can never get enough Handel:

January: My first three performances with the local Mägi Ensemble happened, in Estonia!  Trip highlights include a surprising amount of vegetarian/vegan options, jumping into the frigid Baltic sea and then scurrying straight back into a sauna-igloo, and lots of singing. You may be unsurprised to learn that medieval churches have slightly less effective heating systems than the modern, tucked-into-the-woods Arvo Pärt center — performance #1 featured shivering; performance #2 featured winter boots and wool long underwear beneath our concert dress; performance #3 featured beautifully-crafted, intimate acoustics, a sylvan path, a green room with lemon-mint spa water and a cafe with straight-out-of-the-oven crusty bread and creamy soup.  You can see concert clips, should you be so inclined, on the group’s Instagram, and a few tour pics on mine.

I’ll keep this as short as I’m able (shush – I can hear those snickers), since my timer just went off:

The still-new Evergreen Ensemble presents a program entitled Luminous Night of the Soul, split into halves along themes of dark and light, centered around similarly-themed pieces by contemporary Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo.  It’s a small-ish group – 24 of us or so – and it’s full of beautiful voices and fantastic musicians.  Harmonia’s director Will White recently described the group as having “already established itself as one of the choral heavyweights in town” (thanks, Will!); I’ve been delighted to join them this season.  This weekend will bring big choral walls of sound, lots of susurrating textures, a stunning tenor solo, and strings and piano to boot.

When/Where: Tonight (Saturday 2/17), Edmonds United Methodist Church, 7 PM; tomorrow (Sunday 2/18), Trinity Episcopal Parish Church, 3 PM.

The thing I’m probably the most excited about over these next few weeks is the art song concert I’ll be doing with three other Blessed Sacrament staff singers the last day of the month, Feb. 29, on which each of the four of us will be doing a set of songs with a pianist.  After casting about for a bit wondering what I should sing, I realized it was obvious: the song cycle I’ve been only-semi-subconsciously wanting to do since I was a teenager listening to it on my parents’ CDs, Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.  The title translates as “Songs of a Wayfarer,” but it may as well be called “Songs of a Brokenhearted, Unhinged Lover Who Should Probably Spend Less Time Lamenting and More Time in Therapy.”  It feels springy to me in many places – “I walked across the fields this morning / Dew still hung on the grass / The merry finch said to me [...] Good morning! Hey, you there! / Isn’t it a lovely world? / Tweet! Tweet!” – but our narrator is pretty upset about his beloved, since they’re getting married today, it seems to the wrong person.  Our hero has a lot to say about it, such as how they feel like there’s a flaming knife cutting deeply – Oh woe! Oh woe! – and how they’re hallucinating their obsession in basically every little thing.  Like I said – therapy, but therapy would have made for much more boring poetry, so 🤷🏻‍♀️
 

Also, it’s basically Mahler’s first symphony in song form.  These are gorgeous themes, from the chirpy bird to the constant major/minor modulations that to me sound like the shiftings of an unstable mind.  It’s where Romanticism meets the edge of tonality.  These have been both a joy and a huge challenge to learn and to try to wrap my voice around.  I’m excited about the performance in a few weeks!

When/Where: February 29, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, 7:30 PM.

The Mägi Ensemble will be giving a “homecoming” concert with the program we took on tour!  99% Baltic music; 99% written by women; 99% written within the last 10 years (my math may be slightly off, but you get the idea); 100% very cool stuff.

When/Where: March 2, Mount Baker Presbyterian Church, 7 PM

Harmonia’s Chorus will present “Oracles,” an all-chorus program (typically it’s symphonic-chorus stuff, so choir + orchestra) with pieces spanning many centuries – to directly crib their copy (why try to say it better than Will already has?): this concert gives voice to the voices from beyond. The program revolves around Lassus’ mesmerizing motet cycle Prophetiae sibyllarum (”Sibylline Prophecies”) and is rounded out with works by J.S. Bach, Rossi and Kreek, plus local composers Jessica French and Sheila Bristow — who will be represented with a world premiere!

When/Where: Saturday March 9, First Free Methodist Church, 7:30 PM

I’m going to mash “send” to give this enough time to hit your inboxes with a reasonable chance that you might see it before tonight’s performance.  Besides, I have to change and eat.

More as it comes!  Hope your 2024 is off to as good a start as mine,

-nh