Accelerando!

This week’s activity included sending a 2,000-word memorandum to the SDG board, updating directors on the organization’s program activity . . . yes, 2,000 words. We’ve got a lot on our plate these days. We stay pretty busy around here in general, but 2010/11 will be the busiest season SDG has had in its 17-year history. In the next eleven months, we anticipate more premieres of pieces we’ve commissioned or sponsored than we’ve had in the last six years combined.

Among this season’s highlights, new Psalm settings will issue from composer Sven-David Sandström and from SDG’s own Composer-in-Association, Peter Bannister. Composer James MacMillan will contribute to our choral output as well with a new work based on a passage from the Book of Revelations. But before any of that comes to pass (no pun intended), Peter Bannister’s vocal/orchestral song cycle Hermosura de Dios (“The Beauty of God”) will premiere in Hungary this summer at the Crescendo Summer Institute, followed by Arvo Pärt’s new work/arrangement In Spe (“In Hope”) at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Wales—part of the festival’s celebration of Pärt’s 75th birthday. In early November, the Indianapolis Children’s Choir will premiere Neal Harnly’s 35-minute, multi-movement work, The Lost Son, based on Christ’s parable of the Prodigal Son, and a few weeks later Daniel Kellogg will be the first composer to have two different SDG-commissioned works premiere on the same day in two different locations—one in Wheaton, Illinois, and another in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Before and between all these activities, a long list of other projects and events is sprinkled on our calendar, including several house concerts, the completion and launch of our new website, two regional concerts showcasing Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, our fall board meeting and participation in ACDA’s National Convention in Chicago next March. Hopefully we’ll somehow manage to stay on top of the regular joys of project management (2011/12 and beyond), communication and finances.

I know what you’re thinking: “He left out all the details!” Well, those will all be published in due course, and friends on our email list and those following us on Facebook will be among the first to know and hear the music. (Hint, hint, maybe you should sign up!)

As anyone would probably guess, it takes quite a team of people to dream up and pursue this much organizational activity—and I’m grateful for everyone involved. But I’m taking opportunity here to express my thanks to one person in particular who has long been a driving force for SDG. Richard Gieser’s leadership as Chairman continues to be marked by tireless, creative energy and spiritual devotion to our cause. Dick, we all owe you thanks, not only for the progress made on many of these projects, but for the very ideas that sparked their existence. Three cheers for all you’re doing on behalf of SDG!

July 22, 2010 | Filed Under SDG general | Leave a Comment

Haydn in the Netherlands

What a joy it will be to take in the filming and live broadcast of Haydn’s The Creation next month in the Netherlands! I have a soft spot for great sacred spaces, and from the photos and videos I’ve seen of the Grote Kerk (Great Church) in Naarden, it looks like a truly spectacular setting for this SDG-sponsored production. As this satellite shot reveals, the church sits in the middle of the town of Naarden, which is surrounded by a moat in the shape of a star.

I plan to take lots of pictures and hope to relay here on my blog a bit of the feel of being there, behind the scenes. SDG’s production partners, Ideale Audience and Medici.tv, did such a superb job with the live broadcast of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis in Lisbon earlier this year. I’m delighted to partner with them again on this new production. We live in an amazing time in which beautiful music can be made and beamed online to viewers around the world, with a delay of only a few seconds. It’s stunning, really.

May 17, 2010 | Filed Under Haydn: The Creation, SDG general | Leave a Comment

Open house…and DVD screening?

Today I hope to finalize plans for an open house we’ll be hosting here at the SDG office in connection with our spring board meeting in May. Sometimes good ideas get complicated by even better ones. Why not take the occasion to celebrate the release of our Beethoven Missa Solemnis DVD? The DVD won’t hit the store shelves until later this year, but we could get our hands on the disc early and have a screening when John Nelson comes to town for the meeting. Sounds like a great idea to me, but we need to find a venue close by for this one.

Cathedral Room, University Club of Chicago I recall our last DVD screening, a dazzling affair (if I do say so myself) in the Cathedral Room of the University Club of Chicago, where a crowd of about 300 enjoyed Bach’s Mass in B Minor on an enormous screen. Given that the Bach film was shot at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the surroundings of the Cathedral Room were perfect! A large poster from the event now hangs on the wall outside my office – another interesting piece of memorabilia to check out at the open house.

For the Beethoven screening we’re shooting for a simpler event, though I hope no less exciting. We’ve got lots of work to do between now and then!

March 31, 2010 | Filed Under SDG general | Leave a Comment

Prelude to an essay

Peter Bannister leads a rehearsal with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris

This morning I finished reading a brilliant essay by composer/musicologist Peter Bannister, SDG’s Associate Artistic Director, reflecting on Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, a piece for which Peter joined the Chamber Orchestra of Europe as organist in last month’s performances in Lisbon. One would probably have to comb through a great deal of what’s written elsewhere on the Missa Solemnis to find anything quite like what Peter has put forward in this essay. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was stirred - and yes, we are planning to post the essay on the SDG website soon. In addition to illuminating Beethoven’s Missa, I found it helpful as an example of how to think analytically about a piece of great sacred music from a theological point of view. More often than not, what we read about a work like the Missa comes to us in the form of program notes and focuses primarily on the work’s technical construction and basic aesthetic gestures. But there’s a somewhat assumed and unspoken part of our admiration for great sacred music that has more to do with the music’s theological underpinnings, specifically what the composer was thinking with regard to the meaning of the text, in this case a liturgical text, and the musical constructs employed to express that. In that regard, Peter’s essay led me down paths of thought that I would most likely have never traveled alone. No doubt it will do the same valuable service for other readers as well. I look forward to sharing it far and wide.

March 24, 2010 | Filed Under SDG general | Leave a Comment

Up close

Here’s a shot of the scores I mentioned in my last post. It’s always interesting to get a close look at music like this. The frame closest to the camera holds a copy of the title page of the Requiem SDG commissioned from Pulitzer Prize-winner Christopher Rouse - a gargantuan, emotionally charged work.

Rouse Requiem- photo: Lee Salem Photography

And here’s a shot from the world premiere of the piece with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Los Angeles Children’s Choir (more photos here and info here). What a magnificent project that was, commissioned in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hector Berlioz. I enjoyed the opportunity to visit with the composer and take in Walt Disney Concert Hall (pictured below).

Not surprisingly, Disney Hall has come to mind since then in connection with the J. Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago. Both were designed by Frank Gehry and the similarity is striking.

Rouse Requiem photo courtesy of Lee Salem Photography.

March 19, 2010 | Filed Under SDG general | Leave a Comment

Onwards

I enjoyed lunch today with a dear friend who took the opportunity to pray God’s blessing on SDG. How I cherish that.

This week we welcomed two additions to our staff, Communications Manager Marcia Broucek and Administrative Assistant Katherine Ludington. Both are exceptionally qualified. After years of being understaffed (and really feeling the burden of that!), I am so relieved and excited to see these two join the team.

Plans are being made for an open house here at our new office in Glen Ellyn. Our space will soon be enhanced by the installation of a beautiful new painting created for SDG, scheduled to arrive next week. We’ve framed pages from several musical scores we’ve commissioned as well as autographed concert posters, and we’ll have other memorabilia on display as well. I look forward to welcoming SDG friends and showing them around. I guess I’ll have to replace the cardboard box I’ve been using as a printer stand before we open the doors for the event!

March 18, 2010 | Filed Under SDG general | Leave a Comment