Days 6 and 7 – Food and Music

Day 6: Ever heard of Max Brenner?  A Plexiglas rack was placed before me.  In various openings sat a small carafe of warm chocolate ganache, a bowl of tiny chocolate balls filled with peanut butter, crushed wafers, and a waffle cone with one scoop of peanut butter chocolate and one of vanilla ice cream.  Give me a break!  It was lunch!…and a fine one at that.  I needed lunch, I had time before the next concert and the place appeared as I walked near the venue – another sign from God (that means no guilt in celebrating every bite).  By the way, the Server noticed and brought another carafe of chocolate when the need was apparent (very small carafe! – well, sort of small).

Before that while crossing a street, I engaged a local in conversation about the very complex intersection of multiple streets.  We were stand on a small island with traffic whizzing by us.  Her mother (in her mid-80’s) had recently been hit at that very spot, thrown a distance as a car tried to make a U-turn, ended up going the wrong direction, backed into her and drove off.  Her mother walked away with only bruises – a tough lady.  I mentioned I was on my way to a concert and she stopped for a couple of minutes asking about it.  That was a very full five minute conversation very full.

I saw Kristen’s friend Emily (I think I can also now at least claim Emily as an acquaintance if not a friend) at the next concert in a very small old and very lovely venue.  There was an early horn that looked like a French horn without valves.  Emily told me and later the player confirmed and demonstrated that he could change the pitch not only with his mouth but by moving his fingers in the bell.  That technique was developed only 30 years before Beethoven wrote the piece they played, a piece that is unusually happy and light for Beethoven.

Next was another fantastic concert with some of the best players in Early Music.  I recognized one of them.  She is a core member of a group called Piffaro that played in Kansas City a year and a half ago.  I had met her at the dinner after her concert, the one at a home of a Board Member of the Friends of KC Chamber Music.  Needless to say I talked with her for just a moment after the concert to confirm that I was correct about that.

After that I took the trip out to Brandeis to hear Kristen.  I sat next to a couple (Walter and Alice) from Boston whom I had seen a few times at the Festival.  They had heard Kristen before and had been equally impressed with her singing – and again that evening.  Kristen dropped me off at the late night concert at the Festival (they start at 11pm or later).  That concert was done in costume as two singers very dramatically (sometimes with props) performed some early Laments.

Day 7: Ever heard of Legal Seafood?…probably not legal in Kansas.  The crab cake was beyond description – the Guinness was good too.  It was lunch!  I needed some food.  Why not!

The next concert was a little emotional for me.  The young players were prize-winning and rightly so.  One piece in particular worked its way in the feelings on that anniversary of Mary Ann’s death.  It just allowed me to rest in some painful but no longer disabling memories.  The next concert contained music that did the same.

Between the two concerts a Breakfast Buddy (Cellist from the Florida Orchestra) and I got some coffee at a recommended coffee/sandwich shop.  It was a real coffee shop.  The espresso was good (in the opinion of my unsophisticated palate).  The Baristas were appropriately impressed when I dropped the names of Pete Licata and his Coach Holly Bastin.  In fact they were extremely impressed.  They actually were very happy that I liked the espresso.  (They were not aware of just how unsophisticated my palate is – that information is only given out on a need to know basis.)  I was shameless when I ordered the espresso.  I asked if they had one espresso to cut through in drinks with milk and another for espresso by itself.  I should be punished for such pretentious behavior.

More food!  After a concert by the Hilliard Ensemble, four men who have sung early music for a very long time (world renown), another person with whom I have interacted a few times (Nica) was heading to a very (very!) nice restaurant for a glass of wine before the next concert (11pm) at the same venue.  I saw a very nice scotch menu.  Why not?  Then we shared a gourmet chocolate torte (not sure the right word for the dessert – sure it was as good as the elegance of the restaurant implied).  By the way, at that concert the person next to me had heard Kristen a number of times and spoke glowingly of her beautiful voice and her skill.

The final concert of the day was a performance of early Celtic music by a harpist using an ancient style Celtic Harp and a singer who both a cappella and accompanied by the harp sang in an old style fitting the period.  They were in costume and very engaging of the audience.

Before that concert I had seen and greeted Harpsichordist Nadja (from the dinner earlier in the week).   When I talked with her for a moment afterward, she gave me a CD of her and her sister performing.  She had given CD’s to Philippe and Cynthia at the table at dinner earlier in the week and felt badly that she had not given one to me.  She had one in her bag to give me if she saw me again during the week.  Needless to say she is a very kind and thoughtful person as well as (according to Cynthia — I have not heard her play) an outstanding Harpsichordist.

What an experience this is!  As I have said before every day is like a week – even more given attending four or five concerts each of those days.

Gone Three Years Today

There was another dramatic convergence of events in my life last evening. 

I took the T (first time on the Orange Line) to the North Station stop from where I then walked through tunnels and across open areas to the commuter train station.  I bought a ticket on the Fitchburg Line and got off at Brandeis University.   After enjoying some conversation with her while I had a sandwich before the concert, Kristen performed with a prestigious early music instrumental group called Aston Magna.  They love her voice, as does everyone who has ever heard her sing.

Kristen Watson flew in from Boston three years ago and sang at Mary Ann’s Funeral.  It is as if she has provided bookends on a part of my life’s journey.  While I still have access to the pain of losing Mary Ann, the time of gestation seems to be over and a new time in life has emerged.  The new life is only beginning and I haven’t a clue where it will go.  The grief has settled into an appropriate place in that new life, always accessible (not always at times of my choosing) and always teaching me.  I have not lost her; she remains with me (still reminding me not to get too full of myself).

By the way, the utter coincidence of Kristen happening to be performing nearby while I was at the Boston Early Music Festival in some circles (including my mine) might very well be perceived to be something other than a coincidence.

Kristen sang an Italian Cantata.  Here is an English translation of parts of the cantata:

Separated from her lover, the faithful Filomena weeps, and as the tears form, her singing becomes sweeter, the more so as her pain becomes crueler….

Fly away soon and leave off your singing as it is swayed by your pains, while a commitment to love makes us deserving of but one good: that constant search of well-being. 

Fly, and when you’ll find that longed-for well-being – the dear lover – you will see your struggle turn into joy, and you will express your feelings with more beautiful harmony.

I feel now in my happy breast pleasure without equal since the pleasure that follows pain is increased in value. 

Why do I continue to surprised at these things?  Could there have been a more fitting message for this time in my life?

What a Ride!

She is the one who more than a year ago insisted that I needed to attend the Boston Early Music Festival.  I was at a performance of Early Music in Kansas City and in a conversation I mentioned that Early Music is my favorite.  She is the Founder of the Kansas City Friends of Chamber Music.  On the spot that evening she invited me to join a light dinner with the performers at the home of one of their Board Members.  I discovered that among the membership of that Board are some of the folks who have built the sports stadiums in Kansas City and the Center for the Performing Arts.  In one sense I felt very out of place there, but since I love Early Music, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.   

I had been looking for her at the Festival wondering why she wasn’t there if it was such a great event (which it is).  At the first afternoon concert, there she was.  Apparently she had been looking for me also.  As enthusiastic as ever, she said that the performer who would be playing the viola de gamba at that concert was the best player in the world.  Then she invited me to join her and her Publicist at dinner.  Of course I accepted the invitation.

Other than a problem with the acoustics in the room, he made music in a way that was breathtaking.  When I arrived at the restaurant, Cynthia came in not only with her Publicist, but with the gamba player, Philippe, who had just performed and a young harpsichordist, Nadja, who had wowed her earlier in the day.  Philippe is from Belgium and Nadja currently from Austria at one of the major early music centers in Austria.  Nadja was born and raised in France.  It was fun to listen to the two musicians those moments when they spoke French to one another.  Philippe has three children and is in the prime of his career.  Nadja and her sister (not with her at the Festival) both play the harpsichord (along with singing and playing most of the stringed instruments) and, of course, they are early in their careers.  Both Nadja and Philippe spoke English pretty well.  They were gracious and pleasant and very engaging people, as interested in us as we were in them.

The meal was not only wonderful because of the company but also because of the food.  There is not time now to describe the meal in detail but we had multiple courses of well-prepared and elegantly presented fare accompanied by a very nice wine (even I could tell it was nice).   I very rarely go out to eat any more other than stopping at Wendy’s when I travel.  This experience was a bit surreal.  We missed the first half of the next concert, but Cynthia arranged transportation for us so that we made the intermission and got to see the last half of the performance.

The first concert of the day was someone who played a 17^th century violin doing all Telemann, another of my favorite composers (Bach’s era).  Then at Philippe’s concert I sat next to Phil whom I had met at a concert earlier in the week since he was also in the next seat then.  When I asked him if Emmanuel Church was his parish, he said that he is Jewish.  Rather than wasting any time being embarrassed, I told him about having sung in a choir at the dedication of a Torah (hand-written by the congregation) at Temple B’nai Yehuda in Kansas City.  Then I discovered that he chanted the Haftorah once a year at the Day of Atonement celebration.  After two years of studying Hebrew in class, I tried to learn to chant a Hebrew text.  I soon gave up.  Two weeks at the end of the school year was not enough time to do it.  I’m not sure I could have learned it although lots of 14-year old Youth do it for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah.  I enjoyed talking with Phil.

At a later concert (violin and harpsichord) the Violinist’s bio mentions that she is in a Pastoral Care program (Gestalt).  I asked her about that and we now intend to exchange information about our Spiritual Formation activities via email.

The last half of the 8pm concert was a performance of some Handel with period instruments and a vocalist.  We walked to the late concert that didn’t start until 11:30pm (hence again writing a morning after post).  It was in the room with the problematic acoustics but that didn’t diminish the quality of the Lutenist.

Need to get going – late for one of the many performances today.

Now it’s getting weird!

I was talking to the people next to me in the concert hall before the performance began.  The person in front of me overheard the word Kansas.  She and her husband are from California, but she has many relatives in Kansas.  She told me the surname and I said I knew someone by that last name.  It was her cousin.  Her cousin is a Director of Christian education in my denomination.  A few decades ago I worked with her cousin on some youth gatherings and conferences (memory fails as to specifics).  Another cousin (I think) was at the Seminary around my time there (45 years ago).  We talked before the concert, at intermission and after the concert as we waited for the next concert to begin in the same venue.  She has been to the Taizé Community in France where I am planning to spend a week before I do the Camino in Spain.  Someone in her husband’s family did the Camino (Road to Santiago). 

After the late concert (12:15am) as three of us were rushing to get one of the last trains back to the dorm, a young man (Patrick) overheard me mention Kansas as a couple of us were doing the usual “where are you from” check.  He said he is from Kansas.  I asked where in Kansas.  He answered, “Topeka.”  That is where I live.  He lives two blocks from Washburn University and sometimes goes to my coffee shop (it is, of course, mine).  He grew up in the church across the parking lot from the church from which I retired.  He sings at the church across the street on the other side of the church from which I retired.  This conversation was overheard by a fellow sitting on the train car near us.  That fellow asked if we knew someone he named.  Both Patrick and I knew him well and we all wondered if the twins had graduated from St. Olaf’s yet.

Remember, I am in Boston, a long way from Topeka!

Because of the late concert last night I am writing in the morning about yesterday.  As planned, I met Art, a high school classmate, for lunch at the Harvard Medical School where he is faculty.  This is the third time I have seen Art in 52 years.  Art is a Veterinarian who is still a clinician, but also does research and works on a team that develops cutting edge (sorry) surgery techniques.  They are able to turn around from need to sanctioned use of a technique in three months or less.  The team approach allows that possibility.  Art lost his wife four years ago, so we had lots to talk about.

After fish and chips and a pint of milk stout (none for Art, he is still working), I bailed on the afternoon concerts since I was just blocks from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  A tablemate at breakfast had gone the day before planting the seed in my mind.  I spent the afternoon there until the 5pm concert.  I sat for a while resting with a cup of coffee.  The heavy lunch took its toll, but it served as most of my food intake for the day.  There was a whole section of Art of the Americas (three floors), a great European Art section (stood within inches of paintings by the Grand Masters – that is not golf, guys), and some rooms of Contemporary Art that stretched the imagination.  One very entertaining sidelight was listening to two Docents taking around the Museum two groups of football players from Boston College.  I learned some things listening to the Docents talk about the paintings and I enjoyed watching the players react and interact.  Some were responding and fully engaged, others reminded me of teaching Confirmation Classes (only made up of giant-sized people).

The venue for the three following concerts (5pm, 8pm and 11pm) was just a few more blocks away.  The first was an ensemble of fifteen mostly early oboe players who had a flamboyant style with some lively music.  Their facility with the early instruments was impressive.  The 8pm concert was just two people, a couple, he played the lute and she sang all Dowland music.  As far as I know they are at the very top of the best in early music.  She sat or stood and with the appropriately simple tone of the period very dramatically expressed from memory a program of 18 songs.   The Harpsichordist at the 11pm concert is the one we had heard do Mozart in the ensemble the evening before.   Again, I suspect there is no one who could have done it better – anywhere in the world.  He is German, now living in London if I remember correctly.

I started the day with half of a concert before catching the T to meet with Art.  That means even though I bailed on a bunch of concerts I ended up attending three and a half concerts, still a full day of music.

Need to get going.  It is time to leave for the first of many concerts today!

Historical Evening

I was impressed.  With my own eyes I saw them and with my own ears heard them.  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s violin and cello had never before been in the USA let alone played in a performance.  There they were.  They were brought from Salzburg, Germany where they are played only in Mozart’s home to very small audiences.  The extremely gifted performers were specialists in Mozart from Salzburg.  There is no way to describe how marvelous an experience it was. 

That was the fifth concert I attended today.  I skipped one concert time slot since I needed food and even without eating there would not have been enough time to make the other concerts.

The breakfast of cereal, an omelet, fruit and coffee held me until almost 3:30pm.  I needed food, so I stopped for fast food (a Mediterranean veggie wrap) at a place with a French name, Au Bon Pain.  I am sure it was a sign from God that just a couple of doors away there was a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream place.

I was able to add money to my CharlieCard so that I could ride the T from venue to venue when time would not allow me to walk.  It has been raining off and on today, a chilly day.

The Sitka Trio plus four friends performed with old style instruments, a lute six or seven feet long, a theorbo (similar to that lute), a doucaine (a recently discovered old instrument a little like an oboe), viol de gamba, viols, percussion, recorders and the list goes on.  One of the friends was a vocalist with whom I spoke afterward since about forty years ago I tried unsuccessfully to sing with a small ensemble of early music instrumentalists.

Then there was a Celtic group playing music from earlier centuries.  One of the instruments was Uilleann pipes, a kind of Irish bagpipe.  The next concert included a surprisingly long conversation with the leader of the group before they started playing.  She had studied at UMKC in Kansas City and grew up there.  She knew the church of which I was Associate Pastor for fifteen years.  We probably knew people in common since she went to the high school that many of my Youth attended.  Her area of study was the connection between neuro-science and music.  I mentioned the use of Interactive Metronome and music in my wife Mary Ann’s treatment by the Occupational Therapist.  She responded immediately that her father died of Parkinson’s and her brother has also been diagnosed.  I am reminded endlessly of how small the world is.

Then followed (after the wrap and the ice cream) a concert by a person whose enthusiasm was matched by the speed with which her fingers moved across the keyboard of the two pianofortes that would have been used around the time of Mozart, Hayden and Beethoven.  There I recognized a friend of singer Kristen.  Emily sang at a concert in Kansas City a couple of years ago.  At that time I noticed she was from Boston, asked if she knew Kristen and discovered that she had eaten lunch with Kristen just a week before and knew that Kristen had come to sing at Mary Ann’s funeral.    Not only that but DCE Audrey at the church from I retired had given Emily voice lessons when she in Audrey’s Youth group a decade or so before in another state.  It was good to talk with Emily again tonight.

Sorry about the complexity of these experiences, but today has seemed to be about a week long with a week’s worth of experiences.  Tomorrow will be another full day.  It is time to get some sleep.

Not Lost Yet!

I rode the T (subway) and actually got to the intended venue, St. Cecelia (and back)!  There in a perfect acoustic for the St. Paul’s Boys’ Choir I heard early music from my favorite era sung as close as possible to the way it would have been sung when it was first performed hundreds of years ago.  

It gets better (if that is possible).  I obtained enthusiastically given directions from the church after the concert to a nearby JP Licks Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt place.  There I had dinner.  If it is a meal, the calories shouldn’t be a problem, right?  (That is a rhetorical question with no need for some response intending shatter my illusion.)

I started the day walking to Emmanuel Church where Kristen sings during the program year.  They do Cantatas every Sunday if I understand correctly.  For the summer months the services do not include that special music and are held in a very impressive gothic chapel built in Memory of a Member there who was killed in the Lusitania.  I felt comfortable there and was treated well especially when I played the Kristen chip.   As would be expected, she is held in high regard there.

This afternoon included a trip to CVS for earplugs.  The outdoor sounds  were deafening until the wee hours of the morning (loud siren sounds of varying sorts, loud and long car horns honking, loud partiers standing in the street outside a couple of bars/entertainment venues).  I remember noting that by about 4am it seemed to be quieter.  That was a Saturday night.  Maybe tonight won’t be quite so loud.  The earplugs will help.  There was a Silverfish that greeted me when I was moving the covers on the bed after I first arrived and there is some black mold around the shower, but those are extremely minor issues more than compensated for by a comparatively cheap rate, excellent security, a wonderful location and a great buffet breakfast.

Tonight I had a snack before the last concert of the day – a cup of lobster chowder and a pint of Guinness.  (Remember, I only had some ice cream for supper—it is a good thing I am doing a whole lot of walking.)  I walked to First Church of Boston to hear an Ensemble of singers specializing in the music of William Byrd, a favorite of mine.  They sang other pieces by composers of his era.

I have spent much of the evening trying to determine which of the ten optional concerts to attend tomorrow.  There is one in the evening outside of the ten daytime options for which I already have a ticket.  It takes a while to determine how to get from one to another on the T or on foot.  I had better eat a hearty breakfast since I don’t see options for eating any other meals.  I have enough stored under my belt to sustain me if I miss a meal or two.   I do need to figure out how to load my CharlieCard since it appears I will be using the T a number of times tomorrow.

It is time for the earplugs and hopefully a good night’s sleep.

A New Adventure Begins

I am sitting in a dorm room in Boston, MA at Emerson College.  I am in the heart of Boston across from the Boston Commons.  I just had dinner with Kristen and Eric.  Kristen sang at my wife, Mary Ann’s funeral within days of exactly three years ago.

We walked past the Majestic Theater to Jacob Wirth Restaurant and Pub with live music filling the room.  We had German sausage and beer.  Kristen gave me maps and a CharlieCard for the subway, along with information on concerts to attend and venue locations.

I start wandering tomorrow as I wend my way to one or two churches, followed by a couple of concerts.  I am on the fifth floor of a very old dorm building in a suite for six with one shared bath.  The rest of the rooms should fill tomorrow.  It is on its way to midnight and the streets are full of vehicles using their horns and young people using their voices loudly.  I am here for about ten days.

Last night I was in the Chicago area spending the evening at a restaurant in Aurora.  There were four couples from the in Kansas where I live.  All are closely connected to one another (three by family connections and the other by friendship close enough to count as family).  Three couples just happened to have ended up living in the Chicago area and one was there visiting for work.  Two of the couples provided a combined six young children to add to the fun.  They are all people about whom I have come to care very much.  More than half of the adults were Youth in the congregation from which I retired five years ago.

Internet access will cease in a few minutes and remain unavailable until Monday (this is Saturday night) so I need to post this right away.  This is my first ever visit to Boston and the Early Music Festival.  Again, I am traveling by myself and feel as if I am truly on another adventure.