May 13 was the Flint Hills Masterworks Chorale spring concert. We performed Haydn’s “Creation” (in English!) with, among others, Katharina Janik Bossman as our soprano soloist… she’s just amazing! Later, her husband said that it was the best concert he’d ever heard us give.
The concert was recorded so we can sell CDs as a fundraiser for our ‘09 European tour. Recorded by my ex-boss, no less, which meant I was absolutely miserable leading up to the concert– I was just sure he was going to harrass me the whole evening! But thankfully, I managed to avoid him completely. *phew*
At the “after concert party” (at the Little Apple Brewery) I ended up sitting next to Dr. Pittman, and across from Katharina and her very funny, very German husband. Such elite company… and I was my usual socially-inept self! How embarrassing…
Found out from Dr. Pittman that my friend Sam was not only away at an international nuclear conference that week, but he has an internship in Florida this summer, and is going to China in the fall semester, which means he won’t be back until next year! Great news for Sam, not so great for my plans for recording a duet with him!

I’m sooo dissapointed that Gardar Thor Cortes didn’t win the Classical Brit Awards.
Okay, actually, I’m not really disappointed, because I honestly had Hayley Westenra pegged for a “sure win.” I just hoped that by some miracle Cortes would win…
But I was totally not expecting Blake to win! I mean… Blake?! For crying out loud… And the rest of the public seems to be a bit outraged, as well. In all of the internet discussion I’ve been reading, only one person was hoping Blake would win. The facebook-formed-boy-group was everyone else’s last choice.
Oh well– at least Anna Netrebko won… er, what was it. Female Artist of the Year? Go Anna!
Her duet with Andrea Bocelli was surprisingly good, with a few surprising flaws. Andrea sounded much better than I’ve ever heard him, so that lifted him in my esteem a bit. Anna was absolutely beautiful– as pregnant women usually are. She was just glowing! And her voice was lush as ever, possibly more so. The flaw in the performance was both Anna and Andrea’s lack of rhythm… both of them kinda botched it in a few places. But who’s being that picky? haha.

May 14th was the 10th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s death. Which got me to thinking…
Isn’t it just a little bit morbid that we’re making such a big fuss over the anniversary of someone’s death? I mean, the commemorative stamp is cool– that’s an honor bestowed on the memory of Frank and his family. And something like TCM declaring May as “Frank Sinatra Month” is okay; they have “[Movie Star] Month”s all the time, so why not Frank Sinatra in May?
But all of these new CD, DVD, and memorabilia releases… those aren’t honors, those aren’t tributes, those are greedy capitalizings on the popularity of the World’s Greatest Entertainer. (Much as I love Judy Garland, I’m willing to concede that title to Frank) Do you see what I mean? Usually, when we celebrate the anniversary of the end of something– say when the Berlin Wall came down, or V-Day– we’re celebrating having put something behind us. So why are we celebrating ten years of having “put Sinatra behind us”? Shoudln’t we be celebrating his life, his legacy, his career… Couldn’t we have waited until December 12 this year and celebrated his 90th birthday (just like we’re celebrated Bette Davis’s 100th this year) instead of having a media and merchandising hoopla over… his death?

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is released in theaters today!!!!! Wheeeeeee! I’m soooo psyched…!
The current “scheme” is for my cousin Lauren and me to go see it when she comes to visit from Texas the first week of June… Fingers crossed it will still be in the Manhattan theater by then!
And speaking of merchandising… lol I get such a kick out of seeing Harrison Ford’s face plastered all over everything! Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m tempted to buy a box of Corn Flakes just because of the great picture on the front!I want to go see Prince Caspian, too… but I’m not sure now likely that is to happen. I’ve been missing all of the operas they’re showing at the movie theater, too! Phooey.

One of these days I will figure out the trick of what is appropriate rep at my age and what’s not… I hesitantly mentioned “Ebben? Ne Andro Lontana” to my teacher Leia, 99% sure she would say, “No way! Maybe in five years or so, but definitely not right now!” But do you know what she said? “Oh yea! You can totally do that!” I was like, “Uhhhhhhhhhh… Okay! Great!” So now I’m working on two songs that are all dramatic “I’m leaving, I’m so sad, boo hoo” etc, etc… Ah well. It’s fun!

I’ve been reading Dashiell Hammett lately… for some reason, I get an urge to re-read “The Dain Curse” about every three months. haha. And it’s kinda funny, because most people consider it not on par with his best work… and I personally don’t care for “The Maltese Falcon!” Anyway. I do love Dashiell Hammett… the detective noir genre kinda gets knocked for just being pulp fiction, but Hammett really was a great writer! There was one sentence in The Glass Key… let me see if I can find it:
“His feet rested in a parallelogram of late-morning sun and the smoke he blew out became suddenly full-bodied as it drifted into the sunlight.”
Parallelogram! Of all the words… parallelogram. And rendered so sinister; so decadent… amazing.
(Yes, I’m obsessing. But it could be worse!)
In church last week, it suddenly struck me that the life of Paul (yes, that Paul) would make a terrific Dashiell Hammet book! haha Just think about it, though. All of that political intrigue, and danger, and coniving by the Romans and so forth… it would be perfect!

Okay, time for your homework assignments:
First, check out this terrific 12-year-old soprano, who’s debut CD (released earlier this year) will be repackaged and given a “big time” release this June by her record label, Signum Classics.
Emilia Dalby - www.emiliadalby.co.uk 
And second, take a look at this great video! It’s an “Album Preview” for “When You Say You Love Me,” the sophmore release from Gardar Thor Cortes. It features fun, casual clips of Cortes talking about the new album, interspersed with samples from some of the songs! Absolutely fabulous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50eZMAMibIM

 [Segments from two articles by Ted Gioia from Jazz.com] 

“I never worried much about the appearance of jazz in the past, but today this is a matter crying out for a great critic to address. Some deep thinker needs to write a penetrating history of jazz as a symbol, as an image in our collective psyche. Ever since Fitzgerald (F. Scott, not Ella) appropriated the term ‘the Jazz Age’ to denote a whole way of life, this music has been weighed down with multiple layers of meaning. When swing was the thing, jazz took on new symbolic resonance. When hip was hep, when cool was the school, when beats were worldbeaters, when retro was the rage — jazz was always there, sanctioning lifestyles and casting a beneficent light on the proceedings.

Yet traditionalists still out-number the progressives in the world of jazz vocals by a five-to-one margin. Jane Monheit may have grown up in the 1980s and 1990s, but her stylistic development stopped short somewhere around VE-Day. She has a bright, perky delivery, a capacious range and good, clean intonation. There are no dark, emotional recesses in her songs – everything happens on the surface with no insides to probe. She is effervescent on up-tempo songs, and sweet-as-pie on ballads. This singer still has room to grow, but not in her technical command, which is already impressive, but rather in probing the psychological depths of her material. If she could add this to her already impressive arsenal of skills – not forgetting her “stunning, raven-haired beauty” – she might live up to the hype of her PR campaign.”