Cange’s Corner

March 7-10, 2013 will most certainly go down as a transformative and transitional year for the Vann Vocal Institute in Montgomery, Alabama.  As many now know, my connection to the Capital City goes back some 20 years.  Established in 2007 via gift/bequest from the late Roy D. Vann, the Vann…

Winters in the snow belt of Cleveland, Ohio were brutally cold in the 1970’s.  They were endless, withering, and dumped several feet of snow on the ground due to the dreaded “lake-effect” conditions that haunted cities and towns that were perched along the wide, open swath of Lake Erie. At…

On Facebook and Twitter this morning, I posted that second performances are akin to "Low Sunday" in the Catholic Church. That is to say, a letdown compared to all the festivities and poignant lead up to Easter Sunday; or in a way the opening of a new opera production. Now...in…

I am quite often asked by friends and relatives who are not in the performing arts about the process of getting a production to stage.  After all, they are the ones who only see the "final, shiny, right off the assembly line, fresh from the show-room" product that is sure…

Before having dinner with a friend last night (August 22, 2012), he handed me a copy of the August issue of Opera News. While he knows that I am not a voracious reader of most industry publications, he said "A lot of your friends are in this issue; just glance…

As the city of Cincinnati continues its incredible renaissance by reclaiming historic neighborhoods, redeveloping long neglected public lands, and renovating the most spectacular collection of Italianate architecture ever seen in the United States, one was struck this past week by the presence of thousands of visitors, and hundreds of choirs,…

When I have friends over for a meal, and the dinner plates are readied for consumption, I am often the recipient of looks of disbelief from my guests.  "This looks amazing", "My god David, this looks delicious", "Oh my god, I can't wait to start eating"...these are just of few…

The passage of time is so sneaky, we hardly note the 'tick-tick-tock' of life's clock.  Then one day we awake and realize that we have grown old(er) {see: Old in San Diego, from the August 2011 blog archive}.  Sometimes it is sad, as when we realized that our childhoods were…

When one tallies the affect and effect of 100 years' time, we can clearly say "Wow; how things have changed!" as much as we can say "Wow; some things never change!"  My grandmother turns 100 this year.  She lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, enjoyed radio--but also saw…

With each breath and step we take, a sliver of history is created: Micro-history, I like to call it.  Macro-history, however, is created via demonstrable over-arches that bend the arc of narrative...at least, and until--in the case of records--they are replaced. Such will be the case later this week when…

As an undergraduate music student at Baldwin-Wallace College (now Baldwin-Wallace University) in Northeast Ohio, we were force-fed an unrelenting amount of music by, arguably, the greatest composer to have ever lived, Johann Sebastian Bach (just don’t tell Mozart or Beethoven…and for goodness’ sake, don’t breathe a word to Wagner!).  The…

As some of you know, in addition to my operatic performance career, I have spent the last five years establishing (by invitation) a small but growing vocal institute in Montgomery, Alabama; a city with which I have had a decades-long association.  As the Artistic Director of the Vann Vocal Institute…