Cange's Corner
There ARE no recipes!!!!
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 of the predictable gasps that […]
And then there were 5…(generations)
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 really over; and sometimes it […]
100 years YOUNG??? (Dallas Symphony and Bruckner)
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 the advent of television; she […]
Making History: Dallas Opera–and a decades old production!!
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 the Dallas Opera steals most […]
A Steady Diet of Bach (A Dallas Symphony Orchestra/St. Matthew Passion experience: March 29, 2012)
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 B-W Conservatory of Music was […]
"You can't go home again"…or "CAN you"?? (A Visit to 'Normandy High School')
On this 23rd of March, I sit in the living room of my corner-unit residence in Chicago. With over-sized windows that feature Gotham City views, I watch the rain come down, as well as witness the fog engulf the downtown skyline in which my own building is nestled. I think about my other home in […]
Vann Vocal Institute, 2012 (Trying to keep our sanity…)
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 (named after deceased philanthropist and […]
COC's "Love from Afar": The joys and challenges of contemporary opera!
This past weekend, a friend and I attended the other current offering at Canadian Opera Company; Kaija Saariaho’s Love from Afar, based on the 12th century poetic text La Vida breve by Jaufre Rudel, with modern libretto by Amin Maalouf, and stage direction by Daniele Finzi Pasca. As the “Hollywood-ization”–or in this case the “Cirque […]