Tag: music

Opening Night

Timothy Price2 Comments
Wedding Singer Robbie & Julia
Logan Mitchell as Robbie Hart & Devon Frieder as Julia Sullivan

 

We went to the opening night of The Wedding Singer directed and choreographed by Devon Frieder. The show was fantastic, and I would encourage anyone living in the greater Albuquerque area to go and see it. The show dates and times, ticket prices and the location are available on my Happy New Year post.

The show is at the Musical Theatre Southwest Black Box Performance Space, which is a small, intimate theater where the performance space is larger than the space allocated for seating (about 100 seats), which gives the allusion that the number of performers are about equal to the audience members.  When the full cast is on stage dancing and singing the intimacy, activity, variety of colors and the performers expressions are so exciting that it all becomes almost overwhelming trying to decide who to watch — you can’t take it all in at once like you can in a larger theater.

The story is about Robbie Hart, a singer/song writer, who plays for weddings with his friends Sammy and George. Julia Sullivan is a waitress who becomes engaged to a successful broker, Glen Guglia, but she and Robbie fall in love and everything seems to go wrong for them becoming a couple.

The music and choreography are fun and were delightful to listen to and watch. The comic lines are delivered flawlessly, and the acting was superb. Most of the cast play multiple characters and they play them well. They wouldn’t have had to name the stars and famous people they portrayed, as even I, the no TV, cultural misfit that I am, recognized all of them.  Although I don’t usually care much for musicals, I throughly enjoyed the performance, was taken in by the story and characters, and I even fell for the romance and wanted to see Robbie and Julia get together and be happy in the end.

 

Wedding Singer George & Rosie
Rikki Carroll as Rosie & Bryan Daniels as George

 

Wedding Singer Holly Sammy Glen
Amy Burgen as Holly, Gus Spencer as Sammy & Erik Joshua Clack as Glen Guglia

 

 

The Messiah Has Come

Timothy Price5 Comments

ChoirOrchestraSoloists

If you missed Handel’s Messiah tonight, performed by the Central United Methodist Church’s Chancel Choir with the NM Philharmonic Orchestra, David Felberg, Conductor, and soloists Cammy Cook, Soprano, Jacqueline Zander-Wal, Mezzo-soprano, Javier Gonzalez, Tenor and Ivan Conrad, Bass — not to worry, there is a second coming of the Messiah tomorrow afternoon, Sunday, December 9th,  3:00 pm at Central United Methodist Church, 201 University NE. If you live in the Albuquerque area, you really shouldn’t miss it — there will be tickets available at the door.

Before the concert began, members of the Albuquerque Girl’s Choir were singing in the hallway as people came in. Most of the girls were very young, and they didn’t have a director. They were all very cute, but as they tried to sing, especially with recorded music, they were so rhythmically challenged that they were difficult to listen to. After the Chancel Choir had warmed up, Jerrilyn Foster, the director of the Chancel Choir, came out and started directing the girls choir, which completely transformed them — they all of a sudden sounded good and were “in compás”.  I think Jerri has a magic touch, because she takes all comers into the Chancel Choir and gets the best out of all the singers. She is really amazing.

Tonight’s performance was wonderful. Even though I’ve been listening to the choir practice every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon, and to Laurie sing with her CD daily for months; and even though I sat through the rehearsal with the soloists Wednesday night and the dress rehearsal with the orchestra and soloists last night, tonight’s performance still sent chills up and down my spine and brought tears to my eyes — it also brought back memories of listening to the Messiah in a 15th Century Cathedral in Madrid, Spain in 1996. The cathedral was packed and we had to stand through the whole concert, but the sound and the atmosphere was so beautiful and mesmerizing, you felt like you where in the 18th century, and there wasn’t a dry eye in that old cathedral when the Hallelujah Chorus was sung. I had much of the same feeling listening to the Messiah this evening and I believe, like Handel, that we see Heaven before us and “the great God Himself” when we listen to great performances of the Messiah.

Girls Choir
Jerrilyn Foster takes a minute before the concert to direct the Albuquerque Girl’s Choir
Left to right: Ivan Conrad, Cammy Cook, David Felberg, Jacqueline Zander-Wall and Javier Gonzalez

The Messiah is Coming

Timothy Price2 Comments

Only seventeen days left until the Central United Methodist Chancel Choir with the New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra present Handel’s Messiah. I am listening to the choir rehearse as I write, and they sound wonderful.   Besides singing, the choir director has the choir do choral calisthenics and stretches so they will be in ship shape to deliver outstanding performances.  The performances will be on Saturday, December 8th at 7:00 pm and Sunday, December 9th at 3:00 pm. If you live in the greater Albuquerque area, I highly recommend getting tickets to this concert. Tickets can be purchased on-line at http://holdmyticket.com/event/119812.

Handel composed the Messiah in 1741, a 100 years before the term photography was attributed to the process of recording images on a medium using a camera.  Since the daguerreotype was one of the earliest photographic processes that resulted in a direct positive, I used a hand-colored daguerreotype effect on the photos of the choir doing their calisthenics, stretches and singing to represent an early time. It doesn’t take us back to the time when Handel lived, but it does give a sense of rehearsing the Messiah in the earliest days of photography.

Javier Y Pablo

Timothy Price1 Comment

We went to a graduate Recital by Javier Gonzalez, tenor at Keller Hall tonight. Mr. Gonzales was fantastic and he was accompanied by master pianist, conductor, composer, arranger… Pablo Zinger, whose piano accompaniment was spectacular. We couldn’t have asked for a better performance from both artists.