July, 2002
Volume 17, No. 3
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July, 2002
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Contents:
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BOARD'S EYE VIEW
The Melodious Accord Board of Trustees experienced first hand the "View from Here" at its April 27, 2002 meeting hosted by Alice Parker at Singing Brook Farm in Hawley, MA. The pastoral springtime setting provided the ideal environment for spirited discussions about board membership, the future of our January concert, the ongoing recording project, fund-raising, and our songbook project. Much attention was given to whether we will be able to offer our January spirituals concert. The concert honoring Dr. King has been an important part of our mission for many years, but expenses for the Cathedral, publicity, and singers have increased significantly in recent years and income from ticket sales is not sufficient to meet these costs. Other venues in New York City and alternative concert formats are being investigated in hopes that we will be able to continue presenting this much loved and eagerly anticipated annual event for Melodious Accord followers. We persist in our negotiations for the release of CDs recorded under the Alice Parker Recording Project and plans were made for the next phase of the project. There is no shortage of material, with over 800 Alice Parker compositions and arrangements to choose from, and we have chosen choral excerpts from Alice's opera Singers Glen as our next recording. A recording of Alice Parker anthems is also being considered, and we are investigating avenues for re-release of previously recorded material that is no longer available. Under the leadership of Jim Heiks, Melodious Accord is moving forward with its plans to produce a graded series of songbooks containing a selection of songs every child should know. Jim has collected the songs and is now working toward a prototype that will present the style and graphic design for the series. The working title for the series is, "Alice Parker's Hand-Me-Down Songs" with each level having its own title. Our popular Fellowship programs for mid-career Professionals are thriving and we expect to expand on them. If you have suggestions for topics appropriate to 3-10 day workshops with Alice at her Hawley studio, send them to alice@aliceparker.com. Throughout our planning, the Board was aware that all these programs and projects are made possible through the support of those of you within the "sound" of this written "voice" of Melodious Accord. For your loyalty and generosity, we thank you. We hope you look forward, as we do, to the continued vitality of our organization.
BOBBY MCFERRIN What a pleasure it was to see Bobby McFerrin in action at the Chorus America Conference in Denver last month. His performance of course was superb, particularly in interaction with a children's chorus and a dulcimer player, but the real treat was watching him field questions at two sessions the next morning. Unfailingly gracious and well-spoken, he was direct and pithy in his remarks on improvisation, singing-and-learning "by ear", and the ephemeral nature of what we do. I could hear over and over the questions coming from over-educated page-oriented conductors and his courteous replies, which implied but never said "You're missing the point! It can't be notated! It is only sound, and sound only." This makes me think that perhaps Melodious Accord has a new mission field to serve as a bridge between the world of sound and the page. . .but actually that's just a different way of stating our core purpose. All our more than fifty Fellows know that "the sound in the air" is what counts - not the miserable oversimplification that appears on the page. Viva Bobby! Alice Parker is a member of the Board of Directors of Chorus America and actively supports its mission to expand the public awareness of choral music. For more information on the mission and programs of Chorus America, go to www.chorusamerica.org.
STUDY WITH ALICE PARKER COMPOSERS WORKSHOP October 19-23, 2002 The Composers Workshop offers the opportunity for three days of work with Alice Parker and a small group of composer colleagues at Ms. Parker's studio in Hawley, Massachusetts. Composers present examples of their works that serve as a basis for discussions of score reading, analysis, technical problems, and other questions that may arise.
For further information or application materials, please contact Kay Holt at: 413-536-1753 or kay@aliceparker.com.
ARE YOU ON THE MOVE? Please remember Melodious Accord when you move to a new address. We pay first class postage for each newsletter returned to our distribution center, and that means we pay twice for a wrong address. Help us keep our costs down by including Melodious Accord when you file your change of address cards with the post office.
THE VIEW FROM HERE At the moment, it's lush and green, after last night's wild thunderstorm and drenching rain. We've had every kind of weather this spring: temperatures in the 80's in April, along with drought. Then May, warm and lovely until a surprise three inches of snow on the 18th which did away with my optimistic first planting of flowers and herbs. June has been cool and rainy - the water table is almost up to its old level - and the lupin on the hillside have been in bloom for over two weeks. Now we're feeling the first real heat of the summer, and the basil and tomato plants are beginning to thrive. But I've not been around much to observe all of this. My travels since February have taken me from the high desert in Bend, Oregon to the low coastline of Houston. It was a special delight to renew an old friendship with Alfred Mann on a visit to Fort Wayne which included the first performance of a new work An Exaltation of Birds, five choral songs based on poetry by Thomas Troeger, Wendell Berry and Emily Dickinson. I've led SINGS in Tacoma, WA, Anderson, IN, Hyattsville, MD, and Dallas, TX, with two more next week in San Diego. I thoroughly enjoyed the meetings with colleagues at the Chorus America Conference in Denver - what a fine and growing organization that is. Interspersed with all this air-time were two wonderful weeks here in Hawley with the Fellows of Melodious Accord. It will be such a joy to be at home from mid-July till mid-September - I'm looking forward to long days of observing the quiet of nature along with the noise of family visits, and just perhaps getting caught up with the tide of papers on the desk and at the composing station. If there's anything I need more of, it's the view from here. Alice Parker
LIFE AT ONE REMOVE Editorial The author of a book about the media poses an interesting thought: that in those hours spent at the TV screen we are living life second-hand. We live through others who do not touch our individual selves, but exist in an other-worldly atmosphere, remote from our fears and desires. It's not so much the content of what we see (much of which is deplorable) as the fact that we are neglecting our own lives to immerse ourselves in theirs. Some of our favorite people don't exist. Of course the same complaint can be made about books (and many of these have deplorable style and content) but there is a difference. The TV screen dominating the family room tends to focus the attention of all viewers on the same inanities, pre-empting time from the nurturing of the kind of relationships that are at the heart of healthy families. More: I noticed at a party the behavior of two children, watching "baby-sitting" TV at the periphery of the adult chatter. When the program ended, one child hauled off and smacked the other - no words, just frustration and boredom, inviting the inevitable parental displeasure. The characters on the screen solve their problems with violence - why shouldn't I? Their saga is resolved in thirty minutes - why isn't mine? Why are these real people around me so troublesome, while those on the screen are so attractive? When we carry our cell phones and CD players wherever we go, we are living at a remove from our surroundings. We can in no way be as attentive to the moods and needs of those nearby, or even the physical dangers present in driving and talking. Instead of actively participating in each moment of our lives, we are withdrawn, increasingly unable to cope with other human beings, or even to notice and enjoy the natural world through which we move. We become so umbilically attached to that electronic life that we suffer very real pangs of withdrawal, as from an addiction, when the stimulus is removed. Is there an antidote to this cultural disease? Let me propose those arts based on doing rather than viewing. Let us work together to make things that involve our senses, cooking together being an obvious focus point for families. We are helping each other, teaching and learning, conversing (often sharing the tidbits which remain hidden from direct questioning), and finally sharing in the results of our labors. Theater is the art that involves the creation of a world rather than a meal, where actors and production folk become a community as they work to produce a convincing whole. Writing, reading and painting are solitary - as are practicing an instrument, or sculpting a statue. Yet all these are intensely human activities: the ultimate goal is to communicate with other human beings. Art is not, in my view, for art's sake: it is for our sake, in the largest possible context. I've saved singing - choral music - for the last. No other art demands so persuasively that we dwell in this moment, right here, where space crosses time, in order to create something fleeting that we cannot make alone. Here is a positive addiction - one that brings blessings rather than disease, and one that makes us appreciate and value those with whom and for whom we sing. We are most wonderfully human when we sing together - and we should be very jealous and suspicious of those electronic media that seek to usurp this experience. We are just beginning to learn how subversive the media can be in spreading hatred, suspicion and closed-mindedness. Let us counteract this in two ways: by turning them off and tuning them out, and also by rewarding those producers who affirm the virtues of dignity, silence, politeness, listening, restraint, self-control, and working together for the common good. Alice Parker
FROM HERE AND THERE FROM THE FELLOWS In response to the question, "What was your experience as a Fellow?" here's one person's reply: "The answer to that I think is the ... resurrection of melody in my soul. You see, [after professional singing in New York City] I've spent the last 15 years as a Social Worker investigating child Abuse and Neglect, licensing Foster Homes, and recently being certified in Gerontology. Having retired this past March, I can now transition back to where I left off - only this time with the encouragement from you and the others, to listen to the melody that is within me, being true to the chosen text and trusting my own given instincts to get this on the page and into the hands and voices of my choir. Thank you Alice for being the tie that binds, with your inspiration, gentle probing and pushing to get me back on the path." Marlys Trunkhill FROM THE NORTHWESTERN ACDA CONVENTION Some of my favorite memories from the convention include Chor Leoni's performance and "the boys with their toys". What an incredible group of men ...their director made the difficult seem so easy and fun. "Life long singing" - watching the different groups at Jazz Night....'Proud to be an American" - the awesome Singing Sergeants concert. Premier performances, Rotunda sings, our fine northwest choirs, generous exhibitors, great committee and student crew members, the incredible work of our honor choir directors. "Life long learning" - the opportunity to meet Alice Parker and bask in her radiance. The rest of the world can have Britney Spears but my idol is Alice! Karen Fulmer FROM THE MAILBOX "...While we were doing the research, in Philadelphia Revels this year, we wrote our own show, based on the songs and solstice traditions of colonial America. At the beginning of Act II, we did a slave shout dance (lit amazingly so it looked as if the dance was around a bonfire. At first, the director cast me in the dance, but I talked her into letting me be one of the singers instead. We did a shout dance spiritual called "Bell Done Ring." There were 7 singers in all - 5 of them prudently stayed on the melody, but 2 of us improvised (and, given the mood of the scene, rather wildly, I might add). For all the improvising I've done with you, this was the first "performance" experience I had with it - 7 different audiences, all with different energy levels, and us not knowing each time what would happen. How exhilarating!" Elena Santangelo
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© 2002 MELODIOUS ACCORD, INC. The Melodious Accord Newsletter is published three times a year, reaching 4000 musicians in the United States and Canada. Send address changes, deletions, name changes, etc. to Judy Ellis, P.O. Box 27, Indian Valley, ID 83632, (208) 256-4440 (phone only); e-mail:newsletter@melodiousaccord.org. |