The Bel Canto Choir of Gateway High School under the direction of Chris Barletta will give the premiere performance of The Chariot by Wm. Glenn Osborne during their spring concert on Monday, May 5, 2014 at 7 pm. The concert will be repeated on Tuesday, May 6 at 7 pm. Wm. Glenn Osborne will guest conduct the first performance on Monday. Tickets are $5.
A video of this first performance can now be seen here.
Written on April 16, 2014 for Chris Barletta and the Women’s Choir of Gateway High School in Kissimmee, Florida, with an expected first performance in May 2014. The students selected a poem by Emily Dickinson as the text that they wanted me to set for them. The Chariot begins “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and is a somber piece that suggested a chromatic language to me. While there is four-part divisi, the piece remains homophonic and there are many passages in only two parts. The choir is supported by the piano with a brief unaccompanied passage. A video of the first performance can be seen here.
Logo chosen!It was a tough choice, but I awarded a winner in the competition at 99designs.com for a logo for Audubon Park Music. Thanks to everyone who voted or offered their opinions on the submissions! Net up will be a website redesign to incorporate the new logo and start moving my catalog of music for sale from wmglennosborne.com over to audubonparkmusic.com. I hope to have the site fully functional by the time the bishops grant me permission to publish my psalter.
Any musician at a reasonably large church is familiar with the difficulties of having to be in two different places at the same time. While science may have advanced enough to provide clones of certain animals, I’m still waiting for the technology that allows us to bi-locate. How much more practice time could I get if I could actually be on the organ bench AND at the staff meeting? If you could be in two places at once, where would you choose to go?
Sadly, we can’t divide ourselves yet, and as the sound system in the social hall at Holy Redeemer was my most stressful part of this past week, I am extremely grateful that my choir was willing to change venues and move from their traditional location of the church to serve the overflow crowd in the social hall. While I normally like to have everything well-planned in advance, I am still an improviser and will go with the flow when necessary. Thank you to all the singers and musicians at Holy Redeemer for a wonderful week of liturgies and for going along with the flow when change was needed!
Death seems to be the theme of this week. Not only at church, but in real life. One of my colleagues from Westminster Choir College passed away just over a week ago from cancer. While sad, this was expected. The unexpected event was the sudden death of one of my classmates at a rehearsal at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. Jeff Dinsmore and I graduated from Westminster twenty years ago this May. I still feel young enough that learning of the death of someone my own age creates a pause for reflection: am I spending my limited time here on earth doing the best that I can? How about you?
The students at Gateway High School chose a text by Emily Dickinson for me to set for them titled The Chariot. Because I Could Not Stop for Death is the first line, and it seems very fitting that I managed to set this text during this week surrounded by death. We are still working on the potential performance date. There will also likely be another piece written for Gateway this year to be sung at their baccalaureate service at the end of May. No one wants to hear about death at a graduation ceremony, so I’ll be looking for a happier topic….
The next performance I do have scheduled is the Classical Choir Concert of the Central Florida Community Arts on May 3 and 4. The program includes The Seven Last Words of Christ by Theodore Dubois (referenced by today’s subject line). Luckily, this concert also includes some happier tunes by Mozart, Rossini, Thompson and others. I’m hoping this week of death is now finish-ed and more pleasant times will arrive in this Easter season.
May you live long and prosper!
Glenn
Newsletter Issue 20 – 2014 04 22
See the complete list of newsletter issues here.
Seeking Singing BirdsAs you may remember, I registered with ASCAP just a few months ago. In order to do so, I needed to choose a name for my publishing company. After exploring a few possibilities (some of which had already been taken), I settled upon Audubon Park Music. The neighborhood where I live in Orlando is called Audubon Park and the working title for my psalter has been the Audubon Park Psalter, so it made sense to me to go ahead and make something like that the name of my publishing company as well.
What’s one of the first things you need when starting up a business? Nowadays, that would be a website and business cards, of course! The website – audubonparkmusic.com – I set up the day I chose the name using a simple WordPress template, but I didn’t want to print simple plain business cards. Every good business has some sort of identifiable mark or logo that is instantly recognizable. Take McDonalds, Nike, or AT&T for example. I wanted a nice clean logo for my company, so I turned to 99designs.com.
At 99designs, there are over 200,000 designers competing on various projects. I presented a design brief outlining what sort of logo I would be looking for and some of my thoughts about what the logo could or should look like. One week later, I have had 32 people submit 152 designs for my consideration. I have been very impressed by the creativity of several of the designers, and now it is time for me to make my final choice. Because I have always had a difficult time making choices, I would love to invite you to participate in a poll and rate the designs that I have selected as finalists. You may see the choices and provide your feedback here:
http://99designs.com/logo-design/vote-nxe1j0. I expect to wrap this up quickly, so please vote in the next 24 hours to have your opinion count.
While evaluating birds, I also received a request for an arrangement of HOLY ANTHEM for organ and brass quartet. I hope to have the Finale performance file of it uploaded today here if you’d like to give it a listen. My next composition task is to set a poem by Emily Dickinson for Gateway High School. The premier is scheduled for just about a month from now, so if the girls are going to have time to learn it, I need to get them a score soon!
In addition to looking for singing birds, I’m also looking for singing people. This summer (preferable sooner rather than later), I’d like to make a recording of some of my compositions to be released as an album. If you are in the Orlando area and would be interested in being part of this recording group, please let me know so that I can begin to figure out rehearsal dates and locations.
Hoping the birds are singing for you!
Glenn
Newsletter Issue 19 – 2014 04 10
See the complete list of newsletter issues here.