OPEN WIDE. Lyn Brakeman, blog post, Hartford Symphony Orchestra Concert

Have you ever seen a grand piano miked up—that is with its lid wide open and not one but two microphones hanging down suspended from somewhere high above the vulnerable open-lidded piano?

It almost reminded me of being at the dentist, all bibbed up and feeling apprehensive about the little tray of sharp picks and tools you have spied. Any minute now, the dentist will approach at your right, lean in with a smile, and say OPEN WIDE. 

I do because I’m a good girl. A treat awaits me for good behavior. At the dentist in NYC where I grew up that meant a brand new tooth brush in a small bag accompanied by a small tube of toothpaste, tied with red ribbon and, of course a good mother who I know will take me to the nearby Schraffts for a sweet treat.

This is self-defeating of course but a ritual to be admired. So it was with the Hartford Symphony concert on April 12, 2024. BUT here the treat paid off! 

*  * *  *

First, we heard the pre-concert talk, organized and offered by Carolyn Kuan, the Music Director. She is personable, fun and smart. Usually there is some history about the players, soloists, and composers, yet it’s not heady. If there is a concerto featuring one of the instruments or its soloist that player is invited to the stage to talk about her or his instrument. One I most remember of course is the tuba, and what I remember about that is how very heavy a tuba is, how little it is featured in most pieces, and that the player sometimes polishes it, raising a shine bright enough to reflect his own grinning face. If the tubist were a woman I imagine she could put on a fresh coat of mascara and grin. The line between beauty and vanity is never absolutely clear anyway! And the tuba is always part of a symphony orchestra.

*  * *  *

But back to the yawning piano, all primped and ready for pianist and composer, Brazil-American, Clarice Assad, often known as a musical polyglot. She played the piano inside and out, once even crawling inside to pluck some strings with her fingers to illustrate the theme of connectivity in her musical piece, FLOW.  She wrote the music with the Erie 

canal in mind. 

Geographically, the Erie Canal, was built in 1825 to facilitate commerce between Albany and Buffalo. Simultaneously, it facilitated the “flow of ideas”—what people thought and felt about life itself, their cultures, religions, and the exchange of ideas and feelings—almost like a memoir would.  

Divinity, in its many expressions, must also flow along,  just like the canal, always thrumming the flow of my own heart, and facilitating the divine connective presence in all things. In short, let’s go with the flow. I wonder who will serenade the Strait of Hormuz?  

GO WITH THE FLOW. EMBRACE THE CRAZINESS.  YES, WE DID! 

2021.12.19 Let Heaven and Nature Sing—Bringing Music To the Soul With Wendy G.

This Sunday is Fourth Advent, an invitation to focus on Mary of Nazareth AND lots of other bringers of brilliance, including Wendy Gerbier, Mezzo-Soprano. 

 

 

When I was in college I took a basic music course as part of one of the requirements. I chose it over Art 101, not because I disliked great art, but because there was music in my family, and I loved to sing—in a large choral group—too shy to solo. Strangely, I loved studying classical music and discovering opera. It made my heart soar even when I did not understand the words. My dad had a rich deep bass voice, and his mother had given up her vocation as an opera singer to get married and have children. She did a good job at that, spawning six children. Operatic drama, however, stayed in her soul. She would frequently summon her “boys”, one of them my dad, to stand around the piano after dinner to sing. I don’t know why she never invited the daughters. Maybe they too could sing, but she favored those four boys. They all joined their father to sing in the Mendelssohn Glee Club in New York City. Felix Mendelssohn only lived to be 38 years old. His music will last forever. Did you know he composed music for “Hark the Herald Angels SING!”?  And sing we must.

My mother hated those concerts. She favored show music, even though her own father had been a New York impresario (importer of musical talent from Europe to this country) and was, like Mendelssohn, Jewish—a fact I discovered only after Mom died. She had “adored” her father and felt devastated when he died in 1924, when she was twelve. With the help of technological stretch on the internet and our parish archivist, I researched his beginnings in Eastern Europe before he emigrated/immigrated to the USA. Knowing such details of my own history made my life, my heart-and-soul being, richer and wiser. I wish I had known my Zaide.

This long string of extraneous personal facts warms me, yet is a mere lead-in to tell you about the roots of my love of operatic bravura—and Auntie Wendy, the finest mezzo-soprano soloist I’ve ever heard and felt a tiny bit related to.  

                         *  *  *  *

Wendy Gerbier, Wendy G., a professional singer of classical music, is Aunty Wendy to my stepdaughter Honor’s son, Brianjohnson. We first met Wendy in Nantucket when she came with Honor for a weekend visit. She brought immediate delight. We were lucky to have mostly sun that weekend, yet I bet Wendy’s exuberant laughter and buoyant presence could have penetrated any island fog-sweeps, just as her mezzo voice penetrates the sound barrier. Honestly!

On December 3, 2021, we heard Aunty Wendy sing professionally for the first  time. We went to her concert as part of the Silvermine Artist Series in Norwalk, Connecticut, originally established in 1983 by Karen Shaw, Professor of Music at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music. The venue was a nondescript brick house set way back from the road. We drove back and forth, passing it a few times until we saw Brianjohnson waving us in. He wore a jacket and tie—symphonic, really, and with a great grin. 

The interior of this house looked like a museum, crowded with antiques and amazing paintings, and seasonally swathed in Christmas greens and holiday decor. Chairs for the audience were set up facing the grand pianos—three of them. Here is one.

The audience chatted and waited. Somehow everyone suddenly knew to hush into anticipatory silence as we heard a distant voice calling. Aunty Wendy descended a side staircase, her voice growing louder, crescendoing, as she sang the spiritual, “Rise Up Shepherd and Follow.” Immersed, I would have followed that voice anywhere. I didn’t move, but my soul did, and my head turned, knowing something wondrous was about to happen. I wasn’t with those ancient biblical shepherds that followed a star, but quickly knew how moved this scruffy bunch of shepherds of old must have felt. Today I still follow that “star” and that call wherever I see or hear it.   

Wendy G stood at a podium to sing, and her gifted accompanist David Harris took his place at one of the pianos.   

The concert officially opened with Panis Angelicus (Bread of Angels), music by Cesar Frank, and text by Sylvester Wager.  As Wendy sang this very traditional Christmas anthem, I envisioned angels soaring about preparing a visitation to a young girl of Nazareth named Mary. I bet these angels conferred as to how to approach this teenager with the idea that the child to be born from her womb was of God. I’m guessing Mary fretted about being pregnant before marriage, but the biblical version tells us that a guy angel delivered the message to Mary, and a guy Joseph stood by. We all rest assured  to know that her scandalous condition was no offense to God, so why would it be so to mere humans?  

Music dedicated to the courage of this young girl named Mary and the glory of divine courage followed. There are many tunes and texts to Ave Maria. My own prayer version only alters one word: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is within thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Wendy G. sang this to a tune composed by an Italian composer, Guilio Caccini (1551-1618) of Fiorenze (Florence), Italy. Caccini’s music is every bit as melodic as the traditional tune, and even more meaningful to Honor’s dad and my husband, Richard John Simeone, whose father was born in Italy. I never knew his father but lovingly call him Ernesto di Napoli. His presence at this concert was invisible although honored by the presence of his son and granddaughter and maternal great grandson. Here are Wendy and Dick Simeone. 

The Spiritual, “Mary Did You Know?” graced this audience and the biblical story with a musical tradition familiar and beloved by African Americans. Wendy G. did it justice: “Mary did you know that your little baby would be a king?”  Similarly, “Pie Jesu” from the requiem by Andrew Lloyd Webber, also the composer of my all-time favorite rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” swept over us with deep tenderness and volume rich enough to make me hold my breath and think to myself: Aunty Wendy rocks!    

The closing hymn “O Holy Night” composed in 1847 by French composer, Adolphe Adam, a name close to that of my maternal great grandfather, Adolph Adams, whom I never knew. Wendy sang it with such power and volume I turned my head to look up to the balcony to follow her voice—almost too big for the humble space. I felt grief and grace. But is that not the point of Incarnation, God in our flesh, praised and mourned?  

At Christmas, 1982, my 71-year-old father was dying of esophageal cancer. Surgery had not been enough. He was young. He made a final stab at “Merry Christmas” and came to sit at the head of the family dinner table. He couldn’t swallow or eat. My heart wept as we all smiled and cheered Christmas. Later that night Dad sat alone with his nurse as the night settled in and sang “O Holy Night.” It was his own “Magnificat”. 

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining

It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth

Long lay the world in sin and error pining

’Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.

Wendy G. sang traditional seasonal music—vital because it is beloved. She gave it the brilliance of Mary’s life and story as well as her own and mine. 

This concert made my soul feel its worth. It was Advent anticipation blended with Christmas joy—already and not yet in the same moment. Every day we live this story over and over as if it were our own. And so it is. 

*  *  *  *  

See WendyGerbier.com for a schedule of Wendy’s performances and to hear her sing. She is a United States Anthem Ambassador with a three-octave range and sings regularly at Greenfield Congregational Church in Fairfield, Connecticut. 

2021.12.05 The Arts. Music.

I have always believed, and said many times, that the Arts would and could save the world from extinction, or from itself. I think this because the Arts—music, painting, photography, medicine, literature, oratory, journalism, iconography, and Nature herself—are creative and desire to explore and express the depth dimension of life itself. By this I refer to that curious place inside each one of us all in which Mystery informs us of things we cannot understand that we know to be true and life-giving. Some call this internal meeting ground Soul.   

Hector Mendoza is the campus minister for liturgical music—music for public worship—at the University of Portland, Oregon. First of all, I think it is unusual to have a campus ministry for liturgical music, sacred music. But then this university, founded in 1901 as a private Roman Catholic university affiliated with the Congregation of the Holy Cross, with a sister school at Notre Dame, honors the spiritual needs of its students and faculty. You know there has to be a robust worship component. There is a chapel in every residence hall and their main chapel is the Chapel of Christ the Teacher where “people come together to evoke God’s harmony.” Here are its doors, carved from walnut local to the area, showing a sunburst. 

Some might say this is overdone religiosity. I quite disagree. It merely acknowledges that every student has a soul that also needs an education. 

Mendoza started his musical journey when he was a child. At seven he was already performing percussion in the Venezuelan ensemble, “El Sistema,” a publicly funded music education program, founded in Venezuela in 1975 by musician and activist José Antonio Abreu. His vision was to offer young people a free education in classical music that promotes human opportunity and development for impoverished children. He called his system (sistema) Music for Social Change. Students receive instruction and free use of an instrument. Today, El Sistema is thriving with over 400 music centers in Venezuela and also many in the U.S. An education in music is spiritually formative, encouraging creativity as well as discipline. What could be more “gospel” than this? 

Mendoza followed his music to the University of Vienna, where he taught about contemporary Venezuelan music and its influence on Europe. After his wife died, he moved to the US with his son. He was very angry at God and confused. He said: “I wanted nothing but to forget my past. I wanted to quit being a musician.”  This is often a pained grief response, to run away to forget. But, quite against his plan to escape, Mendoza got a job playing an organ in a church orchestra. Most of us learn that we just can’t run away from our passion, our natural gift—inwardly energizing God-given.

I do not believe that God ever manipulates for the sake of control. I do believe that the Holy Spirit of God entrances us, beguiling us to follow what we love and care deeply about for the sake of Love itself—and bids us look up when everything’s going downhill.  

Mendoza learned to conduct, a different approach to the same love: music in a classical mode. “When I conduct my mission is more about perfection; it’s about getting the best result possible.” He keeps three main goals in mind: Beauty. Holiness and Connection. Holiness is the most important one to him, yet he works hard to make sure a congregation is connecting  with the emotion and spirituality of a moment. Like any pilgrim, Mendoza is “always searching” not just for perfection but for the many expressions of music—jazz, classical, reggaeton, salsa, and more eccentric forms. Here is the masked conductor. 

All these varieties he discerns and follows within the context of a Mass. Is this not what the God of Creation desires and why we worship at all? It forces us to remember that we are but a blip in this cosmic universe, all of which reflects the Holy. 

What beckons you?  For me, it is the image and vision of a larger-than-religions Divinity that surpasses confinement and explodes like a sunburst inside me. I follow without knowing where I’m going.  

2018.04.08 The Depressed King and the Deformed Musician

What do you do when you feel insane, trapped in the endless circle of your own mind? Sing, of course.

Here’s a story for you. It was part of a sermon delivered by the Rt. Rev. Alan Gates on Holy Tuesday, 2018. The bishop was speaking to the clergy of his diocese, many of whom were feeling exhausted, preoccupied, and some defeated, by the weight of their vocation at this most important time of the Christian year.

King Felipe V of Spain ruled in the early 1700s. He suffered from mental illness that caused him to howl into the night, become incontinent, play obsessively with clocks, and often go mute for weeks. Against all reason he was not deposed.

Carlo Farinelli was an Italian-born singer who was castrated at the age of ten in order to preserve his beautiful voice. Men like Farinelli were called castrati. Although cruel measures were used, the sound of castrati singing had depth and power and a pure, genderless, ethereal sound.

By one of those coincidences I like to call God-incidences, Farinelli the castrato and King Felipe the insane found something unique together. Farinelli was persuaded by Queen Isabella to come to Spain to sing for the tormented king. The king received Farinelli because he sensed a certain bond in circumstance—that inner sense we often dismiss but that sometimes turns out to be a nudge from the Holy Spirit, the Great Connector.  (She does know how to do Her healing work!)

The two men conversed:
    King: “We were both made [who we are] against our will. It is no more natural for me to be a king than it is for you to be what you are.  Both of us have been ‘robbed of normality.’”  Both men, concludes the King, have unreasonable, impossible expectations heaped upon them – by their families, by the public, even by God. “You have a world of subjects – as I do.  Mine were given to me by God, though.  I wish I were a pagan.”
    Farinelli:  “Why?”
    King:  “Many gods are fun; one is a nightmare. … He keeps us on a tight rein.”

The relationship that began in mutual brokenness evolved as healing. When Farinelli sang, the music penetrated the king’s madness. It gradually drew him out of his isolation and dark despondency—re-centered, restored, reconciled him to the world around him, even to the impossibility of his vocation. The king called it “the music of the spheres.”  As for Farinelli, he sang the king to his senses, himself to pride of purpose.

There is a young girl in the neighborhood who stands alone waiting for the school bus to arrive. While she waits she sings—to herself, to the world, to no one, to God—rain or shine, she sings. It’s not the quality of her voice, tonality or atonality, that makes her song beautiful. It’s that her music, for its own sake, evokes truth, love, soul, and beauty. Such odd holiness, eh?

P.S.  It was the patriarchal politics and religion of the King’s day that kept him on a tight leash —not Godde.

2018.04.01 HALLELUJAH!

HALLELUJAH!  Such an excitable word! I got to thinking about the power of the word itself—breathy, open, pumped.

                                                       

HALLELUJAH

The first time I bumped into Hallelujah in a visceral way, I was eight—vulnerable and easily smitten. Our music teacher, Miss Ball, was one of my many image-of-God figures—worthy of worship. She was tall, bunched her straw-colored hair in a net tucked tight to her neck, had a baton we all obeyed, sang to us like angels do, and made solemn promises we trusted.

Miss Ball promised that if our all-girls chorus practiced our soul-notes—the ones that came from the bottom of our bellies, not our throats —we could sing The Hallelujah Chorus at the Christmas concert. She sang us sample hallelujahs. She was an alto. So was I.

“This is the music of heaven by a prodigiously famous composer named Handel, girls,” she said.  I didn’t know what prodigiously meant but I fervently practiced my soul-notes at home. I didn’t know what heaven was either, but I was sure Miss Ball was a prime candidate.

Hallelujah, according to Miss Ball, was a Hebrew word, hallel— praise. “Close your eyes tight and imagine the brightest light you can.”  I squished my eyes tight and envisioned the huge square flashlight my father used when we had night air raid drills in New York City. He held the light while I raced around to pull down all the black shades so no bomb would fall on us.  “Now open your mouths and let that light shine in your voices, like this. Ah-lay-looo-ya, silent H.”  We girls were securely under Miss Ball’s spell. I didn’t know who wanted this Hallelujah more, me or Miss Ball.

We practiced like mad, singing wide-mouthed ahs and oohs and las and yahs. I could tell Miss Ball wasn’t at all sure how this whopping choral piece would come off. But it was printed on the program; parents and God would be in attendance, so we were ready.

Hallelujah night arrived. Breathless, we stood in our rows, spiffed in white blouses and navy blue skirts, waiting. What if Miss Ball was late? Then she swept in like Loretta Young on television.  My eyes popped wide open—wonderstruck. Miss Ball’s hair had escaped its net. Out it tumbled. It billowed magically in waves. She picked up her baton, tapped the music stand, shining upon us a grin of blinding radiance.

Halleluah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.Hallelujah. Ha-la’ay-loo-yah.  We shone with praise.

Everyone stood for the chorus and then everyone clapped for us—maybe for God, or Handel. We took our bows. Although Miss Ball had carefully explained to us that the famous Hallelujah Chorus by the prodigious Handel was really intended for Easter not Christmas, she applauded wildly, and I never saw much difference between the two anyway—still don’t.
                                                             *  *  *  *
All this happened just before Christmas vacation. That year Hallelujah surpassed even Santa Claus. All through the Christmas vacation I walked around singing my alto part out loud.

After vacation I was eager to see Miss Ball—and get more praise. Instead, she grinned and  announced that we all should now call her Mrs. Davis.

HALLELUJAH