Gilbert & Sullivan’s

THE MIKADO

and invites you to join in a public

SING-THROUGH

at the Durham Arts Council building

120 Morris Street, Durham NC 27701

Sunday, November 1, 2009

2pm to 5pm

Scores will be available for loan or sale ($25).

——————

THE MIKADO

2010 Performances: March 18, 19, 20, 21
at the Carolina Theatre
309 West Morgan Street, Durham NC 27701

AUDITIONS
January 2010 at the DAC
by appointment
Sunday, January 3 from 1pm to 6pm
Monday, January 4 from 7:30pm to 9:15pm
Callbacks: Tuesday, January 5 at 7:30pm

To schedule an audition or receive more information, contact
mikado.producer@gmail.com
or 919-491-2364

Audition guidelines, preferred selections, and complete show and ticket information are available at
www.durhamsavoyards.org

By way of newraleigh.com, it looks like Tori Amos will be coming to the Durham Performing Arts Center at the end of July. I haven’t seen her in concert since moving to Durham from the DC area in 1998, but I remember she had a good show then. I wonder what her stuff is like now.

If you haven’t been to the DPAC yet, you might want to consider going on May 9th.  It was just announced that in association with WUNC radio, Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion will be coming to the DPAC.    Tickets won’t go on sale until March 2nd but when they do you can get them at the DPAC tickets page.

I had heard rumors of this a few months ago, but had thought they fell through.  It’s nice to see they were correct.  A Prairie Home Companion is my son’s favorite show and he just picked up two books by Garrison Keillor at the Book Exchange in their going out of business sale.

• Durham Symphony
• Duke University String School

Interestingly enough, the concert for the Duke String School got a review while the 3 full performances of Handel’s Messiah, presented by the Duke Chapel Choir, did not.  Something’s a bit wrong there.

My son has been taking violin with the string school this fall and will be performing with the beginner 1 group at 3pm.  In addition, when my son started, I mentioned to his ensemble’s group instructor, Stephanie Swisher, that I played double bass and asked if she needed any help.  While they didn’t need anything with the beginner group, she asked if I’d be willing to help with the intermediate 2 group, so I’ll be playing bass with that group at 7pm.

Anyway, if you’re in Durham tomorrow afternoon and are interested in some classical music, consider stopping by!

Update: When posting late at night, double check all your facts. Baldwin Auditorium, of course, is not in Biddle Music Building.  Oh well, here’s hoping I get it right next time. Their next concert will be December 6.

Last Tuesday evening, I went to the meeting about the future American Tobacco Trail bridge over I-40.  Architecht/Engineer Steven Grover showed off a bunch of designs that were rejected and then 3 that were still in contention: a truss bridge like the one in Raleigh, an arched bridge, and a cabled stayed bridge that I really like.  Everything on the cable stayed bridge evokes triangles and for a bridge in the heart of the Triangle I think it’s really appropriate.  I hope that’s what we go for.

This weekend was the Strawberry Festival for Central Park School for Children.  I spent the morning scooping strawberries onto shortcake and then wandered around with my son until heading home to change into a tuxedo and pick up my double bass for the Durham Symphony Orchestra concert at the farmer’s market at Durham Central Park.  We had a very large crowd and except for a bit of wind had a good concert.  I’m really looking forward to the fall when the symphony starts back up.  We’ve got a good slate of guest conductors for the upcoming year and I’m really looking forward to see what they will do.

Tonight, I helped setup the polling place at the school of Science & Math.  I’ll be there tomorrow from 6am until at least 7:30pm as an election judge.  If you have already voted, great!  If you have not, please make sure to go vote tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter who you vote for, but please do go vote.

Assuming I’m not completely wiped tomorrow night, I’ll have more information about how tomorrow goes.

An octopus sired by a dwarf, unless it was a snake! ©  Tanner Lovelace

I’m starting to recover from the whirlwind week I had last week where I spent around 25 hours total just playing the double bass at the Savoyards rehearsals, shows and even one Durham Symphony concert. This weekend I also went through election official training with Durham BOE Mike Ashe (who is a trip!) and election equipment training. Tomorrow evening I have ballot training and then a 1-on-1 interview with Mr. Ashe, all in preparation for being an election “Emergency Judge” for the primary on May 6. I’ll have more to post on that soon.

Until then, I’ll just leave this one picture that refers to a previous post. A good friend of ours from DC was down this weekend for a show and since she’s a very accomplished balloon artist, she created for us, on basically the spur of the moment, an octupus, a dwarf and a snake so we could take it to the last performance. The official line spoken by the character Colonel Fairfax, in response to the question “what was that”, in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard is “an arquebus, fired from the wharf, unless I much mistake.” However, it’s easy to mishear it and so that apparently gave rise to the line, that the singer actually had the guts to use in the first rehearsal with the orchestra, “an octopus, sired by a dwarf, unless it was a snake”. So, here is Steve, who played Colonel Fairfax in Yeomen next to the octopus, dwarf and snake.

1. Early voting starts
2. The Durham Savoyards production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeoman of the Guard starts tonight.

I encourage everyone to avail themselves of both options.

On Saturday I start training to be an election judge and hope to have some interesting posts from that.  Until then, take a look at some pictures that were taken Tuesday night at the first dress rehearsal for Yeoman of the Guard.

So, for those of you who haven’t heard, the Durham Savoyards will be performing Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeoman of the Guard at the Carolina Theater on April 17-19 at 8pm and April 20 at 2pm.  Find out more information at the Savoyards website and please come see our show!

Another interesting bit of information that was announced at the DSO rehearsal tonight was that we had apparently received 96 applications (with accompanying DVDs of their work) for the position of DSO conductor!  The search committee has now winnowed that down to 10 and will be looking to reduce it even further down to 4 and invite those top 4 to guest conduct during the next season.  I have no idea who the candidates are but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing who the search committee picks.

These concerts should be interesting as they are the first ones since Conductor Emeritus Alan Neilson retired. The Durham Symphony plans to host guest conductors until a replacement for Maestro Neilson is found. Up first will be Andrew McAfee who is the Music Director/Conductor for the Triangle Youth Ballet and Durham Intermediate Youth Orchestra and Adjunct Instructor of Horn at UNC. He was also formerly the principal Horn for the North Carolina Symphony from 1992 to 2007.

Maestro McAfee has started off by e-mailing the orchestra a complete schedule down to the minute of what he expects to cover during our rehearsal on Tuesday. This is actually the first time I’ve ever had a conductor do that and I find that I actually like it quite a bit. It lets the instrumentalists know what the expectations are and doesn’t leave us wondering how much more we need to cover in the rehearsal. As to whether the reality will actually fit the schedule, that remains to be seen, but I am hopeful.