Week 6: James MacMillan

This week was quite exciting for me, most especially because I met my favorite living composer, James MacMillan.

If you don't know who this is, you can read more about him by clicking on his name and reading his bio on the Boosey & Hawkes page. Let me just say that he is the man, he's my composer-hero. He writes music in all classical genres, many of which, even his orchestral works and concerti, have sacred themes. He is a devout catholic. Many of his works are as touching to me as the Bach Passions or some of the most sincere Brahms works (ie. Requiem, Geistlisches Lied Op. 30, etc.) If you're interested in learning more about his music, check out "Seven Last Words from the Cross" (Layton recording), "A Child's Prayer" (The Sixteen recording), "A New Song" (The Sixteen recording), and "Sun-Dogs" (Netherlands Chamber Choir recording).

My life is particularly exciting right now because one of my other favorite living composers is Paweł Łukaszewski, who I am currently studying with.

Anyway, MacMillan was here this week performing with the Britten Sinfonia, one of the UK's 2 or 3 best chamber orchestras. MacMillan conducted and they played 3 works, a piece by living Estonian Composer Tuur, MacMillan's new Oboe Concerto, and Bethoven's 2nd symphony. It was a great concert and the audience clapped so much that they played an encore. Last week I emailed MacMillan to see if he had time to meet with me. They were passing through very quickly and didn't have any extra time, but he said I could come to their rehearsal. I did, and afterward, he invited me to his dressing room/green room and we talked for about 30 minutes. I was in heaven. Ok, I know that I'm a complete composer/music nerd. Most of you have no idea who this guy is, but I felt like I was meeting Paul McCartney or Jimmy Page. He was very nice and interested in what I'm doing. We talked a lot about sacred music and how it can still be very relevant in contemporary classical music. This is something that he excels at and yet is still taken very seriously by the best classical music organizations. Anyway, it was great!!!

After the concert, Paweł and I had this picture taken with him and were invited to a little cocktail party in one of the concert hall banquet rooms. We met several different British performers and arts organizers including the development director of one of the best choirs in the world, The Sixteen from the UK.

Today, we (Musica Sacra Choir) sang in a special Mass. The archbishop of Warsaw was there and it was very interesting to see how that changed the ritual of the meeting. The meeting was 30 minutes longer and they had many extra musical requirements with many of the bishops and priests singing as well.

Tonight I've been hanging out with some American, LDS friends who are here on a Fulbright, the Boudwin's. We played Dominion and had dinner. It's been nice hanging out with them. I don't usually mind being by myself, but on Sunday's, it's nice to not be alone.

I have a ton of projects going on right now. One of them is a Mass setting that Musica Sacra is going to perform on Maundy Thursday during Holy Week in April 2012. That Mass will be a special one for all of the priests in the area, some 300-400. It is a short setting for mixed chorus and organ; Kyrie (Lord Have Mercy), Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), Dextera Domini (The Right Hand of the Lord), and Pater Noster (Our Father). I set both the Latin and English versions of the text so that more choir can use them.

Ok, more next week!!!

Week 5: Warsaw Visual Tour

As I mentioned last week, I'm giving a little tour of where I live in Warsaw. I rent an apartment very close to the city center, about 3 blocks away. First, the interior of my little apartment. Sorry if this is a little boring. I'm trying to be obedient to my wife.

 Here's the little kitchen.

Bathroom

Little washing machine and drying rack.

Living room/office

Book shelf and heater

Fold-out bed/couch. 

Other half of bedroom

Front door

This is the view from my apartment window. This building has an open market in it with many shops and fresh fruit/vegetable vendors. 

Looking straight down from my 14th floor window. The yellow things down there are pallets of food for stocking at the little grocery stoor that's about 10 yards from my building's front door.

A wider view from my window 

Little neighborhood playground between apartment buildings.

The building next to me with grass and bushes on the roof. 

This is view from the window in my hallway. The tall building on the left was commissioned by Stallin in the 50s as his gift to Warsaw. Right across the street is the central train station and a huge mall.

My hall way. My neighbor, an old guy, sits on that table several times a day to smoke his cigarettes. 

My front door. 

The elevators. 

Here's that little grocery store that's right next to my building. 

It's called Biedronka (sounds like it's spelled), which means lady bug. I was going to take a picture inside, but people already look at me weird because I can't understand what they're saying, I didn't want to add to that.

This is the name of my street, Grybowska (pr. G-zss-u-bov-ska) It means mushroom. 

This is the view to the west when I come out onto the street. There's the Radisson hotel. 

This is looking east. There are several cafe's, restaurants, banks, and apartment buildings. It's a very nice part of town.

Here is my building, the middle of the 3. My apartment is on the 2nd highest floor and closest to the street.

If I turn around from the previous shot, I see a little path between buildings that leads to the big mall and train station about 3 blocks away.

 Here's the path back to my buildings, on the left.

This is the big street half a block west of me. It's named after the last Pope, John Paul II who was Polish. The love him here, his picture is everywhere. 

John Paul II street looking south. 

John Paul II street looking north. 

 This is not the best picture, but in the background you can see the Marriott hotel. It was the first foreign hotel built in Warsaw before the iron curtain fell.

This is an old church turned into a museum that's about 50 yards from my place.

About 200 yards east of my place, going down my street, is the main street in Warsaw, Marszałkowska (pr. Mar-shaow-kov-ska).

 Marszałkowska looking south.

Marszałkowska looking back down my street. 

Right across Marszałkowska is the big Saski Garden. It's very beautiful.

More Saski Gardens. 

 These are the street cars that I take across the river to go to choir at the cathedral.

Across the river looking at the sky line of downtown. 

The Praga Cathedral where we sing. 

Going around the cathedral to our rehearsal space in the white building to the right. 

This is my teacher rehearsing the ladies this evening in preparation for their performance in Mass. I lead the last 4 rehearsals while he was in LA. He returned yesterday.

Here they are singing.

This way a good week of composing and preparing ideas for pieces to come. I had a great 4-hour lunch with another Fulbrighter, Dara Weinberg, who is a poet and playwright. We shared a lot of our work and are thinking about collaborating on a new project. This is another nice thing about the Fulbright, getting to know the others who are here studying. There is quite a group of very talented people. It's really fun to share our work. Tonight, Dara and 3 other Fulbrighters who live in Warsaw came to Mass with me to hear the choir sing. One of them, William (Bill) Helmcke, is a musicologist. He is here studying the Chopin Polonaises. We have a ton in common. Our classical music tastes, ideas about teaching theory and ear training, and several other things, are very similar. Another great connection.

This weekend we had District conference at church. There are no LDS stakes in Poland, and I know of only this one district, but I don't really know much about that. There is probably a district in Krokow, but I don't know. There are 7 branches in the district, only 2 of which are in Warsaw. Others had to travel pretty far, up to 3 hours, to attend the conference. In this morning's meeting, there were about 250 or 300 people. We filled the little chapel and cultural hall very well. It was a great meeting! I was asked to lead our branch choir which grew in number 3 times with impromptu volunteers right before the meeting, many who were young and senior missionaries. We sang a nice little piece and it really added to the Spirit of the meeting. Afterward we had many nice comments. They have never had a choir perform in conference. It was really fun to be a part of. The mission president, who is from Las Vegas, presided. The district presidency was re-organized. The new president is a young Polish man and his 1st counselor is an American man who has only been here for 2 months. He and his family are here for 2 years. He works at the US Embassy. He bore his testimony and told us what a surprise it was to be called. Many of the audience were Americans and they provide translation for us. 

It's really nice to be able to attend church and feel the same Spirit all these thousands of miles away that I do at home. The church is a marvelous thing. It's small here, but it's doing really well. The mission president spoke about working towards being ready for temple in Poland. We are very far from that, but it was really great to get the fire burning in everyone's hearts. 

Ok, more next week. I have some exciting things coming up in a few days that I'm looking forward to writing about. I miss my family, but we're all doing really well!! 

(sorry if there are typos Janae, I was too tired to re-read)

Week 4: Musica Sacra Warsaw-Praga Cathedral Choir

This was a busy week of composing, applying for University jobs, and rehearsing. As I mentioned last week, my teacher is currently in Los Angeles, CA lecturing at a conference of Polish Music at USC's Thorton School of Music. In his absence, I have been leading rehearsals with the women of the Musica Sacra Warsaw-Praga Cathedral Choir. We are preparing to make a CD of sacred choral music for women's voices. One of the pieces is a new work of mine, Ave Redemptor (Hail Redeemer, in English). We are also continually preparing new selections for our monthly performances in Mass at the Warsaw, Praga Cathedral, (sorry, this video is all in Polish, but there are some nice shots of the cathedral).

(This picture was taken the day after I arrived in Warsaw at my very first rehearsal. A photo-journalist visited the rehearsal to prepare for an article in the Warsaw Times. I'm in the back row on the far right.)

Though my abilities to speak Polish are dismal, we managed fairly well. Most of the 20 ladies speak English well enough to understand most of what I had to say. I tried to always say the bar numbers in Polish, but there are so many 'sh' and 'ch' and 'djz' and other tongue and teeth sounds, that I often stumbled. We had fun and laughed at each other's funny language slip-ups. Though not all of the members of the choir have formal musical training, and a handful can only barely read music, they have a beautiful sound and are very excited to learn and improve.

I applied for 9 University jobs this week and found 3 new listings yesterday. This makes 17 University jobs in the US for my particular area of expertise and the listings only started being posted at the end of August. It's a good year, things have really picked up from 2 years ago when there were only a handful of postings throughout the whole school year. Here's a break down of where the jobs are located by state how many per. Hawaii-1, California-1, Texas-4, Illinois-2, Minnesota-1, Michigan-1, Indiana-1, Ohio-1, Pennsylvania-1, New York-3, Massachusetts-1.

At the request of my Aunt Bonnie, I have been planning to post some pictures of my apartment, neighborhood, and local shopping so you can see what I see every day. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and will have to postpone this until next week. Instead, I'm posting a few videos that demonstrate how to say your numbers, days, and months in Polish so you can get a sense of what I was trying to do at rehearsal this week. Thirty-three is of the devil, it's by far the hardest to say.

1-10
11-20
10-100
days of the week
months of the year

Today we had really great church meetings. I attend the Warsaw 2nd branch where there are about 75 active members. This is the best attended unit of the church in Poland, it's a wonderful and vibrant branch. I actually live in the Warsaw 1st branch boundaries, but there is so much more English spoken in the 2nd branch, that I've received permission to attend there. Our branch president is an American who is a US Embassy employee. There are a handful of other American families here on business. When the mission president is in town (there's only one in the whole country), he and his wife come to our unit along with 4 other sets of missionaries including a retired couple from Sandy, Utah. This couple, Elder and Sister Curtis, just arrived on the mission 2 weeks ago and speak no Polish. They will be working with the Young Single Adults in the area. I learned today that 3 of the missionaries, 2 Elders and 1 Sister, play the violin. Before coming to Poland, I had hoped to find an LDS string player in Warsaw to play some of my hymn arrangements with. I've hit the jackpot here!! Luckily I brought my Principal Player books with me. We are already planning multiple musical numbers. Next Sunday is district conference and for the first time in the history of the church in Warsaw, there will be a special musical number presented by a choir. It happens to be our branch choir. Everyone is very excited to have so much music in the church, it is a very new thing for them.

I really enjoyed visiting with my family on Skype yesterday even though the kids were a little distracted with a new game they just got. Thank goodness for the internet, it makes the world a whole lot smaller. I miss them and love them very much. I'm trying to work and compose as much as possible while I'm here to make this whole thing really worth it. Thank you to incredibly helpful parents who have sacrificed so much to allow Janae and the kids to live with them while I'm away!!

More next week, and hopefully more pictures.

Week 3: Warsaw National Philharmonic (Filharmonia Narodowa)

This past week was spent mostly organizing myself and working out a composition schedule for the next several months. There are many projects that I would like to work on, it has been difficult to nail down exactly what I want to accomplish while in Poland. Since my teacher is an expert of sacred choral music, I've decided to focus almost exclusively on this kind of music to get the most out of my time with him. There is a set of piano works, Paisajes del Poeta, that I also need to compose while here to fulfill a commission. My choral projects will include a set of motets set to be sung in either Latin or English, which I will call Warsaw Motets. My main dissertation project will be Missa Resurrexit, a mass form based on the story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for Mixed Chorus, Soloists, and Organ. I will also orchestrate the work to give it more performance flexibility, like the Faure or Durufle Requiem settings. Additionally, I have a couple other small choral pieces that I'd like to prepare include a handfull of LDS hymn arrangements for chorus.

Some of these composition decisions were aided by my experience this week with the Warsaw National Philharmonic, or Filharmonia Naradowa, as it is called here. As I've mentioned in previous posts, my teacher Paweł Łukaszewski is the composer in residence with the orchestra this season. I did not before realize how exciting this really is. This was the season opening week and the main feature of the concerts was Paweł's Symphony No. 1 "Symphony of Providence" for chorus, soloists, and orchestra. I attended the final rehearsal on Thursday and met the conductor of the Warsaw Philharmonic Chorus, Henryk Wojnarowski. This is a fully professional choir that rehearses M-F from 9am-1pm. They have a wonderful rich tone and excellent blend.

The concert performance was really wonderful. It is a very beautiful and somewhat somber piece. I sat with Paweł, his wife Joana, and a conductor friend of their's from Cologne, Germany, Richard Mailaender. Richard was very fun to talk with. He works for the Archbishop of Cologne as his director of music and choirs. He is extremely well connected and always working on new exciting projects. He knows quite well and has worked on several choral projects with Arvo Pärt, one of my favorite living composers. He asked what I was working on at I mentioned the Missa Resurrexit project. He perked up at this and informed me that he performs a new resurrection work every year with his choir in Cologne. Part of the reason he was visiting Warsaw was to discuss a new commission project with Paweł for his resurrection project in 2013. He asked that I send him my Missa Resurrexit when I'm finished. Hopefully I can be a part of his annual Easter project in a few years to come.

After the concert, Paweł invited us back stage to meet the conductor of the orchestra, Antoni Wit. What I later learned is that Mr. Wit is the most important conductor in all of Poland and the Warsaw National Philharmonic is the most important orchestra in the country. This was the first of several concerts this season that feature Paweł's orchestral works.

Paweł told me a funny story while we were at the rehearsal that illustrates the importance of this orchestra. Poland has had many fine composers in the last 50-60 years. The 3 most famous of these are Lutoslawski, Penderecki, and Gorecki. Whenever Paweł talks about meeting them or bumping into them, he says "he was like God." One time, when Paweł was a student at the Chopin University of Music, he purchased a ticket to see a concert at the National Philharmonic who had given many important premieres of these 3 great Polish contemporary composers. His ticket was for a seat in the very back of the upper balcony. As the concert was about to begin, he saw that one of the seats in the first row of the balcony, one of the best seats in the house, was still vacant. He decided to go sit there because no one else seemed to belong to it. A few minutes after he sat down, he felt a tap on his shoulder. An old man's voice said, "excuse me, I believe you're in my seat." Paweł turned to apologize to the man and saw that it was Lutoslawski himself. Then came that line again, "he was like God!" 

A couple weeks ago, the King's Singers gave the premiere of a new work the Paweł was commissioned to write for them, Tenebrae Responsories. They will perform the work again in London this November, which I will be attending. Here are a couple pictures of him at the concert and afterwards backstage with the group and his wife. She is the lady on the right. She is the vocal coach for our Musica Sacra choir and does an excellent job warming us up before each rehearsal and performance (we always warm up for 30 minutes, it's pretty serious).

I don't think I've shared any Paweł's music yet on this blog. He has 2 very fine discs of choral music performed by Stephen Layton and his choirs Polyphony and the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge. You can hear samples of the pieces by following these links. His Nunc Dimitis and Crucem tuam adoramus, Domine. 

On Monday, Paweł flies to Los Angeles for 10 days to lecture at a convention of Polish Music at the USC Thorton School of Music. He his hoping to meet Morten Lauridsen who teaches there. Lauridsen is one of his favorite composers of sacred choral music.

The other highlight of my week has been the LDS General Conference where our prophet, apostles, and other general church officers have spoken to the worldwide church over live satellite and internet broadcast. The 5, 2 hour sessions have been really wonderful. It seemed like many of the talks were directed to me personally. It was a very needed emotional and spiritual support. The Tabernacle Choir and other choirs sang very well and added greatly to the spirit of the meetings.

I'm looking forward to getting started on my big projects this week and the start of the school year at the Chopin University. Though I'm only taking lessons, it will be fun to be around the school once a week and a part of it all.

That's all for now!!