Last night I went to a free concert of Spanish Renaissance
Christmas music at the Pres House. I sat with Kathbert, one of the fiddlers
from my band, and some other ladies I know from church. The fabulous vocal ensemble is
from Eau Claire and is led by a professor at the university there who just got
tenure and also just spent a few weeks in his native Hong Kong, attending the
protests that are going on there. We all followed his saga on social media, and
I’m sure we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when he posted that he was
back on the plane to the US! He is much braver than I am – I cannot imagine
risking the wrath of the Chinese government! The concert included those crowd
pleasers “Riu Riu Chiu” and the Victoria “O Magnum Mysterium,” as well as a
modern setting of the text by a Basque composer that nearly caught the mystical
import of the words as well as Victoria’s setting. My favorite piece may have
been an “ensalada” that starts with singing in Spanish about the birth of
Jesus, then goes into a Catalan folksong about a woman who wants a new dress,
then another song in Galician, a Sephardic tune, and finally a crowd scene in
what the program says is “made-up Portuguese.” The reason it is called a “salad”
is precisely because the song changes every few measures, from sacred to
rousing. It was so much fun! I even bought a CD of the same concert (with three
extra pieces that we didn’t hear last night) with some of my gig money. I guess
I play music for (very little) pay in order to support other, better musicians.
Famous Hat
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