Tuesday, March 14, 2006

"A Farewell to Arms"

Tomorrow (Wednesday) night, I'm playing as cello solist in two works with the DePauw Chamber Singers. One is "A Farewell to Arms" for mixed chorus and cello, by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. It's a simply wonderful piece, about ten minutes long. The text is full of dying old soldier imagery, and the music is beautiful.

We're also doing an arrangement of a Civil-war era Shaker tune I found this summer, "Prayer for the Captive." It includes improvised interludes on the cello. I'll write about this piece on my improv blog.

If you are in the Greencastle area, it will be a good concert. It would be good even if I wasn't playing--the Chamber Singers and their director, Gabriel Crouch, formerly of the Kingf's Singers, are fantastic. Here's the blurb on the DePauw website.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While I am more familiar than most with Shaker tunes, I haven't heard "Prayer for the Captive." I'm looking forward to reading about it.

Terry