Thursday, July 24, 2008

Not chant, but....

May I point you, anyway, dear reader, to the truly amazing music offerings at the Trinity Wall Street website?

First, allow me to announce that the organ festival there this summer features female organists from all over the world and is called, most unfortunately, "Pedals and Pumps: A Festival of Organ Divas" - a name that is, I'm sorry to say, quite a bit too precious for me. The concerts, though, are just terrific! Listen to these two Italian women, Federica Iannella and Giuliana Maccaroni, for instance, who mess around splendidly doing all sorts of things with the keyboards there (and with some other instruments, too, from what I could tell as I was working and listening this afternoon).
This week, Federica Iannella and Giuliana Maccaroni, Italian concert organists and recording artists, who will use both chancel and gallery consoles during their concert, perform four-hand works by Morandi and Rossini.


Their charming accents as they introduce the pieces are alone well worth the price of admission ($0.00!), believe me. But you get the music, too.

Then there's Barbara Dennerlein from Germany, who actually does indeed play Fats Waller (among other things) on the Trinity Wall Street electronic organ:
Barbara Dennerlein, Germany's most famous jazz recording star and concert organist, improvises her own works using both classical and modern jazz idioms. She will use theatrical registers programmed by Cameron Carpenter for the virtual pipe organ.


And Jane Watts from England ain't half-bad, either. Well, go listen to them all! There's another organ concert, live, today at 1 p.m. EDT, too.

And don't forget, while you're there, to have a listen to the other "Concerts at One"! Right now I'm listening to and watching Vassily Primakov play Beethoven on piano. Wow.

But mainly, you simply must go take in the the Trinity Choir and Rebel Baroque Orchestra perform Grands Motets!
The Trinity Choir and soloists from the choir with Rebel Baroque Orchestra perform French masterpieces of Lully, de Lalande, Charpentier, Desmarest, Rameau, and de Mondonville. Conducted by Simon Carrington.


It really is astounding that Trinity is simply giving this stuff away. These are some of the best musicians in the world, and some of the most sublime music ever written. (And right in the middle of listening to the Grands Motets the other day, up popped Charpentier's wonderful Gloria Patri, from I'm still not sure what. Here's an mp3 of the version I'd once found just tooling around the web one night and really liked.) The Grands Motets are so rich and and so thick with sound and so expressive with emotion; this (along with the Petits Motets) is some of the most wonderful choral music I've ever heard.

Really, take advantage of the generosity of the Trinity Wall Street music ministry; you can go to a concert every single day, if you want to. Hard to believe, but true.

1 comment:

bls said...

TWS is very generous to provide us with videos of these concerts, I think.

They also post all the Eucharists of the year, and there are videos from every Feast and Celebration. Their Holy Week stuff from last year was great, too.

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