Music and March

     Although the daffodils have bloomed and the flowering trees are strutting their stuff, mornings are at still quite chilly and the temperatures are struggling to get of the 50s.  I'm not complaining, mind you, as I've heard from friends up north that snow remains on the ground, but this is the first spring in Durham that we haven't had a long series of warm days. We've been able to keep busy attending concerts and attending sporting events.  I'll deal with the concerts first.
     In early March we attended the Duke Symphony Orchestra's concert.  They were celebrating the works of Britten, Wagner, Gluck, and Sibelius.  Highlights of the program were Britten's Simple Symphony for Strings and the Violin Concerto by Sibelius.  The Britten piece took four melodies he wrote as a youth and tied them together.  It was quite moving with melodies which suited my simple tastes..  Musically the Sibelius piece was more challenging.  However, the performance by Jingwei Li as the soloist was amazing.  Ms. Li, a Duke student, was the winner of the Duke Concerto Competition and was outstanding, playing the difficult opening movement "without a lick of music", as my father used to say.  It ceases to amaze me as to the level and diversity of the talent of the students at this university.
      Each Spring the Duke University Chorale presents what is called it "Tour Concert".  Over Spring Break they head off to some exotic location to present a series of concerts and then bring it home for the university.  This year upon their return from the Bahamas their concert was held in the Duke Chapel, which always a great place to hear and see a musical event.  The director of the Chorale, Rodney Wynkoop, told his audience that of the 50 or so members of the Chorale only 8 were upper class men(or women as the case may be).  The group's a cappella numbers were very good.  The opening number "Ave maris stella"  was particularly effective in the chapel setting.  I also thought the arrangement and presentation of a Rumi poem "Where Your Bare Foot Walks" written by David N. Childs was very good.  The group must have had a problem hearing the piano accompaniment on several of the numbers in such a large space as the Chapel as pitch became a problem, not between the parts but with the piano.  Anyway, great work by a young group of students.
     One of Nan's friends, author A. J. Mayhew, sings with a group named The St. Matthew's Women's Singing Circle.  They performed at the St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough and we attended a concert they sponsored.  The Singing Circle performed a number of songs in a folk and gospel tradition.  Several of the song were in what I would call the primitive folk.  (If you saw the film "O Brother Where Art Thou" you'll know what I mean.)  They were accompanied by percussion and guitar on most songs and did a nice job.
     They were the "warm-up" for The Gospel Jubilators,  an all-male gospel group from Durham who have sung all over the world.  They were founded in 1972 as a response to what they saw as the growing commercialization of gospel music.  One of the original members of the group is still singing with them.  Having spent over 10 years performing and sometimes conducting a gospel group, The High Spirit Singers, it was a great pleasure to see and hear the Jubilators.  Their harmonies were tight and presentation crisp and moving.  They even did a couple of songs that High Spirit used to do - Swing Down Chariot being one of them.  They had the audience join in on several of  their numbers and I had the pleasure of belting out the tenor on "Count Your Blessings".  I'd go see them again, that's how much I  enjoyed it.