I learned quite a lesson Friday night in how we can be SO wrong about what we really want and need. As my week ended, I was completely and utterly exhausted- depleted by a combination of things that had really made the last few days very challenging- and battling a bad headache to boot. So
Last Saturday was the funeral of a 33-year-old woman named Alison Hill, who passed away after a long and sometimes frustrating struggle with health difficulties that caused her terrible pain. Her death marked the end of her suffering and her release into a better life, but it’s still hard to view her death as anything
I’ve been directing the Holy Communion Senior Choir for just over 24 years, and a lot of exciting and gratifying things have happened in that time- but I’m not sure I have ever been prouder to stand in front of these men and women as I was the other night when we traveled together to
Several weeks ago, I blogged about a high school voice student of mine named Jacob who has begun to explore the intriguing possibility that he is a Countertenor.... which means that even though his voice has changed and he is fully capable of singing in the normal male range, he actually feels most “right,” most
I can still remember the moment when Dr. Peter Dennee, the chair of the music department, announced at our music faculty meeting back in February that Laura Kaeppeler- who graduated with a music major in 2010 - would be returning to Carthage on the 15th of March. . . her first time back on campus
Today was already a most unusual and exciting day, thanks to the visit this afternoon and evening by Laura Kaeppler, a.k.a Miss America! But then it became still more exciting thanks to an entirely unexpected visit from a delightful music alum from Carthage named Melanie Taylor- although back in her Carthage days, she was Melanie
If there is any blessing that is all-too-easy to take for granted, it is the state of Painlessness. . . especially when you’re young and feeling pretty invulnerable. But when you pass your 50th birthday, like I have, and carry around more weight than you should, like I do, aches and pains become fairly familiar
After twenty years of marriage, my wife has learned to pick her battles. She knows I’m not going to have a neat car - nor a neat studio. She knows my shirt tail will be hanging out at least 60 % of the time. She knows I will never make the U.S. Precision Shaving Team.
In the midst of a weekend piled high with music (the Jitro Choir Concert Friday night, Kenosha Solo & Ensemble Saturday morning, “Chicago” auditions both Saturday afternoon and Sunday) it was almost a blessed relief to sit in the audience of Carthage’s black box theater last night and take in a David Mamet play called
Saturday was Kenosha’s Solo & Ensemble competition, which means that 1,500 high school and middle school music students descended upon Indian Trails High School like . . . I was going to say “locusts in a plague” but that doesn’t quite convey the spirit of the event1 :-) Solo & Ensemble is an incredible celebration
