Quick Post: Kaleidoscope

Is this selfie terrible? Yes. Does it have (most) of Dashon Burton it it? Also yes.

Also, first person to comment "Nice glasses," gets a kick in the shins.

(left to right: baroque cellist Alice Robbins; Dashon Burton; soprano Michele Kennedy; a fraction of my face)

This is going to be really quick because I'm putting off a problem set that I haven't started (eek!) which is due tomorrow (double eek!).

Remember prisoner of the state (concert 11 of 50 from this summer)? Remember how I mentioned that my job got me into a rehearsal meant for "classical music influencers"? Well, I didn't mention that it was a rehearsal where the covers were singing instead of the main cast. And Eric Owens's cover was Yale grad and Roomful of Teeth member Dashon Burton.

Frankly, I thought he was as good as Owens, if not better. I got to tell him that tonight. And now he thinks I'm an influencer because I was at that rehearsal. So what the hell, let's keep up the façade.

Anyway, tonight the nascent Kaleidoscope vocal octet (nonet, actually, because one of their members was missing) had their second performance ever. I've mentioned a few of the singers here before, most notably Enrico Lagasca, the bass over whom I fawned in concert #13's Cavalieri. Plus Grammy-winning tenor Karim Sulayman, fantastic countertenor Reginald Mobley, early soprano (and my voice teacher because I'm the luckiest person EVER) Sherezade Panthaki, the list goes on, all-star after all-star. Their mission is to celebrate diversity in the classical music world.

Kaleidoscope did a workshop-concert, so they only sang for about 20 minutes. Bach, Caroline Shaw (*sigh*), and a premiere by absent member Jonathan Woody.

But from those 20 minutes, I can safely say they're going to be big. Like, really big. Music with a mission is more powerful, more important, more relatable. And Kaleidoscope isn't just people who can sing. It's people who can articulate a noble cause through music.

They don't have any recordings -- this is only their second concert, after all -- but keep an eye (and an ear) out. This won't be the last you hear of Kaleidoscope.

[34] shadows of love at Bethesda Lutheran Church, New Haven | #1Summer50Concerts

WHO: Matthew Cramer, bass-baritone; Stephen Gamboa-Diaz, harpsichord; Michael Rigsby, viola da gamba
WHAT: Works by Dowland, Lambert, d'Ambruys, Purcell, and Bach
WHERE: Bethesda Lutheran Church, New Haven CT
WHEN: July 7, 2019 at 4:00pm

Concert #34: In Which I Immediately Review Someone Else I Know, Even Though I Just Said That It's A Bad Idea

I discovered this 4th-of-July weekend that New Haven is a ghost town in the summer. Some students stay behind for research; a moderate horde of high schoolers come for summer sessions. But when you walk around, the thing that strikes you is the quiet -- other than the cars, there's no student chatter around campus. It's part eerie and part relaxing.

I was only there for three days (I took a day go to visit my brother in Boston), but by the time my trip was ending it had been five days since I had seen a concert. Far too long, in my humble opinion.

Luckily, a couple of friends decided to beat the summer boredom (not the heat, mind you -- there is no air conditioning at Bethesda) with a half-hour concert of renaissance and baroque music. It was an intimate affair -- maybe twenty people in the audience, half of them wearing shorts and/or crocs (myself included).

I think Matt Cramer sang it in a better key, to be honest, but this is the best recording out there.

So, again with the reviewing-people-I-know thing -- it feels weird to write formal reviews about friends and colleagues, but here goes nothing. The programming for the concert was fantastic, full of tunes that I heard for the first time that afternoon and am still humming right now. Matt Cramer, though a choral conductor by trade, lent inventive and clearly-sung ornamentations. Stephen Gamboa-Diaz showed his harpsichord prowess both as an accompanist and as a soloist; Michael Rigsby rounded out the crew.

But the charm of this concert came not in the music-making, but in the purpose. This wasn't part of a summer concert series or anything like that. When I asked Stephen what compelled him to put on a concert like this, he shrugged and said, "I don't know, Matt was in town for a little while and it was time to do something other than sightread in our living room." And if that's not inspirational, I don't know what is.