A New Landmark: Steinberg’s “Passion Week”

Every so often a record comes along that changes the landscape of choral music. Robert Shaw’s 1989 recording of the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil comes to mind. It remains one of Shaw’s finest recordings, and, in my opinion, still the best overall recording of the piece to the date, minor flaws in interpretation and Slavonic diction…

Continue reading »

On History and Tradition: A Review of Cappella Romana’s “Good Friday in Jerusalem”

For makers of music, history, by its mere existence, presents challenges. A recent headline in the Onion ran, “Nation’s Historians Warn The Past Is Expanding At Alarming Rate.” While we can smile at the joke, there’s a way in which the specter of an “ever-enlarging past” does really keep musicians up at night. Every Western composer since Beethoven has…

Continue reading »

Contemporary Art as Theophany

To-day in England we think as little of art as though we had been caught up from earth and set in some windy side street of the universe among the stars. Disgust at the daily deathbed which is Europe has made us hunger and thirst for the kindly ways of righteousness, and we want to save our souls.…

Continue reading »

The Picture and the Frame

“A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.” —Leopold Stokowski It is a curious thing that most of the earth, most of the time, is completely silent—forests, mountain ranges, deserts, prairies, glaciers, oceans, the vast expanse of the sky: all totally silent save perhaps for the call of a bird…

Continue reading »

Ottawa International Byzantine Arts Symposium

I am quite excited to have been invited to participate in the first Ottawa International Byzantine Arts Symposium.  The Symposium is organized around the work of George Kordis and will also feature concerts, an iconography workshops and icons from other artists.  This is a great chance to meet master iconographer George Kordis. I know I am…

Continue reading »

A Reflection on Arvo Pärt’s “Kanon Pokajanen”

On June 2, Saint Vladimir’s Seminary’s ambitious Arvo Pärt Project wrapped up with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir performing Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen (1997) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, under the direction of Maestro Tõnu Kaljuste, is one of the world’s premier choirs, and their performance that night…

Continue reading »

UPDATE: Seven Successful Candidates to Receive Certificates in Byzantine Music

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article appeared last week, before the examinations had taken place. This entry serves to report on the outcome of the examinations. For the  first time in history, an American academic institution has awarded a Certificate of Byzantine Music. Eight applicants were examined by a board of five renowned Byzantine cantors last weekend…

Continue reading »

Concert—Deep Roots Are Not Reached by the Frost: The Enduring Russian Sacred Choral Tradition, 1830 to the Present

On May 31, at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Danbury, CT, the St. Tikhon of Zadonsk Chamber Choir will give a concert of Russian Orthodox liturgical music in the final installment of the church’s third annual “Music on the Mount” concert series. The St. Tikhon of Zadonsk Chamber Choir is an ensemble of Orthodox professional…

Continue reading »