The thought that got me out of bed this morning was a line from a song that I heard on New Years Eve: what are you waiting for?? It was in the chorus and repeated over and over (with other words too but these were the ones I remembered.). It got me out of bed and now it's got me excited to go about my life and remind myself, what am I waiting for?

What are you waiting for?

coldplay

What day couldn't be better for an awesomely large dose of Coldplay?

Fictionist

So I know I recently said I wouldn't be blogging much anymore but I just realized that I believe I've failed to mention Fictionist to you. Rolling Stone is doing a competition to find an previously unknown band, the winner of this competition will get to be on the cover of Rolling Stone, and get a contract with Atlantic Records. I'm telling you this because I recently learned about Fictionist and I've really loved their music. The keyboardist is in my YSA Ward (which is how I came to know about them). So go to their website and check them out, if you like them you should vote for them and rate them etc. here. They're in a good position to win the competition, especially if more people vote for them. Plus if you do like them, you can go to their website or find them on facebook and download some of their songs for free.

Little Women

Little Women, I got to see this opera recently and I was skeptical. I knew going in that it was not your average melodic type opera, it was more modern and 20th century type music, if you're familiar with the composer John Adams at all, that's the type of music I was expecting. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw, though parts of the opera were more modern music-y, and in 12 tone (if that means anything to you, it doesn't really to me) other parts were quite melodic. A big difference in the opera was that I don't really recall songs or arias that much as one might with other operas, what I did take away were there phrases "things change Jo" and variations of "things were/are perfect as they were/are" Those were the main themes focused on in this opera, Jo and that she wanted things to stay as happy and perfect as there were to her, and people in turn telling her that things changed and had to change. So I quite enjoyed this opera and I'd recommend it. I compare it to Aaron Copeland's music, I heard once that though his music was so modern, it was made relateable because he worked so much with folk songs, things that people knew, this opera's plot line is one that is near and dear and well known to so many, I think that's part of the reason it's so popular. Anyway those are my thoughts.

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace is well renowned as a beautiful and powerful song, but there is also a movie by the same name, I first heard about it a few years back as part of a final for my persuasive writing class. I put the movie somewhere on my list of movies to see, but clearly I wasn't in a huge hurry to see it. Recently the movie has be brought to my remembrance a few times and I recently borrowed it from a friend. I watched the movie yesterday and it was amazing, a wonderfully made movie about a powerful and captivating story.
The movie chronicals the movement to abolish slavery in England, focusing on the life of William Wilberforce who was one of the most integral people in the movement. Wilberforce was a member of parliament (MP) in the house of commons and he and those who he worked with, worked for years to abolish slavery, despite being shut down time and time again. After watching this movie I wanted to have everyone I knew see this movie. I wasn't conscious of it being Black History Month when I watched this movie but apparently it is and I think it was a good way to commemorate this month. It's also striking to me that as far as I know, this movement to abolish slavery was mostly peaceful, unlike our own civil war, fought largely over issues of slavery.
Wilberforce found religion, so to speak, at a point in his life when his political opportunities were stretching out before him and he was torn as to whether he should serve God or continue in politics, and it was put to him that he could do both by working to make the world a better place. While the rest of us may not have the same opportunities or challenges as William Wilberforce, we have the same opportunity to use what we have to work to make the world a better place.

Piano Puzzler

There's a classical music radio show called Performance Today, it's an enjoyable show but my favorite part of the show happens on Wednesdays; the piano puzzler. The host of PT and Bruce Adolphe (a great pianist) get together with a listener (via the phone) and the listener's job is to guess the song and who's style it's played in that Bruce Adolphe plays; an example: a Beatles song in the style of Mozart or a tune from West Side Story in the style of Chopin. I like to play along at home, I can quite often get the song but I'm usually lost on the composer who's style it's in. I've improved as I've gone on listening. Listen, see if you can solve the puzzlers.

Christmas in Killarney

I was introduced to this song last night by some friends and I quite like it, it's nice and jolly. Enjoy.

Wexford Carol and accents

One of my favorite carols the last few years is the Wexford Carol, it's just so beautiful. What are some of your Christmas favorites?

Something from Boston that I really loved was hearing the accents, I know that different accents exist, but none the less it fills me with glee when I hear them. From the lady on the bus who was talking to her boyfriend (loud enough that the whole bus couldn't help but listen, some of us with eager interest), to the man who served us people, and the kind man who gave us directions. I loved the Boston accent.

Today's memory of Boston is the Holocaust Memorial, I guess Boston has a large Jewish community. The memorial was quite powerful, a path covered in glass with three or four glass towers and on the glass, very small, were the number of the people in concentration camps. There were soo many number, I know that should be obvious but it was a little startling to see them all together. There were also quotes from survivors, or soldiers who helped to liberate the camps. Lots of little stones on some of the stone slabs with quotes and facts, which to my understanding is the Jewish equivalent of putting flowers on a grave. I think it's important for us to remember the Holocaust and to have that little shock of realization that comes from meeting the reality of something in a history book.

As for today's Christmas music, we have several Kurt Bestor albums and probably half of them are Christmas albums. I really enjoy his style and I've grown up with this music, it's definitely a part of Christmas for me. This is his arrangement of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Enjoy.

Music and the T

I know I had the big long Boston post yesterday, but there's so much more that I didn't fit in. So I thought I might share a bit more as I go. Today, the subway, they call it the T in Boston. They have four or five lines: Red, Blue, Green, Orange, and silver but I think that one's more of an airport line. My favorite was the blue line which has nice new clean trains and nice stations but we only rode that a few times on our last day. My second favorite was the red line, still very nice trains and stations and we rode that a fair bit. The green and orange lines were pretty comprable from what I remember, we only rode the orange line once to get us to China town, but we rode the green line a lot to get us to a lot of museums etc. The green line is old and grubby, it's got terribly squeeky brakes and runs a bit more like buses do. So there you have it, my thoughts on the subway system in Boston. You can wake up now.

I also decided that I might share some of my favorite Christmas music, I realized in my years of listening to radio Christmas music at work, that I didn't grow up listening to a lot of mainstream Christmas music... if there is such a thing. You can keep I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, and Grandma got Run Over by a Reindeer, in my opinion the writers of those songs should be punished. You can also keep My Grown Up Christmas List (a little part of me died when I learned that Michael Buble had sung that song) and the Christmas Shoes. Most of my favorite Christmas music isn't played on the radio but it's beautiful. A lot of my favorites come from the Christmas concerts that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir do each year. My first song to share is from the 2008 concert with Brian Stokes Mitchell, the song is The Friendly Beasts. I was lucky enough to attend this concert and they asked us before the song started, to be quite and not laugh, etc. so that they could get a good recording, they hadn't been able to the previous evenings. I had my fist in my mouth trying not to laugh, or atleast not be audible. Enjoy

A cool experience

Today I got to sing at the conference center in the choir loft for a regional broadcast that was broadcast to people all over the area. It's been a pretty cool experience, to see the conference center from a different perspective, to sit in the same seats that the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir routinely sit in, and to read the teleprompter while apostles are speaking and to know when they deviate from their writen talks.
The conference was wonderful with a great spirit and so many wonderful talks and insightful messages including talks by Elder Nelson and President Uchtdorf. The choir sang beautifully (I'm not tooting my own horn here, I was only a small part of the choir and not the best part by a long shot). It was a rare experience and I'm grateful to have been a part of it. I'm also grateful that the conference is over, we worked long and hard to sound our best, the songs were beautiful but challenging.

I had a very culturally enriching weekend this past weekend. I was able to go to two operas and to visit an Islamic Center. I didn't plan for it to be such an opera packed weekend, it just happened.
The first opera I got to see was La Boheme, which is a very famous opera by Puccini. I wasn't sure how much I would like La Boheme because it's a tragedy and I'm not a huge fan of tragedy, however there was a fair amount of comedy in the opera and so I did indeed enjoy it. The music was beautiful and beautifully sung. If you get the chance you should see this opera.
The next event of the weekend was visiting a local Islamic Center. My friend's co-worker invited her to come and have a tour and to be able to talk to the Iman (the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center) and my friend invited me. When we got to the Center I realized that I'd actually been there a few years earlier on a field trip. The building itself isn't exactly what one might think of when they think of an Islamic place of worship (aka a mosque, however I found out that mosque isn't really what it's called but I forget the other name), I think of the grand mosques like Dome of the Rock, etc. which are exquisitely beautiful. The Islamic Center I went to is a more humble building, many of it's patrons are immigrants and refugees, but it is still a lovely building.


It was very interesting as the Iman showed us around the building and told us about his religion, correcting popular assumptions as he went. We were able to observe as members of the community gathered for their prayers and afterwords the Iman and those who were there taught us more about some of the essentials of the Muslim faith. It's really very interesting and intriguing to see how very similar the beliefs of different religions are. Islam is a fascinating and very simple, yet complex religion. If you'd like to learn more about the religion find your local Islamic Center and ask about a tour etc.
The last big event of the weekend was seeing Mozart's The Magic Flute, I've been interested in this opera for a while, I had a brief introduction to it when I first saw the movie Amadeus, years ago. I really enjoyed this opera, if you're new to opera this is a good opera to see, the music is beautiful, the plot intriguing and comical. This opera was a little different from other opera's that I've seen, the music was sung in German and then there was dialogue in English, I enjoyed the opera but all the same I would have preferred language continuity. In a lot of opera's rather than spoken dialogue they have would sing/speak along with piano/harpsichord accompaniment and this was called recitative. German didn't lend itself very well to recitative and so instead they did Singspiel. In singspiel they sang the music and then spoke the dialogue making it a bit like a musical today. The plot of The Magic Flute is very fantastical and also contains a lot of Free Masonry connections which are really cool. I whole heatedly recommend The Magic Flute. PS the queen of the night's aria is insane.

Hollywood

I really enjoyed this song and this video by Michael Buble.

I'm not a very big fan of Man of La Mancha, but I must admit that this song is just beautiful!

Coldplay

Dear Coldplay, thank you for the music you write and preform that I love so much. Songs like this and this make my day. Thank you.

Tarzan

I really enjoyed the Disney movie Tarzan when it came out several years ago, the characters, animation and music are all wonderful. A few years ago I heard that Disney was making a musical of a few Disney movies including Tarzan; I couldn't really see it going well and didn't think much more about it. A year or two after that I had a roommate who'd seen the show in New York and had the sound track and through listening to it with her I came to enjoy the extra songs that hadn't been in the movie. Recently I've been listening to the soundtrack of the musical and liking it more and more with every listen. This summer I found out that Tarzan would be performed locally and dreamed of going but figured that it wouldn't happen.
I got to go though, I recently saw Tarzan and I loved it; I don't have pictures however because they weren't allowed. I think a lot of the show's success is due to the fact that the music and lyrics are by Phil Collins. The story is modified from the movie but is still quite enjoyable.One of the coolest things of the performance was the flying/vine swinging that Tarzan and the gorillas did. They had multiple zip line type lines on various paths across the stage and over the audience and the actors could go across. My new fantasy dream job is to be a bungee gorilla for Tarzan.
I highly recommend Tarzan.

black and white

Last night I was watching tv and flipping through channels when I came across this performance of South Pacific. I first saw South Pacific in first or second grade; in my elementry school the sixth grade put on a musical every year. I liked South Pacific and so I watched the movie and I liked that as well. It's been a long time since I saw South Pacific and last night I found myself understanding much more than I did as a kid. One of the important themes of South Pacific is about racism and how wrong it is. The musical came out when segregation was a part of life in the United States, the setting was World War II when segregation was a part of life and when hundreds of Japanese Americans were put into internment camps to make sure that they wouldn't join forces with the Japanese. When I was little I couldn't understand why Nellie the Nurse couldn't marry Emile and why Joe Cable couldn't marry Liat, I didn't really know or understand about segregation and racial prejudice; as I grew older I learned about these things, I'm very glad for the ways the world has changed since the musical was made. I wonder how much South Pacific might have influenced that change. I don't know much about Rodgers and Hammerstein but it can't have been easy to get such a musical made in that time period. One song in the musical more than any other brings home the message of how wrong racial prejudice and segregation were and are. You've Got to be Taught. This isn't the whole song but I think it gives enough of the message.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

I got to go to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert last night and it was really awesome. We got to sit on the plaza of the Conference Center and we were only a few rows back. President Monson was at the concert and it was the closest I think I've ever been to him, he was only 50 to 100 feet away.This concert was especially cool because they were celebrating 100 years of the choir making recordings; they had songs from various stages of the choir's history and had videos with history of the choir.
I've sort of taken the choir for granted, I've always known about them and so I guess I never really thought about what a big deal they are and how great of a choir they are. I've recently become more aware of what a great feat the choir is, they're an award winning choir, they've traveled the world and sung for Presidents and I believe for royalty and they're a choir of volunteers.
Here's the choir singing Come Thou Fount, you can find tons more of them on YouTube or their website.

You can make the pathway bright.

I heard this piece in concert recently and it's been on my mind. It's beautiful and so I decided to share it. I didn't hear the preformance in the clip but it was still quite beautiful, possibly even more so. No sparklers were involved.