Schubert Break

Photo by Alessio Bax.

Amazing start to the week.

Moonrise

Moonrise from the sky this evening.

Rules of Flying

As a frequent flyer of the often un-friendly skies, I appreciated this little gem from Buzzfeed today...



Happy friday everyone!

Cancellation

I'm sorry to report that next weekend's Ravinia performances of Britten's church parable, The Burning Fiery Furnace, will not take place.  Via James Conlon's website:

James Conlon has cancelled two August engagements to undergo surgery to remove an inflamed portion of his colon as a result of diverticulitis. The surgery will take place in New York, and Mr. Conlon’s prognosis is for a full recovery following three to four weeks recuperation after surgery. 

Affected concerts include his August 17 Ravinia Festival performances of Britten’s The Burning Fiery Furnace with singers from Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute and members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Trinity Episcopal Church, and an August 23 engagement presented by the La Jolla Music Society, as part of LA Opera’s Britten100/LA Festival, featuring the SummerFest Chamber Orchestra performing Britten’s Simple Symphony and Prelude and Fugue. 

Mr. Conlon is expected to have resumed normal activities by the time of his next scheduled appearance, conducting Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Metropolitan Opera, opening on October 11.

I hope you all will join me in wishing Maestro Conlon all the best for a very speedy and easy recovery. Get well soon!

Kickstarting the Collaborative Works Festival

So, in case you didn't know this already, in addition to running around singing all the time, I'm the Artistic Director and a founder of new-ish organization in Chicago that promotes classical art song and vocal chamber music, Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago.  The pinnacle of it's programs is the annual Collaborative Works Festival.

Preparations for the 2013 Collaborative Works Festival are underway and progressing fairly smoothly!  Our line-up of artists is complete: we have an extraordinary roster of guest artists this year, including countertenor David Daniels, soprano Kiera Duffy, Grammy Award winning mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, pianist Martin Katz, members of the Grammy-Award winning ensemble eighth blackbird, and more!  You can check out complete information on the festival at our website here.  We also are very excited to be partnering with both The Poetry Foundation and The University of Chicago for our opening night concert. 

CAIC just launched a small Kickstarter campaign to help raise a little extra money to cover some of the production costs of this year's festival. In case you aren't familiar with Kickstarter, it's a great crowd funding platform that allows individuals and organizations raise a lot of money through lots of smaller pledges from individuals.  The catch to Kickstarter is that, if we don't raise our minimum goal by the deadline - CAIC won't receive any of the donations pledged. As of today, there are 13 days left! This year, we are aiming the kickstarter campaign to help us cover the cost of venue rentals, and we have set a minimum fundraising goal of $4,000.  $25 is the most common pledge on kickstarter -  right now we are only 130 individual $25 pledges away from reaching our goal!  

If you have already donated or just simply can't donate, it would also be MOST helpful if you could help us spread the word about the campaign. The link to the campaign is: 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1301876439/2013-collaborative-works-festival-the-heart-of-the

I hope that you will be able to make it down to Chicago for our festival this September to witness the fruits of your pledges.  It's going to be an amazing long weekend of concerts, and I would love to be able to share this momentous occasion with you.

I can't thank you all enough personally for your continued support of CAIC, and thank you so much for helping spread the word!