Month: November 2008

I am at London Heathrow airport awaiting my flight home. Even this last morning in London was a whirlwind: breakfast with Christian, a hotel fire alarm, a very entertaining and equally expensive taxi-driver discussion about Obama while watching the changing-of-the-guard band marching by, extravagant tea drunk in more extravagant 300 year-old porcelain, a listening with […]

Read more about a BBT goodbye

On Armistice Day, Andrew Kennedy reflects on his personal experiences with the poems and music of World War One. I have always enjoyed singing in English, and as a tenor am particularly lucky to have all the repertoire in song and opera that Benjamin Britten wrote for Peter Pears. So English song is a natural […]

Read more about The Dark Pastoral – an emotional journey

What a day. The Concertgebouw is one of the most special cradles of music in the world. Some halls sound beautiful; others look beautiful. Then there is the inexplicable mystique associated with certain places like Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein, something awe-inspiring about the history of concerts in that particular space; millions, perhaps billions, […]

Read more about BBT Tour, Day 5

Perugia is stunning. I wonder why the rest of the world outside of Italy was ever created when we could eat this pasta and drink this espresso eternally. Both are incomparable. Perhaps Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was an expression of his longing for this caffeine high. My final Louange of the piece […]

Read more about BBT Tour, Day 3

This is actually Day 2 of the trip for me because I groggily discovered myself in London on the morning of October 30 after a redeye flight. After I did nothing that first day other than wandering the city searching for (and finding!) an extra violin for Bartok Contrasts, the group convened yesterday at London […]

Read more about BBT Tour, Day 1