News, October 2008
Long time no see!
It’s been a while since my last newsletter, and the reason is simple: while there’s been some stuff going on in the last eight months, there hasn’t been enough of it to fill a new entry. Until now.
First of all, Uwe Liefländer got fired from his position at St. Augustine’s at the beginning of June, and my feelings about that can be summed up in two words: good riddance. I had no quarrel with the basic premise of what he was trying to do--i.e. use a more reverent and classically-oriented repertoire than what contemporary composers have written since about the time of Vatican II--but the way he was going about it ruffled a lot of feathers, not to mention my own. I could list enough grievances about him to fill a book, but suffice it to say that he was not the best fit for our parish, let alone for me. (To pastors considering hiring him, and musicians considering working with or for him, I say caveat emptor.) After he left, I took over the 4:30 mass for the summer until a new choir director, Lisa-Marie Massey, came in in mid-August. Her children’s choir does material far more familiar to the congregation than what Uwe presented, with a sprinkling of contemporary material.
Meanwhile, I continue to work with the 9:00 choir at St. Augustine’s and the 11:00 choir at St. Elizabeth’s. Our choir at St. Augustine’s is preparing for a concert that will take place on November 2. For this I’m preparing a backing track of a tune my friend Ralf sent me, Tore Aas’ “I Call On Your Name”, and a rendition of Vivaldi’s “Gloria”.
My position at Resurrection of Our Lord has dwindled down to an “as needed” basis. The choir I work with there sings at the parish’s 9:30 mass, and while they would like to have me as their regular organist, that isn’t possible due to conflicts with the 9:00 mass at St. Augustine’s and the 11:00 mass at St. Elizabeth’s. While they have since found a regular organist who can do both the rehearsals and the 9:30 mass, there are some Monday nights that he can’t do the rehearsal, and they call me to fill in for him.
As for my own activities, I’ve been busy mainly in the administration of my music business. As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I bought a new computer at the end of December. In March I ripped all my CDs to its hard drive, and in an effort to make some shelf space available, I’m putting them into storage. In the process, I’ve been working for the last six months on a text file consisting of the lyrics to all the songs on these CDs; this way I won’t have to pull out their storage box every time I need to look up the lyrics for a particular song on one of them.
In August I accidentally fried my IBM ThinkPad 600 laptop when I bought a power cord that turned out to have an incompatible voltage, and I’ve since bought an Acer Aspire 5315. Gradually, over the last couple of months, I’ve been programming it for as much of the ThinkPad’s functionality as possible. Unfortunately, my Roland Sound Canvas card (SCP-55) won’t work with Windows Vista due to driver incompatibility (Roland’s most recent driver for the card is for Windows 3.1 and 95). I depend heavily on this card when I prepare and mix MIDI files for use at St. Augustine’s because its organ has a sound module with the same Sound Canvas sound set. I’m looking for a way to rectify this problem, though, and I hope to have access to the Sound Canvas’ sounds again within a month or so. Stay tuned!
It’s been a while since my last newsletter, and the reason is simple: while there’s been some stuff going on in the last eight months, there hasn’t been enough of it to fill a new entry. Until now.
First of all, Uwe Liefländer got fired from his position at St. Augustine’s at the beginning of June, and my feelings about that can be summed up in two words: good riddance. I had no quarrel with the basic premise of what he was trying to do--i.e. use a more reverent and classically-oriented repertoire than what contemporary composers have written since about the time of Vatican II--but the way he was going about it ruffled a lot of feathers, not to mention my own. I could list enough grievances about him to fill a book, but suffice it to say that he was not the best fit for our parish, let alone for me. (To pastors considering hiring him, and musicians considering working with or for him, I say caveat emptor.) After he left, I took over the 4:30 mass for the summer until a new choir director, Lisa-Marie Massey, came in in mid-August. Her children’s choir does material far more familiar to the congregation than what Uwe presented, with a sprinkling of contemporary material.
Meanwhile, I continue to work with the 9:00 choir at St. Augustine’s and the 11:00 choir at St. Elizabeth’s. Our choir at St. Augustine’s is preparing for a concert that will take place on November 2. For this I’m preparing a backing track of a tune my friend Ralf sent me, Tore Aas’ “I Call On Your Name”, and a rendition of Vivaldi’s “Gloria”.
My position at Resurrection of Our Lord has dwindled down to an “as needed” basis. The choir I work with there sings at the parish’s 9:30 mass, and while they would like to have me as their regular organist, that isn’t possible due to conflicts with the 9:00 mass at St. Augustine’s and the 11:00 mass at St. Elizabeth’s. While they have since found a regular organist who can do both the rehearsals and the 9:30 mass, there are some Monday nights that he can’t do the rehearsal, and they call me to fill in for him.
As for my own activities, I’ve been busy mainly in the administration of my music business. As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I bought a new computer at the end of December. In March I ripped all my CDs to its hard drive, and in an effort to make some shelf space available, I’m putting them into storage. In the process, I’ve been working for the last six months on a text file consisting of the lyrics to all the songs on these CDs; this way I won’t have to pull out their storage box every time I need to look up the lyrics for a particular song on one of them.
In August I accidentally fried my IBM ThinkPad 600 laptop when I bought a power cord that turned out to have an incompatible voltage, and I’ve since bought an Acer Aspire 5315. Gradually, over the last couple of months, I’ve been programming it for as much of the ThinkPad’s functionality as possible. Unfortunately, my Roland Sound Canvas card (SCP-55) won’t work with Windows Vista due to driver incompatibility (Roland’s most recent driver for the card is for Windows 3.1 and 95). I depend heavily on this card when I prepare and mix MIDI files for use at St. Augustine’s because its organ has a sound module with the same Sound Canvas sound set. I’m looking for a way to rectify this problem, though, and I hope to have access to the Sound Canvas’ sounds again within a month or so. Stay tuned!
posted by Jamie at 9:26 p.m.
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