NYRG Fall Season Zoom Kickoff
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Conducted by NYRG Music Director, Deborah Booth
Visit our Archives Page for Listing of the Session Music
Sarah Cantor Leads NYRG on October 29
Sarah is from the Boston area and is the recorder artist who created the Global Recorder Orchestra (120 players!) that performed Handel's Lascia Q'Io Pianga (leave me to weep) at the beginning of the pandemic (scroll down this page for photo and link to the recording of the event). Sarah joined our September Zoom Session, and Sarah and Deborah are collaborating on the selection of pieces for the October meeting. For more information about Sarah, visit her website: www.cantornote.com.
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Mark your calendar for the upcoming Fall Season: October 29, November 19, December 17;
Spring 2021 dates: January 28, February 25, March 25, April 29, May 20;
Season Finale: June 17.
7:00 PM, set-up & social, 7:15 PM downbeat, 8:30 PM last cut-off;
fifteen minutes additional social time for those who want to stay on and chat with other attendees.
All Meetings will be held via Zoom until further notice.
All necessary links will be provided on a timely basis once you have registered for a session.
Participants will need to have the Zoom application installed on the device being used to participate and position themselves either near their modems or connected directly with an ethernet cable for best results. An external microphone and speaker or headphones also improves the experience. Sign up, it's free. For more information and to install Zoom, visit their website: https://zoom.us
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MEMBERSHIP DUES Yearly dues: $40
MEETING FEES: Members: $15 per meeting; Non-members: $20 per meeting
EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT $140 includes dues and a full season of meetings (save $5 per meeting!)
STANDARD PAYMENT
Click here to pay using Zelle to NYRG treasurer Judith Wink jwink@nyc.rr.com.
PAYMENT RATES
Membership: $41.46; Membership Meeting Fee: $15.74; Non-member Meeting Fee: $20.88; Early Bird: $144.36
Click here to pay using Pay Pal
If you are paying for individual meetings (not using "Early Bird Discount"),
you must pay electronically through Zelle or PayPal, not by check.
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Conductors for the upcoming season will include several NYC teachers that we've enjoyed in the past: Wendy Powers, Valerie Horst, Larry Lipnik, Rachel Begley, as well as artists, to be announced, from outside of our local area.
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Message from Music Director Deborah Booth
Greetings to New York Recorder Guild Participants!
I hope that you are all in good health and reasonably positive spirits. These are indeed difficult times for everyone, especially New Yorkers. I'm thinking of each one of you, and wishing the best luck for you and your families. Music is a great solace at times like this, and I think we could all say that we feel very lucky to be musicians. It provides us inspiration and distraction from the harsh realities of the daily News.
Please allow me to recommend that you consider playing your instruments and practicing as much as you have energy to do. It really does help raise the spirits. This may be a good time to explore and organize your sheet music files. Who knows what you may find! I'm always surprised when I delve into the backs of filing cabinet drawers. Often many surprises! You could also do some exploring online for available music - through the ARS site or Imslp or CPDL or many others. There is a wealth of material out there.
Another thought for being productive in these isolated times would be to carefully oil all of your recorders. As this is a time of seasonal weather change, it's a perfect time to moisturize the wooden instruments. You will make them happy and they will sound better and last longer. I'm sure the thing that we miss the most is being able to play together in groups. Let's join together in hoping that we will be able to be together soon and share our music!!!
Very Best Musical Thoughts!
Deborah
View Deborah Booth's bio and professional background on our Board page
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AEM ONLINE Saturdays and Sundays: classes scheduled each weekend
Visit the AEM website for more information and to register: www.amherstearlymusic.org
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Join a Virtual Recorder Class with the American Recorder Society
For schedule and information, visit their website at: americanrecorder.org
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CityRecorderGlobal 2020!
Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, October 25, 2020.
A 2-day Zoom workshop for recorders, curated by Valerie Horst and Wendy Powers, with 3 classes per day and a concert on Saturday.
Fees: Classes are $25 each, or take all 6 for $125! Concert is $15
Click Here to Register
European Medieval Melodies: Daphna Mor and Daniel Freedman, percussion. The class will include repertoire from the Cantigas de Santa Maria and Libre Vermell de Monserrat and other sources, accompanied by exciting global percussive rhythms.
Fear No Danger! Purcell’s Music for the Stage: Rachel Begley Three- and four-part songs, dances, and incidental music from plays and masques by the beloved English composer for church and theater.
Master Class: Solo Telemann Fantasias: Saskia Coolen (honorary New Yorker from the Netherlands :-)). These pieces are a miracle of compositional ingenuity. Though you play only the one part by yourself, you must create the effect not only of melody but also of bass lines and often even polyphony. Modified master class format, with audience participation.
Intriguing Renaissance Duets: A Flemish Canon & Mass Movement, English Fantasias: Deborah Booth. We will warm up with a unique canon & Benedictus by Antoine Brumel, then cross the Channel to explore the rich fantasy life of Thomas Morley, Christopher Gibbons, and William White.
Renaissance Notation +: Three Faces of Du Fay: Valerie Horst, Wendy Powers. Churchman, party boy, courtly wit. Scores will be provided in facsimiles of original sources and also in modern notation for those who would like to play Du Fay but don’t read early notation.
Lions of Venice: The Venetian Polychoral School: Lawrence Lipnik. Motets and canzone by such composers as Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Widmann, and Stanford for multi voices, culminating in the world’s first online double-choir performance. Recorders of all sizes are welcome, and viols as well.
Since Eric Haas can’t lay out his bounteous Von Huene Workshop tables in the hall of the Ella Baker School this year, he will talk with us online about all the music that he has available (including his own latest publications), and also about new and used instruments for sale. Like the classes, this will be a live presentation, and Eric will take questions at the end.
Recorder virtuoso Martin Bernstein has just returned from France. He and two friends plan to provide us with an exciting LIVE, online concert, with his own very interesting commentary!
For more information on other workshops, visit our Workshops page for dates and registration information.
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Special New York Music Concerts and Events
(additional events and concert series are listed on our Events page: check websites for schedules and changes for the upcoming season)
GOTHAM EARLY MUSIC SCENE (GEMS) is dedicated to the
promotion and advancement of early music in New York City and
serves professional and amateur performers and ensembles, church
organizations, audiences and enthusiasts.
2020-2021 Season: Watch live Thursdays at 1:15 pm on Facebook or YouTube. Midtown Concerts is pleased to present a full schedule of concerts for the 2020-2021 season. The opening concerts will be live-streamed until it is safe for audiences to gather once again. As safety allows, they will reintroduce in-person events. Get on their mailing
list and receive On the Scene which features current
New York performances of early music. Call: 212-866-0468 or E-mail info@gemsny.org. For more information and concert links, visit their website: https://gemsny.org/midtown-concerts
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The Global Community Recorder Orchestra Performance of Lascia Ch'Io Pianga
from Handel's Rinaldo
Starring Recorder players from around the world. Look for our Music Director, Deborah Booth, and many friends of NYRG, including Daphna Mor and Joan Kimball.
Click Here to View and Listen
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Contact an instructor for an online lesson via Skype or other video software. Here is a partial list of teachers offering online lessons:
In normal times the New York Recorder Guild meets at
Advent Lutheran Church
2504 Broadway (at 93rd Street)
Basement Fellowship Hall, side Entrance, corner of Broadway and 93rd Street
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Visit our Events page for photos of last year's City Recorder and recent playing sessions and events.
Consort FinderThe board and music director are pleased that you are attending New York Recorder Guild sessions to play with and meet other recorder players. It is certainly a great place for this! You may also wish to enjoy playing recorders in a consort or smaller group setting, but it is often difficult to get the right players together for levels, geography, and temperaments. If you are interested in being matched with other players, contact our music director, Deborah Booth, at: deborah@flute-recorder-deborahbooth.com explaining your thoughts, wishes, level, location, and years of experience. Coaching is also available if desired. Deborah will attempt to put you in touch with others who match your skills. NYRG has had success with this program in starting consorts meeting in Brooklyn and Manhattan. |
Subscribe to the New York Recorder Guild Mailing List and get the latest news on NYRG happenings as well as keeping up to date on the Metro New York Recorder scene. Contact: newyorkrecorders@gmail.com
Visit our Events page for photos of recent playing meetings as well as listings of playing sessions of other local ARS Chapters, concerts and other early music and recorder events..
Visit our Archives Page to keep up with all of the music played at our Monthly Meetings. Music listings of workshops and other events will be added as they occur.
Our Workshops page has all the information on Recorder and Early Music Workshops taking place in the area.
Recorders need repairs; looking for music downloads? Visit our Resources page for information on everything recorder-related.
Recorder Myths?? A Regular Series of Articles by Judith Wink
Little Deaths
At the end of The Caine Mutiny, World War II is over and Captain Keith is taking his warship home. The narrator looks into the captain’s future:
The stars and the sea and the ship were slipping from his life.
In a couple of years he would no longer be able to tell time
to the quarter hour by the angle of the Big Dipper in the heavens.
He would forget the exact number of degrees of offset that held the
Caine on course in a cross sea.All the patterns fixed in his muscles, like the ability to find the speed indicator buttons in utter blackness, would fade.
It was a little death toward which he was steaming.
For once Shakespeare got it wrong. It isn’t just cowards who die a thousand deaths. We all do. Some of these deaths are untroublesome. Captain Keith, for instance, is is his mid-twenties and never planned to command the Caine forever. He will get a Ph.D. in English and become a professor. Young adults like him die many little deaths as they leave school, leave their first jobs and their first apartments and (sometimes) their first husbands or wives. These changes don’t even feel like deaths. They’re more like the experience of the butterfly bursting out of its cocoon or the chambered nautilus building a bigger house for its growing body.
For older adults, it’s different. One of our friends, a man in his late sixties, broke his wrist playing basketball with a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. The wrist healed but his confidence didn’t; he's not sure whether he wants to get back on the court. I know several people who have sold their houses or their apartments and moved into assisted living. Their new homes have lots of amenities and all the conveniences, but everyone in this situation knows what his next home will be. “God’s waiting room” is the usual nickname for these places. One inmate described his as “a Carnival Cruise on the River Styx.”
The late Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos used to say, when a colleague or a friend died, that the person had “left.” He said someone had died only when the person stopped doing mathematics. Musicians die in the Erdos sense. I don’t know whether Pablo Casals ever retired, but a lot of less fortunate players, professionals and amateurs, are forced to do it by arthritis, failing eyesight, physical or mental breakdowns, nerve damage, increasingly lousy reviews or a growing conviction that there’s got to be a better way to make a living. Amateurs sell or donate their instruments. They give away their music. Going through these collections can break your heart. The pages are worn because the piece has been played many times. It’s also been studied. The owner’s notes are all over it, notes on phrasing, on articulation, on emphasis and dynamics and the relationship of the words to the music. You can see the hours of thought that went into playing this piece. It was a labor of love, a labor that the owner will never again be able to undertake.
With luck, there will be compensations. Years ago, the Westsider ran a column by Bessie Doegenes (I think that’s the spelling,) a longtime resident of the West 80’s whose essays were full of dry humor and gentle wisdom. She was in the 80’s in another sense, so she had a lot to say about being old. One column described her race from Central Park back to her bathroom, a race she won by a whisker. Another talked about losses and gains.
One of her friends, a good amateur artist, became too crippled by arthritis to manage a brush. He took up photography, using his trained eye to create beauty in a new medium. Another, who loved concerts, lost her hearing. She started going to the ballet. A third lost her sense of smell. Forever lost to her were the scent of roses, of clean laundry, of roast chicken. But there were a few people at her senior center who were isolated and lonely because of their dreadful body odor. Bessie’s friend, no longer troubled by what others found unendurable, hugged these outcasts and lunched with them. Here’s Bessie’s punchline: “That smart cookie Ralph Waldo Emerson got it right: ‘When the half-gods go, the gods arrive." In time all our half-gods will go.
When that happens, may there be gods waiting for us.
Judith's previous articles are archived on her special page. Click Here
The New York Recorder Guild is a member of the American Recorder Society
