Choirs and windows and furnaces

Woot! My pal Janice called me this afternoon with extra tickets to see Ensemble Amarcord, an a capella group from Leipzig, Germany (Old JS Bach's stomping grounds). We have a terrific chamber music series here, bringing world-class chamber ensembles 4 or 5 times a year. Amarcord currently has 5 voices, all men who were formerly in the boy's choir at Leipzig.

The purity of their tones was amazing, and watching their mouths form their vowels so carefully was almost excrutiating. At least during the first half of the performance, they stood very stiffly, belying the liveliness and interplay of their voices. It's obvious these guys have been trained in formal singing since the age of 7.

They covered a lot of territory. First came some Elizabethan English works, Byrd and Tallis and such. It was a little weird hearing ecclesiastical Latin with German pronunciations... they don't use the same standards for Latin vowels or some consonants that we do. Then came a set of Romantic era art songs from their hometown of Leipzig. Next was a modern setting of 6 poems (French, German, English, Italian) commisioned by and written for them, very complex interplay of close harmony, dissonance, and, um, phonemes. At times the sounds just rippled accross the stage from one voice to another. The second half of the concert grew progressively lighter, and included some pop standards (King's Singers arrangements, some of them) and jazz pieces. Their last piece was Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time."

Meanwhile back at the house we're about to get some windows put in. One will be a picture window in the dining nook to hang our wondrously spiffy Mosaic Glass window in front of. The others will be upstairs to replace the ridiculously leaky old monstrosities in our bedroom. And in a couple of weeks we're getting new high-efficiency gas stoves in our upstairs and in the basement apartment. Cozy warmness and light is on its way.

Mac Whacking update: not much unfortunately. I finally tried booting the two laptops. One makes a pathetic mechanical moan when I try to start it. The fan came on once, and the screen turns grey like it has power, but that's it. The other makes a happy Mac "voom" chord when I power it up, but the screen stays dark. So I'll be connecting an external monitor to that one and see what's on board. Maybe, just maybe the screen from Mac A can migrate to the body of Mac B.