Sweden – 6, 7, 8 May 2008

Tuesday morning the 6th was a resumption of rehearsals for the Vårkonsert with RK. It was a good rehearsal on this repertoire, although unfortunately our friend Eva Wedin had caught a cold and lost her voice. Meanwhile, Kathryn and my parents went to Uppsala and saw the town, Cathedral, some of the university, and the house and garden of the famous Swedish botanist, Linneus. After they returned, we had dinner together.

A picture from the Linné garden:



Wednesday afternoon was the rehearsal with RK and Chapter Two. Earlier in the day, Kath and my parents wandered around downtown, then came to Berwaldhallen for the rehearsal. I met with Johan Norberg, Nils Landgren (Chapter Two—see my earlier post here) and Mikael Engström before rehearsal around 3 PM to go over how the collaborative pieces would work. Mikael, who is the frequent accompanist for RK (and a marvel at it) was acting as producer for the concert (in charge of what was happening on stage and in the booth).

Me with Mikael:



Boel Adler was also there, as she’ll be the announcer for the concert (which will be broadcast live). Boel used to sing regularly with RK, now works on air, but still sings as an extra now and then (I’d met her before and she also sang with the choir for the Brahms Requiem I’ll tell you about shortly).

Johan and Nils are truly amazing musicians. I’ve always had enormous respect for jazz players and their ability to improvise, but these two are incredible in every way. Johan is one of the most active studio musicians in Stockholm and Nils lives and teaches in Germany, but is on the road up to 250 days a year, playing and recording. He’s appeared on more than 500 recordings and can play amazingly high, soft, fast, or whatever (and is also a very good jazz singer).

The rehearsal went well as we adjusted to the acoustics (well, that was just me—I don’t have experience in Berwaldhallen as the others do—not the easiest acoustic to work in), figured out levels for amplification of the guitar and trombone, placed the choir members, the recording engineers sorted out levels for the broadcast, and we rehearsed all repertoire, but worked particularly on the pieces we were doing with Chapter Two (Morley, Stanford, Rutter, and "All Through the Night"—we never got the arrangement Arne wanted, so used another). This was the last full rehearsal on this repertoire (we’ll have an hour in the hall on Friday between 5:30 and 6:30 PM). Nice for my folks to be able to be there and see me work with this choir (they were impressed and said, “We know why you like working with this choir!”).

Thursday we all went to Stadshuset (City Hall) and took the tour. Even though we see the tower from Gunilla’s apartment and had walked around the courtyard, Kath and I’d never taken the tour, which was excellent. The Nobel Prize banquet takes place there and the various public rooms (the city government does work here, too) are gorgeous.

Sitting outside Stadshuset:



Afterwards we went for lunch on Gamla Stan, and then took the bus out to Skansen, which is a park on Djurgården with buildings from different historical periods. I didn’t go, since I had a rehearsal at 3:30, so took a short walk, and then went to the Radio. Kath and my folks had a great time there, the weather beginning to warm up.

My rehearsal today was for the Brahms Requiem, which RK will do (along with extra singers, 48 in total) later this month with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev. This is the only chorus rehearsal before meeting with the orchestra, not too unusual for such a standard work. There were probably 8 or 9 singers working for the first time with RK and there was a fair amount of over-singing in the first half of the rehearsal. The second half I primarily worked to get them to sing softer (we did a lot of a cappella work), although one never knows what the eventual conductor will do—it’s a large orchestra, not a lot of singers, so they could have to sing out the whole time. Hopefully they won’t—the Brahms doesn’t need it and can be quite subtly sung—as I told the choir, it’s not hard just to sing loud all the time! They’ll do a beautiful job. I also chatted at break with one of the extra tenors, who sings in a barbershop quartet and loves it—his quartet just won the Swedish championship and will go to the finals of the international competition in Nashville.

After the rehearsal I took a cab back to the apartment, picked up Kath and my folks, and we went out to Arne and Birgit Lundmark’s apartment. We went to a local restaurant and had a drink while waiting for Birgit—she was at a meeting with the Swedish equivalent of their condo board. We then had a nice dinner together, followed by dessert and coffee back at their apartment. As I’ve noted before on the blog, Arne and Birgit are just great people, and everyone had a wonderful time talking, eating, and talking. We got back around 11:30 PM after a great day.

Arne & Birgit:

Another "broadcast" (Pro Coro Good Friday)

This recording was bootlegged during Pro Coro's Good Friday concert (as you'll quickly see) and posted on YouTube. You're welcome to watch and listen here. Quality is as one would expect from a digital movie camera from the audience, but it gives a sense of what we were doing.

It's not authorized, but I won't argue with the free publicity.

Sweden - quick link to Radio Choir performance

Much more to report and haven't had time. However, the Spring concert can be found on-line on this page:

I don't know how long these are kept in the archive and how easy it will be to play, although I got it to play right away on my Mac.

Much more soon!

Sweden – 3 and 4 May 2008

Saturday we were invited to Eric Ericson’s and Monica’s for coffee. My parents met Eric briefly after he conducted the first concert with Choral Arts in 1993, but that’s the only time and, of course, Monica had never met them.



Eric and Monica are both so gracious and we had a great time for a little more than two hours chatting about a variety of things. I think, for Eric, it was also fun to see father and son together. Eric was in great form and both he and Monica have a wonderful, dry sense of humor. A lot of his former singers and students have talked about Eric’s tremendous sense of humor (something, perhaps, that you might not realize entirely if you’ve only heard him rehearse in English in North America). Someone should collect the “wit and humor” of Eric for his 90th birthday in October—not a project for me, but it should be done!

I also talked separately with Eric about some of the video projects he’s involved in and will help if I can.

Sunday was a day to take a steamboat out to Drottningholm, the “Queen’s palace,” which I’d seen before, but neither Kathryn nor my folks had. It’s now the regular residence of the King and Queen, but the building and grounds, formal gardens, Chinese Pavilion, including the surviving baroque theatre, are open to the public.



The 400-seat theatre is amazing. After the assassination of King Gustav III in 1792 (which by the way, is the basis of the Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera), the theatre was forgotten until the 1920s, so the original stage machinery and scenery survived. The theatre was restored and scenery and stage machinery copied, so baroque and classical opera productions there can be done in a truly authentic style (well, they do have electric lights now!). I saw a production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail there in 1990 (thanks to tickets from Eric and Monica) and if you can, do see the Ingmar Bergman production of Magic Flute (conducted by Eric, by the way). It’s available on DVD and at netflix. Some of it was filmed at Drottningholm (although some of the theatre was recreated in studio), complete with stage machinery. A young Håkan Hagegård plays Papageno. Great fun (it’s sung in Swedish, by the way) and some truly Bergmanesque touches.

We were lucky to have beautiful weather, mostly sunny and warm (mid- to upper-60s for Fahrenheit people, 18-19 for Celsius ones). It’s also a scenic boat trip for an hour or so through Lake Mälaren to the island that is Drottningholm. Gorgeous day.

Sweden – 2 May 2008

Friday evening we’d planned a get-together with Gary Graden and his wife Maria Södersten at their house in Nacka, partly to introduce my folks to some of our friends, partly just to have a good time! Included were Maria’s mother, Barbro; Margareta and Bertil Dimander, good friends of Birgit Hemberg, whom we’d met before (originally Birgit was going to come, but had to cancel); Birgit’s daughter Anna and her daughter Nena (Anna sings in Gary’s choir and we’ve met her on many occasions); and Linus and Stina and their two charming daughters (their youngest is just starting to walk—both sing in Gary’s choir and Linus is the choir president—we had a little bit of business to talk about, too). Of course, Gary and Maria’s two boys, Johan and Filip, were there as well.

Kathryn and Maria had planned the menu and Kathryn spent time beforehand prepping salad fixings, fruit and a great dessert (an English trifle). We also brought a lot of wine, so Kath had loaded three suitcases with wine and food for the taxi! Maria made appetizers, some gorgeous roasted potatoes and vegetables and Gary barbecued again—just fantastic. They also made a delicious punch with elderflower juice, mint and rum.

It was a terrific evening of conversation, eating, drinking, more eating, and a bit of music, too. We left around 11:30, the taxi dropping us off at the train station for a short walk home, before taking mom and dad to their home. I can’t imagine a nicer time—we owe thanks to Gary and Maria.

Most of the dinner party:



Maria and her mother, Barbro:



Gary jamming with his son, Johan:



Me and Gary:

Sweden – 30 April, 1-2 May 2008

Tuesday was errand day, partly to get ready for the arrival of my parents (Richard and Joyce) on Wednesday. Wednesday they arrived at 2:30 in the afternoon and we took them to the apartment we’d arranged for them, near St. Eriksplan, got them settled, they took a short nap, then we found them an ATM, got a bite to eat, bought transit passes for the week and showed them Gunilla's apartment. Neither had been to Sweden before, so the next two weeks should be fun, but busy, with showing them as much as we can, plus four rehearsals and a concert next week for me (and another rehearsal the day before I leave).

Thursday we met them in the late morning and then went to Gamla Stan (the old town) to wander around, look at Storkyrkan (literally, “The Big Church,” or the Cathedral), have dinner, etc.



This was the first of May, a major holiday. When we were about to leave we saw the police gathering around the palace. They were there to make sure all was well for the demonstration march by the various labor/leftist groups—some were the former communist party, plus many other groups, almost all young. It was interesting to watch, each organization having its own signs, slogans, and chants or songs. We particularly liked the “Organization of Pessimists!”



Since mom and dad (both 81 years young) were still a bit jet-lagged, we didn’t make it too long a day.

Friday we went to the Vasa Museum. This is an amazing museum, built around the warship Vasa, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 (it took only 25 minutes to sink—the King, as you might imagine, wasn’t pleased!). I won’t tell you all about it (you can read more here and here), but if you visit Stockholm, don’t miss the museum. The ship was found again in the late ‘50s, raised and restored (95% of the ship is the original, including hundreds of carved statues), moved into the present museum in 1990. The exhibits have changed over the years (I saw it first in 1989) and new to me this time was amazing research about the people whose bodies (skeletons) were recovered in the wreckage (many skeletons on display) with DNA research, facial reconstruction, etc. to tell more about who they might have been. The entire museum is a fascinating look into life during this period in Sweden.

More about Friday in the next post.

Sweden – 28-29 April 2008

After last week’s rehearsals with RK, this week is light on work and big on being social. Monday evening we had Robert and Margareta Sund for dinner here in Gunilla’s apartment. Since we’ve been hosted many times at Robert and Margareta’s apartment in Uppsala, it was nice to be able to return the favor. Robert looked very relaxed after his last series of concerts with OD and I think is looking forward to the next phase without a permanent choir. He will keep very busy, though—he has plenty of guest conducting, master-classes, and workshops. He and Margareta both love to travel so will keep an active schedule. A wonderful evening.

Margareta, Robert and me: