The Greater Minnesota Rose Ensemble Tour will soon be upon us and I could use your help to make this tour a success. Since these concerts are self-produced, we do not have the luxury of a presenter to market and publicize these concerts on our behalf. If you have family members, friends, or other contacts [...]
Last Saturday evening I was priviledged to attend a wonderful choral concert, something that I’m not given much opportunity to do. When you are a professional singer, you are usually booked with concerts of your own and so many times concerts overlap your collegues concerts. So when I happened to have a Saturday night free, [...]
In an era accustomed to sensory overload, when stage productions are hard put to compete with the technological wizardry available to film makers, it’s refreshing to spend a couple of hours in a vivid world created simply through the interaction of words and music.
A wonderful weekend of concerts celebrating the release of our new CD “Il Poverello: Medieval & Renaissance Music on the life of St. Francis of Assisi”
Francis was born Giovanni Francesco Bernardone and gave up a life of privilege for the materially impoverished life of a monk. He later founded an order of friars known as the Franciscans.
The patron saint of animals, St. Francis is also the patron of Italy. But his influence was felt well beyond the borders of Assisi and Italy. At Notre Dame in Paris, a group of educated (and perhaps inebriated) monks wrote poetic lines about his life that have a lusty musical setting.
We are thrilled to have performing with us our friends from Legnano, Italy, Isacco Columbo and Stefano Burrati. Isacco came to the US for the first time during our recording session this past August and is just enamored with America. He plays a myriad of instruments, but the most impressive to me is the fife & tabor. It’s kind of like rubbing your head and your belly at the same time in different directions. Check out the video I shot from the first time we met 2 years ago.
I’m back home. It’s was kind of a bittersweet tour for me this time. I loved the Festival, seeing old friends and meeting new ones, singing with new Rosies and making some really fantastic music. The churches were glorious and Piggy gave everyone a great smile. Jordan from The Rose Ensemble has written a couple of [...]
What an amazing evening. We weren’t sure at first how things were going to go. Our bus was due to leave Legnano at 6:30pm, but there was no sign of our guide or our guest instrumentalist. Around 7pm, Issaco arrived explaining that our guide was with the Norway choir and that our packet lunch and [...]
Day 2 began with a quick breakfast at the hotel.. rather decent, actually. It’s buffet style with scrambled eggs, a selection of breads, croissants, pastry, cereals, & fruits. And coffee. But not just any coffee, you see you get a choice of a brewed pot of espresso or a pot of American coffee. I found [...]
so here’s the scenario… we land in Newark just in time to miss our flight to Milan… that was Thursday. Spent most of Friday in Newark hanging around the airport playing on the iPhone and taking Piggy to Dunkin’ Donuts. Since we don’t have one of those in Minneapolis, I thought he should savor the [...]
sigh…. We were delayed in Minneapolis due to weather on the East Coast. Delayed 2-1/2 hours. Sadly, we were on a Northwest flight and had a connecting flight on Contintental leaving Newark at 6:25pm. The irony of the airport thing is they can delay flights coming in, but didn’t delay flights leaving, so we arrived [...]
For an unprecedented return engagement, The Rose Ensemble has been invited back to participate in the “La Fabbrica del Canto”, an international choral festival that takes place in and around the Milan region of Northern Italy. The following blurb was published in an Italian paper this past week: “The Rose Ensemble dal Minnesota, Usa (torna [...]
I was just perusing my latest newsletter from MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) and came across this wonderful blurb: Let’s Hear It for Singers We tend to have a bias around here toward singers since many of us have choral experience, so it’s nice to see that our assumptions have been proven true. In a just-published [...]
Yes, it’s true. I am going to be on television – at least me and my collegues from The Rose Ensemble. It’s all part of a new documentary that was filmed in April over the course of a week. The film crew shot footage of rehearsals, performances and educational programs in addition to capturing some audience
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