Sunday, January 18, 2009

End of 2008, Happy New Year, 2009!

Greetings, Cantus fans!

Well, the year ended on a high note with a fantastic national tour of All is Calm, followed by a run at the Pantages Theater, in downtown Minneapolis--this time with a full theatrical production. We garnered more great reviews: All is right with 'All Is Calm', 'All is Calm' delivers joy -- pure and simple, and 'All is Calm' celebrates peace ... in wartime
. It was a real treat to reunite with our actors from last year's premiere of the piece, John Catron, David Roberts, and Alan Sorenson, as well as director Peter Rothstein. The guys all broke off to visit family and friends during the holidays, but now we are all back on the clock, and doing travelling for the group.

We just returned from New York, where we performed a few showcases for the American Performing Arts Presenters conference (trying to drum up some business at some new venues around the country, and finished the week with beautiful performance of Edie Hill's A Sound Like This at the 31st national convention of Chamber Music America. CMA provided the funds for Cantus to commission the piece from Edie--6 ruminations of texts by Kabir, the 15th century Indian mystic, on translation by Minnesota Poet Laureate, Robert Bly. A fantastic multi-movement work, it really captures the sound of music of the spheres. It's such a thrill to sing in New York City, too. We'll be back there again on March 5th to sing at Trinity Church, on Wall Street.