Fun in Milwaukee

After teaching a day-long festival in Muskego, WI, we were surprised to pull into our hotel in another Milwaukee suburb and find a waterpark attached to the place! Also of note were the non-stop wedding receptions and proms that were going on all weekend long. Adam, our Viceroy of Fun (very official title), saw that the Brewers were playing the St. Louis Cardinals Friday, so a few of us headed into town, had dinner with some locals at a great sports bar--the fish and chips was half an entire walleye--and walked to the amazing Miller Park for what turned out to be a captivating bottom of the ninth-bases loaded skin of teeth victory for the Brewers! Jones had a birthday, and during the trip some of us managed to go see Iron Man, too. We always try to have fun on tour.

Tim Takach wins Cantus Idol 2008!

Tim Takach was crowned the first ever Cantus Idol winner on Tuesday night.


Trattoria Da Vinci's was packed to capacity, the audience had stomachs filled with food and ears filled with singing. The initial round featured 8 Cantus singers delighting the crowd with a wide array of songs. The voting was tight, but Dashon, Aaron, Eric and Tim moved on to the second round.

The second round featured songs as diverse as "The Way We Were" by Barbra Striesand to "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. The audience chose Dashon and Tim to move to the finals.

Being friends, neither Tim nor Dashon wanted to have either lose, but in a competition setting, there could be only one winner - Tim took the prize with an inspired performance of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain."

The evening was full of fun, laughter, tasty food and outstanding music. One audience member proclaimed: "Cantus Idol puts the 'fun' back in fundraiser!" Amid all the festivities was a great result - over $2800 was raised for Cantus!


This event will definitely be repeated next year, only getting bigger and better! Watch next spring for Cantus Idol 2009! Special thanks to our celebrity judges: John DeHaan, Brian Newhouse, and Mindy Ratner.

Spring mega-tour 08 update

A couple more stops on our mega-tour of the South (and Pennsylvania?!) during March and April: Really great to sing a couple of shows in my home state of Kentucky, too. My gramma and some other family made it to the WKU show, and brought along some homemade fudge and other goodies! One of our stops was Corbin, a small town which happens to be the site of Colonel Sanders' Cafe and Museum--home of the original Kentucky Fried Chicken!. No excuse to miss this stop...

We gave tight shows across the tour, with warm audiences (review here), talented kids to clinic in three states, and some great audience-captured performances:






On our two-day drive home, our van decided to give Eric a chance to see the St. Louis arch, as we travelled north through Missouri. We couldn't wait to get home from this twenty-two day tour, but we've had a good time. Nice to arrive back in the Twin Cities with nice weather: all of our significant others have been stuck with snow, cold, and sleet for the past couple of weeks, while we were outside playing Speedminton and wiffleball...

Take care everybody--we'll see you in your town, or at the pop shows in May! -G

Grueling Questions pt. Deux!

Earlier this season, we presented some answers to pressing questions posed to the Cantus guys about life, music, and fun. Here's part two of those interviews.

Working as a team is lots of fun, but what are your personal goals?


Shahzore Shah: "As a performer, I aim to stretch my vocal and general artistic potential far
beyond perceived limits."

Eric Hopkins "to someday get my Master's degree and teach at the college level.

Gary Ruschman: Sing better. Write more music. Get some sleep. Do a graphic novel.

Tom McNichols: To make a career out of performing while maintaining some semblence of "normal" life

Dashon Burton: I hope to be able to sing in multiple touring ensembles that span a wide range of genres.

Do you have any rituals or things you do before you go out to perform?

Michael Jones: "I never wear shoes untill just before walking out on stage. They make me tense."

Eric Hopkins: " Jump up and down about three or four times"

Aaron humble: "Not really. If I have to sing something big for a matinee I usually have a good greasy breakfast (omelet, turkey sausage, buttery toast, mmmm)"


Finally, If you couldn’t sing, which talent would you most like to have?


Gary Ruschman: "Either creative writing, conducting, or being a fierce bass player."

Dashon Burton: "I would like to have a great memory for detail for use in things like trivia, research, and general academia. I would also love to be able to play Bossa Nova guitar and speak many languages."

Adam Reinwald: "I wish I could run very fast and, most importantly, jump really high. I have always wanted to play professional basketball."

Tom: "I do have it, woodworking. Otherwise I would say, extreme skiier."

Fun stops on tour

Given a coveted rare day off in the schedule, we always head to nearby attractions or cities to see the sights, try new restaurants, or spend a day in a park. This tour is no exception, so a few of the guys went to spend time with former Cantus member Mani, and a couple of us headed down to Philadelphia to catch the new touring Star Wars science exhibit.



Philadelphia must really put a lot of effort into community art, because we found incredibly photorealistic murals all over the city, like this one. Gorgeous!


The science museum was inundated with spectators, all there to view the vintage costumes and models, do some hands-on building of robotics and vehicles with magnetic propulsion, and learn about examples of real-life future-engineering for extended space travel. Of course, there was a cadre of actors in costume there to pose with all the kids, big and small!

This tour is pretty immense--more than three weeks, so it's good we get to have a little fun between shows. After tomorrow night's show in Pennsylvania, we head south to the Carolinas, Alabama, my home state of Kentucky, Georgia, then back to Alabama again. Lots of miles, but hopefully some fun times, good shows, and lots of new people to meet.





Another treat came at our late arrival to our first Pennsylvania hotel, when the members of Inpulse (http://www.inpmusic.com/) walked through the door, having just performed a show at the other university in town that evening. Very very strange to have two Minnesota vocal groups booked in the same town on the east coast at the same time!

Recording. Then more recording. Followed by some recording.

As promised, here's a quick rundown of what happened in the past two weeks with Cantus. The short answer: lots of media!

We had such a resounding success with our All is Calm theatre project that we wanted to record it for distribution by the Fall. So we decided to take two days right away in March to record All is Calm (here's a video montage sneak preview):



As for our annual recording project, rather than head to a remote concert hall for a week in June, we decided to record our upcoming pop shows at the Southern Theater to create a live album instead. It saves us some resources, but gives a whole new experience to us and the audience alike. So if you make it to those shows, you might just get captured in the audience! We welcome two collaborators for the shows, multi-instrumentalist Lee Blaske and our favorite artistic partner, percussionist Dave Hagedorn.

To further our media saturation last week, MPR and American Public Media captured a lot of material, including interviews and our collaborative work with the St. Olaf Choir for broadcast. One song was just featured on Tuesday's Performance Today, and our combined session with the Ole Choir will be featured on another broadcast.

Listen here (we're near the end): Performance Today, 3/18/08


To round out the week, we spent an afternoon being filmed in HD by a local filmmaker who is producing a documentary on the Minnesota choral scene. We filmed five numbers, and hopefully we'll get to show you some footage very soon.

G

Touring and teaching mayhem, 2008 style...

First of all, I should mention that Dashon was unwittingly assuming the Superman pose while we were teaching in Houston--where Cantus reunited with former member Phil Moody, who now is in charge of a big high school music program in Texas. Just like they say, things are big in Texas, and we had a huge day-long festival! On this tour also worked with University of Houston's fantastic college choirs, and Cantus made its Houston Friends of Music debut on the lovely Stude Concert Hall stage at Rice University (review here). What a great place to sing. Despite a large size, the sound on stage is quite intimate, so it was a joy to make music there.

Slipping out early from the sessions with the college choirs, Dashon and I headed across campus to be interviewed on Houston Public Radio (link here).

---

Here's a shot of the Cantus Mobile Office ©, where we get our work done* while we are on tour. Part of our preparation for our pop shows in May involves writing new arrangements (which you can see me toiling away on here)--thank goodness for notation software!

If anyone is keeping score, the Macs are currently leading the PCs 5-3 in the ensemble, plus two iPhones (not that I am dissatisfied with my Powerbook, but Steve, if you're out there, would you like to make Apple the official laptop of Cantus and throw in some new machines?!).


*hopefully

In other news, if you are a member, you can now catch Cantus on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cantus/7671804290




See you next time, when I'll talk about some quick turnaround on new Cantus recording projects, getting "old school" with the St. Olaf choir, Cantus on TV, and other newsworthy items.

Cheers,

Gary