Month: March 2018

We woke up and it was St. Patrick’s Day in the Windy City! We made our way to the spectacular Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago. The chapel boasted an awesome display of unconventionally colored (mostly muted, light hues of purple, green, and blue) stained glass windows.

The concert began at 2:00 PM. Our accompanist opened the show by providing Adrian Berliner G4 a D on the piano so that he could begin his solo in Mogamigawa. But, rather than begin the Japanese folk song Adrian started singing a classic sea chanty From Boston Harbor much to the surprise of our faithful conductor. Andy caught on quickly and began to conduct the song appropriately, but little did he know that once the chorus arrived the entire glee club would speed up the tempo and start swinging eighths. Thoroughly bewildered, Andy smiled and tried as best he could to keep up with the shenanigans. When the song reached the final verse, the Glee Club stared menacingly at its conductor as it solemnly sang “And the one thing we shall have to crave is that he may have a watery grave. So we’ll heave him down in some dark hole where the sharks will have his body and the devil have his soul.” But the piece ended on an upbeat note with a “Yo heave ho, to row row, wind aloft and rum below.” Andy took the tour prank very well and graciously bowed for the slightly confused audience.

After a week of shows and rehearsals the Glee Club gave a truly emotional, yet refined performance. The organ and chapel provided an amazing opportunity to sing the Benedictus of the Cooman mass. One highlight was surely the singing of an arrangement of Sondheim’s Not While I’m Around.

After the show the Glee Club had the opportunity to explore the city of Chicago on one of the most festive days of the year. People dispersed to see the green river and cloud gate, to try authentic Chicago deep dish pizza, and to spend some time with friends and family in the area. In the evening a good time was had by all but the gleeks tucked in on the early side to be ready for the next day’s flight home to Boston.

Our host took us to the Original Pancake House for breakfast this morning. During my time in Milwaukee, I saw connections to Pittsburgh in many areas – the focus on industrial manufacturing as a source of wealth for the city, the intersection of three rivers, and its rebirth as a place focused on environmental research and sustainability. This restaurant was yet another reminder of Pittsburgh, because it was a favorite breakfast location of my family.

After breakfast, we were dropped off for our morning gig at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The new Calatrava addition, build in 2001, seemed like a precursor to the New York Oculus. The 36 fins composing the bris de soleil was down when we arrived, but they lifted it in time for the performance, which let a bit more light into the room.

As today is the 160th birthday of the Glee Club, our conductor led us through a program tracing the development of the Glee Club to its present form. We sounded pretty good for a morning concert, though I expect the echoing acoustics of the museum helped with that.

After the concert, docents took us around in small groups to see the museum. We had a pitifully short amount of time to look at all the artwork, but our docent did his best to hit the major sections of the museum and cover the general history of the provenance of their collection. I took a few notes, which can be seen below:

Notes on the Milwaukee Art Museum:

1. Sofinisba Anguissola – female artist, portrait painter
2. Portrait of Henry III of France’s mignons
3. “Interesting painting which has made its way to Milwaukee” – favorite phrase of the docent
4. Philippe de Champaigne – only one allowed to paint Richilieu
5. Andien de Clermont famous for monkey room paintings
6. Frederick Lipton was buying academic art, which wasn’t super popular, at the same time Chicago was buying impressionists
   1. Bouguereau was an interesting academic artist
   2. Bastien-Lapage pre-dated impressionists, hated by academic artists but still classified with them
7. “Bawdy tales, but in a German way, much more reserved.”
8. Georgia O’Keefe would come to museum to look at her paintings, alone, then leave. She lived in WI for a little bit
9. Joan Mitchell – synesthesia, not a nice woman, “if you were a man, French, & dead, people would like you”
10. A little background on how museum security works
11. Drossos P. Skyllas – never sold a painting, strange portraits, no brushstrokes
12. August Walla – schizophrenic, raised as a girl to avoid draft, swastika and hammer/sickle : feminine & masculine
13. Earthquake in Haiti makes Milwaukee collection of Haitian art much more valuable
14. “Kohl’s Art Generation Studio”
15. Kehinde Wiley: St. Dionysus (docent says it is St. Claire), men posed as women, did Obama’s portrait
16. Reginald Baylor – Adaptation of annunciation, “On duty, not driving”, does paint-by-number

We departed straight from the museum to Northwestern, our last little bit of travel.  After a brief stop for lunch, we arrived at Northwestern’s Bienen school; a new building of concrete and glass right on the river. I dropped off my luggage with my family, then intended to go to a meet-and-greet with the arts group, The Crossing, we would watch this evening. However, they needed more time to practice, and I ended up getting an early dinner at 527 Cafe, next door to the sadly vacant rooms of what used to be Joy Yee.

While I was waiting for the performance, I happened to run into two high school classmates who were studying music, and we chatted briefly about how we were doing. Then we settled into the balcony for The Crossing’s performance of Anonymous Man and Rigwreck. The first was incredibly rhythmically interesting, if not so interesting melodically, while the second one was a little more conventional musically, but had absolutely arresting and extremely political and religious language. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on it after more reflection. For now though, I am being hosted by my extended family, and it is time to turn in for the night.

-Curtis Wu ’18

Day 6 brought the end of our stay in the Winona Days inn, and the beginning of a four hour bus ride to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The first part of our drive was along the Mississippi, before the crossing of a bridge into Wisconsin. The Mississippi was on our left, and on the right, melting snow had refrozen on the embankment next to the road, forming rows of icicles.

I slept a little, finished Brown Girl Dreaming, and made some more progress in Winter. The first conclusive sign of our arrival in Milwaukee was Miller Park, home to the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team.

We pulled up to Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church (interesting point of note: the church is the same age as the Glee Club), and dropped our stuff in a room pointed out to us by the pastor. Next on the schedule was lunch, but the pastor inquired if we had a “musical grace.” This left us momentarily confused, but we realized that he was asking if we had any songs for blessing the food. We didn’t, but we ended up singing “Mogamigawa,” and that earned us a sloppy joe, potatoes, bacon and cheddar macaroni salad, and carrot and turkey soup.

During lunch, we chatted with the pastor; he had recently moved to Milwaukee from New Orleans, where he had been for 15 years, and was also a singer (basso profundo, as he put it). After lunch, we had a brief rehearsal and sound check. Because the organ was by the entrance to the church, the time it took for the organ’s sound to reach the choir (and our sound to reach the organ) led to some timing issues. We had to work out two transitions to get the choir up to the loft and back down, which caused some frustration. Fortunately, we had some time to relax and get changed before our performance that evening.

The performance was a bit shaky at the beginning; I think the fatigue from traveling, the new standing arrangement, and the small audience threw the group for a bit. However, the concert came together, particularly toward the end, when we performed “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” as an encore.

The church provided dinner and dessert to us, again after a rendition of “Mogamigawa.” We chowed down on tacos and chips and fruit, and I chose a slice of carrot cake as my dessert. At the end of the dinner, the pastor bode us farewell with a sung benediction, and the phrase, “I’m going to do something the devil has never done.” To which we replied, “What?” “Leave you.” He also gave us a CD of himself singing. Of course, we thanked him and another church member with a “Domine” for all their help setting up the concert.

Our host drove us through the city, past Marquette University and Lake Michigan, as we made our way to his home. We also stopped at Kopp’s, a custard shop in the building where Happy Days was filmed, and I got a Swiss chocolate custard, my second dessert of the night. When we arrived at his home, we met his family and chatted a bit before going to bed.

-Curtis Wu ’18

While some members enjoyed the option to sleep in this morning, others woke up bright and early to go to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum on a party bus. Apparently the bus company overbooked all its regular busses, so they sent us a party bus for transport to the art musem.

Coming off a late night, the Glee Club started the day a little behind schedule. But by car, subway, and light rail eventually everyone arrived at the Boys and Girls Club of St. Paul. We then participated in three consecutive workshops with choruses of elementary, middle, and high schoolers. In one workshop we learned the song This Little Planet and sang it as a round with the middle school choir before adding original dance moves and having a sing/dance off. A different group performed an arrangement of Michael Jackson’s classic Man in the Mirror and before long the Glee Club enthusiastically joined them in song to create a truly touching moment. The conductor of the school’s singing program Siri told her students that the Glee Club showed that music can be an important part of your life even when you get and even if you do not intend to be a professional musician.

After having completed the three workshop classes, the Glee Club had some free time to explore the city of St. Paul. Gleeks flocked to the Science Museum, the Cathedral of St. Paul, the state capitol building, and the Schubert Club Museum.

In the afternoon the Glee Club gave a short performance at the Boys and Girls Club of St. Paul to an audience of kids and teachers while standing behind a purple Prince mural.

The performance became interactive when Gleeks and kids sang a round/mash-up of children’s songs. Afterwards, the Glee Club participated in a final workshop with Commusication, an after school music program for the St. Paul area in which students meet at least three times a week to rehearse singing and piano under the musical direction of Ryan Laboy. Commusication seeks to be accessible to all youth, create great music, and offer a welcoming community; it recently performed alongside Leslie Odom Jr. at Super Bowl LII. The students in commusication were incredibly well-focussed and simultaneously having a really fun time. With them we played a game that involved practicing proper singing posture and we also learned a song Draw the Circle Wide, which the students explained was about inclusion, accepting each other no matter our differences, and how we’re all stronger together.

Today’s activities with various youth singing groups exemplified the power of music to bring people from very different backgrounds together to create something beautiful out of love.

-J. Finley Ong ’21