Message from Music Director Deborah Booth
Greetings to New York Recorder Guild Participants!
I hope that you are all in good health and reasonably positive spirits. These are indeed difficult times for everyone, especially New Yorkers. I'm thinking of each one of you, and wishing the best luck for you and your families. Music is a great solace at times like this, and I think we could all say that we feel very lucky to be musicians. It provides us inspiration and distraction from the harsh realities of the daily News.
Please allow me to recommend that you consider playing your instruments and practicing as much as you have energy to do. It really does help raise the spirits. This may be a good time to explore and organize your sheet music files. Who knows what you may find! I'm always surprised when I delve into the backs of filing cabinet drawers. Often many surprises! You could also do some exploring online for available music - through the ARS site or Imslp or CPDL or many others. There is a wealth of material out there.
Another thought for being productive in these isolated times would be to carefully oil all of your recorders. As this is a time of seasonal weather change, it's a perfect time to moisturize the wooden instruments. You will make them happy and they will sound better and last longer. I'm sure the thing that we miss the most is being able to play together in groups. Let's join together in hoping that we will be able to be together soon and share our music!!!
Very Best Musical Thoughts!
Deborah
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Consider contacting an instructor for an online lesson via Skype or other video software. Here is a partial list of teachers offering online lessons:
AEM ONLINE Saturdays and Sundays: classes scheduled each weekend
Amherst Early Music Virtual Festival July 5-11 on the Internet
Online classes, salon concerts, round tablew with instrument makers and an online auction are all in the mix for this virtual event.
Visit the AEM website for more information and to register: www.amherstearlymusic.org
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For more information on cancellations and other workshop information,
visit our Workshops page for dates and registration information.
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The May 28th Meeting is Cancelled
Information on future meetings will be posted as it becomes available.
Avoid Sharing Your Instruments at This Time
In normal times the New York Recorder Guild meets at
Advent Lutheran Church
2504 Broadway (at 93rd Street)
Basement Fellowship Hall, side Entrance, corner of Broadway and 93rd Street
Doors open at 6:40 PM - Enter through the side door of the church.
Downbeat at 6:55 PM.
Bring your pencil and a music stand. Music stands will not be provided.
Elevator available in Church if absolutely necessary
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The Global Community Recorder Orchestra Performance of Lascia Ch'Io Pinaga
from Handel's Rinaldo
Starring Recorder players from around the world. Look for our Music Director, Deborah Booth, and many friends of NYRG, including Daphna Mor and Joan Kimball.
Click Here to View and Listen
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Susan Hellauer Led NYRG on February 27th
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The balance 2020 schedule is End of Season Bash, June 18 which is to be announced. All meeting dates are Thursday evenings. All events are subject to change.
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Per-meeting fee: $12 for members. Non-member fee: $20
Please make your check payable to “New York Recorder Guild”.
If mailing your check, send to:
New York Recorder Guild, 145 W. 93rd St., Apt. 2, New York, NY 10025
Not a member yet? Join Us for an exciting and fun year of music-making.
Visit our Membership Page for more information
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Visit our Events page for photos of City Recorder and recent playing sessions and events.
Special New York Music Concerts and Events
(additional events and concert series are listed on our Events page)
GOTHAM EARLY MUSIC SCENE (GEMS) is dedicated to the
promotion and advancement of early music in New York City and
serves professional and amateur performers and ensembles, church
organizations, audiences and enthusiasts. Get on their mailing
list and receive On the Scene which features current
New York performances of early music. Call: 212-866-0468 or E-mail info@gemsny.org.
Consort FinderThe board and music director are pleased that you are attending New York Recorder Guild sessions to play with and meet other recorder players. It is certainly a great place for this! You may also wish to enjoy playing recorders in a consort or smaller group setting, but it is often difficult to get the right players together for levels, geography, and temperaments. If you are interested in being matched with other players, contact our music director, Deborah Booth, at: deborah@flute-recorder-deborahbooth.com explaining your thoughts, wishes, level, location, and years of experience. Coaching is also available if desired. Deborah will attempt to put you in touch with others who match your skills. NYRG has had success with this program in starting consorts meeting in Brooklyn and Manhattan. |
Subscribe to the New York Recorder Guild Mailing List and get the latest news on NYRG happenings as well as keeping up to date on the Metro New York Recorder scene. Contact: newyorkrecorders@gmail.com
Visit our Events page for photos of recent playing meetings as well as listings of playing sessions of other local ARS Chapters, concerts and other early music and recorder events..
Visit our Archives Page to keep up with all of the music played at our Monthly Meetings. Music listings of workshops and other events will be added as they occur.
Our Workshops page has all the information on Recorder and Early Music Workshops taking place in the area.
Recorders need repairs; looking for music downloads? Visit our Resources page for information on everything recorder-related.
Recorder Myths?? A Regular Series of Articles by Judith Wink
Little Deaths
At the end of The Caine Mutiny, World War II is over and Captain Keith is taking his warship home. The narrator looks into the captain’s future:
The stars and the sea and the ship were slipping from his life.
In a couple of years he would no longer be able to tell time
to the quarter hour by the angle of the Big Dipper in the heavens.
He would forget the exact number of degrees of offset that held the
Caine on course in a cross sea.All the patterns fixed in his muscles, like the ability to find the speed indicator buttons in utter blackness, would fade.
It was a little death toward which he was steaming.
For once Shakespeare got it wrong. It isn’t just cowards who die a thousand deaths. We all do. Some of these deaths are untroublesome. Captain Keith, for instance, is is his mid-twenties and never planned to command the Caine forever. He will get a Ph.D. in English and become a professor. Young adults like him die many little deaths as they leave school, leave their first jobs and their first apartments and (sometimes) their first husbands or wives. These changes don’t even feel like deaths. They’re more like the experience of the butterfly bursting out of its cocoon or the chambered nautilus building a bigger house for its growing body.
For older adults, it’s different. One of our friends, a man in his late sixties, broke his wrist playing basketball with a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. The wrist healed but his confidence didn’t; he's not sure whether he wants to get back on the court. I know several people who have sold their houses or their apartments and moved into assisted living. Their new homes have lots of amenities and all the conveniences, but everyone in this situation knows what his next home will be. “God’s waiting room” is the usual nickname for these places. One inmate described his as “a Carnival Cruise on the River Styx.”
The late Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos used to say, when a colleague or a friend died, that the person had “left.” He said someone had died only when the person stopped doing mathematics. Musicians die in the Erdos sense. I don’t know whether Pablo Casals ever retired, but a lot of less fortunate players, professionals and amateurs, are forced to do it by arthritis, failing eyesight, physical or mental breakdowns, nerve damage, increasingly lousy reviews or a growing conviction that there’s got to be a better way to make a living. Amateurs sell or donate their instruments. They give away their music. Going through these collections can break your heart. The pages are worn because the piece has been played many times. It’s also been studied. The owner’s notes are all over it, notes on phrasing, on articulation, on emphasis and dynamics and the relationship of the words to the music. You can see the hours of thought that went into playing this piece. It was a labor of love, a labor that the owner will never again be able to undertake.
With luck, there will be compensations. Years ago, the Westsider ran a column by Bessie Doegenes (I think that’s the spelling,) a longtime resident of the West 80’s whose essays were full of dry humor and gentle wisdom. She was in the 80’s in another sense, so she had a lot to say about being old. One column described her race from Central Park back to her bathroom, a race she won by a whisker. Another talked about losses and gains.
One of her friends, a good amateur artist, became too crippled by arthritis to manage a brush. He took up photography, using his trained eye to create beauty in a new medium. Another, who loved concerts, lost her hearing. She started going to the ballet. A third lost her sense of smell. Forever lost to her were the scent of roses, of clean laundry, of roast chicken. But there were a few people at her senior center who were isolated and lonely because of their dreadful body odor. Bessie’s friend, no longer troubled by what others found unendurable, hugged these outcasts and lunched with them. Here’s Bessie’s punchline: “That smart cookie Ralph Waldo Emerson got it right: ‘When the half-gods go, the gods arrive." In time all our half-gods will go.
When that happens, may there be gods waiting for us.
Judith's previous articles are archived on her special page. Click Here
The New York Recorder Guild is a member of the American Recorder Society
