Concert Review: "Paradise Rediscovered"

Elora Festival Singers put on a sequel to their concert last year, "Paradise Lost," which was a lovely program of Pärt and Whitacre. (melted_snowball reviewed that concert here).

The Festival Singers were in fine voice, but the program wasn't as stunning as last year's. They played two Latin masses, Cantus Missae in E flat by Joseph Rheinberger, Messe En Sol Majeur by Francis Poulenc. They played an arrangement of Kein deutscher Himmel from Mahler's 5th Symphony, and Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine by Eric Whitacre.

The first mass soared with great harmonies. The second didn't do much for me, but I'm fairly convinced I just don't like any Poulenc.

The Mahler was sung to "Excerpts from Sennette aus Vendig (Sonnets from Venice)," and it was gorgeous and well-sung. But it had an "Off Stage Soloist," a feature I spent too much time trying to figure out when I should've been listening more closely, and now that I'm home I haven't been able to track down why they did it. It wasn't a particularly ethereal piece, and it wasn't the "funeral march" movement of the symphony. I dunno. Also, they flubbed up the program, merging the beginning of the Whitacre with the translation of the Sonnets from Venice. (Da Vinci didn't live in Venice!)

The Whitacre was beautiful, and the piece seems well-represented at youtube in case you're curious.

Leonardo dreams of his flying machine
tormented by visions of flight and falling,
more wondrous and terrible each than the last...

[I think this treatment of the piece is better than the one we heard today; which isn't too surprising because it was conducted by Eric Whitacre himself. The one we saw had a bit too much percussion in the last minute; it felt gimmicky, where the version Whitacre conducted just feels upbeat. ]

All in all, a good concert, just not a great concert.

But the company was wonderful- persephoneplace and I kibbutzed about life and such on the drive up and back. And we had cucumber sandwiches and punch served to us by clergy.

And then for something different, after we got back to town we stopped downtown at the Craft Beer and Ribsfest, which hurt our ears and sensibilities just a little. (Both of us wanted to go tell a young woman to pull up her damn pants; and the Blues musicians seemed to be slightly soused.)

Oh, and we have a photo we'd like your collective wisdom as we try to figure out what the hell it is...

Catholic Jelly-fIsh

Apologies for teh blurrinees, but I think we captured one of the rare photos of the fabled Alpha Jelly-fish.

It's in the left hand wall hanging, and the only detail that I think is fuzzed out in the photo is a few vertical lines on the pink jelly-fish body:



Alpha Jelly-fish, second cousin to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, protector to the Virgin Mary.

Yes?