Happy Leap Day.
So last night I attended the University of Michigan at Carnegie Hall concert thanks to some tickets from a new friend and colleague, Tom Wisniewski. We were in Box 1 on the first tier, practically part of the orchestra. I mused “this must be what it feels like to be Queen” as the audience had just as much a view of us as they did of the stage. Our position allowed us to see through the side door where we waved to Keith Taylor and Thomas Lynch, two of the three poets involved with the first piece to be performed. It also allowed me to practically read the music on the stands of the bass players below us.
The first was a new composition by Evan Chambers, a suite from The Old Burying Ground (2007). Tom tells me it is only half the piece, and the other section involves two Irish poets and the poet Richard Tillinghast, with whom I studied at Michigan. The suite they performed involved three poets: Keith Taylor, who was my pedagogy mentor at Michigan; Thomas Lynch, who taught the Creative Nonfiction class every other year (Eileen Pollack taught it in the alternating years and I took it with Eileen when I was there); and the poet Jane Hirshfield (I believe they all do the Bear River Writers’ Conference each summer).
The song cycle interspersed a poem by each poet with a singer and the orchestra, so Keith began with the poem “All the Time You Want” as a sort-of introduction, then the folk singer Tim Eriksen sang “And Pass From Hence Away” and “O Say Grim Death” the original texts of each taken from the Old Burying Ground at the Jaffrey Center in New Hampshire. This section ended with Thomas Lynch reading his own poem “O Say Grim Death” which incorporated lines from the epitaph of Isaac A. Spofford. The tenor Nicholas Phan then sang “A Bar So Pure” followed by the soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird singing “Nancy Eliza” (again, all the lyrics were epitaphs from the graves). Jane Hirschfield then read her poem “Pompeii” at which point Anne-Carolyn sang “Emma” and Nicholas returned to close with “Oh Drop on My Grave.”
The epitaphs used for the lyrics were quite poetic though very traditional in their Christian outlook on the afterlife being true freedom, in not questioning God’s will, and in earthly life being some sort of prison: “Think reader can thy heart endure / a summons to a bar so pure” and “Oh drop on my grave as ye pass it no tear / But rejoice for the freed one, whose fetters lie here” and “Oh say grim Death, Why thus destroy / The parents’ hopes, their fondest joy? / Cease Man, to ask the hidden cause / God’s will is done–Revere His Laws”. What can I say; they dated from the late 18th and early 19th centuries (not that these sentiments don’t still exist today).
The second piece the orchestra performed was Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp Minor, and it was quite a treat as it featured the French Horn (an instrument I played for 8 years in a former life). Part II (Scherzo. Kraftig, nicht zu schell which means, “strong or powerful, not too fast”) featured a soloist from the horn section (Zachary Wasserman, I believe) and his silver French Horn. What an amazing performance! He totally nailed it and he knew it at the end–quite pleased, as he should be. The entire horn section was heavily featured throughout the three parts of the symphony, and it took me back to the days when I played. I couldn’t have asked for a happier convergence.
The orchestra of course got a standing O as they deserved and they treated the heavily-Michigan audience to the fight song as an encore. Go Blue!
After the concert I got to see Keith and a delightful thing happened: a young woman approached me and asked “Are you Matthew Hittinger?” I said yes and she said “Do you remember me?” Sure enough it was Tania Strauss, a student from the very first section of Creative Writing I taught at the University of Michigan back in 2004. She was one of the best students in that section and produced an amazing fiction portfolio (I think she even got a rare A+ from me on it). Well, after that class she pursued the creative writing sub-concentration in the English department and just graduated this past year. Today marks her first day working for the Museum of Natural History. I hope to have coffee with her soon in the city and catch-up.
That’s all for now. Go do some leaps.