Husker in New York
Week 5
October 4
Monday, October 4 dawned a drizzly, cool fall-like day. It felt great. My practice time went very well. Both the Rheinberger "Trio" and Poulenc "Concerto" are making great strides. I continue to enjoy having the time to practice each day. I then spent time with Dr. Entriken working on proper techniques for singing Anglican chant, a beautiful way to sing the Psalms. The first school of organ playing, The Guilmant School, was located at First Presbyterian Church. We spent some time looking through correspondence dating back to the turn of the century as the school was being established. It was a fascinating look back. ( http://www.fpcnyc.org/music/guilmant-organ-school.html ). Lunch followed at a Middle Eastern deli. Kalustyans came highly recommended, and lived up to its billlings. (http://www.kalustyans.com/). The food was excellent and browsing the shelves an adventure in learning about foods unknown to me. The American Classical Orchestra is "devoted to preserving and performing the repertoire of 17th to 19th century composers, playing the works on original or reproduced period instruments....." (http://www.americanclassicalorchestra.org/). This fine group opened its 26th season with a concert at the auditorium of the Society for Ethical Culture. The program consisted of music by Mozart, Domenico Dragonetti (Concerto for Bass), and Beethoven. It was very interesting and enlightening to hear this music played on instruments for which it was written. It is a markedly different sound from an orchestra made up of modern instruments.
October 3
World Communion Sunday at First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York was a busy morning. I arrived in time to practice my postlude and review the introit I was to conduct before the 9:30 a.m. choir rehearsal. The music for the service, including the children's choir, was wonderful. We sang one of our choir's standards, "Cantique de Jean Racine", but in French. Look out choir singers, "parlez vous Francais?" Bill Entriken dissected the service and other musical issues over a long lunch in a great Mexican restaurant in Greenwich Village. I had just enough time to catch the subway and dash uptown for Evensong and Organ Recital at St.Thomas Church. These services with their consistent high standard of music-making never have the sense of concert performance. Rather, they are obviously an offering to God.
October 2
Saturday was as glorious as the previous two days had been miserable. It was one of those days where you just feel glad to be alive. As I think about the day now (at the end of the day), I think of it as my "museum day". I was in no fewer than 5 museums. I started the day by taking the subway and walking to The Guggenheim at 88th and 5th Avenue.(http://www.guggenheim.org/). This museum is probably as famous for its building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, as it is for its collection. The exhibit today was called "Chaos and Classicism" which chronicled the period between the Armistice ending World War I in 1918 to the Berlin Olympics of 1936. I walked from the Guggenheim to the Neue Galerie (http://www.neuegalerie.org/) for a wonderful lunch of German food at the Cafe Sabarsky, whose specialties include Viennese pastries. Feeling very good about myself after this repast, I walked to the Whitney Museum of American Art (http://whitney.org/) at 75th and Madison. Their collection specializes in art by American artists of all periods ranging from traditional to avant garde. If you're looking for Folk Art, this isn't your place. Since I hadn't had enough museum time today, and I had unfinished shopping business at both the Frick Collection (http://www.frick.org/) and the Museum of Modern Art (http://www.moma.org/), I continued on my way to complete my appointed rounds. I returned to the apartment late in afternoon with arms loaded, a happy camper.
October 1
Friday was another grey, dreary day with the remnants of Thursday's tropical storm still affecting traffic and lengthening travel time for everyone in the NY/NJ area. I opened the day as is my routine by practicing at First Presbyterian, looking at choral music and engaging in conversation with Dr. Entriken. I then walked back across 5th Avenue through the rain for a late lunch on University Avenue. One of my favorite bookstores is Strand
(http://www.strandbooks.com/) located just around the corner at 12th and Broadway. It was a perfect day for browsing, and Strand is a great place to browse. Then I realized that my resolution was to empty my book shelves before I start bringing more back into the house. I left empty-handed, and feeling proud of myself. My plan was to go back to the apartment, have dinner, go to an Early Music concert in the Hunter College neighborhood, not far from my apartment. My eyes didn't get the memo on the plan and I woke up on the couch too late to get to the concert. Two late nights in a row took their revenge.
September 30
Thursday was another New Jersey day beginning with the subway ride to Penn Station and the short trip to Union NJ through Newark. ( New York's Penn Station is still bewildering to me. No matter how many times I go in, it seems that I enter through a different door and thus the hunt for the ticket machines and proper gate begins anew. It never gets any easier.) The Entrikens had planned a trip to the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farm close to Morris Plains, NJ. Gustav Stickley was a great proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement of design in the early part of the 20th Century. His funiture designs became classics and are still very popular today, nearly 100 years after his heyday. It was a interesting visit led by a very strict tour guide, who, had she been my 3rd grade teacher would have certainly scared me into doing a better job of learning my multiplication tables. http://www.stickleymuseum.org/
From the Stickley Museum we went to Mt. Tabor another 19th century Methodist camp site that contains a lovely tabernacle set in a beautiful town square surrounded by concentric rings of Victorian homes. This community is look back into the influence that religion played in the lives of individuals and families in the later 19th century. http://www.mounttabornj.org/
Sometimes I look at what I've written about my activities of a particular day, and I think, "I felt that I did more than that". I forget how long it can take to get around the city, even with its extensive public transportation system. Thursday night was a case in point. My train from New Jersey was late coming into Penn Station. That meant that instead of of getting in at 9:40, I got in at 10:00. I walked to the E train in the subway only to find that for this week, there were no E trains running from that station AFTER 10 p.m. That meant that rather than one easy subway ride to a stop just blocks from my apartment, I had to:
- Take an A train downtown to 14th St,
- Transfer to an L train and go to Union Square,
- Transfer to a uptown 6 train.
- 4. At 42nd street, 1 stop from where I would normally get off, I had to get off the 6 because it would begin running as an express and not stop 51st St ( my stop).
- Wait for a local 6 train which would stop.