A win...and a loss

I've been in Sydney over the weekend, playing for a brass band soloist at a competition called the Ern Keller International Soloist of the Year - the details in the link relate to last year.  Obviously they'll be updated soon, and show that the person I played for (and who took me to Sydney specially to do so!) - John Lewis - won.  Great excitement.   John was the Champion of Champions in the brass competitions for 2011, a title which made him eligible for an invitation to the Ern Keller.

The competition was held in St Mary's suburb in Sydney, where the St Mary's Brass Band has a club that functions all the year round with concerts and a casino and pokies and restaurants and much more.  It's the sort of thing most brass bands probably dream of, because it brings in income that assists the band to function.  Our motel was just across the road - literally.

The weather was much hotter than I'm used to, so it was good that the competition was held indoors in an air conditioned hall, one that's obviously used for other functions where drinks and nibbles are readily available.  The piano was a bit of a disappointment: it seemed muted somehow.  I could only just get it to come to life and no more.  Never mind, in spite of that, the trip was most worthwhile.  And we managed to get away on the plane yesterday in spite of the fact that the terrific storm the night before (with lightning and thunder every few seconds) flooded parts of the Sydney airport, and a good deal of other places.

This is a photo taken around the time
I knew Elizabeth

That's the win.  While I was there, I heard about the loss.  I've mentioned before on this blog that back in the late sixties I was briefly engaged to the opera singer Elizabeth Connell, who was at that time studying at the London Opera Centre; I'd been studying there the year before on the repetiteur's course.  It would have been an interesting marriage, if it had gone ahead: after a difficult start in the operatic world, Elizabeth made a name for herself as singer of roles that required considerable stamina and vocal technique.  She excelled in some of the Wagnerian roles, for instance, and in Turandot, one of the most difficult soprano roles in the repertoire.   When I knew her she was a mezzo-soprano, but she later took time off to lift her voice into the soprano range.   She was briefly married to another singer, but this marriage was later dissolved.

I hadn't heard from her in years, until she wrote to me out of the blue in the early 2000s.  We corresponded a little and I tried to get her email address via her agent so that we could write more directly, but I never heard back from them.   She came out here to judge one of the Lexus aria contest, and we thought about going to the Dunedin concert that came after the event, and then decided against it at the last minute.  Which meant we missed catching up with Elizabeth.

When I was in Sydney this weekend, my wife phoned to say that Elizabeth had died; somewhat suddenly, although she'd been ill with cancer on and off for some time.  She would have been 66 this year.  Even though it's been a long time since we had any real contact, it's still a quite unsettling loss.  I guess people you didn't get married to linger on in the background of your life.  Certainly, on hearing of her death, Elizabeth proved that she had lingered more than a little...

PS: There's a news report about John's win in the Otago Daily Times.

Couple of arty things

Just came across this quote on Twitter (via the ArtSharks link)

Art validates us beyond what anyone else can do for us. Anne Copeland

I'm not sure who Anne Copland is - as often happens when I write that, the person in question responds, so here's hoping!

Incidentally there's an intriguing video (see below) on the same site of the eight years of photos of the blogger passing by in just over a minute. The music's pretty awful (to my ears) but the video's worth watching.

Living My Life Faster - 8 years of JK's Daily Photo Project from JK Keller on Vimeo.

Tim Keller

I'm re-reading Tim Keller's The Reason for God, and here he talks about his Manhattan-based Church of the Redeemer, which has a congregation of some 6,000...

Redeemer's basic doctrines - the deity of Christ, the infallibility of the Bible, the necessity of spiritual rebirth through faith in Christ's atoning death - are in unity with the orthodox, supernatural beliefs of the evangelical and Pentecostal churches of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the US South and Midwest. These beliefs often put us in conflict with views and practices of many people in the city. At the same time, we have been delighted to embrace many other aspects of urban, pluralistic culture. We emphasize the arts, value racial diversity, stress the importance of working for justice in the city for all its inhabitants, and communicate in the language and with the sensibility of our city-centre culture. Most of all we stress the grace of a Saviour who ate with people the establishment called 'sinners' and loved those who opposed him. All of these things are very important to Manhattan residents.

Some years ago a man from a southern US state visited Redeemer. He had heard that though we held to orthodox Christian doctrine, we had grown large in the midst of a sceptical, secular city. He expected to find that we were attracting people with avant-garde music, video monitors and clips, dramatic sketches, exceptionally hip settings, and other kinds of eye-catching spectacle. To his surprise he found a simple and traditional service that, on the surface, seemed identical to those in his more conservative part of the world. Yet he could also see that the audience contained many people who wouldn't have ever attended the churches he knew. After the service he met me and then said, 'This is a complete mystery to me. Where are the dancing bears? Where are the gimmicks? Why are these people here?"
I directed him to some 'downtown art-types' who had been coming to Redeemer for some time. They suggested that he look beneath the surface. One person said that the difference between Redeemer and other churches was profound, and lay in 'irony, charity, and humility.'

quotes from pages 42/3.

So where's Brent Stavig, you say? Why would you ask that in a post about Tim Keller and the remarkable Presbyterian Church of the Redeemer in Manhattan? Particularly since Stavig isn't in Manhattan, and hasn't even been in New York City for some time - last I heard, back in 2007, he was living in Seattle. Anyway, he's now managed to appear, in his turn, in this post.