Wonderful news, dear readers. I am going to be performing in a few weeks, and you can win tickets to come and hear me! I know, I know, it sounds too good to be true, but this is real. This is happening. Tenor Dad in concert, and you could be there!
As you may know by now, I have been working with local businesses to provide you all with free stuff and to give a little boost to the places that I think deserve it. And it hit me the other day: music groups are local businesses. Sort of. I mean, most of them are non-profits, but you get what I’m saying. What a natural fit for me to talk about local concerts and musical events, especially when I am performing them! And so a new giveaway was born. But let me tell you a little bit about the music first.
On Sunday, November 24th, at 3 pm, the Burlington Choral Society will be presenting Benjamin Britten’s St. Nicolas at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Burlington. I get to sing the role of St. Nicolas, and it is not a small sing, believe me. I went into this thinking it was going to be a choral piece with some tenor solos, but after spending some time with it I began to tell people that it was more like a tenor solo piece with some choral backup! The truth is somewhere in the middle of course, but this is just to say that I get a lot of fun music to sing.
St. Nicolas, as you probably know, is where we get our Santa Claus figure from, so one could be forgiven for thinking that this is a fun fluffy Christmas piece for your children to enjoy. Instead, Britten tells the story of the life of the actual St. Nicolas, a somewhat superior rich boy whose parents died of the plague, who got sent to prison, who learned a bit of humility and gave all of his family wealth away to the poor, and who complained a lot about how annoying humanity was for not being better at being good. So it is a sometimes dark and prickly piece for your children to enjoy.
At times dismal, at times joyful, this is the story of a man’s life. We don’t actually know too many facts about Nicolas; most of what we know is story and legend, but Britten takes what he needs and humanizes this mythic creature. It is sublimely beautiful, it never goes where you think it’s going to go, and it will haunt you once it’s over. In other words, it is pure Britten. And we’re opening and closing the concert with two bonus Britten songs, from his Seranade for tenor, horn, and strings.
If you love Britten, you don’t want to miss this concert, and if you don’t know much about Britten, you ought to come and hear a little bit a week from Sunday. Which reminds me, the BCS has generously offered to give away two tickets to the concert to one of our mutual Facebook fans. So if you “like” both Tenor Dad and the Burlington Choral Society over on Facebook, and let me know by clicking that little widget just underneath this paragraph, you could win two seats at an amazing concert. And if you follow @thetenordad on twitter, I’ll give you an extra entry, event though I hardly ever tweet anything. So click below and get ready to hear something amazing! Good luck!