Vint Lavender, Jeff Boschee and Vincent Ray taking their bows and singing a song after having fun Friday night at the Billings Studio Theatre. The play was about love, life and death, the Packers, ice fishing, Leinenkugel beer, and friends, which seemed to cover most of what is important amongst at least some guys from Wisconsin. And these guys did it well, not the most authentic accents, more like Minnesotan, if my memory serves me, but they were funny, very funny,  and obviously enjoyed playing with each other. Bobbi Hawk added to her directing plaudits.

Still on for another week. Go and see  it and wear your Packer gear proudly. Once a cheesehead, always a cheesehead.

He Is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!

The beginning of the Great Easter Vigil at St Patrick’s Co-Cathedral with Bishop Michael Warfel presiding. Lots of baptisms and confirmations and eucharistic celebrations.

I got home to Billings just in time to see the Montana State University Billings baseball home opening weekend 10-11 April  against Northwest Nazarene of Nampa Idaho. According to their very useful program, ($1), they have been playing since the middle of February at least on weekends, though some of those games look like they might have taken place in Arizona. They are 16-18 for the season up to today’s 1st game, part of which I saw at Dehler Park.

Yesterdays’s games (9 and 7 innings) were won by MSUB 6-3 and 6-5. Today’s first game also went 9 innings, won by MSUB 6-1. This could have been a 3 hit complete game shutout by left-hander Brian Howe [N.B. the Gazette on Easter Sunday had a different pitcher; not sure who is correct]  but the right fielder lost a ball in the sun late in the game to allow the Nazarene’s only run. Howe looked strong in the 5 innings that I saw him pitch. I didn’t see the scoring by the Jackets as it was early in the game.

From the box scores of yesterday’s games, conveniently provided in today’s program, the pitching must have been fairly strong too. The statistics for the hitting and pitching, also provided in the program, shows 8 guys .280 or above, and 5 pitchers in the 3 to 5 ERA range, pretty good for college games with metal bats.

The rest of the schedule looks like 4 games next weekend here in Billings against Central Washington, then 8 games against Bemidji State and Western Oregon the first couple of weekends in May.

I heard from Bob Sandler that the Legion teams start playing games in May as well, and don’t the Little Leagues start playing her in late April/early May too? Wow, watch this space for your baseball fix. As you can see there are a lot of good seats available for these games, @1.50/game, a good deal.

Oh, I almost forgot, the announcer was a sensible, low-volume guy for whom the home team batters were not the cousins of Jesus Christ: just name, number, position at a reasonable volume and non-tortuous announcements and music between innings. Sometimes he didn’t say anything, bless him. He should give lessons to the Mustangs announcer.

I should know the names of these flowering trees on the edges of Dehler Park. They are coming out just as baseball is starting, how convenient.

St thomaskirche in Leipzig, now repaired after damage of WWII

This is a quote from a contemporary American composer by the name of Michael Torke. I suppose he must regularly apologize to our friends of the psychiatric persuasion. He seems more famous for this one quote than for his music. Anyway, it seemed appropriate to accompany last night’s performance of the Billings Symphony along with the Chorale from Billings and the Symphonic Choir of Bozeman. Everyone was in good voice last night. The orchestra was drastically reduced to 12 violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos, 1 bass, and a sprinkling of others including 2 oboes, 2 flutes and 1 bassoon—oh sorry, I almost forgot the three trumpets. No trombones or horns I am sorry to report, but even so it sounded splendid.

Haussman portrait of Bach 1748

It was all Bach, all the time and marvelous beyond compare. Another quote that seemed to fit was that of William F Buckley: “If Bach is not in Heaven . . . I won’t go!” More quotes here.

They and we were celebrating the 323rd birthday (1685) of Johann Sebastian Bach by playing and singing some of his greatest hits. Actually, during his lifetime he wasn’t all that popular. The Kyrie, the Gloria and the Sanctus from the Mass in B minor and the utterly beautiful Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring showed off the large chorus, must have been at least 120. Both the Billings Chorale and the Bozeman Symphonic Choir must have brought some supporters along because the place was fairly full.

Our woodwinds were in great form for the Orchestral Suite No. 1 and especially in the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, where Lynette Larson and Sue MaKeever on flutes with concertmaster Randy Tracy got some well-deserved standing ovations. The bad news was a rumor I heard in the intermission that Susan Wadsworth, the principal bassoonist for many years, will be retiring after this season. I love to watch her play as well as listen to her smooth sounds.

Anne Kania, an alto with a lovely New Zealand accent, coupled with a little northern England and maybe some Australian too, has moved to Shepherd MT. She did a great job on “Erbarme Dich” from the St Matthew Passion.

The playing of a few excerpts from the programs for the coming year was a good idea, and it makes travel planning for the coming year a little more organized. Check out the Symphony website.

Doug Nagel, general director of Rimrock Opera, is one of our home town treasures, notable for attracting young attractive folks who can really sing, including some from Billings and other places in Montana, and of course, doing some wonderful singing himself on occasion.

Amy Logan, choral director at Skyview, does a terrific job with her ROCK group—Rimrock Opera Chorus for Kids—besides doing some great soprano work in various operas and other venues for the past couple of years.

Saturday evening at 7:30pm and Sunday afternoon at 3:00pm. This is worth a weekend in Billings. Bring your pickup and fill up at CostCo and check out the new restaurants in town.

Things seem to be moving along at the S Billings Blvd exit off I90. They are supposed to open real soon. I’m betting on April or May. Watch that space.

“. . . rend your hearts, and not your clothing. Return  to the Lord, your God,  . . .”

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, . . .”

“But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, . . .”

The first day of Lent in the Western Christian calendar, and forty-six days before Easter. Ash Wednesday, being dependent on the celebration of Easter, can occur as early as February 4th or as late as March 10th. See the Wikipedia entry.

Noon mass at St Patrick’s was crowded, even the balcony was fairly full, more than Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

All of these were well-played by a group of musicians that are better than we have a right to expect given our population and boondocky location. Our woodwinds always rival those of more famous orchestras. In fact, all of the sections and soloists did well.

Joe Lulloff’s alto sax was very nice, a really lovely sound, perhaps a little surprising or maybe just my recollection of the raunchy sound of other alto players. The notes say that he also plays soprano sax, even more likely to produce a nasty sound, with a respectable quartet so we can suspect that he has some miraculous qualities. He was well received by the almost full house.

Sprenkel is still alive but his “Reflections on Titian’s Assumption” was very soothing, perhaps a little academic but not making the mistake of being irritated with or talking down to his listeners.

In Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition apart from the Promenade sections and the overwhelming final Great Gate of Kiev the other parts sound like movie music before they had movies. I’m not sure I’ve heard all the horns playing fff, that’s very loud, together and with control before as they did in the Great Gate section. When people all play together with precision and reasonable intonation it is always surprising how the live sound resonates in the listener’s soul. The thing that saved the whole piece was the showing of local kids’ artwork, supposedly their reactions to the music. I was impressed with much of this stuff.

Maestra Harrington continues to get the best from her performers. I’m looking forward to next month’s Bach concert. As a former musical director used to say, “See you at the Symphony.”

I saw this in the Gazette this morning. Almost snorted my juice through my nose. Sometimes it’s hard to believe there are actually people out there who think along the same line you do.

The only problem, of course, is that yawning cavern of emptiness in the Rocky Mountain West. If anybody needs a little infrastructure we can sure use it. I think I already explained in a cursory fashion my idea of a Y-shaped incision rail line with one arm starting in Williston and the other ending in Whitefish or Kalispell, going through Glendive, Miles City, Billings naturally, Bozeman, Butte, Helena, Missoula; and the stalk of the Y heading south out of Billings toward Sheridan, Casper and eventually to Denver.

I don’t think you need Maglev speed, just 100-120mph would be fine I’m sure and a couple different departure times every day. Just twice as fast as you can reasonably drive would be good enough for now. That’s HopenChange you can Believe in. I might just be a closet Obamaniac, maybe even a born-again member of the Obama Nation. Uhh, maybe not the last. Just think how this would relieve pressure on the roads and airports. Heck, you could probably delay fixing the roads long enough for the US automobile industry to recover. If they ever do.

Maybe we should do this as a state, like they did in New Mexico recently (see above highlighted post for a nice picture of a RailRunner) possibly with some help from North Dakota, Wyoming and maybe others too if we modify the route a little more. How about it? Senators Tester and Baucus? Representative Rehberg? Where are you when we need you?

I mean what would be the point of sending however many billions to Montana to pay for more state employees and more state-delivered services for a couple of years, then we would be on the hook forever after that. Oops, I think I just figured out how Obama could make that outrageous claim that 95% of us were going to see our taxes decline. Of course, he meant federal taxes. Duh! But even now I still can’t see how it could be done even with a compliant media to explain things to us commoners. Probably just invincible ignorance on my part.

I just love playing the role of Don Quijote or better yet Sancho Panza or maybe just good old Rocinante. What windmills? Why, there are whole brigades of them out there!