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Although only one concert was scheduled for the 2010-11 concert season, unfortunately that one concert is no longer on the schedule. Mr. Schickele will not be able to present his part of the annual Bearsville Theater Holiday Train Wreck on December 11 in Woodstock, New York after all, and is currently hoping to reschedule that particular concert for sometime in the Spring. We send apologies to anybody who already bought tickets to that event, and promise to make announcements here and on the mailing list as soon as the concert has found a new date.
While you are waiting for this new concert date, you might want to check out a couple of new additions to the concert calendar, both of them in New York City next March. Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival 2011 will present several chamber music works including the New York premiere of Peter Schickele’s Music for Orcas Island on the 28th, and the following day pianist Laura Leon and friends will present an all-Schickele program, in honor of his 75th birthday season. Mr. Schickele will be in attendance at both concerts, though he will not be performing himself. More information about these newly-scheduled or newly-unscheduled-and-to-be-rescheduled concerts can be found on the ever-in-flux concert schedule page.
Find out why 2010 is the fiftieth anniversary of P.D.Q. Bach concerts and what effect that revelation is going to have on the 2010-11 concert season by reading this article written by Prof. Schickele himself.
Just as sometimes this P.D.Q. Bach Web Site provides news not about P.D.Q. Bach but instead about his father, J.S. Bach (for example, see the March 18 post just below), so too sometimes this Peter Schickele Web site provides news not about Peter Schickele but instead about his brother David Schickele. Well, saying “sometimes” might be stretching it a bit, as in fact this is the first time we have ever announced news concerning the younger Schickele brother, and are doing so now because otherwise many people will never find out that recordings of David Schickele’s music are being made available to the general public on CD for the very first time. These songs, written, performed, and recorded by David, have been treasured by his family and friends, but have been rarely heard by anybody else. (One of the rarest instances of hearing some of these songs was when Peter broadcast two of them on an early episode of Schickele Mix). But his family has gotten together a project to release these recordings over a series of five CDs, the first two of which are available now, and can be bought right off of this Web site because you might have a difficult time finding them otherwise. The information on this site also includes audio samples to give an idea of what the music sounds like, plus a introduction by Peter Schickele to give an idea of the history of this unique music.
Two new items of interest to faithful readers of this Web site about Peter Schickele have appeared elsewhere on the World Wide Web. In the interest of those who are interested in these items of interest, the main page of the online store has been updated to provide links to this information. One of them is the release of a DVD Bach and Friends, where many musicians and non-musicians are interviewed about the music of J.S. Bach. Peter Schickele’s interview for this film includes excerpts from a recording session of P.D.Q. Bach’s The Only Piece Ever Written for Violin and Tuba. The other item of interest is a video tribute put together by Theodore Presser Company, publisher of both Peter Schickele and P.D.Q. Bach sheet music, in honor of Mr. Schickele’s 75th birthday. Although Mr. Schickele’s 75th birthday is not until later this year (and J.S. Bach’s 325th birthday is not until a few days from now), this online video in honor of Mr. Schickele’s birthday (and the documentary in honor of Mr. Bach) is already available for viewing now.
It appears that finally the Herculean task of dragging our Web Hosting provider through all of the repairs necessary after their unprovoked upgrade of our Web server has been accomplished. The secure server connection needed for placing on-line orders safely has been fixed and even works better than before (no more annoying error messages from browsers about “secure certificates”). Along the way, we repaired the Schickele Mix database after they broke it yet again and even got http://www.pdqbach.com pointing back to this site again instead of to a blank page somewhere in uncharted Web space. Apologies again to anybody who tried to use, well, practically any of the features of this Web site during the past month or so. Usually this doesn’t happen.
We have made some progress in recovering from the problems caused by our Web Hosting provider moving the site to a different server without telling us. The Schickele Mix database is back online and the on-line store is available except that the secure server has not yet been restored. It is possible to place orders, but we recommend not entering credit card information online but using the fax or mail options instead. We will continue working to get the secure server connection working again as soon as possible. If you see any other problems on the site, please let us know.
Our Web Hosting provider decided to move this site to a different server without telling us or learning how to do such a simple feat accurately. Many of the original problems caused by this move have been resolved (the mailing list sign-up form is working again!) but a couple of major problems remain, including the on-line store and the Schickele Mix database. We are working with technical support, who has promised us yet another 24- to 78-hour resolution time, but until then, or more likely a week later, these features of the Web site are unfortunately unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience, especially for the store being unavailable during the holiday shopping season, but I’m afraid the problems are outside of our control.
The paint is hardly dry on the schedule for the 2009/2010 P.D.Q. Bach
concert season, but that hasn’t prevented this Web site from listing the
dates on its Concert Schedule page, even for a few
events where the time and location is still unknown. Because ready or
not, this concert season will be bringing the music of P.D.Q. Bach to many
cities around the country.
In fact, seven different cities have decided to go ahead and schedule
performances of P.D.Q. Bach & Peter
Schickele: The Jekyll and Hyde Tour even after being warned about
such works as the Four Next-to-Last Songs and Songs from
Shakespeare by the recent Telarc CD.
This program features singers Michèle Eaton and David Düsing in addition to
Prof. Schickele who, between January and April of 2010, will be taking this
tour from Dayton, Ohio through
Goshen, Indiana;
Austin, Texas;
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina;
Kerrville, Texas; and even
Davis, California before
arriving in San Francisco,
California. These same performers, along with keyboarder Margaret
Kampmeier, have also signed up for
P.D.Q. Bach: The “What’s Your Sign?” Tour, and will be taking this
show from Princeton, New Jersey
to Englewood, New Jersey.
There are also some orchestras and choirs that have invited Prof. Schickele
to join them in some P.D.Q. Bach concerts, especially in Texas. The
Baylor Symphony Orchestra in Waco,
Texas will be hosting P.D.Q. Bach:
The Vegas Years and the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be defending themselves against
P.D.Q. Bach: An Afternoon of Musical
Mayhem. The Houston
Chamber Choir will be performing many P.D.Q. Bach choral works including
the Choral Cantata “Knock, Knock”.
This year’s concert schedule, as in past years, also includes several annual
events. While last month many people celebrated the Fortieth
Anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, which did not in fact
take place in Woodstock, this December a few other people will celebrate the
Fourth Annual Bearsville Theatre
holiday performance by Peter Schickele with Mikhail Horowitz and Gilles
Malkine, which does in fact take place in Woodstock. Later in the
season, the Armadillo String Quartet’s annual
Music of Peter Schickele concert
in Pasadena, California will reach its Twentieth Annual performance, a
milestone so significant that this time they’ve added another whole
Music of P.D.Q. Bach concert.
So far few details are available about these annual events, but for almost
all of the other events described above, plus the performance of Mr.
Schickele’s The Emperor’s New Clothes by An Die Musik in
New York City which is not
described above, the exact dates, locations, and information about ordering
tickets can be found on the Concert Listing page.
In what may very well turn out to be the last additions to the 2008/2009 concert season schedule before the end of the season, two new concerts have just appeared on the concert page. The first of these concerts is the latest entry in the Armadillo String Quartet’s long running series of annual concerts of Peter Schickele’s chamber music. This 19th entry in the series features the world premiere of Barry Socher’s string quartet arrangement of Mr. Schickele’s Brass Calendar, along with several past favorites such as String Quartet No. 5, “A Year in the Country”. This year’s addition to the record-breaking string of concerts will take place April 20 in Pasadena, California.
Then to extend the 2008/2009 concert season more than two months beyond what was previously planned, The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts has bravely scheduled a performance of P.D.Q. Bach & Peter Schickele: The Jekyll and Hyde Tour for the evening of June 30. This perennial favorite includes pieces such as the Four Next-To-Last Songs and Songs from Shakespeare that were heard on the recent CD of the same name, as well as pieces such as Shepherd on the Rocks, With a Twist that were not. Since June 30 is the last day of the 2008/2009 season, it is very possible that the next announcement of new concerts on these pages will actually be for the 2009/2010 season.
