Voices: Ardenne High Alumni Choir concert

There I stand, before the Alumni Chorus, my first attempt at conducting A full first half...I shall now give wing to my immense exhaustion...

Ardenne Homecoming 2012

Well, it would seem there's no end to this year's artistic opportunities... Just having been relieved of the University Singer's concert season run, I am presented with the opportunity to conduct The Ardenne High School Alumni Choir at this year's Homecoming concert. It was with immense fear I had accepted, and I approached the appointment with more than a little apprehension, after all, I would not only be dealing with singers my own age, in fact the bulk of the choir will be singers who predate me by several decades! nevertheless, with some coaxing from Hanief, I stand before the choir, built on voices that shaped my choral existence and those which weathered high school with me... it was looking to be an awesome experience...Til' I actually got before them, and was greeted with the true difficulty of being at the helm of a ship whose crew may not exactly be "enthused" at your appointment, and unappreciative of your manner... I speak quickly when flustered, and I generally have a faulty brain to mouth connect when it comes to work to be done- I. Am.A. Stickler...bad combination...will keep you posted as it unfolds...

Of Concerts and Operas...UWI Singer's Concert Season 2012

Promo Poster for this year's concert Season
(Me extreme right as gentleman and below my wineglass as a "thug")

so...the summer is off to a pretty much bleak start, but there are little windows of hope/joy...sorta, lol... So this year, The University Singers of the University of the West Indies Mona Campus (you guessed it, im in this choir), is staging our concert under the banner of events commemorating the Jamaica 50th anniversary of independence. this year, a first for the choir, we attempt/present an Opera on the Morant Bay Rebellion titled "1865" written by our choirmaster, Mr Franklyn Halliburton. in the performance of this, I understudy two roles: 1; the spirit who opens with a dance, wielding a calabash as dramatic turns to the four corners of the stage to invoke the presence of the ancestral spirits, which I share with a good friend and fellow tenor in the choir J. Chambers, and the role of a gentleman of the gentry, who warns the Custos Rotulorum of the arrival of the disgruntled peasantry at the Courthouse, which I alternate with another tenor vocalist, O'Rain Thomas. I am proud to say I was apart of this process and presentatio of the work. I enjoy my roles and I enjoy the audiences reception of the undertaking, some nights bowled over by the standing ovation we receive. first CDT's Ballet and now an Opera...I am looking to see what else this season in life has in store for me...
Yours in the Arts (:-p)
Carl-Anthony

Me (Right) as terrified Gentleman, O Thomas as Custos and
Ms D. Nelson as a terrified but vindicated Lady of the gentry

Needed...yet feeling so infinitely unworthy

"Come, whoever you are! Wanderer, worshipper, Lover of Leaving. Come, this is not a caravan of despair. It doesn't matter if you've broken your vow a thousand times. Still and yet again, Come." 

-Rumi

Miserere....

I've discovered that as these past days have come and gone, I laugh less and less...my companion at nights isn't the tired yet sated "end of day" feeling...rather it is an anxious restlessness, an acute frustration and angst...and it attacks right at my core in ways I cannot begin to understand let alone communicate. It seems every bit of headway I make is lost and I am rolled right back to the bottom of the hill to start all over again...Its a broken feeling...like my spirit is slowly dying, and I am going through the motions of a life I have ordered to be on autopilot by sheer volume of activity...I press on...with all that makes my dark cloud hang that much lower...

I pledge, great music to tune to the heart of any patriot...

The video I upload here is something that is quite a beautiful and very much rough rehearsal video...its my Choir conductor's arrangement of I pledge my Heart Forever, solo for Soprano...It is to be performed in our season this year and I honestly CANNOT WAIT to hear the flawlessly rendered piece...just hope I don't freeze or tear up backstage when I should be changing costumes. *covers face* full credits for the video are typed below it, feel free to comment ...ENJOY !!! 

I Pledge... music Gustav Holst (I Vow to thee My Country), Lyrics Hon. V. Stafford Reid, OJ, Arranged for Soprano solo and piano by  Franklin E. Halliburton, AS sung by Marcelle Thomas, Accompanist, C. Whyte

Laying in my room, I stew in the malaise of another year of life lived, another year of loss and pain through the lens of the fifteenth anniversary of my mother's passing, it would be bad and not so bad if it were that this milestone did not occur annually in the week leading up to Mother's day (as it -being her passing away- had happened the day before mother's day in 1997)  but here I must every May pretend to be joyous and happy for everyone who will on this day celebrate their mothers, while secretly harbouring a bitterness I daren't  express and is non-existent in any other facet of my life...but I felt the need to sing, and on the morning, at around the time I was informed I could no longer stop it, and here it is, a mess that I in retrospect should not have made, but alas...Im bound by my word to post such forays...In a future post i will bemoan with words my day