Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness & perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from it’s direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order & discipline, intimate with the Indian character, customs & principles, habituated to the hunting life, guarded by exact observation of the vegetables & animals of his own country, against losing time in the description of objects already possessed, honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves, with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body, for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprize to him.
Thomas Jefferson, 1813 on Meriwether Lewis
Monthly Archive for September, 2006
I’m reminded of the sheer mastery of this work and its recording as Bill McGlaughlin plays some excerpts on his radio show this weeek.
I had the privilege of performing this work as a bass chorister 10 years ago. It was the last concert I was with for this choir. We were doing the Verdi Requiem a couple weeks later but I was so gobsmacked by our performance that I had to let this be my last with the group.
What’s with the re-mastered recording of May 2006? How could it be improved?
the kind of September…when life was slow…
Don’t ask me why, but every year on this day (9/11), I think of this song from The Fantastiks musical. NPR produced a story about the closing of the musical in December 2001.
I guess I keep thinking about 9/10.
If you’re old enough to have lots of vinyl recordings then you’re probably wondering about preserving these or reducing the space they occupy in your living area. The LanceJ Technoweb blog has a good post which discusses his preferred procedure to convert these analog recordings. He also has a few other interesting items, too!