I Believe I Can Fly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoJX-yoYMKw

Flash Choir with the Builders and the Butchers! Live!

This is from July 2008 --
enjoy!

The Builders and the Butchers at PDX Pop Now 2008 from Robin Margolis on Vimeo.

Flash Choir/TBA

Here's the choir singing on the first night of the TBA festival, on Sept. 4th, 2008. We sang "Caesar's Gate". Pat is directing in this picture. Check out those boots! Photo by Carolezoom. Thanks Carolezoom!

Our March 21 performance video finally

We had an amazing show at Patton Park. The grandson of the man who founded the park was there. It was a beautiful and sunny day. There were tons of kids running around and playing, and families, and people hanging out on the grass. There were free ice cream bars. There were people crying when they heard us. The crowd contributed beautiful words for our song. This is exactly right.
This is our scene!

Upcoming

The choir has a few upcoming shows of note.
1. Rededication of Patton Park, on North Interstate. Saturday June 14, 1:00-1:30pm.
2. The JAW theater festival at Portland Center Stage. Saturday, July 19 in the afternoon sometime -- this will be a site-specific work that we don't know anything about yet
3. A performance of "Caesar's Gate", by Sarah Dougher, at Reed College, 7pm. More on this soon.
4. PICA's TBA Festival, September 4th and 14th. At the Left Bank Building. Time TBD.
5. Maybe Condon, Oregon in Early Oct?
more info: picasing@gmail.com

A little note from Sibelius

From Alex Ross, "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century" (New York: FSG, 2007)

The "swan hymn" -- the second movement of the fifth symphony came from this:

"The composer...recorded it in his notebook next to a description of sixteen swans flying in formation over his Ainola home.

'One of my greatest experiences!...Lord God that beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming, silver, ribbon..That this should have happened to me, who have so long been the outsider.'

The swans reapppeared three days later:

'The swans are always in my thoughts and give splendor to my life. It's strange to learn that nothing in the wole world affects me -- nothing in art, literature, or music -- in the same way as do these swans and cranes and wild geese. Their voices and being.'

Flash Choir with the Builders and the Butchers!

These photos were taken by Chris Funk, producer of the new Builders and Butchers record. The Flash choir contributed their voices to some tracks this Saturday. Pretty fun!

Upcoming Fun for Spring 2008 and beyond

April 23: Oregon Arts Summit evening performance including possible colaboration with the Cello Project. More details TBD
June 21 Summer show
Sept 4 and 15 PICA TBA festival performances, including possible musical theater interludes.

Spring is Coming, Spring is Here

The Flash Choir is on a two-week break while blossoms pop, rain falls, rivers run high.
On April 7th, you are all invited over to my house at 6pm for a potluck and discussion, with a little singing too. We will talk about what we liked about our spring project (what worked, what didn't) and what we'd like to do for our summer concert, tentatively scheduled for June 21, 2008.
My address: 641 NE Holland -- two blocks south of Lombard, two blocks east of MLK. There is a bus stop for the 6, 8 and 75 two blocks away.
Hope to see you all there!

Our first performance

So the Flash Choir made it's debut yesterday at three parks in Portland. Our new friend Abe Ingle took this photo and put it up on the Mercury website, along with his comments: http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/2008/03/pdequinox.php.