Posted on 5/5/2010 at 11:16:29 AM
We were honored to participate in the 3rd wedding ever at The Woods - a really cool new live music/event venue in Sellwood. It was originally a funeral home before the current owners converted it to its current incarnation - but trust me, it’s totally not creepy.
Here’s some copy from the Woods website:
Portland’s newest venue, The Woods, is located in historic Sellwood in a former funeral parlor. The classic Mission-style building, built circa 1929, served the community for years as a place to honor and venerate those who have passed on. Renovations have breathed new life into the space, transforming it into a mid-size, comfortable and reverent venue to see modern music, where quiet is the new loud. The hardwood floors, chandeliers and spacious elegance evoke the lobby of a Western hotel, reborn as a music hall and art nouveau lounge. It’s a place to sit and have a glass of wine in a serene environment, entertained by renowned local and national musicians and performers.
The 3000 square foot venue houses a beautiful chapel area for performances, as well as several smaller lounges and outdoor seating, including a covered smoking salon.
The atmosphere is part club-house, part secret society. Patrons will feel they have stumbled upon another world: candle-lit, eccentric yet stately. Karaoke, avant stand-up comedy and movie screenings are scheduled regularly on non-musical performance nights.
And weddings, too!
This particular ceremony was really cool. The bride and groom were already legally married, so they devised a lovely way to publicize their union in the presence of their family and community. There were four attendants on each side (and the women each wore vintage dresses in varying shades of light green which was complemented by absolutely wonderful floral arrangements utilizing maidenhair ferns and other light green foliage); each attendant in turn related a positive aspect of their friendship with the bride or groom, and then charged them to sustain that particular positive aspect within their relationship to each other. To which the response was “I will.” This was much like the way the officiant normally charges the couple in a traditional ceremony, e.g.: “Will you love, honor, and respect this wo/man?”
The bride and groom then stated their vows to each other, exchanged rings, and possibly a kiss? I missed that part. At the end, the entire bridal party intoned together, “We now pronounce you man and wife!”
I loved it. Oh, and what did we play? Our bride had mentioned about a week before the wedding that she particularly loves the soundtrack from the movie Krull. If you’re not familiar, it’s a sci-fi/fantasy flick from 1983 with music by James Horner (who also did the Titanic, Avatar, the Legend of Zorro, Braveheart, and many more).
With little time, she knew it was a long shot to ask us to transcribe and arrange something from a huge orchestral film score, so she left it up to us entirely to decide on her processional music. And I could NOT resist… I chose the love theme and made a quick arrangement by ear with the help of my dear husband who is amazingly good at this. And did it work out? Yes! Not only did the timing end up absolutely perfect (we played the final bar as the bride arrived on the stage), but she also told me later that it almost made her cry when she realized we were playing it.
Ahhhh… music. If I can have a positive effect through music on even one person, then I call that a perfect day.
-S.
Posted on 5/1/2010 at 6:53:55 PM
… is unquestionably the Old Church. I love playing there because for whatever reason, the room really does IT for the flute. I mean, everything sounds great in there but especially flute!
So can you guess where we played a wedding today? Yep, Old Church. This was another ceremony with quite a lot going on musically. Highlights:
- Particularly satisfying prelude music - again, the sound in there is so wonderful, and we played several of our more recently acquired and fairly up-tempo Baroque prelude pieces which are fun to play, and sound perfect in that environment. It felt like we were giving a concert because most of the guests were there for the entire prelude. I love that.
- Processionals were Bach’s “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring” and Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”; even though the groomsmen ended up in front of us so we could barely see the bride, we managed to pull of the timing without a hitch - yay!
- Unity candle: we played, by request, Faure’s “Pavane” - an unusual choice because many people find it too “sad” - but hey, there are about 2 measures of major-key action in there!
- An interlude song: I sang, with string accompaniment, “When You Say Nothing At All.” I love this song. The first time I heard it was at a 50th - yes, 50th - anniversary party. It meant a lot in that context, and still does.
- Another musical interlude: Schubert’s “Ave Maria” - we played our instrumental version which features the cello on the vocal melody. Mmmmmyummy.
- Recessional: “All You Need Is Love” and Oh Boy was that fun! We had a wonderfully talented friend of the bride and groom join us for this one. He sang it perfectly and played piano while we accompanied him with flute, viola, and cello. It’s a hard song to learn, and he just nailed it! I loved his voice and his style.
After that, we finished off with good ol’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” - what else can follow a Beatles tune but another Beatles tune? It was a gorgeous day, and a really delightful wedding. This bride and groom did an excellent job of putting together a spirited, meaningful, fun, relaxed, yet absolutely beautiful ceremony. Here’s to an absolutely beautiful life together!
-S.
Posted on 4/24/2010 at 7:44:36 PM
What better way to start off the new wedding season of 2010 with a wedding that really rang true to my own heart? Today my husband David and I drove down to Woodburn and played flute and guitar for a wedding that turned out to be, IMO, amazing.
Here’s what went down, from my musician’s perspective:
- Friday night: talk at length with FOG, who is also officiating. What a charming man, with the cutest laugh EVER!!
- Saturday morning: brunch with my in-laws. My husband’s family is more experienced in matters of the church than me/mine, so I was discussing things with them and my father-in-law ended up singing the Doxology together. Who knew?
- Saturday afternoon: head to gig. Arrive and immediately we are greeted by both the FOG/officiant who gives me that excellent giggle of his again, and a friend-of-bride who will be singing.
- Friend-of-bride and I go to see the bride in her dressing room. Turns out (I wasn’t entirely clear on this) the bride, her friend, and FOG are all singing a song a capella. It is suggested that I play flute on the high soprano part. Good idea! So we rehearse. Sounds shaky, but decent.
- Back to chapel. Join David for some prelude music.
- Mothers are escorted in. This is our cue, so we start Jesu for the processional of everyone including bride. Nailed the timing - not hard with Jesu, but this was particularly perfect.
- Talking.
- A hymn! Everyone sings! I got up and started them off, then jumped in on flute after singing the first couple of lines.
- Talking.
- More singing! This time, the a capella trio. OMG. They NAILED it! Not shaky ONE BIT - so gorgeous. I was honored to join them on flute.
- Vows and rings, then a moment of meditation, during which we played instrumentally the same song the vocal trio had just sang, in a delicate and contemplative manner. This was cool.
- ANOTHER song - this time, the familiar “Joyful, Joyful”; I started the assembly off and then David and I accompanied on flute and guitar.
- more talking, then Doxology - which I led - or I should say, they led me! The assembly had a very different idea of tempo than I did, and they didn’t follow my conducting at all, so I gave it up and just sang along on the alto part.
- Straight into the recessional, which was - get this - Ode To Joy. Perfect choice? Yes.
Did you notice how there were two songs that were repeated? We played the vocal trio’s song instrumentally after they sang it, and then, again, we played Ode To Joy after the assembly sang “Joyful Joyful” - which of course is the same song. Repetitive and boring? Not a bit. Big win all around.
I loved this wedding.
There was something so real, organic, and righteous about the entire construction of the event. The humble little church. The bride singing during the ceremony. The groom and bride in turn reciting their vows from memory. Her ring that didn’t have a big rock on it (kinda like our own plain silver wedding bands). Everyone singing. The FOG’s charming giggle, the overall genuineness of everyone I met today.
So, all in all, I am touched, and really looking forward to the season. I’ll post more, with pics, when I can get ‘em.
-Susan
Posted on 5/8/2009 at 11:56:49 PM
After a lovely off-season (AKA booking season) we are easing into the real wedding season again. Highlights from Thursday, May 7 (yes, Thursday!!):
Can I get away with polka dots AND fleurs-de-lis?! We’ll see if the fashion police arrest me. It’s too cold this morning to go out with bare legs, though that would be better in my book. I’m short on black socks.
Skip looked like a cellist should look. He’s grinning here because he got away with not only pinstripes, which you can’t see in this pic, but moustache wax! Ha! And don’t you just love that swirly cake?!
From our vantage point, the big tent at Abernethy Center in Oregon City looked fantastic. I wish I’d had my real camera - next time! The white and lavender paper sphere lanterns were just perfect. It sounded great in there, too - who knew a wedding tent could have such great acoustics! I attribute it to the concrete floor.
Speaking of sounding great… This is Shawn Whitemore, of Event Team Entertainment. We heard him make a couple of announcements and he played a few tunes as we were packing up. He was so relaxed, professional, and charming!
I think the polka dots came together fine. Thanks to Skip for the pic!
And I’ll leave you with this parting shot, courtesy the back window of my car:
Posted on 9/1/2008 at 9:39:37 PM
I’ve been away from the blog for a while because we just had the busiest month of our lives as wedding musicians and have had no time for writing - nor breathing, for that matter (except when absolutely critical for playing wind instruments)!
Update time. August was busy in a particularly rad way. We had a lot of really interesting special requests for music. We did “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys, I sang “I Will” by the Beatles at two ceremonies, we did an Eels tune, one from Angels and Airwaves, a Jim Brickman song, a gorgeous one by Sade (“By Your Side”), an instrumental (guitar solo) from the Allman Brothers, another instrumental from Tom Petty that was originally part of a soundtrack, another soundtrack number from Shelter Surf which was totally lovely. We learned the Celtic Alleluia, played Sweet Child Of Mine a couple of times, Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”, a lot more Beatles tunes, and then just this last Saturday, we did the main Star Wars theme for recessional. Awesome.
All this unusual (meaning, not from our normal existing repertoire) has been interesting and fun, and has been possible because David and I have combined forces to make the arrangements for all these tunes. He has an incredible ear and can listen to anything and figure it out, and then I’ll add my knowledge of classical musicians and what they/we need to see on the page in order to make sense of it and play the song, and somehow out of that we end up, eventually, with an arrangment.
Meanwhile, we’ve also been striving to improve our regular repertoire. I did a major overhaul of the string/flute quartet books: took out the stuff that we never play (cause we hate it and you would too), added better stuff (including two Stephen Foster songs arranged for quartet and about six or seven Mozart quartets - great stuff for a classical cocktail hour!), color-coded the pages and reorganized the entire contents. Now we are seriously ready to RAWK with the string quartet!!
We also went to the studio this week for the first round of recording. This time it was holiday music! You can hear what we did if you go to the Collage Music homepage and click the blue banner to get to the holiday page.
Next up in the studio sessions: Our new vocal jazz trio which will involve me on vocals, sax, and flute, and Bret on guitar and vocals, and Owen on bass and vocals. This is gonna be hot! We’re also going to record a couple of vintage holiday jazz standards to finish up the holiday sessions.
I will leave you with a couple of pictures from our varied August exploits.
- This is a chamber music “reading party” (something classical musicians do from time to time - just hang out and read stuff together. We read a LOT that night. This photo was taken during a reading of Schubert’s Octet for winds and strings:
- And this one is an example of what unruly classical string players do during a wedding ceremony, if left to their own devices. This is Adam and Justin, who play viola and cello respectively, at Mt Hood Bed and Breakfast. I love these guys. The next thing we played was Guns n Roses’ “Sweet Child Of Mine” - I think they were just gearing up for it…
Posted on 8/10/2008 at 12:22:28 PM
Get this, from Victor Zuckerlandl, a philosopher of music:
Hearing a melody is hearing, having heard, and about to hear, all at once. Every melody declares to us that the past can be there without being remembered, the future without being foreknown.
I haven’t had much time to write but we have been out and about all over the place at some exceptionally beautiful weddings. This past weekend in particular - Hoyt Arboretum, then a gorgeous little B&B out near Carlton called the Brookside Inn, Lakeside Gardens, Elk Cove Vineyards, the Gerding Theater at the Portland Armory, the Shakespeare Garden at Washington Park, Youngberg Hill Vineyards - even out at the coast in Garibaldi (a rare thing for us but a lovely wedding despite horrific weather).
I have many pictures to post and will get on it once I get through the weekend… but for now here’s one from last weekend.
This is Bret at Cathedral Park - we had just arrived and Bret was about to set up. In this picture he is walking through the ceremony site. I thought this was about the most RAD place for a wedding ceremony ever.
Gorgeous. The place is aptly named.
Here’s another - I can’t resist. This is Scott and Danielle at the Brookside Inn. I loved the weeping willow! (note Danielle’s Bridesman, too! This is seriously a happening trend, guys).
Posted on 7/23/2008 at 9:52:06 PM
Is this the new thing or what? In the last two weeks, I have seen both a Man of Honor and a Groomswoman. I love it! It makes me want to have groomswomen and bridesmen at my own wedding. Why not? Many of my closest friends are men, and while I certainly wouldn’t expect them to wear dresses, I could totally get into coordinating ties with my sisters’ dress colors…
Today’s big fun was Wendy and Chris’ wedding rehearsal - a rarity for me. Their wedding is Thursday, and Wendy chose a particularly unusual piece for her processional: a French art song entitled “A Chloris” by Reynaldo Hahn. It’s gorgeous and sweet at the same time, and lays very well in the key of E for her trio of flute, violin, and cello. It’s longish though, and I really wanted to check out how long it would take her to walk to work out the timing. So, I offered to come to the rehearsal for that purpose. Normally I can’t even consider rehearsal attendance on Thursdays or Fridays, but this was Wednesday, and I was free, so I considered it a perk of having a weekday wedding.
The rehearsal was fun, and I even stepped in for part of it as the Maid of Honor because the real MOH was stuck in traffic at the time (she showed up later). I wish I had the time to attend every rehearsal… maybe when I figure out how to clone myself… Until then, I’ll be somewhere in the office/practice room/rehearsal space/teaching studio/etc that is Collage Music HQ. Also known as the Opera House. Don’t ask why. 
Posted on 7/21/2008 at 11:10:19 PM
We lived!! So, I heard from more than one source that the GNR went over really well at Jessica’s wedding (thank you Jess for the idea!!). We had a grand time at Laurelhurst Park/Laurelhurst Club for Carrie and George. Skip commented that he thought my arrangement of “I Will” by the Beatles was good (ohh… gosh). I sang it at the ceremony and then K & G did the awesome-est thing: Usually the officiant says (for example): “George, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife… etc etc.” But instead, they made a point to have him say, “George, will you… etc” and then the statement from C and G was, as in the song, “I will.” Sweeeet.
The cocktail hour was even better. All this time, I’ve really been enjoying having two instrumental sounds to choose from (flute and alto sax) during a jazz/swing cocktail set. And of course I did that, but then since we had Marilee as well, we also had violin. So all in all, it made for a really colorful little ensemble: flute, violin, alto sax, cello, and guitar. When flower girls come by twirling and dancing, we know we are doing our job (and they did).
Sunday was sweet. David and Doug played together as a cello/guitar duo, and David said that he really likes Doug and that he’s a joy to play with. I agree! Doug even rewrote the violin part to Canon in D for cello, so that he could play it for the processional, since the violin part is gorgeous and the cello part is, frankly, boring. Yay Doug!
Then Liz and Skippy and I (as a flute, violin, cello trio) witnessed one of the most beautiful weddings ever. Jess had chosen the Bach Arioso for her processional, and not only did she purposely walk slow enough to let us finish the entire piece (which is one of my very favorites ever ever ever by Bach), but then when she and Daudi carved their initials into their beautiful bay laurel tree in the backyard during the ceremony, they did it in exactly the amount of time it took Skip to play though Ave Maria. Wow. We had another piece on board in case it took extra time, but they just nailed it. On purpose? Just lucky serendipity? Either way, it was awesome.
Today I met with three brides/grooms and planned out ceremony music. I love the advance planning!! We had a great time and came up with good stuff for all three - David was there in his adjacent office as peanut gallery adviser on the subject of non-classical music and helped us come up with ideas for recessionals.
Speaking of recessionals. I’m really into this idea of using something like Guns N Roses or Journey or Beatles or the Police or whatever, instead of the classical recessionals.
Why? Well, this is personal, and a matter of taste, but I’m finding that more and more, I totally love the really traditional ones - the Mendelssohn Wedding March “there goes,” Vivaldi’s Spring, Handel’s Hornpipe, and my new favorite, La Rejouissance by Handel.
But if it’s not going to be one of those top 4 (there maybe another I’m forgetting…), then I say, lets RAWK out! I mean, who wouln’t want to hear a string quartet play Metallica? I mean, we just did Guns n’ Roses….
Posted on 7/18/2008 at 12:12:11 AM
I was going to make this part of the last post but then decided that it should be its own!
So here’s a weekend in the life of Collage Music: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on 7/17/2008 at 10:43:31 PM
God Only Knows by the Beach Boys.
I don’t know if everyone’s like this, but I live my entire life with some piece of music or other stuck in my head at all times. Often more than one. Like right now, even: I have the Beach Boys on top, and then on another deeper layer, I have the first movement of the Bach solo flute partita going on, just because it was the last thing I played (I like to play Bach for myself for kicks, usually late at night, when I start getting less focused on whatever tasks are at hand).
Anyway this Beach Boys song is worthy of being stuck. It’s there because earlier today I made a string duo arrangement of it for a colleague who needs it for a gig tomorrow, then decided that I LOVE the song and I arranged it for flute, violin, guitar, and cello, and I think we may have to debut it at Kerry and George’s wedding on Saturday provided they’re into it. Maybe as a post-lude after the recessional.
Oh wow what a gorgeous song… Ok, I’m calling a recording session. This can’t go unplayed!
Collage
