Prima Vox Goes for Baroque with the Mankato Symphony Orchestra

Our performance with the Mankato Symphony Orchestra went very well. There was an hour and a half of music before we took our places at the front of Christ Chapel in St. Peter, so the room and the audience had been gorgeously primed.

There were nerves, of course, and some last-minute wardrobe adjustments (like pinning part of a $12.99 yard of black velvet to the back of my dress to cover some unmentionables). But The Voxes Three calibrated by humming and warming up together and we were ready.

We began with Monteverdi's "Ave Maria" and the crowd hushed.

The woman in the front row started to get tears in her eyes, and I had to look away.

"Sweet, Exclude Me Not" (a kind of racy love song for such an elegant concert)

was so lovely with Jim McGuire's accompaniment.

The Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria" was gorgeous

with David Fienen's accompaniment on the harpsichord. 

My prayers to the Gods of the G Above High C

were answered, and I hit that note like never before.

Here I am dramatically acting out a line from the catch "The Thirsty Vampires"

about vampires leaving their coffins and sucking poor morals dry.

(Never fear, the song is really about wine.)

Everything else went so smoothly. Three happy and proud Voxes unpinned their black velvet and went to Richard's Restaurant and Pub for some celebratory wine (because more things should be about wine than songs) and proceeded to talk about, of all things, medieval music. We "went for Baroque" well enough. There is a return to chant and early polyphony in our near future now.