Sunday, August 14, 2005

I'm staying in the room of my dear friend Amber, who's out of town. If you want to see what Amber looks like, take a look at John Eliot Gardner, the Monteverdi Choir, and the English Baroque Soloists' recording of Bach's Ascension Cantatas. There's Amber, smack in the middle of the CD cover, next to Bach. She did not pose for the picture, and she didn't even know it existed til she saw the CD in a store. It has to be her — it's small, but it looks like no one else, and she was spending a lot of time in the Thomaskirche the year before the CD came out. We were all astonished. (It so happens that she plays the baroque violin!)
The Thomaskirche is Bach's church — where he worked, where he's buried — at the altar, no less. I sang there once, & thought, "I can't believe I'm singing Bach's music in the presence of Bach's bones!" At moments like those relics & ancestor-worship make perfect sense.

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