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More Than Just An Empowerment Program: Voices of Our City Choir Puts On a Great Show Downtown November 3

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved Yesterday (Sunday, November 3) my husband Charles and I went to a free concert in downtown San Diego at an open-air location on 13th and Broadway featuring the Voices of Our City Choir. Originally called the San Diego Homeless Choir, Voices of Our City Choir was founded in 2017 and is an independent nonprofit corporation headed by Steph Johnson, a tough, energetic woman who MC’d yesterday’s show. Voices of Our City Choir seeks to recruit homeless people as a way of helping them out of homelessness. Its Web site, https://www.voicesofourcity.org , describes its mission as follows: “Voices of Our City Choir began out on the street: communing and connecting around music. Six years later, dignity remains the entry into, and experience within, our Choir. In 2022, we expanded our services and introduced new offerings. Voices’s outreach team built relationships with neighbors liv
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Jaqueline FitzGibbon, Michael Garson Team Up for Stimulating Oboe-and-Piano Miniatures at St. Paul's Cathedral November 2

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved Yesterday afternoon (Saturday, November 2) I went to a live concert at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral featuring Jacqueline FitzGibbon on oboe and both alto and soprano recorders and Michael Gorman on piano. The program consisted of 15 “miniature” pieces by a wide range of composers, including Béla Bartók, Henry Cowell, Leos Janáček, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Darius Milhaud, Maurice Ravel, Ennio Morricone, Ernesto Júlio de Nazareth, and Astor Piazzola. There were also pieces by lesser-known names like James Oswald (1710-1769), Madeleine Dring (1923-1977), Alan Richardson (1904-1978), and the one still-living composer represented, Sofiane Pamart (b. 1990). Sofiane Pamart is a young man living in France, and he’s perhaps best known for his dramatic appearance in the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, in which he was on a barge floating down the Seine River playing a
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36th Annual Spreckels Summer Organ Festival Closes with Well-Attended Tribute to The Doors, Pink Floyd

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Monday, September 2) the 36th annual Summer Organ Festival at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park concluded with the annual rock tribute, this time to The Doors and Pink Floyd. San Diego’s regular civic organist, Raúl Prieto Ramírez, appeared playing the pipe organ (ironically in music originally written for electronic organ players Ray Manzarek of The Doors and Richard Wright of Pink Floyd) along with an ad hoc rock band consisting of musicians who’ve played with him in previous concerts. He referred to them under the band name “The Organization” and they consisted of singers William Fleming, Chloe Lou and Lauren Leigh, guitarist Ben Zinn, bass guitarist Harley Magsino and drummer Richard “T-Bone” Larson. I expected a large crowd but I didn’t expect one the size of what we got: just about every seat in the Organ Pavilion was taken – the sort of overwhelming attendance we used
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Matthew Phillips's Relentless Rock 'n' Roll Assault Closes "Twilight in the Park" Concert Series August 29

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Thursday, August 29) was the final concert in the 2024 “Twilight in the Park” series, featuring Matthew Phillips. I’d assumed he was a folk-style singer-songwriter; instead he’s a hard rock singer-guitarist who reminded me of the short-lived early-1980’s artist Rick Springfield. I said “short-lived” because Springfield’s career peaked early (with the enormous 1981 hit “Jessie’s Girl”), even though according to Wikipedia he was born in 1949 and is still alive. Like Springfield, Phillips is boyishly handsome, and he’s an immense beneficiary of the wireless technology that has allowed electric guitarists to roam free around the venue, untethered by the long cords they used to need to connect their guitars to their amps. Phillips moved around the Organ Pavilion unencumbered by any need to stay physically connected to his equipment, and though his on-stage band featured only himself, bass gu
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Moonlight Serenade Orchestra Plays an Appealing Mix of Classic Swing and Later Pop-Rock at "Twilight in the Park" August 28

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Wednesday, August 28) I went to the next-to-last “Twilight in the Park” concert of this summer’s season, and since he had the day off work my husband Charles was able to come with me. The band was the Moonlight Serenade Orchestra, named after Glenn Miller’s theme song, and as their name suggests they’re mostly a cover band of 1930’s and 1940’s swing classics. But they’ve broadened their repertoire enough to encompass songs like Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” The Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” Ritchie Valens’s and Los Lobos’s “La Bamba” (their front person, singer Ed de Brach, seemed confused by the two hit versions of the song), Billy Joel’s “My Life” ( not “Just the Way You Are,” which would have fitted more closely to their usual material), Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” and The Champs’ 1958 instrumental novelty hit “Tequila.” Their musical director is Bob Tutleman,
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Coronado Concert Band Plays Well in "From Hollywood to Broadway" Concert at "Twilight in the Park" August 27

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Tuesday, August 27) I went to the second-from-last series of “Twilight in the Park” concerts at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park, featuring a quite good ensemble called the Coronado Concert Band. A “concert band” is actually a quite large group consisting of all the major instruments of a symphony orchestra except strings – though one of the key numbers on their concert last night included a guest violinist. The program was advertised as “From Hollywood to Broadway,” and I was grateful that for once at one of these concerts there was a printed program, so I didn’t have to scribble down frantic notes on what they were playing. As you’d guess from the title, the concert was given over to songs and instrumental pieces from Broadway musicals and film scores – and sometimes, notably the two songs from the Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim musical West Side Story , Broadway music
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David Marsh Plays Organ for "Not-So-Silent Movie Night" Feature: Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill, Jr."

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Monday, August 26) my husband Charles and I went to the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park for the annual “Not-So-Silent Movie Night,” a showing of a silent film in the Pavilion with live organ accompaniment. The film was Steamboat Bill, Jr. , a 1928 comedy starring Buster Keaton and his last made independently with Joseph M. Schenck as his producer. The organist was David Marsh, a young man who performed in a floral print shirt and tight blue jeans. Though his photo in the program shows him as blond, when he appeared last night he had dark hair and at first Charles mistook him for San Diego’s regular civic organist, Raúl Prieto Ramírez. Marsh is based in Orange County, where he’s the president of the Orange County Theatre Organ Society. He teaches piano and music theory and used to be director of music technology at Villa Park High School. He’s also refreshingly sly and self-depre
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