Greetings from the ninth floor of the Professional Arts Building in Scranton, PA, and the three small rooms that serve as my composing and work studio for the months of the year when I’m not on Lake George.

The boxes here on ninth floor are repacked now, ready for a return trip to Bolton Landing. A great deal of my time here during the past nine months has been spent working with our Sembrich “team,” preparing the upcoming summer festival, “Trailblazers,” and the numerous exciting events that we look forward to sharing in the weeks ahead.

Simon Mulligan, his wife Jacqueline and son Jasper.
Click to enlarge

A favorite pastime of mine, when not composing or preparing our Sembrich events, is following the performances and activities of members of our extended Sembrich family of friends and colleagues.

The first of these was pianist Simon Mulligan, who regaled us at The Sembrich last July 2nd and whom I caught up with in Allentown, performing with his jazz trio, the Simon Alliance. Simon, a brilliant artist and an annual favorite with the Allentown Symphony audience for the past decade, presented a varied program ranging from jazz-infused Mozart, American songbook standards and his own winning compositions. An added treat was a lovely rendition of “If I Loved You” performed by Simon’s wife Jacqueline Milena Thompson (the pair married last August.) Simon’s son Jasper even got into the act, ably joining in on the drum set for one of the numbers.

Though the war in Ukraine has displaced our friends from “Discovering Paderewski,” Adam Bala and Marianna Humetska, directors of the organization, continue to present collaborative programs uniting performers and organizations from Ukraine, Poland and the US. Their latest effort, the commissioning and premiere of a new work to inaugurate the Copernicus Year (marking the 550th anniversary of the birth of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus), came to fruition on March 19 at the Copernicus Center in Chicago.

*A thrilling premiere at the Copernicus Center in Chicago. Click to enlarge*

The thrilling new work, by outstanding young Polish composer Mikołaj Majkusiak, is entitled "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres" for string orchestra and 7 magical instruments. The 27-piece ensemble from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, was led by university rector Klaudiusz Baran. The young musicians appeared to be having the time of their lives mastering the challenging score. The addition of a digital lightshow synchronized to the music, projecting images of the planets on to the stage, added to the excitement of the premiere.

Sunday, April 2nd, brought a return trip to Allentown to see a performance by the Tamburitzans. Comprised of college students from the Pittsburgh area, The Tamburitzans are the longest-running multicultural song and dance company in the United States, presenting music and dance from varied Eastern European cultures and traditions. The Sembrich was privileged to present The Tamburitzans in performance at the Wood Theatre in Glens Falls twice, most notably, in February of 2008, to mark the 150th anniversary of Marcella Sembrich’s birth.

Whenever possible, I try to get to the touring shows that pass through Scranton when I’m in town. I happened to land a front row center seat for the opening night performance of the excellent touring company of Bartlett Sher’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Imagine my surprise, the next day, to receive a message through the Sembrich website from one of the performers in the cast!

Lauren Steinert has been an annual visitor to The Sembrich since 2001, brought to the museum every summer by her mother Joyce Steinert. Lauren was three years old at the time and her sister Allison was two. Lauren, a cast member of the “Fiddler” company, noticed me in the front row during the opening number of the show and sent me an email the next day. Lauren and I were able to get together for a brief visit before the company left town.

“Now in my young career as a performer, I have personally always felt that going to The Sembrich at such a young age sparked my curiosity and interest in the classical realm,” wrote Lauren in a recent email, “And it has held my gaze ever since."

How gratifying, all these decades later, to realize that Marcella Sembrich continues to inspire young performers to aspire to a career in classical music and singing.

The focus of my composing this past winter was the completion of an a cappella choral piece for the Lyric Consort, a setting of a Walt Whitman poem, commissioned in memory of conductor Dr. Steven Thomas. A beloved figure in the Northeast Pennsylvania cultural community, Steven was also a member of our extended Sembrich family, having performed in the studio with the Lyric Consort during our 2010 “Summer of Barber.”

An assignment of this type is a great responsibility and one which I took very much to heart. I spent the better part of a year in search of a text that would properly honor Steven in this new work. Steven’s wife, Susan Minsavage, was a tremendous help in the search, sharing with me Steven’s love of nature, his philosophy of life, along with some of his favorite poetry.

*Dr. Steven Thomas and Susan Minsavage. Click to enlarge*

I ended up going back to one of the first poems I had come across and considered, “As the Time Draws Nigh” by Walt Whitman:

As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud,
A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.

I shall go forth,
I shall traverse the States awhile ― but I cannot tell whither or how long;
Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly cease.

O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?
Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us?...And yet it is enough, O soul!
O soul! We have positively appear’d ― that is enough.

Susan voiced her support for the choice of text, the notion of it “being enough” to have “positively appear'd” expressing Steven’s Humanistic hope—gratitude, too, for the chance to have “appear’d.”

“As the Time Draws Nigh” was premiered by the Lyric Consort on Sunday, May 21st, 2023 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Scranton. The final section of the piece is posted below, recorded by Carl Shinko. The audio was synced to the musical score by Ben Keil, this season’s Production Assistant at The Sembrich:

On behalf of The Sembrich Board and Staff, we extend our good wishes for a wonderful and rewarding summer season. We look forward to meeting in the weeks ahead and to the opportunity to share once again in the joy of music on the shores of Lake George!

Until then,

Richard Wargo, Artistic Director

Notes from the 9th Floor - June 2023

Notes from the 9th Floor - January 2023