Yesterday afternoon I presented a lecture recital for the Members Only Tea at Cherry Hill in Inez, NC. It is lovely venue with a fine Steinway and excellent acoustics. The audience - about fifty folks, I believe - sat in two rooms off the sides of the main hallway as well as on the steps and in the other end of the hallway.
My Roberston ancestors who owned the anthology lived just a few miles from Cherry Hill. Alstons and Kearneys married some of my Roberstons and Skinners. The Alston and Kearney names are also associated with Cherry Hill.
I think it's safe to say that the Roberstons would have at least known the residents of Cherry Hill. It seems likely that they would have visited there on occasion and vice versa. A little more speculative is the idea that the music of the Skinner Anhology was played there. It's quite possible that it was.
It was a special privilege and delight to share the music and my research at Cherry Hill. During the reception that followed, I learned a great deal and met many fascinating people.
One gentleman thought he had seem a Knauff piano before. Knauff, the arranger of the Virginia Reels in the anthology, did run a piano factory for a time in Farmville, VA.
I met several people who share Skinner or Kearney ancestors with me way back.
I also met a great-great...granddaughter of Albert Jones. Jones was the architect of Chowan's MacDowell Columns as well as a couple of other houses in town. I learned that Jones was from Warren County and more of his houses are very close to Cherry Hill.
I learned that a friend of over 10 years might share some Skinner ancestors with me. We never knew we both had Skinners our family trees.
Jonathan Johnston joined me for the concert. He played the reels and the Boieldieu and also read the descriptive titles during the Battle of Prague. Our rehearsal went smoothly, and with that piano in that acoustic, our sounds meshed better and we discovered some things about how to shape the Boieldieu. So much of that piece seems the same that it takes a while to really zero in on the contrast and the shape that it does have. Jonathan also mentioned that The Battle of Prague came more into focus and sounded much more convincing in the Cherry Hill setting. Several folks mentioned a passage that I think was probably in the Battle of Prague that reminded them of the Keystone Cops, which got me wondering if an excerpt from Battle Prague might have been used by silent film pianists.
On the way to Cherry Hill, a deer walked onto the road ahead of the car and nonchalantly stood in our lane. We stopped and waited for the deer to realize the danger it was in. Then it ran quickly back towards the woods which were far across a field.
I had been excited about the very meaningful experience of playing this music at Cherry Hill for several days leading up to the event. I didn't reaize how tightly wound I had been until I started to unwind on the drive home! We stopped for a filling supper at the Logan's in Roanoke Rapids.
Today I'm pondering further tasks I should pursue regarding the anthology, in addition to lecture recitals. I need to make usable scores of the rest of the piano works and research them as well. I currently have 20 or less of the works in a usuable version. I'd like to write an article for some scholarly organization on the contents of the anthology. I'd like to make a recording of some of the music. And I'd like to edit an edition of a selection of the works.
I enjoyed practicing some of the pieces today. Bigger portions are getting memorized even though I wasn't particularly aiming to memorize this music. The longer I'm a musician, the more I realize that a lot of the richness and enjoyment of the work comes from having pieces of music as your daily companions whether that be in practice, rehearsal, or performance.
