Mother singing Handel

My mother came to Greenville, SC in the late 1950s, at the invitation of Dupre Rhame, to become a music faculty member of Furman University. For many years she sang solos in various musical productions: operas, oratorios, and the like. She had a rich contralto voice and amazing breath support (I have never heard someone who could sustain a musical phrase so beautifully for such a duration as could she). This is her singing “Behold a Virgin shall conceive” and ”O Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion” from Handel’s Messiah in December…

When singers cease to sing

Thank you to everyone who has been so kind to our family in the wake of the loss of our matriarch, Shirley Duncan, our beloved mother, sister, aunt, grandmother, great-grandmother, and friend. Several of you have asked for the text of the sonnet that I quoted, written by my son, Jennings. Here it is. The sonnet is about a group of Singers singing together for the last time, and he wrote it just before his graduation from Mississippi State University, and right before his final time singing with the Mississippi State Singers (he and his roommate Eli Denson have set it to music, by the way). I liked it, and related to it, the very first time I read it, but in the wake of my mother’s death, the lines that especially caught my attention and landed in a different way are “And so…

A Quick Update on RTS Jackson in the midst of the…

So many of you have written or texted me asking how the seminary is doing in Jackson (because you have seen the national news), that I thought that I ought to give a brief report. Short answer: by God’s grace, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson has been able to begin the semester and continue classes on campus through the area flooding and through the City of Jackson water problems. He is the situation. The heavy flooding we have experienced in the Jackson metro area contributed to a failure at the main water treatment facility in the city. Bottom line: water pressure is low or non-existent across much of the city (I understand that west and south Jackson are especially impacted), and the all the water is unsafe to drink (or even to brush your teeth with). We remain on a boil…