“Alfred’s Great Birthday Party” Saturday June 25 from 2 p.m. till around 6 p.m. This will be a real fun opportunity for musicians to introduce themselves to us. Steve Tosh will be caressing the Kawai. Steve can read almost anything. Please call.

“Mascagni” Our friend Hilaire’s special request. The main body of this program will consist of Mascagni’s magnificent songs. I’ll talk to Peter about including an uncut recording of the 3rd Act of “Guglielmo Ratcliff” also “Parisina” extracts, however the piano reductions are, to say the least, brutal. It is similar to “Vile city, vile people” from “Isabeau, which we are still trying to perfect. I call Mahler the greatest opera composer who never wrote an opera, maybe Mascagni is the greatest opera composer who never wrote a symphony. This will be a program and a CD. more

“Glory to God” A lot of magnificent music mostly written in the last 150 years. It will be a challenge to know what to leave out. This will probably be in English, Latin, French and Italian. We will make an eclectic CD of this magnificent music with a view to taking it on the road to churches

“Walter Goldenrath Memorial Concert” Scheduling this for Saturday October 29th. Walter, our major benefactor, passed away on October 28 last year. He was a NASA man, a doctor and a U.S. Navy Captain. This will be a celestial program of course. It will feature music about the sun, the moon, the stars the birds, bees and farfalla.

“Pucciniana” A mixture of songs and arias. It will be a little different from our last “Pucciniana” program.

“Viva Verdi” Songs, rare arias (some of these were recorded by Luciano about 40 years ago. I’ll try to do the rest if I can find piano vocal scores. I have the same piano vocal score of these “Inediti” that Pavarotti used. I understand that more have come to light. Help anybody?

“La Boheme/La Boheme” A Christmas program featuring extracts from Puccini’s perennial favorite together with selections from Leoncavallo’s unjustly neglected opera.

“Franz Liszt” Petrarc Sonnets of course

“A Date with the Devil” James and Peter will be handling this.

“Ralph Vaughan Williams and Peter Warlock” Songs of Travel, On Wenlock Edge, Four Hymns and extracts from “Hugh the Drover”.

Gerald Finzi – “Dies Natalis”–“A Farewell to Arms” and other songs by this fine British composer. We will have a string orchestra for this. Stewart Robertson will be guiding us through this. He has orchestral arrangements of some of Finzi’s songs

“Sunny Italy” Lots of songs, known and unknown.