How was your summer?

Mine was transformational. 

It began with a phone call last spring.   A singer and retired teacher contacted me and asked, “How would your church like a pipe organ?”   

My ears maximally perked.   As a church musician for about fifteen years, I’d been playing a 1960’s Allen electric organ, a workhorse at the end of its life.  Pipe organ purists would call it a toaster.

Nazareth College is taking another step in the effort to enhance its undergraduate and graduate music programs.

The Nazareth College Wind Symphony is just one of the orchestras that make up the extensive menu of music performance and other programs at that college.

With a season-opening concert slated for Saturday, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians and its management are still locking horns over details of a new contract agreement. A bargaining session ended Monday night with no resolution, only a set of last minute proposals from management which players will vote on Tuesday night.

It is immigration of the most-fearful order. A caravan arriving at East Main and Chestnut streets, proceeding to Parcel 5, the gravel lot off East Main Street, with loud sounds and bright lights alerting Rochester citizens – women, men, children and dogs – to turn their faces to the sky and witness weird creatures, their facial features bulging, bulky bodies darting this way and that in a threatening manner on the whim of the breeze, herded by men and women speaking a foreign language…

Updated at 1:35 p.m. ET

The Associated Press reported Thursday that 11 more women have accused opera megastar Plácido Domingo of sexually harassing them in the opera theaters that are their workplaces. In total, 20 women have now accused Domingo of misconduct in allegations made via the AP.

A spokesperson for Domingo disputed the report and accused the AP of waging an "inaccurate" and "unethical" campaign against Domingo.