Thomas Meglioranza, baritone

:)

A drizzly cold morning in DC was brightened by the news that my October recital in Philadelphia with pianist Reiko Uchida made the Philadelphia Inquirer's Best in Classical Music for 2009 top 10 list.

Benefit Concert

Tuesday, December 1st is World AIDS Day, and pianist Reiko Uchida and I will be performing a Classical Action benefit concert to raise money for AIDS-related services across the country.

The concert will take place in a beautiful home in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City.  Wine and snacks at 6:30pm, performance at 7:30pm.  The program is Schubert's Winterreise, which lasts about 70 minutes.

For more details, and to buy tickets ($75 or $125), call Classical Action at (212) 997-7717, or click HERE.  Space is limited.

Sabarsky sound check

Cabaret at Café Sabarsky

If you're in the NYC area on November 19, I hope you'll consider coming to the Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie to eat some delicious Austrian food and hear Reiko Uchida and me offer some Songs from the WWI-Era.  So far, we've performed an ever-evolving version of this program in Kalamazoo, Philadelphia, and Cambridge, (collecting some good press along the way), but the Cabaret at Café Sabarsky series is the place I had in mind when I put together this program.


Dinner is at 7pm, performance at 9.   Tickets are $110, which may seem steep, but it includes a prix fixe meal in a beautiful and unique restaurant that earned a particularly drool-inducing review in the NY Times.

The reservation number is 212-268-6200, extension 485.
[Update: SOLD OUT]

Boston

On the Amtrak headed for Boston.


Pickman Hall, at Longy, where we again performed the WWI program.


On the train ride back to NYC, studying a Winterreise score, I looked out the window and saw this Nebensonne.

Philadelphia

I was a little worried when I saw the carpeting, but I really liked the acoustic here. Most concert halls sound completely different when they're full of fluffy, sound absorbing people, which can make rehearsing in an empty hall almost pointless as a 'sound check', but the carpeting seemed to approximate the effect of a full house, so there was hardly any difference when we finally performed our WWI program in front of the audience.

More recording...

A beautiful new hall at Tufts University, recording songs by Virgil Thomson from the back of the orchestra, where I have to be careful not to spit into the winds. Notice the screen in front of the mics. I think it's there to protect against overly explosive consonants. Very useful when recording lyrics like "Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright!"

Recording...

SUNY Purchase

Storm

Scary storm last night.

Thai fried chicken

I'm not much of a deep fryer, but I made this fried chicken three times within two weeks this summer because it reminds me of the chicken cooked up near the polo club in Bangkok that's been haunting my food daydreams for the past ten years.



I had never made fried chicken with this kind of rice flour slurry/marinade before, and I was amazed not only at how crisp it turned out, but how sturdy it is. The crust doesn't easily detach while frying, like buttermilk/flour batter sometimes can. The coating also very effectively seals in the heat and juices. Twenty-five minutes after it came out of the oil, it was still scalding hot and juicy inside. Even the breast meat, as you can see in the photo.

The recipe calls for cilantro root, which can be hard to find in supermarkets, but during the summer, a lot of the cilantro at the Greenmarket here in NYC is sold with nice big roots attached.