Madrigal Dinner and Madrigal Singers 2008

Madrigal Singers Entertain at the Annual Madrigal Dinner

This Friday and Saturday evenings, December 12 and 13, Dr. Tom Ediger's Madrigal Singers once again, and for the eighteenth year in a row, provided wonderful fanfare, glorious color, bawdy humor, excellent food, and music, music, music.




The Madrigal Singers' offerings included the beautiful "Song of the Bells," one of the group's concluding numbers you can listen to on You Tube at this site.


This year's opera The Royal Conundrum featured all the members of the chorus in a story about a king with strange inventions, a queen who thinks she is a cat, and well, an heir born as a drum, and a second son whose name no one seems to remember (Duh).

This year, I made a video of the entire opera and uploaded here a section of the opera of around three minutes, a fun song, "The Well Bred Princess" from which the following photograph comes:




To view some photographs taken during the show, including a group of shots taken of parents, friends, and singers after the show, take a look at this site.

As always, you feel free to download whatever appeals to you. And give last year's performance a look by clicking this link.

In addition to photographs taken of the show and many of the people in attendance--and both nights enjoyed strong audiences--I took a number of posed pictures of the group, one of which is featured above.

To view these images, just click here.

This year's Madrigal Dinner marked the last performance for three long-time members of the group, Amy White, Apryl Schwartz, and Jeff Schwartz, pictured below with Dr. Tom Ediger.

We wish the three good fortune and thank them for their years of service and fanfare.


Dr. Tom Ediger and the Madrigal Singers wish everyone a productive final week of Fall 2008 and a wonderful and restful holiday season.

Peru State College Band Fall Concert

On Sunday afternoon at 3:00 in the Peru State College Theater, the Fall Concert took place.

The Concert Band, in its first performance of the year, and the Jazz Band entertained its audience with a variety of excellent music, from Robert Jager's Japanese Prints to the late native Nebraskan Buddy Miles' Them Changes.

The Peru State College Concert Band

You can see a number of photographs of both bands in action. As usual, feel free to download any images that appeal to you.

Clicking here will take you to last year's Christmas Concert where you can hear the Concert Band perform a couple holiday tunes.

Under the direction of Dr. Pat Fortney and Mr. Kenneth Meints, the Concert Band opened Sunday's engaging program, which included Japanese Prints.

You will find here on You Tube (again, remember to click for "highest quality") the final moments of "Yumi Kato," Jager's piece's second movement, and all of the concluding "Kopama."

The Concert Band concluded its portion of the Fall Concert with "McKissick's Island" by Roland Barrett, who, before moving on to the University of Oklahoma's Music Department over two decades ago, served as band director at Republican Valley High School in Indianola, Nebraska, and at Fairbury High School in Fairbury, Nebraska.

While Sunday's marked the first public performance of the year for the Concert Band, many of the students also perform in the very popular Pep Band--here you can watch the band and the Peru State Cheerleaders perform at the first football game of the year.

The Jazz Band opened its college season with an outdoor performance early in the term at the 16 September re-dedication of the Al Wheeler Center followed by a 2 October show in front of the Fine Arts Building.

Other gigs include a Pep Rally in Auburn and recent performances at a hospital in Syracuse and a return trip to Falls City where the band entertained for the second year in a row at the annual Fall City Farmers Appreciation Banquet.

To conclude its section of the concert, the Jazz Band offered a high-voltage version of Them Changes, the best known composition by Omaha native and drummer for Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies, Buddy Miles.

To watch the Peru State Jazz Band's exciting homage to Miles, just click here.

The Peru State College Jazz Band