Suspicious Cheese Lords 10th Anniversary Concert

The Suspicious Cheese Lords will be holding their 10th Anniversary Concert next Sunday, at which they will showcase works of the group's original composers (there have been four). My friend Gordon's most recent piece is included in the program, a setting he did last fall of a sonnet he wrote when he was about 19, "A rose beheld the sun from summer's wood."

The sonnet garnered praise from noted academics Lindsey Tucker and Zack Bowen when it was new. More recently Skip West, founder and president of the Suspicious Cheese Lords, compared it approvingly with the poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke. SCL premiered this piece last spring, but with little time to learn it confidently, and partly as a result the piece received the only pale note in an otherwise effusive review by a Washington Post music critic, who said it sounded "vague and unsure of itself." They aim to remedy that at next weekend's concert, so be sure to be there! I understand it is sounding great in rehearsal.

"Although the Lords specialize in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, their repertoire ranges from Gregorian chant to original compositions. From 1998 to 2006, the Cheese Lords served as the choir in residence for major services at the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC. Additional service credits include the Cathedral of St. Matthew, Church of the Epiphany, the Church of the Holy Redeemer, and Georgetown University's Dahlgren Chapel. The ensemble assisted in developing 'An Evening at the Tabard Inn,' an event for the Smithsonian Institution's Resident Associates program in which the Cheese Lords provided music contemporary to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and related to the theme of pilgrimage. The Lords' other performance venues have included Washington National Cathedral, the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, the National Gallery of Art, Epiphany Catholic Church (Georgetown), The Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes, Christ Church (La Plata, Md.), the Cathedral of St. Thomas More (Arlington, Va.), the Old Presbyterian Meeting House (Alexandria, Va.), Christendom College (Front Royal, Va.), and XM Satellite Radio's Live Performance Studio. Their concerts are regularly broadcast on the Vox channel of XM Satellite Radio." -- official website


This concert is in the Washington, DC metro area. Map, directions and further details here.