A few days in Vermont

| 3 Comments

I spent some of last week with musician Michael Olbash and other singers, at this recent chapel (photos) in the "northeast kingdom" of Vermont.

It was built in 2006 by Richard and Joan Downing, a Catholic couple from Massachusetts, generous people who raised 35 foster children during Mr. Downing's long financial career. Now they spend part of their time in northeast Vermont on a property that includes a cattle farm, a comfy country inn, and a health spa.

Now, lay-owned oratories are uncommon, so I was curious to see this one. It is not regularly used for liturgical worship, but occasionally priests with retreat groups have received diocesan permission for celebrations of Mass there; in fact that just happened on the weekend after our stay.

We were there to record some chant performances, and the resulting recording should be ready for us some time in 2008. With the cattle farm next door, the microphones and our ears picked up some sounds of lowing from the newly weaned calves, so before the week was over, Steven Olbash quipped that the eventual CD would be titled either "Moosica Sacra" or "Angus Dei".

Bookmark and Share

3 Comments

ahhh, next time invite me to sing with you. Michael should remember the birds singing during our chant recordings with Fr. Heiman. What would he call that?

I'm not sure what Fr. Larry would've called those birds, but I was ready to call those Belted Galloways dinner! (In fact, I did have a "beltie burger" at the spa one afternoon -- quite delicious!) This was an exciting project, to be sure, and I hope people will find it useful and beautiful.

What an experience! That must have been a blast.

Leave a comment

What? Who?

On life and living in communion with the Catholic Church.



John Schultz


You write, we post
unless you state otherwise.

Archives

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Richard Chonak published on October 30, 2007 7:18 PM.

This link will give you 3 times the arg was the previous entry in this blog.

It figures is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.