Billings and Cooings

In the early days of the Arlington Ward and of the Belmont Chapel—before its wonderful organ was installed—beloved and esteemed fellow-pioneers Paul Dredge (tenor) and Linda Huppi (piano) pulled together an ad hoc quartet, inviting me to participate in the bass rôle, with Dorothy Miller as soprano and Lisa Bushnell as alto. We experimented with the new Chapel’s acoustics and our diverse repertoires and put on a recital that we called “Billings and Cooings”.

Paul

Linda

Dorothy

The event qualifies as a happy memory, although recordings of varying quality survive (below) of only nine of the seventeen numbers on the program. Each of us drew a solo. Mine, borrowed from Gordon Bok, remains the best evidence I can adduce that I, once upon a time and before my vocal chords’ terminal reducing diet, could actually sing. I regret that the recordings of the other three solos are missing; I remember Linda’s Debussy piece, in particular, as meriting preservation, and we had to struggle to overcome her monumental modesty to get her to do it. (Click to hear our performances:)

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