Gone Quiet

For many reason, but mostly due to an insane work-life, I've been quiet for the past few months. It's time to break the silence to pay tribute to a friend who left us.

For 12 years I sang under Richard Westenburg at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Over that time Dick was a colleague, teacher, mentor, and friend. He founded Musica Sacra, New York City's premier professional chorus and his yearly traversal of Handel's Messiah (usually at Carnegie Hall), was one of the city's great institutions and beloved event.

Dick had one of the finest musical minds that I've ever known. Even when I didn't agree with him, he always had a valid and well thought out musical point of view. And yet his music making never took on a studied air, but came out of the natural talents of his singers. When singing with Dick, I always felt that he was treating the singers as professionals and relying on their innate musicality to make the piece sing.

He had studied organ with Boulanger and Langlais, was on the faculty of Julliard and Rutgers and for years was a fixture at churches in and out of NY City. He was opinionated, but he was always nice about it and quick to turn things to a joke and a smile.

He was a great computer geek (which he would freely admit) and he and I spent a lot of time chatting about every new gadget and technological breakthrough. It seemed that every Sunday at coffee hour we were talking about some new piece of equipment that one of us was planning to buy or some problem we were trying to figure out.

Dick succumbed to cancer on February 20. I will miss him very much. Plans for a memorial service can be found at the Musica Sacra website.