Review: VocalEssence and Bach Society of MN make beautiful music together in Christmas concert startribune.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from startribune.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Photo:
Mark McKone, Carleton’s Towsley Professor of Biology, reached a professional milestone in October 2020: his first article published in a music journal. The paper, titled “The Iowa Bird That Inspired Antonín Dvořák’s American String Quartet in 1893: Controversy over the Species’ Identity and Why It Matters,” digs deep into both music history and ecology. It argues that the birdsong inspiration for the third movement of Dvořák’s “American” String Quartet in F major was not the scarlet tanager as has long been believed, but the red-eyed vireo.
McKone didn’t make this breakthrough alone. The second author on the paper is David Beccue, nurse practitioner in the Minneapolis Veteran’s Affairs Comprehensive Pain Center by day and musician in VocalEssence Ensemble Singers by night. When I reached out to learn how this unlikely pairing was born, McKone said, “My co-author happens to be my husband, so it would be easy to interview us together.” So, I did.