Up early banging away on my prelude and postlude on my electric piano with my headphones on. I had wanted to spend some serious time on this stuff yesterday. Instead I managed to finish off filing most of the choral music in the choir room. All that is left is a stack of single copies. These are not as critical as getting multiple copies back where they belong.
I did get some time at the organ yesterday. But since there was a wedding, I vacated the church from about 11 AM on. I used the postlude at the wedding so it kind of got practiced. It’s a goofy little thing by David Cherwien based on the closing hymn. It sounds like a loud improvisation. Most of his work strikes me as improvisations worked out on paper. They do fine for a postlude or a prelude once in a while.
I especially like what I am doing today which is basing the prelude on the opening hymn and the postlude on the closing.
It’s not always easy to find material. It’s even harder to choose stuff that is not basically crap.
I think this morning I have some respectable stuff (especially the prelude). Unfortunately I would like a couple more days on the prelude. Instead I worked over my page turns (it’s nine pages long) and some of the tricky manual sections this morning. I will go in early enough to do some work at the organ between services.
This piece by Stanford based on his hymn tune Engelberg has been clocking in from 10 to 13 minutes. It’s a long prelude. I got in the habit of long preludes working at the Roman Catholic church. At my church I feel like the prelude and postlude are mostly ignored so what the heck, I play good stuff and try to ignore the noise.
That’s what happened at the wedding yesterday. I sat down and played all three movements of Mozart’s piano sonata in C major K. 279 as people were seated. I think Mozart captures the joy and love of life that is present at a lot of weddings. People talked loudly but at least not to me as I was playing. I try to immerse myself in what I am doing despite this. It usually works. It did yesterday. I totally nailed this piece.
Unfortunately when I opened the envelope at home to record the fee amount (I keep track for taxes. I’m a boy scout.) it was only a hundred dollars.
I have been sneaking up the fees pretty much unconsciously. I emailed my boss and asked her if the church could make up the difference and pay me $150. She agreed noting that the amount used to be $125 but that we would raise it to $150 (the amount I have been paying subs for a while).
That’s nice.
My grandson is trying out for piano in his 7th grade jazz band. He and I chatted back and forth online yesterday about it. He is getting to be a respectable pianist for his age. Not a prodigy mind you, but still he loves to play and he loves to improvise.
I walked him through scanning in the music for me so I could see it. So now he knows how to do that.
He could very well get chosen. The tryout music involves repetition of just a few simple jazz chord patters. The right hand is written, but the tryout sheet says to play with both hands. I mentioned he could play the note name of the chord with his left hand, preferably in octaves and it would sound good.
He also is playing trumpet in the school band.
I suddenly remember that when I was his age exactly I had about the chops he has on piano and trumpet.
He also likes to read as I did.
Weird.
Long distance connections.
It is a pleasure I gladly embrace to connect with him (and my other two grandkids as well).
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