Here I am again, sitting with my martini at the end of the day blogging.
I played a lot of music today. This was pretty satisfying. I had an email from Rev Jen asking me if I could sneak in at the end of the early service and play something so they could hear the instrument.
I learned that playing cold at that time of the morning might not always be the best idea. I attempted to play my prelude. It didn’t go so good. Even though I had spent some time rehearsing Mozart on the piano in the choir room, I had trouble concentrating.
I learned something from this experience after I nailed the same piece in the prelude to the 11 AM. Warming up is good even for old farty organists.
The Pentecost service went quite well. The choir sang a new Anglican chant for the psalm and the congregation seemed to join in pretty well. During her homily, Rev Jen came to the back and invited the kids to come with her. Then, following up on the first part of her homily given at the front of the church, she asked me to show how the wind blows through, say the trumpet pipes. Then she asked me to show some other ways the wind blows through different pipes.
I improvised silly windy things on “Come Down O Love Divine,” our opening hymn. Then she and the congregation blessed the organ. That was cool.
The choir sang the Tallis well at the 10 AM service. We were scrambling to get the program finished between the service and the recital. Rev Jen helped Eileen and me and we had 75 programs printed off by the time we left.
We just had time to say hi to my Mom at the nursing home, go home and have some lunch, and then I took a shower.
The recital went very well. I tried my hand at commentary. I kept pretending I was Chris Thile who now hosts Prairie Home Companion.
His enthusiasm seems genuine. We had maybe fifty or so people. I had fun and we pretty much nailed all the pieces.
Whew. Now for a little time off.
Did I miss your opening concert on the organ? I thought it was later in the month… I’m sorry if so! I kept meaning to look somewhere and check the date, because I didn’t have it written down anywhere. It would have been tricky for me anyway, I had a practice hike for the AT with the group from church I’m going with in a week (did I mention this? nutty little mid-life try at something completely different…) Anyway, next time, you should tell the local AGO folks about this. Email Paul or I, and we will send something out. People besides me are interested too, and this organization is pretty much pointless (in my opinion), if at the least we aren’t aware of what’s going on locally and supporting each other. I’d have been there, if I’d have known and could have made it work! Glad you felt like it went well.
You’re right. I should have done an AGO mailing. It would help me if Paul didn’t do blind emails on those things. Don’t we all know each other’s email anyway via the directory? Anyway, this was totally my responsibility. I did send out a press release to the Sentinel (which they seemed to have ignored entirely) and post it on Facelessbook. I know that most of our members don’t connect to Facebook. Brian Carder was there so somehow he found out, probably from Facebook. Linda Fulton was there as well. It was good concert and I’m sorry you didn’t have the option to attend. I try not to pay too much attention to that sort of thing. I did miss you but figured I can’t always attend your recitals and the same has to be true for you. I’ll do better about this next time.