Dear Diary,

Not so much to report today, but thought I should put an entry up anyway. Yesterday at church went pretty well. The congregation seemed a bit giddy. I suspect there were many happy Obama supporters in the crowd. One of the few places in Holland where this can be said. 

I played the prelude, “Let All Mortal Flesh” by Leo Sowerby, pretty well.

This piece timed out at 8 minutes this week so I started at 10:25. Eileen turned pages for me. I have been playing through this piece since before I took my first organ lesson. It was gratifying to do it well even though I had to ask the choir to quieten down a bit to begin and of course they started chatting again almost immediately. Such is the lot of the church organist at my church, I guess.

I did some last minute adjustment on our choral anthem, “Keep your lamps.” I asked the ladies to snap their fingers on beat three while the guys sang the melody by themselves. It had a good blend in rehearsal, but the blend kind of went to heck in performance. But still it sounded pretty good. We did the André Thomas arrangement. I listened to snippets of his recordings online (only provided the usual 30 sec excerpt). I thought he took it too slow and that his conga arrangement part was pretty dumb. I also omitted the forte piano at end, opting for a soft ending.  I was pretty happy with this performance.

Later at home, I listened to Blind Willie Johnson’s version of this which I quite like.

I played a Bach prelude as a postlude. After church, I had agreed to accompany a visiting singer who wanted to sing a song for her mom. It was another kind of gospelly thing. 

Then Eileen and I went and got food for lunch with the parents. Mom asked me to pay for it out of petty cash, which I did. 

I spent the rest of the day resting. I reheased a bit of Kyle Gann’s first Private Dance called Sexy.

I do like the fact that he makes so many of his compositions available on line. I was reading this morning about a piano piece by Jonathon Keren. Went on his website and found it very slick and promotional. No easy info on the piece. I googled it and found another composer on Myspace with the same name. I find it so weird that people guard their material so well that I can’t find out enough about it to know if I’m interested. I might end up buying the very interesting CD that contains this composition.

But it will be more about the fact that the pianist, David Greilsammer, has put together a very interesting and unusual group of pieces in sort of an album thing.

I also received an email from LemonJellos’ owner Matt Scott yesterday inviting me to play there in March. This is very encouraging. I checked my calendar and then said yes.

Today is an actual day off for me. I seem to be mentally a bit in shambles lately. I badly need this day to do nothing (compose, rehearse). I hope it works out that way.