The Trumpet stop is right next to the Tremulant top on my new organ. Yesterday morning I had registered my prelude with a beautiful soft 16′ flute stop to accompany the Dulcian on a tenor solo by Marchand. I reached for the Tremulant but unbeknownst to me I pulled the Trumpet out. So instead of a beautiful set-up for the solo, I had a big fanfare chord. I proceeded to improvise a bit for about four or five measures, brought it to a nice cadence, stopped, switched to the Tremulant and proceeded.

But this wasn’t the only “oops” yesterday. When I began the introduction to the first hymn, the tremulant was still on. Oy. I managed to get it off after a couple of phrases.

At the psalm, I pulled out the psalm I had worked through right before service. I began the introduction. I noticed that the composer of the tone was Thomas Tallis not John Goss as it should have been. I began the first verse and realized that I was doing last week’s psalm. Oops. I stopped and told the congregation that I had the wrong bulletin (true). “Excuse me,” I said and left the room to get a correct bulletin.

While I was in the other room, Jen had them laughing. I think she said that I covered for her so often that now she could cover for me.  I returned, said “Sorry about that” and away we went with the right psalm.

The hardest thing I had to do this morning was accompany the hymn “God is working his purpose out” sung to the tune in the Hymnal 1940. The entire thing is one long canon between the soprano and the bass line. This is even the way it’s written in the pew edition of the hymnal. I had two settings ready. One for a weak singing congregation, one for a stronger. Of course, this morning’s group was a bit of a puzzle. They were singing, but it felt like they needed more organ behind them, so I chose to the first setting.

This hymn was on my mind when I did the wrong psalm.

Also,  in my defense  (defending me from me), I did some composing yesterday morning before walking to church. This is an entirely different state of mind for me from performing. So I was a little blurry.

Of course, my friend and fabulous saxophonist, Jordan VanHemert, was there with his girlfriend. And after church one of the two men whom i didn’t recognize and were the only ones besides me to stand during the prayers of the people came up and was introduced to me by a Hope prof as a friend of Martin Pasi.

Actually, it was nice to have these people there. I like having aware musicians in the congregation.

The friend of Pasi was Paul Roy. He serves as organist at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington State. We had a nice chat. I asked him to sign the guest book and come back and practice (since he was on vacation).