Church went pretty well. I played the Calvin Hampton piece well despite the inattention it received. This doesn’t bother me all that much. It’s a nice gentle rocking piece that when the congregation eventually settled down provided a nice piece of musical wallpaper as people got ready for prayer (“you’re soaking in it” was what the manicurist surprised her customer with in an old commercial when she informed her  that she was soaking in actual bonafide dish detergent guaranteed to soften her nails).

The congregation sang well. The anthem went well. It was one of those easy ones in which the pianist (me) has much more work to do than the singers. It was a bit on the new age Jesus side of the Episcopal practice but whothehell.

I had a moment in the introduction to the closing hymn when I committed the unpardonable error of making a mistake in the actual melody. Very unnerving. Although I played well I never really got my groove back and did not play the Distler as well as I hoped I would even though I repeated the entire short piece just for the fuck of it.

Ah well. Sometimes you eat the ba’r and sometimes the ba’r eats you.

Came home and made pear custard pie.

Eileen seems quite enamored of this recipe. This time I managed to get the “custard” in the pie to set up nicely. This was my second try on this recipe. The first time it was delicious but runny. This time it was delicious and  not runny.

I think I may have accomplished this by carefully measuring the pears (instead of just throwing in what seemed like the correct amount), carefully mixing the wet ingredients including beating the “egg beaters” quite a while before gradually adding sugar and flour. Then instead of pouring the wet mixture over the pears, I made sure the pears had no extra moisture coming from them and folded them gently into the final “custard”  mixture before slipping everything into a freshly made uncooked pie crust.

Something worked. Eileen and I ate half the pie last night.

In between all this I researched tango scores online. I came across a very helpful site from a Minneapolis  group, http://mandragoratango.com/

Like many hard working specialist music groups I have found online, this group is very generous with sharing its playbook and ideas about its speciality, in this case, the tango.

Last week my advanced ballet instructor announced to the class and me that they needed more tango in their lives and I promised to try to “dig up a few more.” I already have one little tango improv I have developed over the years for ballet use.

So I had fun yesterday looking through hundreds of tango scores and listening to several mp3s of Mandragora Tango.  I do like the tango even though I am really just beginning to learn something about the genre. I came up with ten tangos I could probably pull off for today.  There’s no guarantee my instructor will call for them today, but if she does, I’m ready.

For the next three evenings I have  final rehearsals for the Grand Haven High school production of “Beauty and the Beast.” This will probably be a bit arduous, but then come the performances which are actually much less work.