December 2, 2012

• What a week!  The “Messiah” dress rehearsal went really, really well.  The youth were too soft on their portion and could barely be heard, so after racking my brain we decided to ask two adults to sit behind each section and belt out parts to give the youth the confidence to sing louder.  It worked and the “Youth Messiah” turned out well.  My favorite piece was the one I completely wrote myself, “Lord Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart” from the Simeon scriptural account.  The youth soloist on that piece was SO good!  When I was writing the piece I was thinking about a friend of ours who has a great voice, but when I dreamed the piece I would dream a different voice I hadn’t heard.  When this boy auditioned on the piece, I got teary eyed because it was his voice I had dreamed.  He was great!  Cameron had a small solo and did well; he has a nice, pure voice.  The actual “Messiah” performances were phenomenal!  The Saturday evening performance was the best one of all three.  The choir was SO good; so professional sounding!  The soloists were amazing, and the orchestra gets better each year.  I still cannot not fully put in words what a tremendous experience it is to be in the middle of such good music… to be the center of all of the sound, power, spirit, and beauty of the music.  It was amazing!  I had a difficult time controlling my emotions during several of the pieces.  We had a good turnout at the evening performances and there was even a whole row of nuns at the Friday evening performance.  I received a ton of compliments afterwards… I wish the performers could hear all of the kind words that people give since they are the ones who deserve the praise.

  I was still pretty sick this week.  But, I am slowly getting better.  People always ask if my arms hurt from conducting so long… but they don’t, only my calves hurt.  I tend to stand on the tips of my feet when I conduct so my calves get a long workout and kill me the next day.  Conducting is all about technique and if you do it correctly, it doesn’t hurt your arms; it usually only hurts if you’re doing it wrong.  I went to my Symphony again this week and enjoyed that the conductor took the  pieces a bit faster.  On Saturday, Logan had his last soccer game.  The other teams’ coach was “way” into the game and quite rude.  At one point, one of the Dad’s on the other team came on the field and started yelling at one of our 6 year olds… not cool.  The other coach quit the game… I think because we were about to score and he had never lost before, but such is life.

  I guess I’m still a “kid” sometimes in that I like my parents to share in my accomplishments.  I was really hoping my parents would come hear the “Messiah” and I was glad they did.  Thankfully, they helped watch Emma and Logan during the Saturday afternoon performance and then brought Grandma to the evening performance, which was our best one.  Dad, mom, and Grandma really enjoyed it, but especially Dad.  He and I were both emotional at the end.  Carol came to the afternoon performance and stayed a little bit.  Carol also watched Logan and Emma during the evening performances which was a huge help.  Mike ran the sound again this year for the Messiah and did a great job.  He is getting so good at it, that I don’t know if we’ll be able to “trust” anyone else to do it.  We had a little debachle during the last performance with someone wanting to sing with the Youth Choir who had never rehearsed with us, but after a big worry it ended fine.

  • 3:56 pm
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