Saturday, December 31, 2005
Vacation Over
Heading to my office for the first time in five days. I have no idea what piles of messages will be there. I have the afternoon to catch up on them, assess the mess ahead this weekend. (I don't schedule lectors or EM's on holidays, so it's hold my breath and hope for the best at our five Masses this weekend.) I told the pastor to call me at home if he needed me, but there's been no peep. I hope he wasn't buried in funerals or something.
Had a good choir practice the other night. About half showed up, but many people were out of town or sick. It wasn't the week to work 'em hard--they actually appealed for an extra rehearsal the Sunday before Christmas because the one before that was pretty rough. We're using a gospel-style setting of Psalm 98 again. One of our newest singers ended up with the verses. (Our regular cantor for that piece was one of the sickies.) She did a stupendous job.
I'm toying with doing my own arrangement of this piece 
for next week. It was originally a Georgian lullaby, which makes me feel a bit better about hauling in a secular ballet piece to play as a prelude. My friend Peter, who plays bass, has been working hard on teaching himself the cello this year. We have regular players of flute and violin in the group this year, plus I can always call on my favorite parish clarinetist. The piano part is simple enough, but if the cello is ready, I'll play hammered dulcimer on it. If all five of us are playing it, I'll need to spend a good bit of time arranging this so it sounds decent and not overdone. I'll probably be calling on my clarinet friend anyway; I want all the forces I can muster to make the musical portion of Epiphany shine.
