Eileen and I just got back from the annual Easter Egg hunt at her Mom’s house. I drove up and she drove back. We are both pretty tired at this point. So this will be a bit of a “no thank you helping” of a blog post.

It was interesting dong this week from the piano.

These pics all came from the Grace Episcopal Church Facebook page.

In looking at pictures of the choir and congregation at the Vigil, I am struck how nicely wide open so many mouths are. Good singing!

My composition was very well received and we did nail it. This is us playing it as the postlude last night.

Church went well again this morning. I explained to the choir that I scheduled improvs for the prelude and postlude today not to show off but because it was easiest for me. Improvising was a better use of my energy than spending many hours learning repertoire that might go unheard due to noise of the Easter visiting crowd. As it was they did seem to listen to my improvs. For the prelude I improvised on the opening hymn, the ever  popular “Jesus Christ is risen today.” For the postlude I used the tune “In dir ist freude” since it was our second communion hymn. I put it in duple with a walking bass.  I actually had applause for that one! Wild! All of my improvs today had a debt to Jazz.

As I was leaving, two Hope college profs were chatting outside. They congratulated me on a job well done. (Unheard of!) One of them said that there was a nice “buzz” in the choral acoustic now. He’s a choir director and does know whereof he speaks. Then much to my delight he said now what we need to do is rip up the carpeting in the front of the room around the altar. I looked at him and said “So moved! as in second that emotion.