I broke my pattern today and haven’t gone over to church yet this morning. I have an 11 AM funeral. The woman who died was in the choir for a while. She and her husband threw one of those significant wedding anniversary parties a while back. I can’t remember how long they had been married. But I did learn a great deal about her and her husband via the memorabilia and photos they shared at this party. They had traveled extensively and had a fascinating life. I realized how sophisticated they were. The widower has requested Bach for the funeral. Yesterday Amy, my violinist, and I prepared several Bach pieces for today’s funeral. We worked at my home. I invite Amy and Dawn to rehearse at my house on Feeding America Thursdays which occur once a month.

It was a shame we couldn’t get over and work with the organ and new acoustic at church. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. We are thinking of playing Spiegel im Spiegel as part of the long musical prelude that usually occurs at funerals at our church. I have to get over there before too long and find the dam violin part. It was not with the accompaniment.

The new organ still presents an interesting challenge since I’m not overly confident about how well I can make it work. Part of that is my own learning curve on a tracker and a flat pedal board. Also part of it is that it’s an incomplete instrument. I will probably have about six ranks to work with today. Thankfully one of those will be a 4′ principal something that will help me lead the singing if we happen to have an enthusiastic assembly.

My treadmill stopped last night after twelve minutes of treadmilling. Dang. I was so proud of myself that I had jumped on it at the end of the day before martini time. I was chatting with Eileen on Whatsapp this morning and she said we should a “real one.” The problem with that is that a better machine is expensive. Of course by the time I have bought four of the fucking things I will have spent close to a thousand dollars. I don’t think I can get a “real one” for that amount. But it’s frustrating to keep buying crappy ones that break.

I am washing my non-black dress pants for use today. The last thing I said to Amy was that she didn’t have to wear black. She doesn’t like wearing black. I think it has something to do with not having had a lot of fun experiences with string quartets and other gigs that insist on musicians in black. Anyway, I got up this morning and realized that my non-black nice pants were not clean enough to wear. I have black pants, but then I thought that it would be kind of creepy  to show up in black pants after telling Amy she didn’t have to wear black.

I am sometimes amazed how much my trio talks about what we should wear. I know it’s important to the other members to think about it. For me, it’s less and less important.

Phil Harrington, the Methodist minister who sings in the bass section of my choir, asked me in front of Pasi if I had told him about my marimba organ piece. I had not, but it prompted Pasi to email me the above audio file of Robert Bate’s piece for organ and synth. The organ playing is a Pasi, naturally. It’s  Opus 19, located at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, TX.

I’ve listened to the piece twice. I’m not sure what I think of it as a piece of music but it’s cool that Martin emailed it to me.