Last Thursday night, it was announced that long-time choir librarian, Jerome Vasconcellos, would be retiring after more than 20 years of service and volunteers to fill the position would be much welcomed. So it was with a great deal of relief that Andrew McCaffrey has stepped up to the plate and will become the new librarian. Jerome will assist.

In case you don’t know, the job of choir librarian is one of the most under-appreciated and thankless positions. “Just wait, people will turn in their Christmas music after Easter!” I overheard Jerome saying to Andrew. And I am probably one of the worst offenders — especially with my psalm settings which I tuck inside the accompaniment book and don’t turn in for (shhh!) years! It is the responsibility of the choir librarian to put all the music away after it has been performed. Fortunately it’s easy to find out who hasn’t turned in the music since every person is assigned a number and each copy is numbered.

I always thought of the choir librarian like the (human) dishwasher in a busy kitchen — and having to clean up the mess. Every Sunday there is a minimum of four pieces: psalm setting, Gospel acclamation, offertory and communion anthems. After a festival service, the task is especially daunting when the choir additionally sings the propers: introit, offertory proper and communion proper and perhaps festival hymn concertos and descants.

Thank goodness LCH now has a music library storage system which can grow with each new piece of music added to the repertoire. See my post and pictures of our world-class music library by clicking here. I surely don’t miss the old days when we had a bunch of mismatched file cabinets standing on top of one another and drawers stuffed so full that you couldn’t put any music away or take anything out either!

Thank you, Jerome, for your many years of service, and thank you, Andrew, for your willingness to help.