Last night could only be described in one word: nightmare. You see, I was accompanying the Hawaii Masterworks Festival chorus in their first performance of the Fauré Requiem and my music would not stay open! That meant that every few seconds, I would need to take whatever hand was free at the moment to swat the page back towards the music rack.

In the last movement, In paradisum, it was especially critical for me to have a page turner (human kind), and when the page started turning backwards the page turner did nothing and I had to lift my hands off the keyboard to try to keep the book open. Of course, this meant that I had to leave some notes out! When this happened two pages in a row, I finally asked aloud to him to please hold the book down! He did this for a couple of pages and then went back to the bass section and I had to fend for myself the last few pages.

I guess it was too much to ask to see that I needed help?!

I guess that the reason this book flipping and flopping didn’t happen during the rehearsal is that we stopped after each movement and I then took the opportunity to bend the pages back so that the book would stay open.

So this afternoon, prior to the second performance, yes, I took out the ironing board and ironed my music, something which has worked for me in the past when I had a similar problem. Dry heat, of course — no steam!

The other problem was that the lighting was soooo dim, and I had asked Tim Carney for additional light. Eric Schank, the pianist, said he would bring a clip-on light, and while Eric did pass it to me after the piano pieces, it did me absolutely no good. This afternoon, there will be plenty of light from the windows and I won’t have that problem.

However, there is a mechanical problem with the Chaminade “organ” over which I have no control — and it is a key which “stays down” when I press it! (It happens to be B-flat on the Swell manual!) That is not a problem when the particular movement has a B-flat in it, but an absolute disaster in any other key! The only way to “fix” it is to physically lift it from the bottom of the keybed, not anything which I can do in the middle of a piece!

In the good news department, everything went fine for my two services at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church this morning. Father Richard Shields gave an excellent sermon and commentary on the Orlando shooting, and for some strange reason, I was taken back to the Sunday after my husband of 37 years, Carl Crosier, died on Thursday, August 28, 2014. That weekend, I was scheduled to play the organ at St. Mark’s and I remember how the many parishioners were so kind and sympathetic to me in my grief. But as you might remember, my car died afterwards and was unable to be started after the service, and we ended up calling AAA to tow the vehicle to the dealer. We went home to get Carl’s car, only ending up having to call AAA to jumpstart that car!

I recall that the refrigerator also died that week and everything started defrosting.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another!