That’s what The Rev. Heather Hill said during the service yesterday at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church where I was subbing for River Kim. Apparently a choir member started to feel faint and nauseous—a parishioner who stepped into the choir stalls to help decided the situation warranted a call for an ambulance because the man’s hands felt cold and clammy.
We had just finished passing the peace, so there was a natural break in the service before the offertory hymn. The service just came to a dead stop for about 15 minutes as the volunteer called 911 and we waited for the ambulance to arrive.
I was intrigued by how the EMTs wrapped a blanket around the man’s shoulders and then used the blanket to carry him out of the choir stalls and onto a gurney.
While we waited, I couldn’t help but think back to the time I had to call 911 because my husband Carl fainted, and five EMTs came into my apartment to take him to the hospital. That was on the 4th of July, 2014, and he had emergency surgery within an hour of his arrival at the hospital.
Other than stopping for this incident, the rest of the service went smoothly, even though the liturgical music was completely new to me. At coffee hour a man approached me to ask whether I played the organ for Iolani School. “Yes, but I’m retired now.”
Apparently his children attended the school and he used to come to the Lower School chapel service every Friday. The man said he recognized my playing style from what he had heard at Iolani! I was really amazed at this—I didn’t know my playing was so distinctive!
Over the weekend I also attended the “Extraordinary Ordinary” concert at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and was glad to see that there was a respectable crowd in spite of the unusual time of the concert: 4:00 pm on a Saturday.
The concert, subtitled “Settings of the Mass Throughout the Ages,” used the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei from William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices as the basis for other settings by Ralph Vaughan Williams (Mass in G Minor), George Malcolm (Missa ad Praesepe), Ludwig van Beethoven (Missa Solemnis), Edward Bairstow (Communion Service in Eb), Louis Vierne (Messe Solennelle), Camille Saint-Saëns (Oratorio de Noël) and David Rossow (Mass for Women).
Singers in the William Byrd Mass for Five Voices were Mary Sim (soprano), Sarah Lambert Connolly (alto), Karol Nowicki (tenor), Bowe Souza (tenor), and Scott Fikse (bass). With the exception of Mary Sim, a William Byrd specialist who was visiting from the Pacific Northwest, all of the other singers are ones which I have worked with extensively through Early Music Hawaii. Karol Nowicki is the choir director at St. Clement’s for only one more week, and then I’ll see him in Europe on the choir tour!
Guess who came to the concert?! It was Hope Jahren, author of best-seller Lab Girl, which is “Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, A New York Times 2016 Notable Book, National Best Seller, Named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People”, An Amazon Top 20 Best Book of 2016, A Washington Post Best Memoir of 2016, A TIME and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2016.”
Hope and her family were parishioners at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu before they moved to Norway a few years ago. I told her that the post I wrote about her (“Lab Girl…everywhere I turn!“) continues to get many pageviews every week, and in fact, it’s one of the most widely-viewed posts of my blog!
This past week I’ve had to balance sightseeing with all my organ lessons, rehearsals and concerts as I’ve been hosting my niece, Madelaine, who was a good sport and came along with me on my insane schedule. Here’s a panoramic photo I took on our visit to Tantalus. As you can see, it’s a beautiful day on Oahu and you can see that our island is unaffected by the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island.
