I spent the morning packing my suitcase before getting an Uber to the Church of the Advent. The apartment where I’ve been staying is not available tonight so I will be moving to a bed-and-breakfast next door to Edith Ho’s house for my last night in Boston. Edith will take the luggage back home while I attend the centerpiece opera this afternoon, Orlando, by Agostino Steffani. What great friends I have, right?

I can’t count how many times my husband Carl and I attended church here at the Advent, so it’s with a note of sadness and wistfulness that I remember all the beautiful music we have experienced here. You may know that he spent his sabbatical here and went with them on tour to Venezuela.

Today was no exception as the choir sang William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices as the Ordinary. Edith brought her copy of the score to look at during the service!

I walked into the church while the choir was rehearsing the offertory anthem, Libera nos, salva nos by John Sheppard and took this brief video clip:

Ah, heaven—so gorgeous! What else can I say?

For the post-Communion, they sang O sacrum convivium by Thomas Tallis. I couldn’t see what edition they were singing from, but do you know that our Ionian Arts edition of this piece is a bestseller! Of course, their performance was so ethereal and beautiful.

Today being Trinity, the choir ended the service with William Mundy’s Te Deum—while the two thurifers swung their censers causing massive amounts of smoke! Every 10th swing was an “Around the World” over their heads!

Hmmm… not quite as much as all that!

The postlude was François Couperin’s Offertoire sur les grands jeux from the Mass for the Parishes, a piece I played on my master’s recital 46 years ago!

After the service we discovered Richard and Kathryn Sparks and I took a picture of them with Edith Ho.

Edith Ho, Kathryn and Richard Sparks