Yesterday I was getting ready to go practice at the church when I received an email from Mairi Manley, the Administrative Coordinator from Nu‘uanu Congregational Church:

Hello Everyone-
The medical team and Diaconate met last night.  Due to the concern of the active Covid cases, hospitalizations, hospitals at or near maximum capacity, they have decided to cancel In-Person Services for the remainder of August… They will meet again on September 1 to decide what to do in September. 

In an instant my world changed, so instead of going to practice wearing a T-shirt and shorts, I had to put on my professional black for making a video on my iPhone.

(BIG SIGH…!)

People have heard me talk about this before — making a recording is just as much if not MORE work than performing in person. Oh sure, something in the back of your head says that if you make a mistake, no problem, just stop the recording and do another take! As it turned out, recording just four pieces yesterday took me an hour-and-a-half—way more than a simple Sunday service.

However, there’s something to be said for performing in person. Granted, you only have one chance to play the piece — but the fact that people are listening to you gives you a little bit of extra adrenaline and forces you to concentrate just a little harder.

I guess it was a good thing that I had already chosen to play all Bach this Sunday — music in the public domain. When we do the “virtual” services, we have to be so careful in the selection of our music because of copyright issues. It’s so much easier to just choose music in the public domain.

The latest edicts from Governor David Ige and the State of Hawaii exempted church services even though there have been cluster outbreaks among church groups. Still, the upcoming concerts in which I’m performing (Sept. 6 First Monday Concerts and Sept. 11, Early Music Hawaii, all-Josquin program) will be most certainly livestreamed, not in-person.

This week I also made the hard decision to postpone my trip to Europe for the Marian Shrines Tour. This is the THIRD time I’ve had to cancel this tour — the first time was in June 2019 because of insufficient enrollment, then last October we decided to postpone until this fall, thinking that the pandemic would be over. Now we’re scheduled to go next October of 2022. Who’s to say, though, whether this pandemic will be over by then? Fingers crossed!

I see that GoAhead Tours has already updated the new tour to October 19-November 1, 2022 and for complete information, here is the website link:

You are most welcome to join us — the more the merrier!