To say that I have survived a big weekend is an understatement! I got up at 4:45 am on Friday morning to catch an early Hawaiian Airlines flight to Lihue, Kauai, where I was met at the airport by my student, Daniel Welch. We drove straight to All Saints Episcopal Church in Kapaa, where I parked my luggage in the church’s cottage, my home for a couple of nights. Daniel and I then practiced our duets for a couple of hours and then I went back to the cottage to eat my lunch. More practicing followed, then I was picked up by cellist Karen Hall and her husband, Kevin (a bassoonist) to drive to the Kauai Philippine Cultural Center for the Kauai Chorale’s Winter Festival concert, which I described in my post, “No paltry amount of poultry.”

For dinner, I went to an local Mexican restaurant called Verde, where I had the fish tostada with sashimi ahi. It wasn’t what I expected (Did you know that “tostada” means “toast” in Spanish?) but it was light and fresh and was exactly what I was in the mood for.

Saturday night was the concert, conducted by my friend, Shane Morris Wise, which I wrote about in “We raised the rafters!” and let me tell you, the decibel level in the church was extremely high! I described the loud singing and the enthusiasm of the choir and audience, but here, you can hear it for yourself in the video below. You can definitely hear the excitement of the singers and audience here.

It threw me, in the middle of the concert, to find out that the church’s acoustics went dead in a room filled with people! Plus, I had a couple of “oopsies!” in my performance—the piston didn’t change in “Dieu Parmi Nous” because I didn’t push it hard enough—but all in all, people seemed happy to hear the organ.

But my weekend was hardly over!

I already told you that roosters woke me up at 3 am on both nights I was there, and I never went back to sleep. On Sunday morning I had another early flight, and my driver picked me up at 6:15 am for my flight. By the time I arrived in Honolulu and got into my car, I drove immediately to Nuuanu Congregational Church where I had to deal with half the organ not working (no stops sounded on the Swell manual). The service ran a little long, but I was able to get to St. Mark’s by 10:37 am, in time for the 11:00 am Solemn Mass. By the time the service was over, I crashed and took a short nap before going out to play the Advent Lessons and Carols and Benediction back at St. Mark’s. Call time was 3:00 pm for the 4:00 pm service. I think the service went well, as you can hear in the video below. I especially liked director Mike Dupre’s choice of choral repertoire for this services—such a wide variety of styles. The 8-person choir sang in German, Latin, Catalan and Russian.

My first organ piece, “Es ist ein Ros ensprungen” by Johannes Brahms begins about 2 minutes into the video. I especially liked the registration I chose for “The Serpent,” by Thomas Pavlecho (at 15:23) — don’t you think it sounded appropriately “slithery” for a piece about the snake in the Garden of Eden? The choir made a lot of hissing noises by emphasizing the “sssss” every time there was an “s” in the lyrics. I also played the slow section of “Le verbe” from Messiaen’s “La Nativité,” for the Benediction part of the service. Thank goodness there were no train wrecks in my postlude, Bach’s trio setting of “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland.” Afterwards, there was a delicious potluck in the parish hall, where Mike Dupre, choirmaster, and I were honored and presented with gift certificates for Christmas! How generous this parish is!

But wait, if you thought this weekend was big, it will be nothing compared to NEXT weekend! On Sunday, December 24th, I’ll play two Advent IV services in the morning, then come home to prepare a Christmas dinner for 6 people. At 7:00 pm I’ll play a carol service at Nuuanu Congregational Church, and then there’s a 10:00 pm call for the 11:00 pm Midnight Mass at St. Mark’s. Then I’ll board a plane early in on Christmas morning to fly to California to be with my family. That will be another Honolulu Marathon!