A couple of posts ago, I was complaining about not being able to see the sheet music off my iPad in spite of enlarging it to its fullest. I was indeed thinking I would have to give up playing the organ or worse yet, even stop teaching because I couldn’t see the music. My “arms’ length vision” was getting so bad that a number of times I caught myself reading the wrong note during a lesson or worse yet, during a service—and instead of five lines on the musical staff, I was seeing six! I didn’t know what note to start on. Yikes!!

Our medieval music specialist and tech guru, Michael Cuthbert, suggested I try adding an external video monitor to my iPad and this morning, he loaned me his monitor to do exactly that!

Wow, a gigantic display! Miracle of miracles! I can see the music clearly!

I love technology!

(That was the same comment my then-6-year old son was given an assignment of alphabetizing a list of words and he typed them into Microsoft Word and pressed “Sort!” This is something he did entirely on this own without any help from mom or dad.)

Thank you so much, Myke! It being my birthday today, this was a pretty fantastic present—and although Myke loaned me this great monitor, I ordered my own today.

Last night was Early Music Hawaii’s Trio Sefardí concert, a program quite different from our usual programming but one which brought in a different audience. As Linda Muller posted on Facebook,

Early Music Hawaii presented the extraordinary Trio Sefardi for an enchanted evening of Sephardic music. Sephardic music is passed down through the generations from Jews, who were banished from Spain in 1492, and moved on to other territories like the Balkans, Turkey, North Africa and more. The artists were Howard Bass (lute, guitar), Tina Chancey (rebec, kamenj, vielle, viola, percussion, vocals) and Susan Gaeta (lead vocal, guitar). The atmosphere created by Trio Sefardi mimicked sitting in the courtyard of a small village or as a guest in a family’s living room, listening to ballads, instrumental pieces, odes and family stories. Like all of EMH programs, not only do you benefit from breathing in gorgeous old, sometimes unknown music, your knowledge grows from the narratives and program notes. Tonight was certainly no exception. Bravo, Trio Sefardi and thank you for bringing the beautiful and often tragic Sephardic history to life.

I really enjoyed this concert, not only because of the repertoire, but also because lately I’m been obsessed with the Netflix series, “Nobody Wants This,” about a shiksa (non-Jew) who falls in love with a Jewish rabbi. Except for the language, I absolutely love the story and am learning a lot of new things about Judaism. We probably shouldn’t have scheduled this concert on a Friday night, it being Shabbat, but unfortunately there wasn’t much choice. Still, many Jews did attend the concert, thankfully.

Thanks to Linda Muller who took some of these photos. There was definitely a feeling of community in the room, as the audience was invited to sing along on the encore, Ocho Candelikas. I’m quite sure this has never happened at an Early Music Hawaii concert!

I met a couple shown below for the first time during intermission, and they were impressed with the program’s music, both of them being Jewish, but for some reason, we started talking about my intensive study of Spanish (and French) over the past few years. The woman was looking for someone to speak Spanish with and I told her about online classes with Cada Día Spanish. But the most serendipitous connection we discovered was that not only did we both graduate from Burbank High School in Burbank, California (but in different years!), but we also attended John Muir Junior High School!

How’s that for a small world story!