Last night I had dinner with Michael Kleinschmidt and Marc Aubertin, who are in Hawaii on vacation. You may recall that the first time I wrote about them was in my post “A break from Bach,” in which I recounted their visit to our condo in May 2011 and Carl cooked dinner. Guess what we were doing back then — two performances of the B Minor Mass — and Michael suggested we take a break from Bach!

We had guessed that Carl had met Michael for the first time when he was an assistant to Gerre Hancock at St. Thomas Church in New York. When Michael moved to Boston to become the organist at Trinity Church, Copley Square, Carl saw him on his frequent trips to the East Coast; Marc sang for years with our dear friend, Edith Ho and the Church of the Advent choir. And in 2011 we were excited to have them move closer, when Michael auditioned and successfully became the organist-choirmaster at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, OR. We in fact visited Trinity Cathedral on Trinity Sunday 2014: see my post Trinity at Trinity —that was the last time Michael and Marc saw Carl before he died.

But now, what I wouldn’t give to be able to tell Carl that Michael Kleinschmidt succeeded Mel Butler at St. Mark’s Cathedral Seattle — Peter Hallock’s former position! I bet he would be pleased as punch! I found this article from the Episcopal News Service, “Saint Mark’s Cathedral calls Michael Kleinschmidt as canon musician” with the official announcement. Having spent all those years on the East Coast, Michael never met Peter in person, and is just now discovering Hallock’s works in the St. Mark’s library. He said that during Lent the choir performed Peter’s tract, Show us your mercy, O Lord and last Advent, Peter’s The Great O Antiphons, still one of Ionian Arts’ bestsellers. “Challenging” was how he described it, but very beautiful.

It was just this week that Ionian Arts (our joint publishing company with Peter Hallock; I am sadly the only surviving shareholder and founder) received an order for Hallock’s There is a stream from Trinity Cathedral, Portland where Bruce Neswick replaced Michael. I took Michael and Marc into the guest room and showed them Glenn Yoshiyama’s beautiful calligraphy of this anthem which was presented to Peter Hallock upon his thirtieth anniversary at St. Mark’s Cathedral. We were so fortunate to have inherited this beautiful piece from Peter’s estate.