Even though Easter is not until April 4, this morning I recorded the music for Easter—trumpeter Russell Ishida and I are joining forces to perform John Stanley’s Trumpet Voluntary, three verses of EASTER HYMN with a descant on the last verse by Dale Wood, and a trumpet and organ arrangement of Rigaudon by Andre Campra.

Of course what this means is that I record the organ part using my iPhone and send it to Russell, where he records the trumpet part and electronically layers it on top of my organ accompaniment. It’s magic, to be sure, but while the church is still refraining from holding in-person services, we’re also keeping our distance from each other.

I can’t help but feel a little hopeful as finally —we are seeing some light at the end of this long tunnel regarding the pandemic. I had the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine last week and the second dose is scheduled before Easter. It’s like we’ve been in a year-long season of Lent, and we can now almost embrace the glorious joy of the resurrection and Easter.

Last weekend I held my first dinner party since the pandemic began—so it’s been a full year since I pulled out my good dishes! I called my dinner, “A Celebration of Vaccines.”

The dinner was for Mary and Wally Purdy, whom I’ve never met before, but the suggestion of the dinner party came from my sister, who plays piano duets with Mary.

Both of them are fully vaccinated so we all felt safe taking off our masks to eat, but put them back on after dinner. They have a timeshare here and have come to Hawai’i every year for the last twelve years or so.

I found out Mary is a retired choral director and she and her husband love to sing in choirs, so we never ran out of conversation topics to discuss. It was a most enjoyable evening!