If your household is like ours, our television has stayed on one station since July 27th — whether it’s summer or winter, when the Olympics are on, we’re riveted to our television. Since the United States has won so many gold medals, we’ve heard “The Star Spangled Banner” played quite a number of times and… Read More The national anthem
One week ago we were in attendance at the Region 4 Conference of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians and Dr. Joy Berg, president, came up to me with an important question: “Kathy, will you play for the choral reading session? This is one detail which slipped through the cracks.” It was about 8:45 in… Read More Music sightreading
“50% Head, 50% Heart” was one of the pearls of wisdom I took away from the ALCM Region 4 Conference this past week. It was René Clausen who said in his keynote address that performing music is “50% Head, 50% Heart” and I couldn’t agree with him more. Clausen has served as conductor of the Concordia… Read More 50% Head, 50% Heart
Earlier in the week, we have been at the Region 4 conference of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM) held at California Lutheran University in cool Thousand Oaks, CA. The theme of the conference was “Behold I Tell You a Mystery: Telling God’s Story in the 21st Century.” In case you don’t know, going… Read More Day One: ALCM Thousand Oaks
Thirty-five years ago today Carl Crosier and I stood before the altar at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and pledged our love and commitment to each other. Today is our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and it seems hardly possible that so many years have gone by, so many musical productions, so many notes! Yesterday I played… Read More 35 years of blessings
Way back in April, I wrote a post called “An embarrassment of riches” and described the musical treasures at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu— its two Beckerath organs, two harpsichords, two sets of handbells, Grotrien grand piano, etc. — but that its greatest resource was its people. Over the years we have been blessed to… Read More A joyful reunion
We’ve scarcely been home for a couple of days, and trying to adjust to the 12-hour time difference between Hawaii and Europe, and we’ll soon have to think about traveling again. As Vice President of Region 4 of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, I have been on the committee to plan the regional conference,… Read More A family affair
Absolutely the highlight of our Milan tour was the viewing of Leonard da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” We have all seen countless reproductions of the image but to see the painting in person is truly breathtaking. Up close the colors look quite faded and subtle, but the further back you stand, the colors become more and… Read More Da Vinci’s Last Supper
Early this morning we checked out of the hotel and took the train to Milan. Even though we have Eurail passes, we were smart to book a reservation online because the high speed train was completely full. The ride was very nice and at one point our speed reached 300 km/hour. We checked into the… Read More On to Milan
Carl had wanted to revisit San Marco and was willing to stand in the long lines to get in, but after waiting for over an hour to take a bus from where we were staying in Mestre on the mainland, we gave up and went on to our next destination. We found out later that… Read More Fabulous Florence