Tuesday, 19 December 2006

"What Vacation?"

Below is a short excerpt of a conversation between the Major General Music and the OIT.

Major General Music: so -OIT-, are you finally getting a chance to rest?
OIT: haha. sort of.
OIT: my parents have been keeping me pretty busy.
OIT: how's vacation treating you?
Major General Music: what vacation?
OIT: haha
Major General Music: it's been very busy
Major General Music: but in a good way
OIT: yeah. same.

In looking at the vacation so far, maybe it could be seen that way.

Friday was a huge shopping frenzy for Christmas presents. The Major General Music spent more money easily that day than he has spent in probably the last two months combined, easily. Thankfully that job with the ASC came this semester to provide the Major General Music with some extra cash.

Saturday threw the Major General Music right back into the musical fray. The morning brought a big dress rehearsal for the Christmas musical/cantata, which was a big exercise in sight-reading for the Major General Music. In between the numbers, he looked at the board with the chords labeled for the children's bell choir, which was set to play a Christmas carol. He knew the overall form of the piece was stropic, but the music minister's wife, who conducts the bell choir, told him "Stop that! You're analyzing too much!" when he tried to figure out the form of each stroph. And there was the last piece, "Pavane for a Silent Night." The Major General Music has generally said that he nearly hit the ceiling after seeing this piece. A PAVANE in a Baptist church?! What's next, "Galliard for Easter Morning?!" He posed this question to the music minister, who laughed.

Sunday marked the service for the cantata. This basically meant the Major General Music sight-read the cantata again. Then the afternoon brought a concert by the community college choir and included singing "Hallelujah!" from Messiah. After thinking about it for a moment, the Major General Music tallied that as performance number 7 of this work. The evening brought another concert at the United Methodist Church by their bell choir with the Major General Music's most wonderfulest piano teacher ever (no joke, she is AWESOME).

Not being a person who can stay away from what he loves or does, the Major General Music was back in the schools doing music stuff on Monday with the high school choirs, helping them prepare for their great big Christmas concert. The conductor was grateful for this assistance and the Major General Music was grateful for a little more experience out in the field. The concert was quite good, and the Major General Music sang "Hallelujah!" for an 8th time. Good stuff.

Next on the menu: learn "Bist du bei mir" for New Year's Eve Sunday!