Flashback Week: Postscript - Sunrise Service
Reminiscences on our time with a local church teen choir…getting them written down so I don’t forget.
I thought I was done. I really did, but Laura’s comment on the last post mentioned an event that must be recorded for posterity, and besides, it will end the series on a funny note rather than a sad one.
Okay, I have to give you a bit of background for this one. We were not only working with the teen choir during most of those years, but also another church that was affiliated with a local Catholic high school (not the one we work with now). And on Easter morning one year, we had to do manage to be two places at once. Well, not exactly, but Mike and I were basically two ships passing in the night. We did Easter Vigil on Saturday night at the high school chapel, then Mike did a band gig, then I got up at some godawful hour of the morning and did Sunrise Service with the teen choir and our other pianist, then came home and went back to bed and Mike got up a little later and did Easter morning service at the high school chapel. Yeah. Fun stuff! But that’s not the main story.
The teen choir got stuck doing the Sunrise Service because no one else wanted to do it. And trust me, that is a true statement. I think it was 6 am. Outside in the courtyard of the church. Chilly. Early. Half asleep. In all our Easter finery.
Mike wasn’t there, so it was up to me and the pianist to try and make things work. And it did work pretty well for the most part. That is until the pianist and the flutist started playing two different songs. Which wouldn’t have been totally horrible except for the fact that one of them was in A and one was in Ab. If you’re not a musician, you may not know how bad that is. But if you know anything about music at all, you’ll know it was not pretty. Not one bit. The pianist stopped playing the intro and the flutist kept going so it did stop sounding like a dying cow, and we did get back on track, but oh. my. gosh. I was standing up in the choir singing with the kids and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop the trainwreck. But, it did right itself eventually. I will never forget that moment. The sinking feeling in my stomach. The look of terror on the pianist’s face. All the kids turning to look at me to see what to do. All I could do was shrug and wait for them to fix it. Which they did. And looking back on it now, it’s pretty darn funny really. And a story that we relate often when we talk about big music booboos. Mike wasn’t even THERE and he still tells the story…lol! Ah, the joys of live music!
Okay, I think I’m really done now. Unless I remember something else. You just never know. ;)
