Happy Easter Monday, Music Nerds! Happy Passover and Happy Spring, too!

I’m tired but content today, having successfully completed another Holy Week in my role as church organist/choir director (Here’s the post-game wrap-up from last year!). For those of you unfamiliar with the church music scene, Holy Week is kind of like four regular weeks compressed into one, with services every day of the week, with special musical emphasis on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That’s a sizable chunk of music to prepare, and even though I’ve done the drill many times, the year in between is long enough that I always have to refresh my memory of how it all goes, and all week I have that bad-dream-about-showing-up-for-a-final-exam-in-your-underwear-feeling.

In spite of the anxiety involved, it’s a very meaningful and powerful experience. Everything went quite well this time: the organ and piano solos I played, the anthems sung by my Little Choir That Could, and even the chanting of the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil, arranged and sung by moi! (I did it on a dare!)

Here I am practicing it:

(I think I make funny faces when I sing, so I didn’t subject all y’all to that…)

By the way, if you like my little graphic above, here’s the HTML code you can use spread it ’round the web! (Change the width as needed)

And now, it is time to tackle the to-do list entitled “I’ll do that after Easter!”