It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
We had our ward Christmas party today, and it was pretty nice. They had the young men and young women do a little Nativity play with Christmas carols for the audience to sing, like, while Mary and Joseph were "walking to Bethlehem." The lady planning the party came to me last week and was like, "Has anybody asked you to play the piano for this? I wanted to make sure you knew about it, because I know it's annoying to have it sprung on you." Personally, I always think of it as a pleasant surprise when they announce we're going to have a sing-along and they need someone to play. (Athena accurately portrayed my reaction as, "What!? This party just got so much better!" ...This is why I need to get better at improvisation and playing by ear.) It was a good thing I had warning, though, because now there was somebody involved who had rehearsed a little bit. XD
After the Nativity play, we all sang Silent Night, but with a twist. The party organizer had asked some people ahead of time, and she also asked again before we did it, in case there was someone she didn't get to, if they could sing Silent Night in a language other than English. So the first verse was sung multiple times, but only once each in Korean, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Japanese (that was us!), Samoan, and Spanish. In retrospect, I think it would have been a good idea to start it off in English, but we just didn't, and that's okay, because everybody knows it anyway. Then everybody (or everybody who was cool enough to be willing to sing) sang the second verse in English, then everybody sang the third verse in whatever language they wanted. It was a pretty cool experience.
And we found out that the choir has been un-sabotaged, so we will get to sing in sacrament meeting tomorrow! Or Athena will get to sing. I'll be playing the piano again, as usual. See, the choir was planning to sing tomorrow, but the ward music director for some reason was also making plans for some other musical number? We don't know the details, only that when we went to choir practice last week, the choir director (who is no longer Athena) said that we might not be singing tomorrow because there was talk of something else in the works. We also have reason to believe that the ward music director hates choral music and sincerely believes that he's doing everyone a favor by preventing the choir from singing at them.
Anyway, at the end of practice, the choir director said it sounded like we were all ready, and looked at the ward music director for the okay, and he said he'd pencil us in. So we spent all week wondering if the choir will be singing tomorrow, but we finally got confirmation about half an hour ago that the choir has been cleared for performing. That's pretty exciting, too!
Today I'm thankful for getting to go to our ward Christmas party, getting to play the piano at the party, getting to perform with the choir, having a very pretty piano part for What Child Is This?, and that neat little multilingual sing-along.
After the Nativity play, we all sang Silent Night, but with a twist. The party organizer had asked some people ahead of time, and she also asked again before we did it, in case there was someone she didn't get to, if they could sing Silent Night in a language other than English. So the first verse was sung multiple times, but only once each in Korean, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Japanese (that was us!), Samoan, and Spanish. In retrospect, I think it would have been a good idea to start it off in English, but we just didn't, and that's okay, because everybody knows it anyway. Then everybody (or everybody who was cool enough to be willing to sing) sang the second verse in English, then everybody sang the third verse in whatever language they wanted. It was a pretty cool experience.
And we found out that the choir has been un-sabotaged, so we will get to sing in sacrament meeting tomorrow! Or Athena will get to sing. I'll be playing the piano again, as usual. See, the choir was planning to sing tomorrow, but the ward music director for some reason was also making plans for some other musical number? We don't know the details, only that when we went to choir practice last week, the choir director (who is no longer Athena) said that we might not be singing tomorrow because there was talk of something else in the works. We also have reason to believe that the ward music director hates choral music and sincerely believes that he's doing everyone a favor by preventing the choir from singing at them.
Anyway, at the end of practice, the choir director said it sounded like we were all ready, and looked at the ward music director for the okay, and he said he'd pencil us in. So we spent all week wondering if the choir will be singing tomorrow, but we finally got confirmation about half an hour ago that the choir has been cleared for performing. That's pretty exciting, too!
Today I'm thankful for getting to go to our ward Christmas party, getting to play the piano at the party, getting to perform with the choir, having a very pretty piano part for What Child Is This?, and that neat little multilingual sing-along.