Phew
-- Guess what? There's a blizzard going on! All day!
-- We went to Humanities to pick up one of the University harps to bring it to a church for a choir concert. Mandy (who was coordinating the harpists for WYSO that morning) was awesome and had the harp already wrapped up and ready to go. By that time (11:45) there was about two inches of snow on the ground, and still building rapidly.
-- The church fortunately has an underground parking space, so we could unload out of the blizzard, and there even was a ramp and and elevator to take it up to the nave. When I got there, the choir director said: "Oh, we're going to be playing up in the choir loft. That's not going to be a problem, is it?" I looked at the stairs, and I kid you not, they were like Cinderella's attic stairs. (Though made out of more solid material than rickety old wood... nevertheless there were four flights.) So we huffed and puffed and got the harp up the stairs... where I rehearsed for like 5 minutes. (these concerts will be tomorrow, at 2 and 4) The harp is staying up there for the night.
-- We slipped and slid all the way home, had lunch, then trekked back downtown to drop me off at (my clarinet teacher) Bethany's church for her wedding (!!!!!). It was a beautiful space - they had decorated it the night before with white holiday lights and drapes of white fabric across the ceiling to form a canopy, they provided the only light other than the candles. The central table/altar was in the center of a small circle of chairs, about 40 total, so that everyone could see. Her aisle extended from the entrance of the room, lined with tea candles in little glass cups. The musicians (me and two of her other clarinet students: Juwon and Devin) were off to one side, but positioned so we could see the aisle so we timed things right. My harp was already in place (we brought it last night for the rehearsal).
--The wedding was lovely - Bethany had chosen gorgeous music, and it all timed perfectly. I started with Debussy's "1st Arabesque," (though we started half an hour later than we thought we would, because Bethany still had to put on her dress ^_^ hehe) then we all played an incredible arrangement of "O Holy Night" - for harp and two clarinets, while the parents and the groomspeople walked in. Her bridesmaid processional was "Flower Dance from Lakme" for harp and 2 clarinets... and then her processional was "The Great Gate of Kiev" for me alone. I was very afraid that I would mess that one up, but it worked out just fine. :D The ceremony itself was very short - they skipped the whole huge service thing and distilled it to just the wedding bits, which was nice. During their sand ceremony (which is such a good idea: instead of lighting unity candles, they poured vials of sand into one long glass vase - Bethany's sand was purple and Brock's sand was black - and the two colors made really cool stripy layers. ^_^) I played Debussy's "Maid with the Flaxen Hair", which is one of my favorite pieces. They wrote their own vows - which were very tender and sweet, then their recessional was Brock's favorite piece by Thelonious Monk - a jazz musician. :D All in all it was awesome.
-- Then we returned the harp home (after dragging it down a set of stairs and around the building through a sidewalk that had by now accumulated 5 inches of snow, and it was now sleeting freezing rain.... the cart kept building snow behind it and bogging down) and we made one last trip downtown for my last chamber orchestra/choral union joint concert. We decided to leave after the first piece, which is the one I played in (Szcymanowski's Stabat Mater) because the Mozart requiem right after it was 50 minutes long. D: Anyway, we hurried home.
-- Tomorrow: work in the morning, then go to the church place for choir concerts... bring the university harp back to Humanities and then call it a weekend. Also catsit. I have to get Bethany's keys somehow before she leaves on her honeymoon..... hmm.