“Get me to the church on time!”

Today was the wedding day of my former student/ now friend Rita Torcaso – and any normal person would have let the wedding and reception be the only big item on the day’s agenda.   But no, not Greg Berg.   In a moment of characteristic weakness and recklessness,  I agreed to do some piano accompanying this morning for the choir director at Union Grove High School, playing for her students for their district solo & ensemble competition.  Normally she would just play for most if not all of her students, but this time around she was in a bind because today was the day that she and her husband were supposed to move back into their house which was largely destroyed by one of Kenosha’s freak tornados back on January 7th.  Consequently,  she couldn’t be at contest and needed a couple of people to step in and accompany in her place.  That’s something I know how to do and I thought it might be fun to do something at a solo & ensemble contest outside of the familiar haunts of Kenosha or Racine.  .   .  so I said I could do it if I could be back in time for a 12 noon wedding for which I was the organist.  Fine, she said – and it seemed like it was going to be a piece of cake.

Not quite.   The first sign of trouble was that the contest was not in Union Grove – which is an easy half hour from Racine – but rather in Muskego, which is maybe another 20 minutes further north and west.   (I guess we could call this a case of failing to read the fine print.)    The second sign of trouble was that my last “client” was scheduled to sing at 10:32 – while I had hoped to be actually out the door and on my way back home by then.   So we were cutting it closer than I would have liked, but c’est la vie.

But this was a much much smaller contest than Kenosha’s or Racine’s.  In fact, there was a grand total of 7 rooms with competitors – basically all located in a single hallway of Muskego High School –  which led me to believe that things would run smoothly and on time . . .  and maybe even ahead of schedule.

Wrong.  Wrong.  Wrong.   As bad luck would have it,  the room where I was to play for the last 5 of my 12 students fell behind schedule, thanks mostly to an overly chatty judge . . . 10 minutes behind within the first half hour of competition – 20 minutes behind by 9:00 – and a full half hour behind schedule as we approached 10:00. . .   which was going to push my departure time to after 11:00 –  way too late for me to get to the wedding on time unless I drove 110 mph all the way home.  ( The wedding was in the heart of Kenosha. )  I’m not sure I can convey how much of a basket case I was as I sat there in Room #4,  wondering how in the world I was going to manage to play for all of my singers without arriving at the wedding in time for the unity  candle.   The worst was when I sat and listened to a young pianist attempt to play Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” – at the tempo of a funeral dirge – with a dozen wrong notes per measure – and TWICE she had to stop and start over again.  ( If it were possible for a human being to actually jump out of their skin,  I would have done just that. ) This earnest young lady played at five minutes to ten,  and there were four people after her before it would finally be time for me to begin playing  for my five singers.  Any way you sliced it, this was a disaster waiting to happen. . . and all that remained to be seen was exactly who would murder me when I failed to appear for the wedding –  the bride,  her parents, the groom, his parents, or Kathy?  (Actually,  they would probably take turns doing the honors.)

Part of what made it especially unnerving was that I was basically amidst complete strangers,  unlike the Kenosha contest where I feel like I know 90 % of the people there and they know me. . .  and were I to find myself in such a predicament,  I feel like I would only have to walk maybe 10 feet before I would run into someone who could and would help me out of whatever jam I found myself in.  But what was I to do so far from my home turf?  Stand out in the hallway and cry “can anybody here play “Vergin tutto amor” for me in 45 minutes?”  ?     Then it hit me-  the one and only familiar face I had seen there apart from the Union Grove kids was a guy who used to conduct choirs at Tremper. . .  Derek Mahan. . .  and because Rita actually student taught with him,  I figured he might be especially sympathetic to my plight.   I just had to find the guy-  which I managed to do in about 15 seconds (that’s the nice part about a really small contest) –   and he very graciously agreed to play for my last two singers. . . .  which meant that I could walk out the door at 10:50 instead of 11:10.    And at 11:40, with a gigantic sense of relief,  I walked through the door of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church – 20 whole minutes before the wedding was to begin.  .  . and nearly danced a jig as I made my way up the stairs to the balcony. . . relieved and also determined to never do this to myself again. Once upon a time,  a day like this – piled up with obligations way too close to conflicting with each other – would have been a bracing bit of fun.  Now at the ripe old age of 48, a day like this seems like an exhausting exercise in stupidity.

It was also humbling, in a way- because Solo & Ensemble in Kenosha and Racine is the one day of the year (I’ve blogged about this before)  where I get to be the Big Man on Campus,  strutting around the hallways like I’m the all- conference quarterback of the football team or president of the student body.  But in the hallways of Muskego High School,  I wasn’t even a probationary member of the physics club.   I was just one more person in those hallways that nobody knew – who knew nobody . . .  and that’s good, too, because a day like this has got to be about the students and about the music.   And about getting to the church on time.