When I walked into the choir room at Holy Communion tonight, I nearly fainted dead away, thanks to the quite unexpected sight of a beautiful Baldwin Grand Piano sitting where a banged up old upright piano had been as recently as Sunday. The piano was not entirely a surprise; several month ago my friend Eric Carlson called to let me know that a couple who was about to move out of the area did not want to keep their piano and were willing to donate it to a church in the area. Eric immediately thought of Holy Communion because he knew we could really use it- and even more important than that, he knew that it would be put to good use and also very lovingly cared for. Their only stipulation was that they wanted the piano to remain in their house while it was on the market; we could have it once their house was sold. In this day and age, that might very well have meant a very very long wait, and I resigned myself to the piano not coming our way for perhaps a year or more. But then Eric called several days ago with the news that these nice folks had sold their house and that the piano was ours as soon as we could arrange for it to be moved. Eric promised to call Skip, our church’s sexton, who would take care of all that- but I figured that it would take a few days or perhaps even a week or two before the piano would actually cross our threshold. But tonight, when I walked into the choir room, there it was in all its beautiful glory! It took my breath away.
Right then and there, I decided that the senior choir needed to be surprised by this in much the same way I had been. So when the members of the Senior Choir came to church tonight, they found a note from me taped up on the front door instructing them to take a seat in the lounge rather than head right on down to the choir room as they normally would. At 7:31, I came out of the office and into the lounge, where the puzzled, even nervous members of the choir were sitting. (I think a few of them maybe thought that I was going to give a big speech about how rehearsal attendance has been rather poor this fall- while others thought I maybe was planning to play some kind of “bonding game” to draw the group closer together. And at least one choir member told me afterwards that they were afraid that I was going to deliver some sort of bad news, like I was leaving Holy Communion or maybe resigning for health reasons. . . evidently thinking that I wanted them seated in comfortable chairs to receive such terrible news. My word- If I’d known this was going to generate such worry and imaginative speculation, I never would have done the whole meet-in-the-lounge thing at all! ) Anyway, I walked into the lounge and invited everyone to head on down to the choir room- and then hurried ahead so that I would have a bird’s eye view of them as they walked through the doorway and caught a glimpse of the surprise for themselves. I wish you could have seen the look on each face as they walked into the room and saw the surprise for themselves. It was beautiful to behold- especially those whose jaws practically clunked on the floor from shock and amazement.
What’s really amazing is that when I started at Holy Communion back in 1988, they didn’t have even one really good piano . . . let alone a grand piano. They had a superb music ministry that had somehow come about with only rickety upright pianos on hand. But I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised at how such excellence could exist without the finer things in place. My alma mater, Luther College, had one of the finest music departments of any liberal arts college in the country…. and they managed it without a music building, as such, but rather by farming out our classes and rehearsals to the basements and back rooms of various buildings scattered around the campus. We took great pride in the fact that we were achieving such greatness without the kind of fancy music building like our counterparts at St. Olaf had – or even a non-fancy music building. (By the way, my class JUST missed being in the Jensen Hall of Music, which opened for business the fall after we graduated – and I think that was just fine. Yes, it would have been fun- but what we had was fun, too.)
Anyway, the morale of the story is that it takes more than beautiful buildings and fancy grand pianos to make great music-making possible…. and by the same token, if you’re fortunate to have a fancy building and/or a grand piano, that in no way guarantees wonderful music-making. For that, you need people…. and their gifts….. and their enthusiasm and heart. So even though it may sound corny, it happens to be true that as I stood in that choir room tonight and watched those choir members walk in one by one, it was a nice reminder that they make all the difference in the world – and that as glorious as it is to have this grand piano, it is even more glorious that I get to stand in front of this marvelous group of men and women as their director. That’s the most exciting part of all this, and if I ever found myself in the strange position of having to choose between this beautiful Grand Piano and my choir members, it is they whom I would choose- It is they who make this worth it. This Baldwin grand piano is an extraordinarily lovely gift – and I will enjoy it with all my heart – but I hope it serves as a reminder to me of what matters most when it comes to making beautiful music together.
On the other hand, it sure is cool to have a grand piano in the choir room!
pictured above: Holy Communion’s grand piano, and a few of the senior choir members who were seeing this gift for the very first time.