In the best case scenario, the first few days after my dear friend Walter’s funeral would have been a time of quiet contemplation and replenishment. But in inimitable Greg Berg fashion, the next three days were actually a wild riot of music-making … probably my most densely packed weekend of the entire year. But I am not complaining one little bit- because by the end of the weekend, I could fall into bed with the happiest kind of exhaustion …. the kind that comes when you’ve given your heart and soul to something (in this case, music) and been repaid a hundred-fold. And although it was an exhausting weekend in more ways than one, I also emerged replenished beyond all expectation.
Walter’s funeral was Thursday the 19th – and as if to register her own displeasure about his death, Mother Nature unleashed a very nasty ice storm that night that left much of our part of the state coated in hazardous ice. Add a dusting of light snow on top of that and the result was a lovely-looking but truly-dangerous mess. That was Friday morning, but by the afternoon the snow was done and the worst of the ice was melted …. and I was on my way to DeWitt, Iowa, the hometown to my voice student Fletcher Paulsen. He has a major trip to Poland coming up in June, and decided to sing a fundraising recital in the beautiful new auditorium of his high school alma mater – and I agreed to play piano for it. I said yes before thinking about how risky it was to plan a trip to Iowa in the middle of December, when winter weather can be a total nightmare. And it very nearly was in this case. School was closed Friday morning in DeWitt because of ice …. and probably should have been in Racine as well, for the same reason …. but my drive to Iowa went just fine. (Although when I got out of the car at the high school in DeWitt, I noticed that the front end of my car was completely coated with ice – an indication that the driving conditions were worse than I even realized.)
As for the concert itself – it was a terrific success. Fletcher was in fine voice and had put together a lovely program that mixed classical repertoire with musical theater, plus three Greg Berg originals (Mercy and Love, Pace, and Great & Glorious Light) which he insisted be part of the mix. I’m sure a few people were scared off by the dicey weather, but there was still a crowd of at least two hundred people who came to hear Fletcher and cheer him on. (And for one song, Fletcher was accompanied by his grandmother, who played for him all through grade school and high school. What a sweet moment that was.) It was the feel-good event of the year and I was really glad I could be part of it. And afterwards, we celebrated over Happy Joe’s Pizza, which I haven’t had in decades. And a former voice student of mine, Andrew Scott, drove more than an hour to surprise Fletcher- and it was fun to catch up with him as well.
(By the way, the little locally-owned motel where I stayed in DeWitt was perfectly lovely, except for the tinges of the movie Psycho around the edges. Just as I was walking into the office to register, the proprietor came running up – just like Norman Bates – and when I complimented him on the lovely holiday decorations, he said that his mother did them. And as he walked me down to room #4 (the Rainbow Room) he said that I could park my car anywhere I liked because I was the only guest in the motel that night …. which is almost word- for-word from the movie. But I had a fabulous night’s sleep, all the same.)
The Paulsens had offered to take me out for breakfast Saturday morning, but I decided that an earlier departure would give me some cushion in case anything went wrong, weather-wise or car-wise. So by 6 a.m. I was on the road, glad to be contending with nothing more than a few snow flurries. While I’d spent most of the drive down to DeWitt listening to the Metropolitan Opera channel on Sirius XM, I spent much of the trip back to Racine listening to the recording of Walter’s funeral and marveling especially at the beautifully chosen tributes from Kris and Jeff and Mark. I shed more than a couple of tears. By 10:45 I was back in Racine, safe and sound, and relieved that it had been as easy a drive as it was. In fact, the worst road conditions were in my own driveway. I pulled in, parked, shut off the motor, and then proceeded to slide all the way down the driveway and into the street – thanks to the ice. But at least I was home!
And that meant that I was back in plenty of time for a very important birthday celebration. At 1:00 that afternoon at Fountain Hills Senior Apartments, Kathy and Kate Barrow and I sang for the 100th birthday celebration of Henrietta Welch, a legendary music teacher in Racine (Kathy’s dad was among the thousands of young people who had her as a teacher) who wears 100 the way most people wear 70! (At this rate, she’ll reach 110 for sure.) We always come and sing a Christmas program at Fountain Hills but this one was extra special because of her 100th, so I arranged for a former Carthage student- Agnes Wojnicki- to surprise Henrietta with some Polish carols.
We also decided that on this special occasion, all of the holiday requests would be made by Henrietta herself (rather than taking them from anyone in the audience) and she worked me hard by asking for both “O Holy Night” and “Old Man River!” It was a neat time before a packed house of Henrietta’s family and admirers, which included her brand new great-great grandson.
I wish I could have stayed around for the open house and reception which followed, but I had to run off to Carthage for the tail end of rehearsal with the Kenosha Pops Band, practicing for that night’s Christmas concert, which is one of my happiest gigs of the year. This is the group for which I emcee and sing solos all summer long at the bandshell, and they reconvene for a free Christmas concert in Siebert Chapel, a space which is absolutely ideal for a group like this. This particular year, I sang “White Christmas,” “Auld lang syne,” and “Still, Still, Still” – narrated “Twas the Night before Christmas” – and played the mighty pipe organ for the concert’s finale, LeRoy Anderson’s “Christmas Festival” – and otherwise was happy to sit back and revel in the band’s marvelous performances.
Sunday morning was gentler than normal for me because the senior choir had the morning off, courtesy of the bell choir – who always provides the special music for the last Sunday before Christmas, which gives the hard-working members of the senior choir a much-needed break. (There is an extra jewel in the crowns for those senior choir members who also play bells, because they don’t get a break at all.) I was assisting minister, but otherwise I just got to enjoy the bell choir’s marvelous playing along with the rest of the congregation. I was only hard-at-work between services as I listened to a young 11-year-old boy, Justin, who had prepared two solos to play for our afternoon Christmas Eve service (and sounded terrific) – and also practiced with Carl Storck, a former usher at church who has Down Syndrome. Sometime ago, Carl asked me if he could sing for Christmas Eve – and there was something about the eagerness and excitement with which he asked me that made it impossible to say no. Generally speaking, Carl has absolutely no sense of pitch or rhythm at all – his singing is the vocal equivalent of just random pounding on a keyboard. But just for the heck of it, this time around I asked Carl if he could try to sing with a little more sense of the beat … and sure enough, Carl made this energetic gesture in the air as he sang the song a second time and there was a the faintest hint of a steady pulse. So I went one step further and asked Carl if he could sing the last note of each phrase a little longer: this little light of MINE, I’m gonna let it SHINE. And sure enough, he did it – although his way of lengthening those notes was to sing them on two pitches, like the 2-note “Oh!” right before “Star of Wonder, Star of Light” in “We Three Kings.” And from then on, including his performance two days later, Carl sang all of those last notes with that same two-note flourish. After all these years of having Carl sing the occasional solo and just letting it be whatever it was going to be, it was really cool to discover that Carl was capable of more than I ever realized.
Early that afternoon, Kate and Kathy and I sang for a memorial service for the father of our good RTG friend Kara Ernst, whose dad John had been a Racine police officer. The service was actually onstage at the Racine Theater Guild and it culminated in his favorite Christmas song, “O Holy Night.” For all of the times I’ve sung that, I felt an extra mantle of responsibility in singing it under these particular circumstances – for the sake of bringing some comfort to this grieving family.
From there, I dashed from the RTG to First United Methodist Church to lead rehearsal for that night’s 9th Annual Singalong Messiah. When it comes to conducting an orchestra, I have much more zeal than skill, but the organizers of this Messiah always gather a group of exceptionally proficient and patient musicians who manage to make sense of my flailing failing on the podium, and a fine performances always manages to emerge. What made things a little dicey this time around is that our soprano soloist, Sarah Gorke (who has been part of every single Singalong Messiah) was snowed in up in Marshfield and unable to get to us – which meant that I had to secure a replacement. Both Sarah and I thought of the same person- a fine soprano who recently graduated from UW-Parkside, Jennifer Hansen, who was happy to be asked and eager to undertake the task. (She had sung Messiah before but it had been awhile.) And fortunately, our rehearsal with orchestra went swimmingly- as if we had been coaching the music for quite some time- and the other three soloists, Libbi, Andrew and Eliot, were all in fine form as well.
The Sing Along actually began a couple of minutes before 6 with a prelude sung by Musici Amici (the group is comprised of singers who at one point or another sang under my direction in Carthage’s Lincoln Chamber Singers) followed by a rendition of “O Holy Night” sung by two of my Carthage voice students who live close by – Nick Huff and Mike Anderle. As for the Messiah itself, it was an exciting and fun … and one of my favorite things about it was that I looked out at the audience and saw the faces of four or five of my young students whom I had invited to come – several of whom were experiencing Messiah for the very first time. Actually, that was maybe the coolest thing of all – that I could look out and see the weathered faces of a Messiah veteran like Mike Swift who has literally sung all or part of this work a dozen times or more … and right next to them would be a high schooler or college student singing at the top of their lungs – Andrew McNair or Jason Martin or Daryle Sturino – singing at least some of this magnificent music of Handel for the first time in their young lives. These singalong performances have a ‘we’re all in this together’ quality to them that only enhances their excitement, and it’s especially cool when it involves young and old alike.
And there you have it: the kind of weekend which prompts two perfectly legitimate questions: 1) Are you insane? and 2) How can it be so hard to say a little two-letter word like “no”? The answer to 1) is “perhaps. The jury is still out.” The answer to 2) is “it’s really hard to say no when music is doing the asking.” Sure, the query might appear to come from a beloved family friend celebrating her 100th birthday… or a cherished private voice student planning a really special recital … or whoever …. but when it’s about the joy of making music, that little word “no” proves elusive indeed. Which is not to say that I’m utterly incapable of saying it. I have become especially good at saying it when it involves playing background music at posh parties and receptions. (You know I consider you a good friend if I say yes to this kind of request.) I also say “no” very easily if it’s a gig that involves hauling in an electric keyboard; life is way too short to be engaged in that kind of foolishness! But when great music is involved – or making music with great people – or singing or playing for people I love – then YES is almost certainly the answer I will give.
pictured above: Kate Barrow, Kathy and I with our dear friend Henrietta Welch. This birthday celebration took place on December 21st, but her actual birthday is Christmas Day. And what a privilege it was for us to be part of the festivities celebrating her 100th birthday.