Today was not exactly a leisurely Saturday-  but I wouldn’t have traded it away for anything.  It may have been packed to the gills,  but at least it was packed with fun.

7:55 a.m. –  The day began with breakfast at Meli Cafe, one of our favorite breakfast spots – and the best place for us to eat today because Kathy had an appointment right down the road at 9.  We did not exactly have a Hall of Fame waitress today –  and Kathy’s soft poached eggs weren’t really soft – but it was just nice to sit across the table from each other, especially knowing that we would not lay eyes on each other again for ten hours- or more.

9:00 a.m. –   Once I was back home and had laundry rolling, it was time to sit down with my Marriage of Figaro score and continue working on the opera’s supertitles.   I’m still wrestling with Google Slides,  so I’m having to do a few things the hard way, but I still managed to get most of Act One done.  Playing in the background was a DVD of Richard Strauss’s Elektra from the BBC Proms – with Marilyn Zschau and Deborah Voigt.  And because I was home alone,  I cranked the volume to the point where it felt like the windows were shaking.  This is one of those operas where nothing less than FULL BLAST will do!

11:30 a.m. – On my way to Carthage,  I nearly forgot an extremely important bank errand which Kathy had entrusted to me.  Fortunately,  the teller at Educators’ Credit Union seemed to sense that I was in a ferocious hurry and moved with lightning speed, which I really appreciated.

12:00 noon – I got to Carthage in plenty of time to rehearse for Recital #1 of the day …. the junior voice recital of Marina Awes and MeriKatherine Bock.  They were both extremely well prepared,  so this was not a frantic last-minute plug-the-hole-in-the-dike kind of practice,  but just a brief warmup and a chance to start a couple of songs.  What a great feeling.

12:25 p.m.-   Because our pre-recital warmup was so brief, I ended up with enough time to run over to the student union and track down a friend and classmate from Luther, Karen DeBausche,  who is a highly regarded middle school band director down in Urbana, Illinois.  She was at Carthage to have her top band critiqued by our own James Ripley (another Luther grad)  and it was so fun to have at least a few minutes to catch up with each other.  Karen was (and I’m sure still is) a brilliant clarinetist and I had the pleasure of accompanying her for both her junior and senior recitals at Carthage.  The way her fingers flew across the keys of her clarinet was a sight to behold and I loved every moment of making music with her.  I’m so glad – and not the least bit surprised –  to see her doing so well as a band director.

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1:00 p.m.-  The Awes/Bock recital is a smashing success – and for as much as I loved everything they did,  I especially enjoyed the piece with which they opened the program:  the final duet from Claudio Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea.  I sang in this opera during graduate school, portraying the role of Ottone,  who loses his wife Poppea to the charms of Nero (yes, the same Nero who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned.)   The opera ends with a sublime love duet sung by Nero and Poppea,,  and every time I hear that music I melt all over again, just as I did back in 1984 as I stood backstage and listened to it being sung.

I was always going to play piano for MeriKatherine Bock,  who is my voice student – but I ended up also playing for Marina when her original accompanist had to withdraw.   All went well until the very last piece on the program, which was kind of a bluesy number sung by Marina to show off her belting technique.  The trouble came when I realized that the last page of the music had not been put in the binder.  (They had combined both sets of music into one binder for me right before the recital, and must have accidentally left off the last page of the last piece.)  Fortunately, it was one of those pieces with basically three chords-  so I just kept playing the same three chords until she stopped singing.   🙂  We had a good laugh about it backstage.

Otherwise,  it was an absolutely terrific recital-  and it was a real testament to hard both of these young women work.  They are both blessed with big, colorful voices and they might be forgiven for just standing there and pouring out a lot of drop-dead beautiful sound.   But both of them have worked really hard to develop and polish their technique, to thoroughly learn their repertoire,  and to harness and nurture their imposing gifts as performers.  And that was really evident today.   And it was also fun to see the two of them being friendly with one another…. because back in January and February, they had to portray icy adversaries in our production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica.  Today, of course,  they were best of friends again.

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2:45 p.m. –  I coached Olivia Wallace,  who is Susanna in our upcoming performances of The Marriage of Figaro.   She has some of the trickiest music in the score,  but she has worked hard and is close to having the role completely finished and memorized.  Moreover,  she is beginning to demonstrate her exceptionally fine gifts as an actress-  and even in a small practice room, without sets or costumes or props or cast mates,  there were plenty of moments when I thought to myself “Olivia Is Susanna!”   And fortunately,  that’s a compliment I can pay to just about everyone in our cast.  But today it was Olivia who was wowing me big time!

4:00 p.m. –  After some more work on the Marriage of Figaro supertitles,  I ran up to the Recital Hall- but this time around,  I wasn’t up on the stage –  I was in the audience enjoying the senior voice recital sung by Elise Dubrava,  who I have known since her days in the Tremper High School Chorale under the direction of my sister-in-law, Polly Amborn.   She may be a very quiet person,  but she sure managed to seize the stage today and make it her own.  Congrats, Elise- and to your pianist, Melissa Cardamone, on a lovely program.

5:30 p.m. –  After determining that Peter Burch didn’t feel the need to have too much of my time before his recital,  I actually zipped home for a quick rendezvous with my wife, who had just returned from Fiddler on the Roof dance practice.  (And by the way,  she spent much of the evening running lines with her friend Kate Potter Barrow.)  The role of Golde is both an honor and an important responsibility, and my wife is giving it her all.

7:00 p.m. – (Actually,  Peter’s recital started maybe 8 minutes late because we had to wait for a security guard to come and unlock the lighting booth so the recital hall stage could be properly illuminated.)   With two other voice recitals having already been sung earlier that day – and with the main stage spring musical being performed at the same time-  I feared that Peter’s crowd might be quite small,  but in fact we were both delighted by how many people came.

More importantly, Peter sang superbly tonight.  The biggest wrinkle was that somehow Peter’s translation insert never got printed off along with the rest of his program –  so the audience was going to be listening to ten different songs and/or arias in foreign languages and not know what he was singing about.   So I made the decision to give spoken introductions for the German,  Italian and French pieces- and I think it helped people to follow and understand all of the pieces he sang.  And as I set about getting my notes together for these announcements,  I was impressed at how readily and completely Peter knew the translation to just about every song, and by having to recite those translations to me right beforehand,  he was in effect reviewing all of these texts and their meaning,  which helped him to deliver even more expressive performances of them.  Win Win!

It’s hard to pick a single favorite from Peter’s recital, especially because he sang everything well …. Wandering Minstrel from The Mikado,  four songs by Schubert,  two by Faure,  and a set of three Italian pieces that included “Dalla sua Pace” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.   Maybe my very favorite piece of the night was the surprise encore (a surprise for the audience, not for me)  of a song that was very popular back when I was in junior high and high school –  “Sing” as in “Sing, sing a song.  Sing out loud. Sing out strong. Sing of happy, not sad.  Sing of good things, not bad.  Sing. Sing a Song. Make it simple to last your whole life long.  Don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing.  Sing a song.” It turns out that this was one of the favorite songs of Peter’s high school choir director,  and for as long as Peter can remember the top choir at his high school has finished out its last concert of the school year with “Sing.”  Peter asked me a long time ago if it would be okay with me if he sang this piece as an encore-  and of course I said yes.   And it was an absolutely wonderful moment, which he introduced so eloquently, and sang beautifully.

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9:15 p.m. –  After grabbing a very late supper at KFC,  I walked into the house to find myself greeted not by two dogs-  but rather four!  It turns out that Kathy’s good friend Kate Potter Barrow was over to help Kathy run lines,  and she was nice enough to bring her two dogs,  Reg and Pete,  along.   So the house is just full of love and fun tonight.

10:35 p.m. –  SNL is doing a tribute to Prince.   I may not be a Prince fan (because I simply don’t know any of his music)  but I am impressed by what I hear about him,  and maybe by the end of this program,  I will have a decent idea of just what made him special in the eyes of his many fans.

10:46 p.m. – Well, so much for watching the Prince thing.  (thank goodness for DVR)   I find my head dropping down to just inches above the keyboard of my laptop.   Time to draw this day to a close –  but not before reiterating what a joy today was from the start of it to its conclusion.   I don’t need every Saturday to be as action-packed as today was,  but to be perfectly honest,  I love days like today,  where it seems like one thing feeds right into the next,  and I actually find myself gaining energy and vitality as the day progresses.   Maybe that’s the litmus test for whether or not you’re devoting your life to the right things – by whether or not they leave you feeling energized – or depleted.  Yes, I know – I need to say ‘no’ a bit more often (and have begun doing so.)  But on those occasions when life unavoidably piles a ton onto one single day,  may it be piled up with one life-giving joy after another like I was able to experience today.