Celebrity Moments

I had a busy but good weekend, and now I'm tired, but I have work to do and a very busy week. Saturday morning was the first combined choir rehearsal for the Mozart Requiem. This is a benefit concert being performed in April involving choirs from at least four churches and two colleges. They're anticipating about 250 singers at the concert. We had probably more than 100 at the rehearsal, filling the chapel at the church where we rehearsed. I love singing in big groups like that, especially music like that.

The rehearsal was good for my ego, too. I had a minor celebrity moment. During a break, the people around me in the soprano section were introducing ourselves, which got into the kinds of conversations you have when making introductions, talking about unusual spellings of our names and what people seem to think our names are. I mentioned that people were always trying to call me "Shannon," but it was actually "Shanna." One of the ladies I was talking with said, "There's an author who has that name, Shanna Swendson." I don't know if she believed me at first when I said that was me, but then all the other ladies were impressed that someone had heard of me, so I must be famous. I didn't have to sign any autographs, though.

And then I was really flattered when the lady sitting next to me turned out to be the director of one of the participating choirs, and she passed me a note during the rehearsal, asking if I could sing at her church for Good Friday. I told her I needed to sing at my church. Then on Sunday morning I told my choir director that he'd better treat me right because other directors were trying to poach me. I don't know if she just wanted to fill out a choir (and I have a pretty big voice, so I can be a second soprano section on my own, as I had to be on Sunday) or if she thought I was a soloist.

Then Sunday morning my kindergarteners sang. We had a moment of panic when the other director forgot to bring the scarves (fortunately, she lives nearby and was able to get them in time), but the kids mostly needed to practice singing because they keep forgetting the words. Or else they get bored halfway through the song because the same words repeat and they just stop singing them midway through. There's not a lot of unison in the movement because they are five. I think there was also some "left" and "right" confusion. I had worked out how to do the movements for them in mirror image, so they could just look at me and copy me, but there were a few who insisted on doing exactly what I was doing, with the same hand I was using, so they're opposite from everyone else. If you can tolerate high levels of cute, here's the clip:



Now I need to come up with something to do for the Palm Sunday song. I hadn't thought you could make hosannas boring, but apparently you can.