Oh hello.  It’s been a minute.

I’ve been riding the waves of concerts, rehearsals, practice, and life – sometimes surfing; sometimes frantically paddling; sometimes doing that swan thing where you project the one but are actually doing the other.  The rush and peaks of the waves always sneak up, no matter how far in advance I commit to a concert or a gig and start working on the rep – wait, just how many pages does that Stanford/Sheehan/Kodály have?? and why so many flats (C-flat major, I’m looking at you)?? – and on the upswell, the sheer momentum almost physically doesn’t allow for me to pop out and say hello, say what I’m about to be doing, what I’m already doing – whereas after a performance or two, almost invariably followed (or interspersed) by a few masses, I’m lying on the beach in this metaphor, a bit sunburned and still tasting salt, but also still tasting the rush of adrenaline, and still humming some alto line that annoys my 5-year-old in the bath almost more than me soaping his hair.  At which point it seems, why write?  I towel off the munchkin, pour a glass of celebratory wine, and wait for the next breaker.

This week is one of those waves.  But let me rewind for a moment, to the season-opening wave last month that I rode and crested and about which I failed to email: the Evergreen Ensemble’s 2024-25 inaugural program, Liturgy.

You know how every job has bits they have to pay you for, and bits you’d do for free?  Evergreen is so squarely in the latter bucket for me (though David, if you’re reading, please keep paying me 😛).  Based in Edmonds (just a quick hop north of Seattle), this is a still-relatively-new group of ~24ish singers, the exact membership of which shifts based on the needs of the program and the singers’ availability.  Everyone in it is just so on top of their game – there are exactly zero moments of, oh, I wish $UNNAMED_SECTION wouldn’t slowly sink a whole step flat over that passage – we open our mouths and now that’s surfing, like a water ballet riding the same wave (albeit everyone is wearing concert black).

We kicked off this season with Benedict Sheehan’s soaring Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is mouthful to name and to sing.  It drew heavily on Russian Orthodox textures, with funkier keys and occasionally funkier meters than other Cyrillic-tradition works I’ve encountered.  I learned the word "oktavist" while rehearsing this piece -- as in, an exceptionally-low voiced dude who can sing an octave below the bass staff; we got to work with two for these performances. We also got to meet and work with the composer – as if the humanity of phonating together in space and time wasn’t enough, the additional tie of singing someone’s music with and to them just expanded the dimensions here.  Here’s the YouTube link to one of the performances.  What a way to start.

The sprints this week are all at Blessed Sacrament, the North Seattle church where I’ve been a staff singer for the last year and change.  Their music program has been expanding in a big way under their new director – last year the staff doubled from 4 to 8 and was dubbed the Cantorei; this year the group doubled again to 16 (fresh pic above!).  They’ve also acquired a small fortune in fancy instruments: a harpsichord, a continuo organ (about the size of my washing machine, but which, despite LG’s best tinkly your-clothes-are-clean chime, plays much more tunefully), a concert grand piano, and a giant church organ, which required seismic retrofitting of the 1914 brick structure to safely install. (Ask me sometime about the minor flood in the church while the organ was still being stored in pieces during loft construction, and the phalanx of choristers and firemen who ferried each pipe to safety, at least one of us in 4-inch platforms...)

All of the above opens up lots of new musical options.  With 16 staff singers, we can flesh out a double-choir banger like the Stanford Magnificat or a Rheinberger antiphonal mass; with the organ, there’s all kinds of gorgeous repertoire with which we can now fill every last inch of the soaring sanctuary.  It’s so cool to walk in and hear the massive pipes vibrating through the entire structure; doubly so to sing with them.

So!  This Friday, the newly-expanded Cantorei presents our first concert of the season, Full of Grace, this Friday, Oct. 4 at 7:30 PM.  The group will be singing from the choir loft, which ought to make the experience both acoustically wonderful and experientially meditative.  There will be more concerts, in a more traditional format, in the spring as well. Oh, and it's free!

When/Where: This Friday, Oct. 4 at 7:30 PM @ Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church [maps]

Also this weekend is Rosary Sunday – a big one for this church, and it’s been programmed accordingly.  The noon Cantorei-sung mass – Sunday, Oct. 6 at 12:00 PM – will feature William Walton’s Jubilate Deo, and the Zoltán Kodály Missa Brevis, both with that massive new organ I mentioned.  If you’re curious what I disappear off to every Sunday morning, this would be a cool one to consider attending (non-Catholics welcome!) or livestreaming.

When/Where: Sunday, Oct. 6, 12:300 PM @ Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church.

Lastly, briefly: somehow it’s already October, which means that quite soon we’ll be tumbling into the holiday season.  In addition to the ginger spice donut special at our neighborhood shop, I’m looking forward to some exciting performances in November and December.  More on these under separate cover; for now, I’ll leave you with these bullet points:
 

• Handel’s Dixit Dominus with Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus – an absolute banger from the man who brought us the Messiah, with an alto aria sung by yours truly;

• That same guy’s Messiah with Blessed Sacrament, this year with both an evening and a matinee performance (solos!);

• A Christmas concert with Evergreen.

Stay warm (or stay cool, those of you currently in the US heat wave!), have an extra coffee wherever you are as the light wanes, and hope to see you out there.  Thanks as always for reading. :)

-nh