MAKING BEAUTIFUL MUSIC

Every Christmas season Gary and I perform a Christmas concert of sorts for neighbours and visitors to our home during the season.

The last couple of years our concert has pretty much been the same repertoire, as Gary's declining vision made it impossible for him to learn new music - in fact last year he played strictly by memory, as he couldn't see the music.  It was a particular sore spot with him that he could not take full advantage of the many different stops and voices on his "new to him" pipe organ, due to his failing eye sight.

Well that has all changed, thankfully.  His successful eye surgeries this spring has resulted in a very happy organist this year... so much so that he has announced that this year, our Christmas concert will be all new material.

Wish he would have clued me in to this... about July!  If he is learning new material, it means I have to also... and right now my calendar is kind of full.  I am working on so many projects again, I really don't know if I can squeeze in an hour or so every evening to learn and practice new music.

Still, I don't want to let him down, so last evening we sat at our instruments and planned our event.  Yup - looks like a lot of practice coming up for me!  Still, it could be worse - at least it is Christmas music which is such a joy to play, and I do enjoy making beautiful music with my husband!

We tried our own version of  "Jesus Jesus rest your head".  He played the accompaniment with the bells on the organ, and I did the melody on the piano using the harp.  We played it very slow like a lullaby  - which if you read the words or "Study the Poetry" like a very gifted choral director used to say - you will find that it IS a lullaby.  The resulting rendition was beautiful, soothing, peaceful.

So that's one down, many more to go.  I have to say - that pipe organ is amazing!  And so is the organist who plays it.  This is going to be a wonderful concert when we get it all practiced and put together.

You are all invited to come and listen... and in case you can't make it, we'll record a few songs to share here.