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This last weekend was a lot, church-and-music-wise. All good!
Saturday morning a bunch of people from our stake (a stake is a collection of wards/congregations, and in this area includes the wards in an area about an hour's drive in diameter), including me, went to an organ workshop about an hour away put on by the stake adjacent-ish to ours. So apparently there are these "traveling organ workshops" where instructors from BYU go all around the country (and pull in local instructors as well) to teach people about the organ, because the vast majority of LDS meetinghouses have an organ and there are tons of people like myself who play piano and fake playing the organ when needed but we don't actually really know how to do it. I learned a TON and I'm just sad that A. couldn't go (there were also cool activities for youth) -- I'd originally signed him up but then realized it was Orchestra Weekend.
There is a set of three youth orchestras here; the lowest tier is for beginners, the middle for intermediate students, and the top for high-school/advanced players. E. is in the highest one; the players are by and large rather good and they play real repertoire -- we joked with her, when she made it in, that she was finally in an orchestra that people would willingly go see even if they weren't related to the kid. (It's free. I wouldn't pay to see it, but as a free concert it's very reasonable!) A. is in the middle one this year with violin, although he's started making noises about additionally wanting to do the beginner one for trombone next year, which I thought was crazy until I learned at the concert that several kids are doing multiple orchestras, so I guess it's just what the cool kids do now. Anyway, the low/middle orchestras have their concert on Saturday, and the high-tier has its concert on Sunday. Additionally, E. has been volunteering for the low/middle orchestras because they desperately need violas (they both currently have ZERO), and the high-tier strings also had a commission to play one song in pit with, I guess, the local youth ballet corps Sat. night. So on Saturday A. was going from 12:45-4pm (call was at 12:45) and E. was going from 10am-6:15pm. (She also had a dress rehearsal Sat. morning.) D. did a lot of shuttling kids back and forth while I was doing my stuff!
So the organ workshop was done in time for me to go to the concert at 3pm, and then after that I went directly to church because this weekend was Stake Conference (a stake is a collection of wards/congregations, and twice a year we have a "conference" where everyone in the stake gets together for meetings; there are two meetings on Saturday and one on Sunday) and I had agreed to put together a choir for the Sat. night session, and I made everyone come practice at 5pm. I am always rather staggered and humbled by the number of people who actually show up for these things, and also the organist (Awesome Organist) was amazing, and I don't think he actually ate dinner because he had played for a previous session (which I was not at). (Okay, I also did not properly eat dinner until afterwards either, though I ate half of a sandwich I had the foresight to bring with me.) It was SUPER fun -- conducting choir is really my second favorite thing in church-music world, when I can't sing with a really good set, which is actually my favorite -- and the choir was just marvelous, a lot of them had done work outside choir practice to learn the music, and they waaaaaatched me (this is the one thing I ask of my choirs, and I think it's funny how most of my church choir directors (some of whom admittedly aren't experienced, but some of whom are!) don't ask for that as insistently as I do! but I learned it from my college choir director, and think it just makes such a difference to where the choir is one entity instead of a bunch of people singing, which have I mentioned, favorite thing in the world?) and it just went really well except that the person in charge of the meeting didn't tell everyone to sit down as we were doing the prelude song. But he knows to do that now (and now I know to cue him to do it if he forgets), and it was maybe even worth it to see how, even though there was a lot of talking in the first and second verses, everyone got quieter and quieter as the song went on, and when we ended the song on a pianissimo amen there was no sound at all from the congregation.
I got home at 8:30pm, having left home at 7:30am. It is really nothing short of divine intervention that I actually had the foresight to pack everything I needed for the entire day, and do everything in advance I needed to -- so I had the choir music, I had church dress and shoes, I had the kids get their orchestra clothes out (two sets for E, who wore white-and-black for the lower concert and black for the ballet), and past!me even remembered, or was prompted to remember, a week in advance to print out music for the session I was not at, thank God (literally).
Okay, so there was one Stake Conference meeting remaining: the Sunday morning meeting. Awesome Music Guy (AMG) has been doing a youth choir for Stake Conference for the past couple of years, and he agreed to do it again and asked if I'd play piano for it, which I was happy to do... less happy when I got his arrangement (he always writes arrangements for these things, which just blows my mind) which has this impossible-for-me-to-read rhythm in both hands, which I had to write out subdivided into sixteenths and clap out (thank you childhood piano teacher for teaching me to clap out rhythms!) and practice for a week and a half before I got it in my fingers, but thank goodness the rest of it's pretty easy once the rhythm is mastered (and the rhythm is also fine once I got it in my fingers, it just took a while). AMG called that evening to ask if I could do the instrumental rehearsal Sunday morning (there were three instrumentalists, two of which were his kids) before the choir showed up. Of course I could.
One more thing you have to know. Each stake (collection of wards/congregations) has a Stake President, who has two counselors (the "Stake Presidency"), and they oversee the entire stake. Our stake president (henceforth SP) had been, at this point, stake president for nine years, which is a long time! (I suspect that COVID probably extended his tenure.) I must confess that in the past I didn't like SP all that much (I really only saw him speak from a distance until recently) -- I found him rather bombastic and kind of judgmental, and Sunday he said to the assembled stake, "Thank you for being patient with me speaking too long all these years," and we all laughed because it's a running joke in the stake that he always takes too much time and always makes meetings run over time. (He spoke too long on Sunday too.)
The way this works, of course, is that I'm sure partially because of this, I was then called, a year and a half ago, to be the stake music coordinator (which mostly means coordinating the music for stake conference -- hence why I had my fingers in so many things this weekend-- I refused to coordinate the Christmas stake program, which I might do if I were a better person, but I just am not ) and I was basically working directly underneath him. I saw a very very little bit of the side of how much work it is to be a stake president -- it is a lay calling for which they don't get paid -- and how SP does legitimately care about the stake even if often I disagree with the way he shows it, and I think he's aware of at least some of his shortcomings (like talking too much, above) which is always a good look, and he's always been nice to me personally, so, okay, fine, I now admire things about him even if I still can't say he is my favorite person. Anyway, they announced last month that the area authorities would be visiting and calling a new Stake Presidency this weekend. They select the presidency a day or two beforehand and then announce it on Sunday.
The new Stake President (henceforth new!SP) is a man who was my bishop... ten years ago, gosh. I wrote about him some here -- he is Bishop S in that post. He's in a different ward now, and I don't see him that often, and in the interim he and family went to a different country as missionaries for a couple of years -- but whenever I do see him I am struck by how genuinely interested he is in me and my family as people, even though we're not, like, super close or anything. I think he is a lovely person and has become even more lovely over the years, and although I imagine he will be a somewhat cautious new!SP and I'm sure more conservative than I would like, I think he will be overall awesome. (And I think he will probably not speak as long as old!SP!)
The first counselor was someone I don't know (from the half of the stake that's farther away) but he seems great too, and the new second counselor was announced to be... AMG. I should have at least suspected when he was going to be late for rehearsal Sunday! (he's a control freak about these things, like me, and it was very uncharacteristic of him to skip out.) He is also a wonderful person and he will be awesome. And will hopefully counter some of new!SP's tendency to be cautious about music. Also, now I will almost certainly be reporting to AMG... which I think could be good. I think AMG has a pretty reasonable idea, by now, of what my strengths and weaknesses are (I do have some fundamental weaknesses as someone in this calling -- like -- I hate calling random people to ask them to do things and won't do it, which is really not ideal, though fortunately I am willing to text random people to ask them to do music and generally speaking people are OK with that), and we might do some cool music stuff. Might be more work for me, lol, but hopefully good work, the kind that's fun, like this weekend was.
The youth choir was wonderful, it was good we had the instrumentalists practice but they sounded wonderful, church ended at 12:10 (ten minutes late, lol) and that was it for me for church for that weekend, and E had just enough time for lunch before she skipped off to call for her Sunday orchestra concert, and after the concert we went out for dinner like we always do on Orchestra Weekend :D Props to E, who had even more stuff going on than I did!
The weekend was sort of an exercise in all the things I absolutely love and all the things I kind of don't love about my church. I love sort of the orderly succession of power that happens every few years, and it's actually really cool to see how much love and faith there is involved in it by both the old and the new presidencies. (In this case, I must admit it helps that I like new!SP much more than old!SP.) And at the same time, they call all these stake leaders... all of them are men of course... and they're like, "...and their wives are great too!" and some of the wives got up and spoke and it's like... okay but... some of these women are absolutely incredible and what kind of church is this in the year 2026 that they aren't also the leaders? More than a bit weird! Though the good outweighs the bad, for me (maybe it wouldn't if I had any desire to be in church leadership, which I don't). Because also the organ workshop was simply amazing. The amount of work and love that had to go into making that happen... and it was just so really well put together... my church just does a really good job at things like that, and because they're centralized they can really make some very cool things happen. (Though to be fair the reason it was free -- did I mention it was totally free?? -- was because an individual apparently gave a ton of money to fund these "traveling workshops." But it's certainly the centralized organization that makes it possible as well!) And like I said I am always absolutely blown away by and so grateful for how much commitment people give to choir.
Saturday morning a bunch of people from our stake (a stake is a collection of wards/congregations, and in this area includes the wards in an area about an hour's drive in diameter), including me, went to an organ workshop about an hour away put on by the stake adjacent-ish to ours. So apparently there are these "traveling organ workshops" where instructors from BYU go all around the country (and pull in local instructors as well) to teach people about the organ, because the vast majority of LDS meetinghouses have an organ and there are tons of people like myself who play piano and fake playing the organ when needed but we don't actually really know how to do it. I learned a TON and I'm just sad that A. couldn't go (there were also cool activities for youth) -- I'd originally signed him up but then realized it was Orchestra Weekend.
There is a set of three youth orchestras here; the lowest tier is for beginners, the middle for intermediate students, and the top for high-school/advanced players. E. is in the highest one; the players are by and large rather good and they play real repertoire -- we joked with her, when she made it in, that she was finally in an orchestra that people would willingly go see even if they weren't related to the kid. (It's free. I wouldn't pay to see it, but as a free concert it's very reasonable!) A. is in the middle one this year with violin, although he's started making noises about additionally wanting to do the beginner one for trombone next year, which I thought was crazy until I learned at the concert that several kids are doing multiple orchestras, so I guess it's just what the cool kids do now. Anyway, the low/middle orchestras have their concert on Saturday, and the high-tier has its concert on Sunday. Additionally, E. has been volunteering for the low/middle orchestras because they desperately need violas (they both currently have ZERO), and the high-tier strings also had a commission to play one song in pit with, I guess, the local youth ballet corps Sat. night. So on Saturday A. was going from 12:45-4pm (call was at 12:45) and E. was going from 10am-6:15pm. (She also had a dress rehearsal Sat. morning.) D. did a lot of shuttling kids back and forth while I was doing my stuff!
So the organ workshop was done in time for me to go to the concert at 3pm, and then after that I went directly to church because this weekend was Stake Conference (a stake is a collection of wards/congregations, and twice a year we have a "conference" where everyone in the stake gets together for meetings; there are two meetings on Saturday and one on Sunday) and I had agreed to put together a choir for the Sat. night session, and I made everyone come practice at 5pm. I am always rather staggered and humbled by the number of people who actually show up for these things, and also the organist (Awesome Organist) was amazing, and I don't think he actually ate dinner because he had played for a previous session (which I was not at). (Okay, I also did not properly eat dinner until afterwards either, though I ate half of a sandwich I had the foresight to bring with me.) It was SUPER fun -- conducting choir is really my second favorite thing in church-music world, when I can't sing with a really good set, which is actually my favorite -- and the choir was just marvelous, a lot of them had done work outside choir practice to learn the music, and they waaaaaatched me (this is the one thing I ask of my choirs, and I think it's funny how most of my church choir directors (some of whom admittedly aren't experienced, but some of whom are!) don't ask for that as insistently as I do! but I learned it from my college choir director, and think it just makes such a difference to where the choir is one entity instead of a bunch of people singing, which have I mentioned, favorite thing in the world?) and it just went really well except that the person in charge of the meeting didn't tell everyone to sit down as we were doing the prelude song. But he knows to do that now (and now I know to cue him to do it if he forgets), and it was maybe even worth it to see how, even though there was a lot of talking in the first and second verses, everyone got quieter and quieter as the song went on, and when we ended the song on a pianissimo amen there was no sound at all from the congregation.
I got home at 8:30pm, having left home at 7:30am. It is really nothing short of divine intervention that I actually had the foresight to pack everything I needed for the entire day, and do everything in advance I needed to -- so I had the choir music, I had church dress and shoes, I had the kids get their orchestra clothes out (two sets for E, who wore white-and-black for the lower concert and black for the ballet), and past!me even remembered, or was prompted to remember, a week in advance to print out music for the session I was not at, thank God (literally).
Okay, so there was one Stake Conference meeting remaining: the Sunday morning meeting. Awesome Music Guy (AMG) has been doing a youth choir for Stake Conference for the past couple of years, and he agreed to do it again and asked if I'd play piano for it, which I was happy to do... less happy when I got his arrangement (he always writes arrangements for these things, which just blows my mind) which has this impossible-for-me-to-read rhythm in both hands, which I had to write out subdivided into sixteenths and clap out (thank you childhood piano teacher for teaching me to clap out rhythms!) and practice for a week and a half before I got it in my fingers, but thank goodness the rest of it's pretty easy once the rhythm is mastered (and the rhythm is also fine once I got it in my fingers, it just took a while). AMG called that evening to ask if I could do the instrumental rehearsal Sunday morning (there were three instrumentalists, two of which were his kids) before the choir showed up. Of course I could.
One more thing you have to know. Each stake (collection of wards/congregations) has a Stake President, who has two counselors (the "Stake Presidency"), and they oversee the entire stake. Our stake president (henceforth SP) had been, at this point, stake president for nine years, which is a long time! (I suspect that COVID probably extended his tenure.) I must confess that in the past I didn't like SP all that much (I really only saw him speak from a distance until recently) -- I found him rather bombastic and kind of judgmental, and Sunday he said to the assembled stake, "Thank you for being patient with me speaking too long all these years," and we all laughed because it's a running joke in the stake that he always takes too much time and always makes meetings run over time. (He spoke too long on Sunday too.)
The way this works, of course, is that I'm sure partially because of this, I was then called, a year and a half ago, to be the stake music coordinator (which mostly means coordinating the music for stake conference -- hence why I had my fingers in so many things this weekend-- I refused to coordinate the Christmas stake program, which I might do if I were a better person, but I just am not ) and I was basically working directly underneath him. I saw a very very little bit of the side of how much work it is to be a stake president -- it is a lay calling for which they don't get paid -- and how SP does legitimately care about the stake even if often I disagree with the way he shows it, and I think he's aware of at least some of his shortcomings (like talking too much, above) which is always a good look, and he's always been nice to me personally, so, okay, fine, I now admire things about him even if I still can't say he is my favorite person. Anyway, they announced last month that the area authorities would be visiting and calling a new Stake Presidency this weekend. They select the presidency a day or two beforehand and then announce it on Sunday.
The new Stake President (henceforth new!SP) is a man who was my bishop... ten years ago, gosh. I wrote about him some here -- he is Bishop S in that post. He's in a different ward now, and I don't see him that often, and in the interim he and family went to a different country as missionaries for a couple of years -- but whenever I do see him I am struck by how genuinely interested he is in me and my family as people, even though we're not, like, super close or anything. I think he is a lovely person and has become even more lovely over the years, and although I imagine he will be a somewhat cautious new!SP and I'm sure more conservative than I would like, I think he will be overall awesome. (And I think he will probably not speak as long as old!SP!)
The first counselor was someone I don't know (from the half of the stake that's farther away) but he seems great too, and the new second counselor was announced to be... AMG. I should have at least suspected when he was going to be late for rehearsal Sunday! (he's a control freak about these things, like me, and it was very uncharacteristic of him to skip out.) He is also a wonderful person and he will be awesome. And will hopefully counter some of new!SP's tendency to be cautious about music. Also, now I will almost certainly be reporting to AMG... which I think could be good. I think AMG has a pretty reasonable idea, by now, of what my strengths and weaknesses are (I do have some fundamental weaknesses as someone in this calling -- like -- I hate calling random people to ask them to do things and won't do it, which is really not ideal, though fortunately I am willing to text random people to ask them to do music and generally speaking people are OK with that), and we might do some cool music stuff. Might be more work for me, lol, but hopefully good work, the kind that's fun, like this weekend was.
The youth choir was wonderful, it was good we had the instrumentalists practice but they sounded wonderful, church ended at 12:10 (ten minutes late, lol) and that was it for me for church for that weekend, and E had just enough time for lunch before she skipped off to call for her Sunday orchestra concert, and after the concert we went out for dinner like we always do on Orchestra Weekend :D Props to E, who had even more stuff going on than I did!
The weekend was sort of an exercise in all the things I absolutely love and all the things I kind of don't love about my church. I love sort of the orderly succession of power that happens every few years, and it's actually really cool to see how much love and faith there is involved in it by both the old and the new presidencies. (In this case, I must admit it helps that I like new!SP much more than old!SP.) And at the same time, they call all these stake leaders... all of them are men of course... and they're like, "...and their wives are great too!" and some of the wives got up and spoke and it's like... okay but... some of these women are absolutely incredible and what kind of church is this in the year 2026 that they aren't also the leaders? More than a bit weird! Though the good outweighs the bad, for me (maybe it wouldn't if I had any desire to be in church leadership, which I don't). Because also the organ workshop was simply amazing. The amount of work and love that had to go into making that happen... and it was just so really well put together... my church just does a really good job at things like that, and because they're centralized they can really make some very cool things happen. (Though to be fair the reason it was free -- did I mention it was totally free?? -- was because an individual apparently gave a ton of money to fund these "traveling workshops." But it's certainly the centralized organization that makes it possible as well!) And like I said I am always absolutely blown away by and so grateful for how much commitment people give to choir.
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