As I begin today’s post, I am accompanied by the chorus of His Yoke Is Easy, His Burden is Light from Handel’s Messiah. This is one of those classical pieces where you don’t feel as if Handel quite got the mood right. While some choral pieces seamlessly weave both musical and lyrical aspects together in united perfection, this is one of those that seems to fail to do just that. Pieces like Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, or even contemporary Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna would fall into the former category and while one listens to those, the listener becomes blissfully unaware of any boundary which could divide the text from the melodies and harmonies. Unfortunately, with His Yoke is Easy, one becomes painfully aware of this very dichotomy. However, I must give Handel a little slack. He was, after all, writing in English, al language that has yet to impress anyone who has learned to love classical choral music.

This week of testing for my kids has now ended, and the pressure is essentially off for the rest of the year. The question now is what in the world to do for the next five weeks…the answer to which I plan to arrive at either this evening or tomorrow as I plan out the rest of the year!

As the week ended, a friend of mine Ken, and his girlfriend Jocelyn asked me to play keyboard with them at a café Friday night that their church group typically hangs out at in Santa Monica. Aside from having no percussion, and Ken being forced to go “unplugged” as his amplifier decided to stop working about 10 minutes before we went on, it was a really fun time. One of the best parts was that all my gear fit so much more nicely into the back of my new Civic than had previously into my old Civic. Maybe this will encourage me to play outside my garage more often. We’ll see. [Personal goal: play one live show of original material with Ken before the end of the summer].

So it’s off to plan right now, hopefully I can find a place with central A/C as opposed to the 78+ degrees it is at home right now thanks to my brilliant roommate who decided to cook using the oven when it’s 95 degrees outside!