Stint as a church musician

I have always engaged in various musical activities besides taking piano lessons and playing the piano.

I am a member of my local parish, St. Peter in Columbus Ohio.  I am also a member of the 930 am Mass Choir.  Our choir is quite amazing, in that we have a very committed group of individuals, many folks who have been members of the choir for over 30 years.

We also have a wide array of musical talent in the choir, including various instrumentalists, a wonderful amateur conductor, several incredible soloists/cantors, and even a member who has arranged music for our choir.  Our able leader, is Debbie Brennan.  She is an organist by profession, but also plays the piano.  Quite simply, she is multi -talented, and is at home at the music studio, local restaurant and at the altar.

Debbie works around clock throughout the year.  She has three Sunday masses as well as one on Saturday night.  She rarely takes a break, but when she does, it is a "call to duty" for the amateur pianists in our group.   We already have one seasoned pinch hit pianist Rosemary Billman.  But Rosemary cannot always "fill in," so to speak.  So Debbie approached me and I agreed.

I learned this from playing Saturday night mass on June 4.  You may think you are ready, and you probably are.  But playing with the congregation is an art, and as with any art, this type of accompanying must be learned.  So one shot at this type of piano playing is not going to be enough.

I approached the whole effort with the idea, that if it went well, I would volunteer again.  I think it went fairly well, except for my page taping snafu.  So I am on the future calendar.

When they say don't shoot the piano player, that kind of expressed how I felt that night.  I decided as Saturday evening got closer, that I should turn pages as little as possible.  I taped the 4 page communion piece in a manner, that I would not need to flip pages at all.  I thought to myself, this is all good.   Well in my travels from the practice room to the piano in church, I somehow had folded that communion so it wasn't sticking out of my binder.

Now keep in mind that the evening was saved by one our glorious cantors, Pam Subler.  She is a wonderful church musician, and brings a quality of singing, that is simply amazing.  She also has a reverence about performing in church, which makes you feel this way:  "Folks you are getting one hour of quality music, in the presence of our Lord"

So we get to Behold the Lamb of God.  It's a piece I have sung and I am vaguely familiar with, so all is good.  I am playing along, thinking prematurely, I am almost done with this service and I can coast tonight and watch HBO.  Wrong.  Somehow my taping and folding operation resulted in page 4 being taped to page three, and in my nervous nature, I could not located page 4.  Pam continued singing acapella, along with my lovely husband Mark, and committed Saturday night church musician Gene.  But I cannot improvise, and alas we scrapped the song for song 2.

Which brings me back to director Debbie Brennan.  If Debbie was at the keys, she would have improvised her way through that hymn and saved the day, and probably saved our souls.  That said, never take for granted the experienced church musician.  They are creating an atmosphere, that might calm you down, cause you to re commit, and even change your life.

So in the end, I realized, one performance does not a church musician make.  It is back to the drawing board, to learn first and foremost a better music taping system, and second, the realization of every pianist expert and amateur, I still need to practice more.

I would have loved to wow the crowd for the sake of the glorious Eucharistic celebration, but instead it was a realization that the collaborative musician qualities of Pam Subler, weres what wowed the crowd.  She had her game face on, and quickly moved to the next song.  St Pamela of Worthington would be an excellent name!

It gives me continued appreciation of the many musicians, who find themselves in a performance, and they screw up something, but they must find a way to continue.  I think performance takes so much courage, and I think it gets easier the more you do it.  I guess one final thing I can say about performance piano playing, is that you are there to share the music.  Sometimes sharing the mistakes, simply confirms that you are human.  But sharing the music, says that you have something to say, and you want to make a difference.

Still all said and done, I got in bed that night and said "OMG, but....thank God for Pam" and that is a prayer.