My Cantata

I can’t sleep. I have all these songs that we’ve been singing in choir swirling in my head, and I guess I’m just excited.
Last week, I spent hours and hours working on a new arrangement called, “Far, Far Away.” It’s an adaptation of the hymn, “Far Far Away on Judea’s Plains” about the angels singing to the shepherds, and a song that C. Michael Perry wrote called, “The Star” which was about the Wise Men seeking the star of Bethlehem. I helped arrange the two songs together to be about both groups of people, shepherds and wisemen, rejoicing and coming to witness the birth of the Savior. It’s now one of my most most favorite songs in the whole cantata! I got to hear how it sounded after we previewed it with the choir yesterday. We all were just sight-reading through it, but even still, I could hear the song’s potential, and I’m just excited for how it is going to sound.
Collaborating has been a new experience for me. C. Michael Perry is a prolific Emmy Award winning composer (he wrote a PBS special musical called “CINDERABBIT”) in addition to being a playwright, novelist, composer and lyricist for numerous plays and award-winning musicals that have been produced across the nation. We “happen” to live a few blocks away from each other, and go to the same church building. You know it’s not by accident when things like that happen! Drawing on his experience and talents, I feel, has really been a blessing, and has helped take my music to a different level. I’ve been grateful for the experience and hope to continue maybe learning some of his orchestration techniques– it comes super easy to him, and I’m hoping he’ll teach me!
This Tuesday, I get to do my little musical preview for Relief Society. Five of the songs from my musical will be performed, and I’m excited for that too! All of the songs are new ones that I wrote since it was performed the first time, and the ones that were performed, have quite different lyrics. I might try to record at least a couple of them on videotape, if I can get someone to do that, so you can hear them.
Okay, well I guess I’ll try to go back to sleep now. With daylight savings time, I guess this is where I’m putting that extra hour…. not a terrible use of the time I don’t think! =)