So, even before the pandemic hit, I thought a really cool blog posting would be to talk about my regular “church gig” at St Philip the Deacon and why I enjoy it so much. Now I find myself, like my cohorts, with every public performance canceled for the foreseeable future.
I’ve been playing at St Philip for their 5:30 service every Saturday evening I’m in town for about fifteen years. St Philip is awesome: the congregation is very community-oriented, the pastors always have great messages, and the music program is fantastic. (Shout out to Linda Armstrong, the fabulous music director!) They love music and bring in lots of terrific musicians, in addition to having a permanent professional core vocal quartet for Sundays. Linda is always up for whatever music I throw at her, so we get to cover a lot of the lovely Baroque and Classical rep on flute and piano, and occasionally I’ll do test runs of new pieces I’ll be recording or playing in recital. One of the yearly highlights for me is their Christmas Eve services, at which I get to play chamber music with members of the excellent Minnesota Orchestra in between the six services - a really nice treat for someone who primarily performs in duos or as a soloist.
Another reason I play there is to keep my performing chops engaged. One of my mantras in my Peak Performance workshops, and what I drill into my students, is that performing is not the same as practicing: you can be completely at ease messing around in the practice room, but the energy, atmosphere and mental game totally changes when you’re in front of an audience. Fortunately, humans are great at learning and forming habits, and the more you practice something, the easier it gets. Playing at St Philip is a wonderful way for me to get practice performing in a very low-key, supportive environment, and I feel like I am contributing something of value in people’s spiritual lives, too, which is a great thing.
The other nice thing about a regular performing gig – whether it’s playing at church, nursing homes, house concerts, or wherever, is that when you do have a “big” concert or audition, you’ll have a wealth of past positive performing experience to lean on as you go into a performance where you perceive the stakes to be higher – it won’t feel like you’ve got to scale the mountain from ground zero.
I was reminded of this quite amusingly this past Sunday, when my harpist friend Rachel Brandwein and I were asked to play special music for the Sunday livestreamed service at St Philip. With the pastors and the music staff, there were less than ten of us there, and we were super spread out. Because I haven’t performed in front of anyone lately, my head was so out of its usual performance space, and I actually got really nervous right before I had to play! For people that know me, I don’t get fazed by concerts, big or small – somewhat because of personality, mostly because of many, many years of doing concerts and working to get in the right head space - so my reaction as I realized I was getting nervous before playing at church was astonishing and not a little humorous: “Wha-----!!! Oh my goodness, are you serious???” was pretty much my internal dialog.
Sunday was quite a learning experience for me. I realized that while on one hand it’s interesting to play for myself in this new reality in my basement practice space/gym/erstwhile guest bedroom at home, I really need to be doing something else, too. A serendipitous tweet by Minnesota Public Radio about violinist Emilia Mettenbrink performing a little concert every evening on her St Paul balcony made me realize that, of course, what was stopping me from doing the exact same thing? So off I go to my own backyard deck when the weather’s nice, serenading the dog walkers and the neighbors. It feels good, and it’s something that brings some light and color into my and others’ lives.