Reviewing Richmond

We have lived in Richmond seven years now and are preparing to move in a month.

Interestingly, I have had several musical opportunities that are helping me to review the work I've done here.

Last week, I was invited back to Collegiate School, a private school where I taught for several years when we first came to town, to provide a yearly evaluation for a number of the piano students. It was an inspiring day filled with bright young people. There were two brothers with great attitudes who played a ragtime duet from memory. There were several students who had not studied more than two or three years who were making great strides and had prepared lots of repertoire. And there was a brilliant student who really grasped and conveyed the exact character of the accents in the classical era work she was playing. That really impressed me. I also enjoyed lunch with my former boss in the fine cafeteria where I used to eat (including the giant bowl of graham crackers that's always available for an easy dessert.)

On the weekend, I accompanied a senior recital at Collegiate which brought back more memories of student recitals, playing for baccalaureate, and gigs across state. One such gig was accompanying a senior in a scholarship competition in Bristol which was a very long drive, especially after the competition.


This Sunday, I had the opportunity to play for Pentecost Sunday service at Grace Baptist Church. Kathy and I were members there for a couple of years. The congregation is very open to creativity and the arts. I played Chopin Revolutionary Etude for the prelude as the piece seems firey and windy - appropriate qualities for Pentecost. Accompanying the congregational singing for the service also gave me an opportunity to encapsulate much of what I have come to view as relevant to the art of hymn playing while living in Richmond in a final service with that church community. This involves some (hopeful tasteful) text painting, a sense of tension and release following both the text and musical sense of the phrases, ideas about tempo change between verses relating to the text, ideas about the relationship of the pianist and the congregation regarding tempo (sometimes I follow, sometimes I push), and the possibility of binding together numerous musical events in a service by incorporating textures or figurations in the hymn accompaniments that appear in the other service music.

Finally, tonight at choir rehearsal we worked on Ken Medema's "To This Altar" which I first learned at Woodland Heights Baptist Church during the last several years with Kathy leading our choir. It's a very moving piece that touches me everytime we rehearse it. Medema describes it in this way:

"It is about bringing our life problems to God's altar for healing."

The text is broad yet somehow specific (maybe I'm saying that it is deeply thought out and felt, and thus has deeply human and universal application.) Whatever my day's experience is, it finds a healing and warming context in this worshipful anthem.