Well, this has been a busy week with Bells. Busy and exciting. We had our regular rehearsal on Wednesday night. Thursday was a rehearsal with the Tab Choir, where the 6 of us who are performing one song with the choir came and sat through about an hour of choir rehearsal, then were allowed to set up and play through our song one time. We felt a bit flummuxed that we used up a whole evening of driving to Salt Lake, waiting and waiting for 5 minutes of rehearsal time. Oh well. Then we had a make up rehearsal on Saturday, since we had missed one a few weeks ago. While I’m not hip on giving up a Saturday, it was kind of a fun rehearsal. Since it was in the morning we were fresh and not worn out and exhausted from our day. After practice some of us went to Crown Burger for lunch (yum!). Sunday we recorded Music and the Spoken Word with the Choir that will actually be broadcast on Father’s Day. The choir will be out of town for a few weeks, so they’ve been doing two broadcasts a week for a couple of weeks to prepare.
Let me tell you what an awesome experience it is to just be there on stage with the Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra. It was incredibly scary and very exciting and humbling all at the same time. We were told to smile or at least “look pleasant” since the camera could be on us at any moment. We thought we were smiling the whole time, but we have some pictures taken today during the run through that don’t look all that happy or even pleasant. We’ll get better at that, I hope. I think the song went well, and we are all relieved to have that one over with. We are just happy to have survived without melting into little quivering piles of jello–kind of like that old cartoon, was it a “schmoo?”.
I’m actually kind of starting to feel a little more sure about my calling to be in the choir. The first few weeks it just felt like there was some kind of mistake. Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing as they had played in this or that bell choir for the past few years, or taught music at their school, or were trumpet and/or organ performance majors. My list of accomplishments didn’t seem to be equal to the task. Sure I played bells in High school, but that was only for one year and that was quite a few years ago. Yes, I do sing and play the piano a little bit and have a general knowledge of music, but nothing compared to some of these people. After the first rehearsal I came home and cried because it was so hard and I was so overwhelmed. I’ve come to realize that while it may be hard, it’s not out of the range of possibilities. I need to stretch, expand my talents, and rely on the Lord to help me and make me equal to the task.
Oh, here’s a cool thing–they have a directory on the Motab Website where you can look up all the past and present members of the choir, orchestra, and –guess what else?–bell choir! I’m actually on the directory of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! If you click on the link and then put in E for Erickson, then you can scroll down and see all the choir members with that last initial. This is too weird.
http://www.mormontabernaclechoir.org/roster/
There was also a neat little article in Saturday’s Standard Examiner about the bell choir. Although I’m not in the picture shown, I am standing right next to Maranda, but she’s the pretty one in the choir, so I expect she’ll always be in any pictures. Maybe one day they’ll accidentally get a picture of my hand or something next to her.
You look so skinny!!!!!!!!!!1