Getting Out of the Way

Last night we gave our first concert of the tour at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Amarillo, TX.  As the last light of day streamed through the windows of this beautiful stone church we sang our opening piece Crux triumphans, an early French polyphonic piece written by Compere around 1485.  What a privilege it is to perform these sacred pieces, some contemporary, some hundreds of years old and share the message of these texts. Our work, in part, is to make these words vibrant and alive for people today!  Since all of the music is memorized, we do not have the distraction of scores and looking up and down.  We aspire to have the music and text so much a part of us that we are able to "get out of the way"- to move together as a group in every subtlety and allow the beauty of this music and it’s message to ring true on it's own.  Can we be so passionate about becoming the music that there is no thought to ourselves?  I pray that we were able to do this in part last night, and that those who came to St. Andrew's were left with something meaningful.