Tonight we played for the Lorette Community Christmas Concert which we have done often over the last fifteen years or so. The concert is centered around The Seine Singers, the local women’s choir conducted by Arlene Shulz. It  has always included the Lorette Children’s Choir, also conducted by Arlene.

We have fully enjoyed these concerts. They are profoundly local. The church is comfortably familiar. The acoustics in the space are sweet, warm, and rich. As a result, performances here are always full of wonderful sounds.

We’ve performed in a variety of ways at these concerts. For awhile we did the sound. Karen, Don, and I provided accompaniment. In fact, we met Don through the Seine Singers. And, recently, Andy and I have been singing in the bass section of the choir.

From time to time there have been guest performances but, more recently, the concert has drawn on local artists. It was our “turn” this year to provide our own brief set of three songs.

We realized coming in to the last week of rehearsals that one of our selections had a fantastic part for the children’s choir. We presented it to them at the final rehearsal. With a bit of instruction we did one run through. It was really cool to see them catch on to the structure of the song and how intuitively they picked up on some of the finer points of timing. Clearly, even at their young age, they understood what we were doing. And with that one run-through, we left it for the performance.

It is common wisdom in music circles that once all the rehearsals are done, all you can do is get up there and have fun. The Children’s Choir climbed on stage tonight and gave it everything they had. In doing so, they reminded us why we do what we do; for the sheer fun of it.