Sunday morn, bright and early, we headed over to St John's Episcopal Church to sin
g a couple of songs during the service. This has GOT to be one of the most beautiful settings for a church I have ever seen. Juliet's mom was very involved here, as is her step dad Paul, currently. My favorite part was when the pastor asked folks to share what they were grateful for: this 4 year old boy came up and talked and talked and finally shared that he was grateful for money. Who could not like THAT. And I have learned that in Maui the dress is VERY casual. Yes, I was wearing jeans to church. How irreverant.
Kent Stewart joined us for a lovely 5-part arrangement by Greg Murai (adapted from his 6 part arrangement) of Duke Ellington's tune "Come Sunday". Thanks, Kent. We loved singing with you and having the chance to hang out for a couple of days! We also sang "The Water Is Wide", which was completely appropriate.Then on to grab a lunch that never happened at a restaurant that was supposed to be good, but where they apparently hired servers that had no idea that they actually had to SERVE the food that was ordered. I'm not bitter ... we ended up grabbing something at McDonalds ... then on to set up for our afternoon show at Seabury Hall, a middle and high
school. (This is Juliet's alma mater.) Yes, THIS is a photo of the school.Stephen Haines is the music director at Seabury and was a wonderful host to us. We set up in the theater for our own concert with Mike Buono on drums and Bob Harrison on bass. These guys are fantastic. We had one rehearsal with them on Thursday and this
stuff is NOT for the faint at heart. Lots of tempo changes, specific arrangements ... they were awesome. The concert was fun, even with SOME of us having to restart a few times ... hey ... it's live music. We also had a really nice videographer filming us during and after the show, the one and only Tim Wolfe. More promo material! Yay!Turns out, in addition to my early morning coffee-pot-turning-on fiasco, my Friends have added a forgetting-the-words-and-starting-over reminder to my list ... but hey! I wasn't the ONLY one who couldn't remember how a song went that day ... :-).
I'm not sure where Dave was in these warm-up photos:
When we were finally done with the LONG but musically wonderful day, we headed to the other side of the island for a dinner at a dear friend of Juliet's, Denise and her husband David. They plied us with good food and wine, we watched a slide show of some of the most amazing underwater photography you could ever see. David Fleetham is one of the best in the world. www.davidfleetham.com
We was tired by the time we got home.
Day 6: Not done yet. Oh no. Back to Seabury Hall where we spent 2 hours with the upper school choir (9th-12th graders) then about 40 minutes with the lower school (7th-8th graders). We sang for them,
fortunately having been able to leave the sound system set up from the night before. And we worked with the high school choir on some of the music they are learning. Stephen Haines was delightful to work with, and we loved singing for and working with the kids.All done. Time to take the sound system back to Bruce. He greeted us with "Praise the Lord" ... if you'll remember, at our initial meeting he believed us to be religious fanatics. He'll never forget us now ... we were all giggling about that one for a long time ...
Not much down-time before we headed out to celebrate Paul Janes-Brown's birthday
at Hana Hou and listen to The Hula Honeys. Paul's daughter Liz and her husband and one son, Max (don't know where Rocky was), Tom Sewell and his wife Michelle who we are renting a house from during our stay, Paul and us. It was a treat. Honestly, I didn't know what to expect but this was fanTAStic music!!!!! Sweet voices, ukulele and tenor guitar and bass, 3 voices singing jazz standards and hawaiian music ... and the company and food was the best. We were so happy to be there with Paul for his birthday. They asked us to sing, so we did. It was a lovely evening. Juliet demonstrated tying cherry stems into knots inside her mouth and yes, hula happened ...On a different note, it seems that Juliet and I have a tendency to murder birds while driving. We have heard, since our fateful accidents, that the birds are actually a bit dim around here anyway, but we each have hit a bird with our cars while driving and almost schmushed another on the way to dinner tonight. It's a bit disturbing to all involved ...
Tomorrow ... sleeping in then to the beach ... finally ... then home Wednesday ...
Aloha,
Angie
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