Chatauqua

Last night All Angels hosted 'Chatauqua', a charming event where the British members of the church made pancakes for the rest of us (in honor of Shrove Tuesday), and then we all headed upstairs for a church-wide talent show.

All Angels has an interesting church population, made up of one part families in the city, one part young artists, one part recovering evangelicals, and one part homeless population.  I'm sure there are more parts, but that's what I've discovered so far.  I felt overwhelmed by the lovely beauty of all these people, sitting around the church's all-purpose room in folding chairs, watching kids run around, making chit-chat with total strangers or dear friends, delighting to be together, inside and warm on a cold snowy night.

And the talent show-- a sock puppet show to Carmen's Habanera (see picture), a Chopin Ballade from our minister of music, who is pursuing a doctorate at Juilliard, a 12 year-old who played Vivaldi on the electric guitar, a woman reading stories of her time in Thailand.  An older couple who would pass the time on long road trips by singing together (back before they had a radio) sang a song in two-part harmony about Old New England.  My new friend Rachel, a singer-songwriter who has started to write songs to respond to her friends request for advice was probably my favorite (check her out at http://advicemusic.blogspot.com/), but equally endearing was a gentleman, obviously of the homeless or near homeless population, singing original works.

I decided to go with something comic, and sang the Seguidilla from Carmen, and in a stroke of genius asked the guy who emcee'd the night to play Don Jose.  We never rehearsed, but he is at heart an improv guy and took my direction to 'pretend like you're ignoring me but really you're into me' and ran with it into the hills.   Needless to say, I got upstaged and could barely get through it for laughing, but who cares- raucous laughter for an Opera scene!