What a day it is! Happy Passover to my Jewish friends!

Louie’s mom invited us for Passover tonight, and we are going, but late…because it is also Good Friday and my quartet plays every Good Friday (or at least has for something like 5 years) at the Third Baptist Church in Midtown. They do a music/readings concert and it’s really nice. This year we are playing the third movement of the Smetana Quartet, a new commission by Sasha Johnson Manning named “O Sacred Head”, and then two Chaconnes: Purcell, and the famous one by Bach but arranged for String Quartet (which is a bit of !!!???##%$%#$# to me but is also fun, I guess.) We play at 7 pm if you are interested.

I’m not sure if it is livestreamed, I feel like I can never find any of this stuff out in advance anymore, and it’ll turn out that an event I played at was livestreamed, but that I didn’t know until after the fact. I suppose I could dedicate more time to finding these things out, but since I dedicated 2-3 hours to tracking down students this week and begging them for their festival videos, helping them upload them, watching them, etc, and that’s a normal week for me…but there is a livestream button and it’s worth trying at 7 pm Central if you are interested. It would also be available later IF it was, as the link goes to Facebook.

In any case, my school this morning was closed which meant that instead of getting up super early I got to sleep in a bit and then do a few different things this morning. I’m headed to my first Good Friday service soon, then some teaching, and then the aforementioned Good Friday concert later. Tomorrow is busier, with a class, recital, teaching, and a Saturday Vigil at a church in Illinois (which is just across the Mississippi River from us, can you believe it?). And then Easter Morning starts at 7 am for me, and I’m playing 3 services!

I know that many of my “I love having my weekends free” from the pandemic have been thrown under the bus lately, but do you know how expensive Norway is? Honestly, I’ve stuck with my main scheduling mantra of “turn stuff down that ruins my teaching schedule unless it’s super cool” and that has worked out really well. I had to move students today for our quartet concert, but that fit into “it’s really cool”. I have some lighter weekends ahead as well, and I’m also playing some weddings and such, but it’s nice to see colleagues. You always get used to what you are doing, whether it’s staying at home more, or running around doing a ton of things. The ebb and flow is part of finding balance, and as I tell myself, Holy Week is but once a year.

We went out for dinner last night at a place near our house, and the neighbor’s cat came out to be petted. On our way back, the cat was out front of our house and we said hello again, and then I realized Muriel was staring out the window judging us and looking angry. (No, I’m not anthropomorphizing, I know how she feels!) I felt bad then and hurried inside.

There are six weeks left of the school year. 5 depending on how you count, or 2-3 if you count the college schedule. Summer is almost here…