McDougall United has these downtown Wednesday noon concerts during the Christmas season. They host a regular Wednesday concert series, but the Christmas one is different. It's in the sanctuary, which is all decorated for Christmas. Starbucks donates coffee. The Journal donates advertising and carol sheets. The church provides greeters, leadership in the carols, and a number or two performed by the church musicians.
There's always a literary moment in the Christmas series, too. And yesterday that literary moment was ... me.
They had asked someone else - a bigger media name. But they didn't get a positive response, so they asked me to step up to the plate. The musical group was the Pergolesi Brass - and I have to say they were in top form. They zipped through a Bach fugue that made my ears quiver with pleasure. And my ears are usually deaf to the reputed charms of Bach.
John Henry Weinlick, the minister at McDougall, got behind the podium and started an introduction. I'm getting weirded out by these events. There was one a couple of weeks ago - a wonderful Women's Breakfast with 65 amazing women in attendance - and I thought I would die of embarrassment when my accomplishments were reeled off. "I don't recognize that guy!" I wanted to say. So when John Henry started to wax over-fulsome, I pushed him away from the mic.
I hadn't actually had time to write the story down. These days everything seems to take twice as long as planned. So I stood there, in front of a healthy crowd who had just enjoyed the brass, and I had 7 minutes to fill.
I'm paper-trained. I admit it. As a musician and as a storyteller, I am used to seeing the material on the page and lifting it off. I have tried to be less anal about the music - and I find I actually learn it very quickly without hanging onto the security blanket of the page. But flying without a net as a storyteller? Not me!
The good folks at T.A.L.E.S. (The Alberta League to Encourage Storytelling) do this kind of thing all the time. But it's nervewracking. All those people staring at you, and they've been given a buildup...
I started with the brass. The only other known musician in my family was a horn player named Kleebach, and in the mid-1700s he moved from Dresden to London. Yes, it took 250 years for my family to produce another musician. The gene is highly recessive. And it wasn't until a few years ago, when I was researching the period for a show, that I figured out why Kleebach went to London. Handel.
Handel spent a lot of time being his own impresario, lining up singers and instrumentalists for his opera company and orchestral efforts in London. He often went to Germany and convinced musicians to join him in London. And because Handel tended to put his players on barges in the Thames - and brass players are a susceptible and non-swimming lot - he always needed new ones.
So Kleebach went where the work was, and probably played enough Messiahs to be heartily sick of them.
Classical musicians do a lot of work at Christmas. Tinned music doesn't carry the same spirit as a live musician. But it means musicians have an odd Christmas - they work and work and work, and often they find themselves far from home. Like Kleebach in London.
My first Christmas away from home was when I was in Banff in 1985. Oh, it wasn't the first time I had been separated from my family at Christmas. At my level of singing, I was always booked locally at Christmas. So if my family wanted to spend time with relatives, they would have to go and I would be the one staying home. But I didn't mind, because I was out there, enjoying being a part of all those Christmas services.
In 1985 I was at the Banff Centre, and one of my musician colleagues couldn't afford to go home to Toronto for Christmas. I had enough money for one round trip ticket. So I decided to stay in Banff, and I gave him the money to go home. When he came back in January, he was able to pay me back.
So there I was, alone in Banff at Christmas. There were only 4 of us at the Centre, eating our meals at the makeshift cafeteria.
My mother makes a hard, sugar-crystally fudge at Christmas. Somehow the tradition developed that she would make it for the ones who were away - and those of us at home wouldn't necessarily get any. Mother not only sent me fudge: she sent Christmas in a box! There was a small fake tree, complete with decorations. And baking and presents and the fudge!
So on Christmas Eve I sang at St. Paul's church. Then I went back to Lloyd Hall, dressed more warmly, and I hiked up Tunnel Mountain in the dark. I was used to Tunnel Mountain - I had been running up and down it for more than a year. On Christmas Eve there was no-one else there. The bears had gone into hibernation, the elk were quiet, and the tourists were all busy doing Christmassy activities in the town.
I got to the top of the mountain, and I looked out over the town, which nestled in the Rockies and sparkled with the Christmas lights. The stars were bright, and the northern lights were humming in that annoying way they have. But it was music of a kind - the music of the spheres, like a natural high drone. And then I was singing. Christmas carols, mostly. And a little Handel, for Kleebach I suppose. And when I was hoarse, I put my hand in my pocket and brought out a piece of my mother's fudge. And I put it in my mouth to soften it as I picked my way down the mountain in the chill dark, feeling that this was the best Christmas ever: I had music, I had my mother's fudge, and the world had God.
So that's the story I told, on the fly, in my 7 minutes. And it's almost all true...
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