Christmas Winds and a House Party

Friday night was music start to finish. I can't think of a better way to spend it.

I started out going to a concert by the St. Louis Wind Symphony at St. Anthony of Padua church on the south side of town. A friend plays flute with the symphony and I always enjoy supporting her. The church is beautiful. Huge, high ceilings. A very impressive altar area. Lots of statues of religious figures, paintings of Bible scenes on the walls and ceilings. It’s a great place to hear music. Though the acoustics aren’t the best.

The concert started out with a few vocal numbers by the Carondolet Sisters. They’re all nuns from the nunnery that adjoins the church, though for tonight they were all dressed in holiday style with red sweaters and jackets. All singing their hearts out.

Then the wind symphony took over and played a dozen or so pieces of holiday themed music. Nice big sounding stuff. And my friend Andrea had some good moments to show off her piccolo playing.

After the concert, Andrea’s husband Bob and I headed over to a moving out house party given by my friend and fellow fiddler, Megan. She’s moving to another state to be with her fella. Good for her! Seeing as she had moved all of her furniture already, she invited friends and acquaintances in for a final party at the house. It was pretty great! A hot session going in the dining room and square dancing in the adjoining living room. I played a lot of tunes (some of which I’d even played before!) for hours. Some of the highlights of the session were playing tunes with a Japanese fella, Aki (sp?) who’s visiting St. Louis for a while. He’s a fine fiddler and plays a lot of squirrelly, crooked tunes. Which, of course, I can never get enough of. As well as Aki, some of the best old-time players in town were there. What a pleasure to play with those folks.

Good-natured ribbing was the order of the evening, too. In honor of Aki’s nationality, we changed the names of tunes to “Whale [Ham] Beats All Meat” and “Whale [Squirrel] Hunters”.

Later on a cute young lady sat down next to me with her cello and played for an hour or so. The sound of a cello in an old-time string band setting is a beautiful thing. It did cause me to wonder why at any old-time music gathering, there always seems to be an over-abundance of good looking women and funny-looking men. Just the way of the world, I suppose.

When my fingers wore out around 1:00 AM, I managed to wander around the other rooms of the house and run into many friends and acquaintances; catch up with their news and have some laughs (as well as some beer, whiskey, and a truly historic egg nog! All in moderation, of course.). By the end of it, as I was driving home and the snow was starting to flurry, I had really gotten the old Christmas spirit. It doesn’t get much better.

I've got to start taking my camera with me more often so I can share pictures of this stuff with all of you.