A Busy Sunday Evening for Red River Breeze!

Red River Breeze performed twice on Sunday evening, December 6th - first at the Macedonia Presbyterian Church at 5:00 PM and then dashing across town to play for Dilliard's VIP shopping night starting at 7:00 PM. So - we got several more opportunities to play Christmas Music and have our new CD available for purchase!

The first event, at Macedonia Presbyterian Church, was our 3rd year of being invited to perform as the music for the church's Lessons and Carols program. Our thanks to Rev. Kathy Fox and the wonderful folks at Macedonia Presbyterian. Unfortunately, since we were due across town shortly after the program to perform at Dilliards, we were unable to stay and share in the fellowship and wonderful food the church hasdafter the program. I can attest to the fact that it was very nice in the previous two years!

A quick dash across town, and we arrived at Dilliard's (amazingly before 7 PM) to be the music for their VIP shopping night. We played there until 8:45. This was our 2nd year to be the music for this event and I wasn't sure we were going to make this work, but some adjustment on the start time from the very kind Raymond Hicks, the store manager, and we were in! Our special thanks to Raymond Hicks as well as to all of the Dilliard's employees as well as the customers who stopped and chatted with us. Our thanks also to the employees carrying trays of food who found out we were starving (no time to eat between gigs!) and made sure they made frequent passes by us so we could munch in between tunes!

A very busy day for us as well as week - but a great way to start the Christmas holiday!

Stephanie performs at Madison Methodist Church for the Festival of Lessons and Carols

I was contacted by Rev. Jared Wilson 3 weeks ago asking me if I would be willing to perform a Malcolm Dalglish piece called Christmas Lullaby with the Madison Street Methodist Church Chancel Choir on Sunday, December 6th. I received a copy of the music on Wednesday, November the 18th and was intrigued to say the least - Malcolm Dalglish is well known in the hammered dulcimer community as a wonderful dulcimer player and as a composer of really wonderful choral pieces with dulcimer. And, this was a terrific opportunity for me to play as a solo artist and with singers... which I have never really done... The music - after I got to see it - was as beautiful AND as complex as I imagined.... I proceeded to get to work memorizing the piece - since that is the nature of hammered dulcimers. Two rehearsals and a dress rehearsal later, I performed the piece with the women of the Chancel Choir on Sunday morning. This was a terrifc albeit scary experience! The performance of the piece was the next to last piece on the program - which lasted over an hour and a half (so I had plenty of time to get really nervous) - and playing with a choir is something I have no experience with and definitely took some different skills than I have acquired. (Poor David M. - He was tasked with being my practice singer countless times over the 2 1/2 weeks I had to prepare as I worked on getting more comfortable with the tempo and timing of a choir as opposed to a string band! David used to sing in church choirs years ago but his vocal skills have gotten rusty so he was consequently hoarse more than a few times after rehearsing with me!) But, when the time came on Sunday, I played the piece well and the choir was magical in their rendition. The church sanctuary is amazing and I most definitely fell in love with the incredible pipe organ that I have heard so much about over the years! The picture at the top of this post shows just how small I felt performing this piece in this amazing space!

Close-up view of me playing Christmas Lullaby with the Choir.

Before the concert; the bell choir is practicing. I'd never heard or seen a bell choir so this was fascinating to me. Note the amazing pipe organ in front. When it was played, the sound was amazing.

Setting up before the program. I am not nervous yet!

My thanks to Rev. Jared Wilson, all of the members of the Chancel Choir and the folks of the Madison Street Methodist Church for allowing me this amazing opportunity and making me feel welcome in their day of music.

Performance at Downtown Artist's Coop, Thursday, Dec 3rd

Last night, 6 of us in Red River Breeze played for the Downtown Artist's Co-op, http://www.clarksvilleartists.net/, at 96 Franklin Street. This was their 9th annual Arts and Crafts Bazaar held every December and this was the third year we were asked to perform for them. We always enjoy participating in this event and this year the turnout was terrific and coincidently, this was the first real opportunity we have had to debut our new CD and we sold 15 of them! Off to a good start! Members in the band that participated were Steve, David M, Dixie, Melanie, Byron and me (Stephanie) and we were able to play Christmas music for the first time this season. We remain pretty busy the remainder of this week through Sunday - with our normal gig at The Looking Glass tonight, and two gigs on Sunday evening. We should be really good at playing Christmas music by the time we are through Sunday night!



This photograph was taken by Susan Bryant of the Downtown Artist's Coop last year but this is basically what we looked like and where we played this year with two exceptions - David E. couldn't make it this year - he had a nasty cold; and Byron was given the honor of playing in the storefront window to lure folks into the building - definitely a job he enjoyed doing....! Too bad we didn't get a picture of that!

Our thanks to Susan and the folks at the Downtown Artist's Coop for allowing us to share in this holiday event with them again!