Back in NYC: Holy Week at Marble
I am sure I will finish writing about my trip to Japan at some point, but I want to take a little break to write about life back in NYC.
After the trip of a lifetime to Japan, I returned to NYC into the exciting rush of rehearsals for Holy Week at Marble Collegiate Church. My third season at Marble and FINALLY I get to sing a Holy Week! Our director, Ken Dake, chose a wonderful, diverse array of repertoire for the four major services of Holy Week and we got started the evening after I arrived back in the USA. It was a delight to be delivered back to the city into the hands of such a wonderful community and wonderful colleagues making exquisite music. Ken invited me to sing a solo in his own arrangement of “Calvary” with the choir on Maundy Thursday and an a cappella version of “Were You There” to end the Good Friday service. I was honored to sing both of these deeply meaningful pieces and to celebrate these important services using my heart and my gifts. I was able to dig into my soul and offer that as a gift to the congregation. I want to get to do more of this kind of performing! Both of these services are available for viewing at marblechurch.org.
And I got to sing my first Mozart Requiem! For all the choral singing I have done in my not yet very long career, I have gotten to sing very few of the greatest hits (never sung a Messiah, a Brahms Requiem, very little Bach, for example) so it was an absolute delight to dig into such powerful, brilliant and exciting music with such a great ensemble. It reminded me so often of singing Idomeneo chorus with the Arnold Schönberg Chor in 2016. Oh, I loved the choir! And then, upon arriving to our dress rehearsal with the orchestra before the Good Friday service, I was delighted to discover a couple of Marlboro colleagues in the orchestra. It was a lovely time of music-making and bonding with special colleagues.
Amidst Holy Week rehearsals, I attended a wonderful performance of Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier at the Met Opera with Linda. It was my first time getting to see my dear friend Mitchell perform with the orchestra. The music in this opera is exquisite, the story and setting are classic Viennese to the max and it has lots of great oboe solos, so quite a treat to share this experience with Linda. The downside is that it is 4.5 hours long (with intermissions). My dear opera community: I know the music is iconic, but this is simply too long. I couldn’t stay awake and I love this opera and have performed scenes from it. If we want to maintain audiences, we need to start cutting these things down to digestible sizes. Speaking of digestion, Linda treated me to an exquisite dinner experience at the Grand Tier restaurant at the Met. It was iconic: the high society folks enjoying their *regular* pre-opera dinner, the beautiful presentation, the view of my alma mater from my seat… But in all seriousness, it was a really special experience, and we had the option to return for dessert during the first intermission, which was awfully fun!
I have gotten to start sharing my Japanese snacks and tea with my friends and it is SO much fun! I reconnected with my friend/colleague/one-time roommate Eliza for the first time in years at her beautiful place in Queens. She made a wonderful focaccia and caprese that we shared and then we had a lovely Uji sencha with a small plate of desserts aka deLIGHTS: matcha warabi mochi (jiggle, jiggle), yummy langue de chat cookies (matcha and strawberry) and a matcha mochi that BLEW. MY. MIND. I had picked up these mochi as an afterthought at the matcha cafe in Kyoto and I should have gotten 7 boxes- they did NOT disappoint!! I can’t even tell you what was so remarkable about the flavor, but it about did me in. Catching up with Eliza was like no time had passed, except that enough time had passed that we couldn’t get caught up about everything. I foresee many tea dates to come <3
Next up was my dear friend/sister Janice. This woman is truly a light. She is so positive and encouraging, so upbeat and sunny. We have been friends for almost two years and I am so grateful to share a city with her. I had fun cooking all morning for her and serving a miso-fish “curry” from a NY Times recipe. We went on a lovely sunny walk to the East River to glance at the Manhattan skyline (it’s alright ;-) and then returned to enjoy the most lovely sencha tea (gifted to me by Anna at the end of my trip <3) and round 2 of the mind-blowing mochi. Between Janice’s inspiring light and the delightful caffein of the sencha, I decided to whip out my watercolors after a long hiatus.
And thanks to two mamas in Japan, Stephanie and Okasan (Kosuke’s mama), I came home with some beautiful origami paper that has been a wonderful reactive outlet for me over the past week as I have been fashioning cranes and flowers that now can be found adding color and life to different parts of my room.
I also continue to shrink my far-too-large mug collection by turning mugs into pots for baby house plants. Propagate, baby, propagate.
Easter was a blast! I was surprised that the main musical focus of Holy Week at Marble was Good Friday, after having sung such a huge production for Easter Sunday in Paris last year, but after a week of so much singing (plus allergies), it wasn’t bad to have a little respite (meaning, I wasn’t singing any planned solos). There was a moment in the last hymn where Ken was doing a big, growing improvisation/modulation into the last verse when he cued the brass with his head and several choristers started verse 4 as well. This isn’t so uncommon, to come in early after the improvisation, but I had specifically memorized the first few lines of the last verse so that I could sing full voice and out to the congregation. When suddenly I was the only person singing and felt gentle bumps from the people on either side of me, I was a bit surprised! Easter solo after all. Who doesn’t love an unplanned solo? Well, it was jubilant, if wrong 🙂
After church, I came home and started making scones. It turns out that the NYTimes cooking recipe for scones is fantastic- I have never made a scone that was so biscuit-like and perfect! And I put together some cucumber sandwiches while catching up with my dear friend, Nora, on the phone. I have never hosted a tea party like this before, but it was really a proper tea party. My friends Matt and Yvette arrived at the same time and we had a lovely time enjoying treats from Japan, the goodies I concocted and the delicious sencha from Anna! It is truly a gift that keeps giving to see my friends try this tea for the first time.
Then I was off to Manhattan again to finally return to Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship after a hiatus of several years. Though I arrived late, no one missed my entrance: hard to miss an opera singer joining the throngs mid-hymn. It was delightful to be part of this group again after so long, so familiar to be around folks of my own culture. For the final hymn, the song leader hinted that if someone was brave, they could sing the descant. The small group smiled as they knew this challenge was intended for me. So I obliged and it was fun, though generally I prefer not being regarded as a professional singer at church. It was quite lovely to reconnect with folks after the service though.
My final stop of Easter day (just one more classic instance of my overzealous planning), was to enjoy some sake that I had brought back from Japan with Mitchell. I also brought the leftover scones with some cheese and a few other little snacks, so we had a regular little floor picnic! We made some matcha, despite the hour and tasted his matcha vs mine. Mitchell proceeded to patiently try to teach me how to play video games… oh dear… I fear that this will never be a strength of mine and I am not ashamed by it ;-)
Life in NYC continues to be deeply enhanced by the richness of my relationships here. Now, if I can really generate a good, steady income, I think things will start to feel stabler.
Marie in NYC
