Christmas programs!

Things are just getting crazy in time for the ward Christmas events! I'm the director of our ward choir, and also I am a decent pianist, so that means that I am accompanying about half of all performances this Saturday night for the ward Christmas party, and then I am directing and/or accompanying all the music on Sunday's Christmas program. Then in the evening of Sunday I'll be accompanying a community caroling event in Urbana.

I just decided that for the ward Christmas party, I'll be playing and singing Down in Yon Forest, a cool hymn I just discovered like two days ago. I arranged myself a version of it an hour ago and I'll teach the ward to sing the chorus parts (the 2nd and 4th line of every verse are the same each time). Here's a choir singing it:



So pretty.

Also for the party, I wrote an arrangement of Silent Night and It Came Upon The Midnight Clear as a medley for piano and violin (surprise! I'm on the piano).

For Sunday's program, we'll be singing Lo How A Rose and Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.

If our choir were an audition-only British boys choir, and they sang a way cooler and more difficult arrangement than we are, this is how they would sound:



I have SUCH A CRUSH ON THAT SONG. I wish we could pull off this... or well, anything by John Gardner.

We are doing an easy rendition I got for FREE (yay free, esp. when you have no budget for your choir), based on this melody featured in Rutter's arrangement:



I also love Rutter. Ah. Love him so much. Wish we could pull off a Rutter, too. Oh well.

I also wrote an arrangement of the Huron Carol for performance in sacrament meeting. It sounds only vaguely like this (in that it has the same words! yay):



And in final news, I decided that next year FOR SURE I want to perform Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion by Handel at some venue.

The end.