Music Pouring Down

Our colleague Jennifer is the CVCA choral music teacher. Somehow, in addition to being in charge of five choirs, Jennifer still finds time to be part of her own group, the Singers Companye. Last Wednesday, the Singers Companye had a concert at CVCA, and Jennifer was kind enough to give us tickets. Mer and I love music, and we love free tickets, so we were very excited to go.

We left CVCA to go home for supper around 6:00 so we could be back for the concert at 8:00. When we got home, we smelled something slightly odd, but couldn’t figure out what it was, until I turned on a light in the living room. We had water all over the place – our bay window was leaking badly, and the water was causing a musty smell.

After some investigation, it turns out that the ice had backed up on the roof (we had 10+ inches of snow and ice on the roof), and while the new roof was not leaking in the house, water had somehow worked its way up under the eaves, where I could see icicles coming out of vent holes. This was not a great situation, but I would not have worried too much about it, except that the top of the bay window comes out from the house and is joined to the bottom side of the eaves. This is where the water was coming in. Happily, there was no water coming in through the actual ceiling, but there was plenty of water coming in through the top of the window.

After supper (and much thought about what to do), I made some phone calls, and found another teacher friend who had a roof snow-scoop (a sort of overgrown garden hoe on the end of a 25-foot pole). Dave agreed to run the scoop over, and Mer headed back to school for the concert (with my urging for her to go since there was no need for both of us to miss the concert). Dave came through with the scoop, and I spent about 20 minutes clearing all the snow off of the roof. Just as I was finishing up, Zach Churchill pulled up with his snow scoop (I had left him a message). He had come over just to see if I could still use the scoop, even though I had not picked up the phone when he called, since I was outside at the time. Zach is a great guy, and I appreciated his willingness to help. Since I was done, I checked on the leak, and it had already slowed down. So, with nothing more that I could do, I headed over to the concert.

I got there in time for the last half of the show. There was no intermission, so I waited for a break in the music and let myself in quietly. I did not want to make a distraction for anyone, so I did not try to sit with Meredith, who was halfway down the aisle; I sat by myself in the back.

To be honest, it was a little hard to focus on the music because my mind was racing with working through the leak situation. Still, I heard about 30 minutes of music total, and after about 15 minutes, I started to hear the music well. The Companye was quite large, made up of over 30 singers. They had a good sound, and finished the evening off with multi-part harmony arrangements of folk music songs, which I really enjoyed. There was a slight distraction, even then – one of the singers must have felt ill, and he left the stage, sat down in the auditorium, and then fell over. Two people quickly checked on him, and he was fine. Still, it took a few minutes to refocus on the music after that as well.

As I said, I did really enjoy the concert once I started focusing on the music. There were a piano and oboe that accompanied the singers, and I especially liked the oboe. I was sad that I’d missed a performance of the main music from the film The Mission, which features oboe, and is one of the prettiest pieces of music.

After the concert, I caught up with Mer, and she had sat with Michelle (the artist and Founding Fool and former CVCA student), whose mom is also in the Singers Companye. Mer and I had a nice visit with Michelle and her mom, and then headed home. Happily, by the time we got home, the leak had stopped. We work with great people, and that was displayed multiple ways last Wednesday.

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