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It's Christmastide at St. Norbert's Catholic Church....

obviously....


There's the woman who is in choir just for the purest fun of singing. Her simplistic bliss infectious. Another is trying to dirgedly lead others in her section to the Path of Right Notes. The second-in-command is haughtily bored, while the littlest chorister in front closes her eyes in obvious self-rapture. There are those who are COMPLETELY clueless (tenors consist the majority of this group), and those who wish they were. A leader tries, in vain, to show his tiny 2-man section a glimmer of a hope of an idea of what is going on. The blind girl rolls her non-existent eyes at the mistakes her trapeze artist comrade leads her into, getting more frustrated at every misjudged leap. Her face, now frozen because of so much scowling, will make her laugh later. Now however? ...the spicy Latina Grama in the first row, though, I think has finally come to a musical catharsis, where everything now makes sense. The leader behind her smiles pontifically, at least outwardly inattentive of every half- and three-quarter toned error until the blatantly obvious and soured dissonance glazes her eyes over and purses her lips together, seemingly without her permission. We have a new French horn player, though I have a hard time believing that he will be playing with us again. Now I know frenchies can curdle a chord, which is supremely interesting. The tympani has his kettles perfectly tuned... Almost. Well, all but one, and that only a 1/2-tone sharp. But t is before noon, and one can certainly not expect a percussionist to be godly before then. The trumpets, however, only occasionally bump into each other on their celestial flight through the music that rises above an "A." The conductor, though, remarkably keeps a relative cool through the true-heartedness of the performers' zeal for Try.

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