Christmas Concert 2012

In 2012, I was the ward music chairperson.  Mostly that involved picking hymns for sacrament meeting and putting together an occasional musical number.  At the beginning of November, the bishop came to me and said he wanted to do a Christmas concert, instead of the usual ward Christmas party.  He asked me to get the music committee of the ward together (I didn't know such a thing existed) and plan the event.

We had our first meeting and picked a date as far into December as possible.  I gave people a week to find music suggestions and I hit the ground running.  In a short 6 weeks, I put together at least a dozen musical numbers.  There were piano solos, vocal solos, duets, small groups, a kids choir, a young womens choir, and a few instrumental solos.  My absolute favorite number was a version of Silent Night, sung by a sweet family in our ward accompanied by their dad on the ukulele.  It ended up being a tremendous undertaking.  I think I participated in at least 6 of the numbers either as a singer or the accompanist.  Some of the songs were sacred and others were secular, but we mostly avoided the hymnbook songs so this evening could be distinct from sacrament meeting.

I was also in charge of decorations for the chapel.  (Some people were worried about decorating the chapel, but the concert was on a Friday night and it had the bishop's blessing).  I had no budget and most of my Christmas decorations were being used in my house.  I think the Lord was looking out for me and the project because the first few people I talked to about my predicament had extra decorations that were just perfect.  We pieced together the decorations that people had and with the ideas and support of my good friend Jamie, it worked beautifully.

Then there was the problem of how to arrange the concert.  I didn't want dead air while we were waiting for each musical number to get ready.  So I decided we needed some narration to fill the spaces between the numbers.  I did some research on the songs we had chosen and wrote brief snippets to go between each of the songs.  They were generally related to the history of the song or the words of the song.  My intention was to have the narration help focus the evening on the most important parts of Christmas - spending time with our families and the celebration of Christ's birth.  I thought the narration was good, but I needed to find the right person to read it.  I initially thought of having a gentlemen with a beautiful deep voice read for us, but he was singing in one of the songs, so I didn't want to have him do double duty.  Someone suggested a lady in our ward who I probably wouldn't have thought of.  But as soon as I heard the suggestion, I thought she would be perfect.  She has a sweet and gentle voice, very grandmotherly, but in a very subtle way.  She didn't think she would be very good, and she was nervous, but I persuaded her.

The last problem was that we had no chance to run through the concert.  There was no dress rehearsal.  There was only a printed program and me explaining to all the participants how I envisioned the night would go.  So at go time, I felt I had done all I could do to prepare and I prayed that the concert would go well.

It was amazing!  Everything went smoothly. The flow of the meeting was great.  Not every musical number was perfect, but the spirit was strong.   The narration worked just like I hoped it would.  Afterword, the bishop said he was happy with how it went and so many people told me how much they enjoyed it.  I felt so blessed to have the skills necessary to be able to pull off this event.  The Lord blessed me in many ways, many people participated and contributed, and I am so grateful for the opportunity.