Friday was a quick but enjoyable day in Seattle. We pulled in during the late morning, and most of the choir spent a couple of hours at the Pike Place Market, enjoying the sites, shopping, and finding fun food. Four current (and future) graduate students joined Dr. Crane at a workshop at the University of Washington with Dr. Geoffrey P. Boers.
We next bused to the chapel where we would be performing in the evening. The Davis family (daughter, Amelia, is a wonderful alto in the choir) brought in a delightful dinner, and the choir had a chance to kick back, eat, and enjoy being off the bus.
We weren’t too sure how much of an audience there would be since the venue had been changed recently and there was some confusion about the start time of the concert. People started arriving at 6 (put that down to the time confusion) and by 7:15 the chapel was full, the overflow was full, and chairs were set up pretty far into the cultural hall. The Bellevue Stake Center has higher ceilings than most chapels, and that made for a very nice place to perform. We had many BYU Singers alumni as well as alumni from other BYU choirs in attendance; that always make the concert more fun to perform.
In performance.
David Kime, organist/pianist extraordinaire and a valued bass in the choir, sent me his feelings about the concert last night. I’ll let him conclude the blog for Bellevue.
“I am always amazed when we have some sort of performance in a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints… it doesn’t matter whether we are singing in a sacrament meeting, giving a devotional, or performing a full concert…it just feels different and so special. I think the whole choir was dead tired today; we’ve been on a bus (it seems like), longer than we’ve been anywhere else. I was kind of expecting we could have sort of a difficult performance tonight. Just the opposite was true… not only did Molly Ijames fly here to hear us sing her arrangement of “Someday I’ll Meet You Again,” but we walked into a chapel that was full well into the gym with people who had come to hear us sing.
“From the beginning of “Awake, My Soul,” it felt like the choir was electrified, fully “locked in,” as Dr. Crane has been encouraging us to be throughout this tour. Our instrumentalists were on point, the soloists were fantastic, Jennifer knocked her conducting out of the park, Alex Keogh’s “getting to know you” routine was better than ever, and, more importantly, the choir was acting as one, giving to the audience the very best that we could. Dr. Crane’s conducting encouraged us to continue giving, and we reflected that energy to a receptive, appreciative audience. Heaven felt especially close during “I Am a Child of God,” and “How Firm a Foundation;” with the Spirit touching both the choir and the audience.
David Kime’s organ solo.
“After performances like tonight, my heart feels full to bursting with gratitude. I get to testify of Christ, of His love, and of His power in song with 40 of the kindest, most excellent, and most caring people I know. I feel so blessed that I’ve been given an opportunity to be one small part of an ensemble made of musical and spiritual giants. Maybe it is the musical excellence of BYU Singers that makes it such a special ensemble, but I believe it is also something so much deeper. I think it is the light of Christ that shines through the music. The Light that changes us, that changes our audiences, that changes the world…concert by concert, song by song, one heart at a time. “
