after the tornado watch

after the tornado watch, 

red-orange-purple sunset,

all quiet in the west

Tornado watch last evening, but we drove 20 miles anyway to Mt. Pleasant for chorale rehearsal. The sky was covered with an enormous blue-gray cloud like a lid hovering just above the horizon. Blue all the way around, except In the southwest, where there was a giant gray funnel. Not twisting, just a mile wide V of rain. While we sang Mendelssohn's Verleih uns Frieden, I watched the sunset turn pink, magenta, yellow, then red, orange, inky purple.

in the lyrical

in the lyrical

third movement the chapel bat

swoops with the music

For our final performance of Beethoven’s Symphony Number Nine, the choir of 120 singers was seated in half of the balcony while the Southeast Iowa Orchestra and four soloists filled the stage of the Iowa Wesleyan College Chapel. Three of the four movements of the famous Ninth are often loud and sometimes dissonant. However, during the quiet, lyrical third movement, a bat began swooping around the auditorium, flying gracefully in time to the music, over the audience, the orchestra and the singers. No one shrieked and the musicians kept playing. Toward the end of that movement, the bat flew up to the highest point of the ceiling and disappeared. Maybe it went to put on earplugs before the rousing finale. I like to call this unrehearsed part of the program BAThoven!