Comfort! Rejoice! Hallelujah! Amen! ... and we got to sing it all in the Chicago Opera House with thousands of others! Handel's "Messiah" is truly a faithful and incredibly beautiful telling of the tidings of comfort and joy that we delight in as Christians. We are so grateful for the hand of the Lord on the life of George Frederic Handel as he composed this masterpiece... and we're very grateful for the opportunity to sing it every year.
This is a group of us that attended - mostly from our church, but a few other friends joined us as well for the train ride and pizza afterwards!
Ah, yes! The train ride! The train schedule worked out so much better for our group this year, and I think everyone enjoyed every minute of the ride!
Josh and Abbey smiling 'cause they can't wait to start singing... or maybe just smiling 'cause that's what they're always doing these days! We're just under 8 weeks until the big day!
Mom and Joanna
Pizza time! There were about 50 of us that went to Giordano's afterwards - we passed the tenor soloist on the street and almost invited him to join us! It was the first time that we really liked the tenor soloist. They've brought the same soprano back each year and she's great. The bass and alto/counter-tenor have been different every year. We enjoyed the new conductor this year - not that the regular conductor was bad, though! But back to dinner...
Mmmmmmm!
Josiah and Calvin
Chicago at night
All aboard!
Here's a short video clip of the first several seconds of the encore! It's not well focused, and my hand is a little shaky after clapping for several minutes! Yes, we were sitting in the first few rows, and yes, as you can tell I was sitting between the alto and soprano sections... And I stopped videoing because I had to sing the rest of the encore - and, of course, my hands had to be free to clap again afterwards! :-) Hallelujah!
5 comments:
Thanks for posting - I've been waiting to read the details. It sounds like another wonderful evening.....
We attended a "do it yourself" Messiah this season.....no, wait....it was only the man sitting behind *me*, belting out the bass parts in the middle of the choral sections. I guess someone forgot to tell him that we were there to hear the Texas Master Chorale! LOL!
Oohhh! No fun! Though, I sort of sympathize with him... It would be hard to sit through it without singing along.
You should hear our home when we turn the CD on. Various ones of us start singing parts of the alto line, the bass line, the viola line, the cello line, snippets from the piano accompaniment...
Oh, it looks like y'all had sooo much fun! I wish we would have been able to attend...:( But, Christa and Daniel arrived from Texas that same day, so after thinking about it for a while, we decided to stay and see them...lol There's always next year, though! :)
Great post you guys! Keep up the good work!
Thank you for coordinating the round trip train ride, the meal, and the tour. We had a wonderful time! It was a relaxing time of just "following the crowd" and enjoying whatever came :). We're looking forward to next year.
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