Week 4: Musica Sacra Warsaw-Praga Cathedral Choir

This was a busy week of composing, applying for University jobs, and rehearsing. As I mentioned last week, my teacher is currently in Los Angeles, CA lecturing at a conference of Polish Music at USC's Thorton School of Music. In his absence, I have been leading rehearsals with the women of the Musica Sacra Warsaw-Praga Cathedral Choir. We are preparing to make a CD of sacred choral music for women's voices. One of the pieces is a new work of mine, Ave Redemptor (Hail Redeemer, in English). We are also continually preparing new selections for our monthly performances in Mass at the Warsaw, Praga Cathedral, (sorry, this video is all in Polish, but there are some nice shots of the cathedral).

(This picture was taken the day after I arrived in Warsaw at my very first rehearsal. A photo-journalist visited the rehearsal to prepare for an article in the Warsaw Times. I'm in the back row on the far right.)

Though my abilities to speak Polish are dismal, we managed fairly well. Most of the 20 ladies speak English well enough to understand most of what I had to say. I tried to always say the bar numbers in Polish, but there are so many 'sh' and 'ch' and 'djz' and other tongue and teeth sounds, that I often stumbled. We had fun and laughed at each other's funny language slip-ups. Though not all of the members of the choir have formal musical training, and a handful can only barely read music, they have a beautiful sound and are very excited to learn and improve.

I applied for 9 University jobs this week and found 3 new listings yesterday. This makes 17 University jobs in the US for my particular area of expertise and the listings only started being posted at the end of August. It's a good year, things have really picked up from 2 years ago when there were only a handful of postings throughout the whole school year. Here's a break down of where the jobs are located by state how many per. Hawaii-1, California-1, Texas-4, Illinois-2, Minnesota-1, Michigan-1, Indiana-1, Ohio-1, Pennsylvania-1, New York-3, Massachusetts-1.

At the request of my Aunt Bonnie, I have been planning to post some pictures of my apartment, neighborhood, and local shopping so you can see what I see every day. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and will have to postpone this until next week. Instead, I'm posting a few videos that demonstrate how to say your numbers, days, and months in Polish so you can get a sense of what I was trying to do at rehearsal this week. Thirty-three is of the devil, it's by far the hardest to say.

1-10
11-20
10-100
days of the week
months of the year

Today we had really great church meetings. I attend the Warsaw 2nd branch where there are about 75 active members. This is the best attended unit of the church in Poland, it's a wonderful and vibrant branch. I actually live in the Warsaw 1st branch boundaries, but there is so much more English spoken in the 2nd branch, that I've received permission to attend there. Our branch president is an American who is a US Embassy employee. There are a handful of other American families here on business. When the mission president is in town (there's only one in the whole country), he and his wife come to our unit along with 4 other sets of missionaries including a retired couple from Sandy, Utah. This couple, Elder and Sister Curtis, just arrived on the mission 2 weeks ago and speak no Polish. They will be working with the Young Single Adults in the area. I learned today that 3 of the missionaries, 2 Elders and 1 Sister, play the violin. Before coming to Poland, I had hoped to find an LDS string player in Warsaw to play some of my hymn arrangements with. I've hit the jackpot here!! Luckily I brought my Principal Player books with me. We are already planning multiple musical numbers. Next Sunday is district conference and for the first time in the history of the church in Warsaw, there will be a special musical number presented by a choir. It happens to be our branch choir. Everyone is very excited to have so much music in the church, it is a very new thing for them.

I really enjoyed visiting with my family on Skype yesterday even though the kids were a little distracted with a new game they just got. Thank goodness for the internet, it makes the world a whole lot smaller. I miss them and love them very much. I'm trying to work and compose as much as possible while I'm here to make this whole thing really worth it. Thank you to incredibly helpful parents who have sacrificed so much to allow Janae and the kids to live with them while I'm away!!

More next week, and hopefully more pictures.