I don't think I’m going to sleep any time soon

And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just extremely difficult to settle down after something like tonight. Tonight was the first concert in the 2005 Bach Week Festival in Evanston (first ’burb north of Chicago). I sing in the festival chorus; we have three concerts to go (Sunday evening, and then next weekend Friday and Sunday evenings). The chorus is really hitting its stride in its fourth (?) year of existence. The instrumentalists and vocal soloists have always been fabulous, being among the top musicians in Chicago. I do know from various people over the years that an orchestra gig can be just a job, just like any number of other things the rest of us do for a living, but these musicians are here in this festival because they love it. On tonight’s concert, we sang the Bach Cantata 190: Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (“Sing to the Lord a new song”) as the last piece of a splendid program. From the first notes of the first chorus, it felt good. It’s been a long time since anything felt so good. Bach was my first musical love—in high school, I just couldn’t get enough (via keyboard—I seriously avoided singing then). But as my voice is now finally getting the hang of navigating some of those incredible runs, I can really enjoy the feel. I can even almost sing credibly in German, having mostly banished the weird Scandinavian accent. The harmonic progressions I’ve loved for most of my life. They’re so logical. You get to scratch the itch at just the right time. The best part: following the concert, we did a photo shoot, and as the goal of the shoot was to catch us “in action,” we performed the opening chorus again. It’s a challenging chorus, and I think it contains the musical meat of that cantata. And it’s just plain glorious. The atmosphere was electric, and if anybody resented having to do it again, they wouldn’t have dared to say so, because the enjoyment of doing it again just because we could was proudly displayed everywhere. The photographer finished just before the end, but Richard (the director) kept right on going. One of the trumpeters remarked that even if Richard had stopped us when the shoot was over, we would have kept right on going. Many voices agreed. When you’re in that groove and you know it, and you know your fellow travelers know it, there’s nothing else on this earth that can top it.