Sunday Evening at Home

Well, here I am on a Sunday evening. "60 Minutes" is broadcasting a story about Rex, a teenage musical savant, and my cat, Phoebe, is sitting on one of the arms of the chair supervising my blogging. (Actually, she just curled up on my feet.)

It's been fairly quiet weekend, which is fine by me. Friday night was busy-dinner at Keo, then a concert at Trinity presented by the University of Tulsa Chorale, Cappella Chamber Singers and Symphony Orchestra. Keo is a trendy Pan-Asian restaurant in Tulsa's Brookside district. The dinner at Keo was pricey but wonderful-I had the chef''s special, halibut with a red pepper sauce, jasmine rice and stir-fried vegetables, and started out with steamed shrimp dumplings. The fly in the ointment was the indifferent service.

The TU concert was excellent. The TU School of Music has come a long way in the past 5-10 years or so, and this concert proved it. The Cappella Chamber singers presented an fine program of a capella works to start the program, and Rick Wagner led the TU Symphony Orchestra in the "Preghiera" movement of Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana Suite (sometimes referred to as Suite No. 4). The evening ended with an outstanding student performance of the Mozart Requiem, which I consider one of the most beautiful compositions of all time.

Kim Childs has more than adroitly led the choral music program at TU in the three short years he's been at TU. The students sang with clarity, confidence and conviction. Best of all, they had an incredible blend and pure sound-at no point did vibrato distort the pitch, and I never heard any one voice overpowering the ensemble. Trinity was jam-packed with TU students, faculty and community members. I was particularly glad to see a good number of Trinity parishioners in attendance.

Casey and Philippe are taking "a holiday" (as they say in the UK) in England, so Karen was on the organ bench, and David did the choral conducting. Karen did an excellent job with the service-one of the best, if not the best, subs we've had.

And I couldn't help but smile during the Prayers of the People when we prayed for "Barack, our president-elect." I can't wait until the "elect" part is taken off!