Once again this year, the third annual Palo Alto All-day Singing was a pleasant low-key friendly singing. Sure, I like the excitement of big singings and conventions. But I also like the singings with forty or so people, because in the course of the day you can actually get to talk with everyone. And the Palo Alto church lends itself well to socializing.
We had about 42 adults and 8 kids. We think of this mostly as a regional singing, and we had people from the following local singings: Fresno, Davis, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Palo Alto. Even though this singing is aimed at those of us in Northern California who have a hard time traveling to other all-day singings, we always welcome a few out-of-town singers, and we were pleased to welcome southern California singers, a New Yorker and a Pennsylvanian. We also had a Polish singer, a musicologist who is spending a year at Stanford, and I felt pleased that I could introduce him to an anthropologist who has done some study of Sacred Harp, and a folklorist/performer.
We sang something like 93 songs, with two song lessons in the morning, and one song lessons in the afternoon. (This is another benefit of a small singing — you get to lead more tunes!) We had a couple of new singers, and at least one singer who’s been singing since the 1960s (though I think she started with the Christian Harmony).
Here are some photos of the day:
Above: Jeff leading in the morning. We had a really good bass section today, and you can see many of them in this photo.
Above: Linda, one of my favorite leaders, as seen from the bass section.
Above: Dinner-on-the-grounds outdoors on the patio, in perfect Northern California summer weather. Just out of the frame to the left is little Cecil, who, though not quite three years old, is already learning how to beat time while saying “Fa, fa, fa, fa, fa….”
Above: Chris Thorman, our chaplain, leading a tune. One of the highlights of the day for me were Chris’s prayers: very much in the Sacred harp tradition, they warmed my soul.