Saturday, May 14, 2005

Pennsylvania Tour - Day Three

Today started out very quietly. I had a nice cup o' tea with fellow pianists Greg Maroney, Catherine Marie Charlton and Craig Urquhart for breakfast and spent most of the morning and early afternoon just chilling out a Greg's house. Greg has a beautiful farm house on 7 acres of land, with 3 dogs, 3 cats and a myriad of chickens! Anyway, though I had a concert in the evening, I didn't have to leave for it until about 3:30 pm.

So at 3:30 I headed out and east to Lancaster, PA and at 5 pm arrived at Grace Baptist Church, where I was scheduled to perform at 7.

I met up with my contact, Brian Loiseau, who works for Hershey's (as in Hershey's Chocolate). Brian had set the concert up for me and did a good deal of the promotion on it. He has been GREAT to work with. If I had a person like him doing the footwork for me prior to every show I would be a very organized tour performer! I so appreciate the work he put into making this concert happen. He also made me a nice bowl of fried rice for dinner, and of course food always appeals to me. :)

So we got into the church and I must say, it was BEAUTIFUL - a really wonderful building. Very HIGH ceilings gave the place a feeling of grandeur - almost cathedral-like. And then I went up to the front and sat down at the piano. It was smooth as silk. What a joy to play! It was a wonderful Steinway. I LOVED it. After playing the piano for just a few minutes, I knew the concert was going to go very well. Anytime I like a piano that much, it pretty much guarantees a great show. It's amazing how much a great piano adds to my ability to perform. If I don't like the piano, I usually don't end up feeling good about my performance.

The church had a videographer there for the event, and they put up an giant video image of me on the big screen while I was playing the concert. That was a little strange to get used to. I wasn't sure I really wanted to have the video going during the concert, but after I saw how they were combing the video of my playing along with nature scenes and scripture verses (as I shared them), I felt much better about it. It really added a nice element to the show.

Anyway, we had about 50 show up to the concert. Most of the folks were from the church, but a few fans from the local area came to see the concert as well. It was a very nice, and very gracious audience.

As to the show, this was one of my better performances of late. I was completely in dreamland on that piano. What a difference a good piano makes. Now I understand why some of the wealthier concert pianists take their own pianos with them.

I'm really beat so I'm off to bed. Tomorrow, I head out for West Virginia.

David

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