Playing at Church

Yesterday, after 35 years of playing and practicing piano, I had my first paid gig as a chuch musician. I filled in for the regular pianist at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in San Rafael. I got this gig through the grapevine: apparently they had called six or seven musicians trying to find a replacement, including my friend Wendy Fitz of Fairfax. She gave me the number for the church, and within a week I had practiced and was at the church ready to play.

Things do not always go as planned, however. After hours of preparation, learning new songs, establishing the proper key signature for them, and even reharmonizing some of them, as I sat down to play in the early service, a guitar player walked up, introduced himself, and promptly took over leadership of the music! I had not been told that anyone else would be playing.

In an instant I knew that this would be a perfect opportunity to practice my aikido, to go with the flow. A ten-minute rehearsal let me know that all my preparations had to be thrown out the window and that I would just be along for the ride as an accompanist as he played and sang and led all the music in the service. All the arrangements and new harmonies were forgotten. Rather than being ticked off, though, I decided to let him carry the weight and I could just relax into the role of backup. In the end it was a much easier gig for me!

(I was able to try out my own ideas in the second service, where I played solo.)

At the service I saw my friend and old business partner Liz Chiarolla, and I met quite a few other welcoming and warm parishoners. I was younger than the average by about thirty years, I think. I will probably forever be known as 'that nice young man who played the piano.'

Apparently Church of the Redeemer is one of the more liberal and welcoming and inclusive parishes around, even by Bay Area standards. At one point during the prayers, the leader read a list of names of American soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past week. The list was nearly forty names. (As it went on and on, it sank in just what a pointless and confused conflict our inept president has gotten the military into.)

I am a third generation church musician. My mother Marie Smith Riggs (BA in piano and voice, MA in organ) has played church organ for 40 years, and her father Frellsen Fletcher Smith played a portable pedal pump organ at camp meetings led by his father Charles Wilson Smith all across northern Louisiana in the 1920s. Now it is my turn. Funny how all the rhythms and responsibilities of playing church music are in my bones, now. Playing yesterday felt like one of the most natural and easy things I have ever done. Thanks, mom!