I get to play with Michael Card in December

When my mom first started checking out churches here last spring, she told me that Michael Card was going to be doing a concert at Village 7 Pres. at the beginning of December. Michael Card is one of Mark and I's favorite Christian singers, and has been for almost 20 years. Mark first introduced me to his music when we started dating; he loaned me his cassette tapes of The Life trilogy so that I could listen to them. It didn't take long for me to decide to purchase the set myself as I loved them so much. I think we still have one set of cassettes in a box somewhere in case we wanted to loan it out (I believe we gave the first set away to a friend many years ago), and we bought The Life trilogy again on CD when it first came out in that format. Mark owns a lot of the companion song books to his albums and can play a lot of the songs on the piano by heart as well as sing them.

Michael Card writes most of his own songs using the scriptures as inspiration and basis for the lyrics and uses a wide variety of music styles to fit the theme and mood of the song. He often uses full orchestras, and gives the oboe a lot of the major themes and descants in his songs (another reason I love his song-writing so much LOL!). El Shaddai, made famous by Amy Grant many years ago, is one of Michael Card's songs. You can hear a wide mix of music styles on some of his albums. The album Unveiled Hope (which I am listening to right now as I write this) is based on passages from the book of Revelation and contains Irish themes, traditional orchestral/choir arrangements, black gospel, rock, and others. Truly a feast for the ears as well as devotional and spiritually uplifting.

The last time we had the opportunity to hear him in concert was when we lived in PA. Bryce was about 6 months old. The concert was in a high school auditorium about an hour or so from where we lived. We enjoyed it a lot; Mark stood in the aisle and held Bryce and rocked him to keep him quiet most of the concert. I was looking forward to just being able to hear a live concert by Michael Card once again. Now that the Festival of Praise concert is over, the Village 7 choir has started to work on their Christmas program. My mother tells me that not only is Michael Card giving a concert on Dec 16, but the orchestra and choir are backing him up! So, I get to play music with him and not just listen this time around! wow! He will be performing The Promise, one of my favorite Christmas albums. Carla said at the end of last weekends concert that the COS is performing that night too, so I don't think she will be in the V7 orchestra that weekend (she also said that that was one concert they need 3 oboes for, but I can't be in two places at once so I will pass on that opportunity this time around). I'm not sure if that means I'll be the only oboe this time- ack! I took my oboe back to the shop yesterday to get it adjusted and cleaned up as that is long overdue for my poor neglected instrument. Hopefully they can give me music fairly soon so I can get started working on it. I want to be prepared and not mess things up LOL! If my oboe is in good working order, I won't be able to blame my goof-ups on it ;)