have you ever been inside of an organ?  i hadn't until reilly took me up into the huge organ at national presbyterian.  with 7000 pipes, this multimillion dollar instrument is over three stories tall and about twenty feet deep.

^^reilly poses with some of the metal pipes^^

^^once you climb inside, there are mazes of planks to access different areas but no real walkways that would obstruct the sound^^

^^reilly pretends to lift one of the massive low register pipes :) ^^

after my tour, reilly climbed back down while i stayed to hear something played from the inside.  then something really cool happend that i wasn't expecting.  when we listen to live music it always comes at us from one direction.  even if you stand in the middle of an orchestra while it's playing, it's still not quite three dimensional.  but when you are inside of an organ, pipes are all around you in every direction, some close and some far, so the sound comes at you from every direction and from many different distances.  it's kind of like the first time you heard dolby surround sound in the movie theatre and it gave you chills.

i'm not especially into organ music, but this was moving.  it was surround sound, but live.  and loud. and the vibrations actually move your body.  this video kind of gives you an idea of it.  it's dark in the organ so you can't see anything in the vid.

 
inside an organ from Katie Gill on Vimeo.

my last day of work was our sunday concert at national presbyterian.  it was bittersweet to be so excited about leaving, getting married, and going to australia but at the same time saying goodbye and enjoying one of these beautiful concerts for the last time as an insider.  schutz's musikalische exequien and bach's trauerode were both on the program.  they are both for funeral services and since we're kind of leaving one life and starting another i thought it was cool :)

it's really crazy how many people you meet and how much you learn in only three years of working somewhere.  there are lots of people to miss in this town!

todd studies a score while reilly plays for brandenburg vi.  the weather was nice so we had lots of light coming in those awesome windows.

it's concert week which means lots of listening to baroque instruments and dealing with baroque musicians. this concert is going to be a good one!  and my anthropologie sale stuff came in the mail! and our dogs are adorable, as usual, as is the fiance ;) ...not much to complain about!

Music confetti! What a brilliant and easy idea for wedding reception decor!

First, I took discarded copied music from work and coffee stained it.  I suppose if you're going to coffee stain music, it's most appropriate that it's Bach.  Apparently addiction to coffee was a "pressing social problem in eighteenth century Leipzig".

Before and after staining

Once the music was stained, I used my new Ek paper punch to make lots of fun confetti.  Looks good!