Just forget the words and sing along

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Reflections on Augustana

Leafing through today's Edmonton Journal, and they have a little write-up saying that the Augustana University Choir has a new album out. I'm sorry...it's the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta now, but it'll always be Augustana University to me!

Actually, this new album was a connection to my new home town of Athabasca...a portion of it was recorded at the Athabasca United Church. I think I've blogged about this in the past. The Athabasca United Church is the largest church in Alberta...when you add a long string of qualifiers. When you add the qualifiers, it's the largest wooden church in northern Alberta in a gothic architectural style. And according to Augustana's Dean, it's got great acoustics.

I traded e-mail with the Dean a few months back...I spied him at my sister's graduation from Red Deer College, but I didn't get a chance to go over and say hello, so I e-mailed him a few days later to say hello, and he said, "Yeah, I was in Athabasca not too long ago..the choir was laying down some tracks in your church." Of course, then, I was a little miffed. I wish he said something, so I could have gotten the Augustana Choir into our little radio station to perform live on the air.

I remember back at CLCR - Augustana's college station - that was always one of the things I wanted to do on my radio show. Around Chrismtas time, I wanted to have the Choir on the show to sing some Christmas carrols. Of course, everyone looked at me like I was nuts. "But the station is so small! You'd never get them all in here!" to which I replied that the chapel wasn't too far from the station, so let's just get some really long extension cords to run down to the chapel. They still looked at me like I was nuts.

That's still one of goals in radio: have the entire Augustana Choir performing live some day.

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