Holiday Pops Concert

A couple of weeks ago, Teach came home from work all excited. She had brought me a Christmas gift and she had to give it to me early. I usually don't give in to such pressure, but she insisted. It was a ticket for each of us to attend the Paul Cardall concert!

Now if you don't know who Paul Cardall is, I want you to YouTube him right now. It's OK, I'll wait.

So what do you think? It's all piano music and it is so calming to me. It sort of soothes my soul. The melodies aren't complicated, in fact, I think they are mostly simplified, and even though I'm not much of a piano player anymore, I love his stuff.

Last Saturday night was the concert. We had a huge snowstorm here and I wasn't excited about driving in it, but I wasn't planning to miss that concert! We got there just a few minutes early and quickly found seats. We were rather close to the stage, but sort of behind the huge camera crane that was a few rows ahead of us, so we moved over to the next section. I snapped a couple of cell pics for you, but the lighting was bad so they are blurry. Sorry about that.

About two seconds after we sat down, Teach admitted she had to go the bathroom. I suggested she pick up a program while she was out because we didn't get one. She was back a few minutes later and handed it to me. That was the first time I realized that this was not really a Paul Cardall concert. It was a charity gig for the Salvation Army and the Angel Trees.

At first I was a bit disappointed, but after a song or two, both Teach and I were really enjoying ourselves and we hadn't even seen Paul yet. When he finally did come in he played three songs in a row. They were so beautiful! But I was disappointed when he left the stage again. 

But not for long. The West Valley Symphony was very good and their director was pretty funny. Paul eventually came back out and gave us several more songs and then left the stage for what we thought was the last time. But we were wrong again.

He slipped back out and joined the choir! Now let me say right now that he is NOT a singer. He has a rather gravelly voice that was a bit disconcerting considering his music is so smooth and sweet. But he stayed there for the last two songs and belted it out with the rest of them.

That's where the concert ended. We stood up and prepared to leave the auditorium. Tons of people were milling about and we glanced at the stage and noticed that Paul was giving some autographs to members of the choir. I turned to Teach and said, "Why don't you go up there and get his autograph?" She just looked at me. She was not a rule-breaker. "Seriously," I insisted. "You could just walk up there. Nobody would care." We both looked a little harder. There was nothing stopping us from walking right up there.

So we did!

Teach handed her program to him to sign and I murmured something about loving his music and that was it. We walked from the auditorium and out into the snowy night.


After a nerve-wracking drive, we stopped at a Village Inn near our home for a late night snack. It was so fun to share that time with her. Thanks, Teach, for the perfect Christmas gift!