THE
ORCHESTRA
RETURNS THIS YEAR!
DEC 16
7:00
MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT CHURCH
We are excited to round the corner out of COVID by bringing back 20 of Baton Rouge's finest musicians to join Michael on stage at Most Blessed Sacrament Church. After several years of solo Christmas performances, the orchestra will perform Michael's original arrangements of Christmas music with some other tunes thrown in. As always, no piano parts have been written so that Michael can improvise over the orchestra's arrangements. Some selections will be fully improvised solo from the piano.
Thursday December 16
Concert 7:00pm. Doors open at 6:00
Most Blessed Sacrament Church
15615 Jefferson Hwy, Baton Rouge LA 70817
Premium seating (in red) is available for $39.99 per seat. Seating in this area is first come first served and is limited to 100 premium ticket holders.
General admission seating (in blue) is available for $30.00.
Parties of 8 or more people will have a pew reserved for them in their respective seating area.
Over the past few years, we've talked about bringing an orchestra back for Christmas and now that we can finally be together for live music, this seems like the perfect time. Now of course, there are a lot more moving parts putting together music for more than a dozen other people. This show is a lot of work, a lot of time, not nearly enough legitimate musical practice, and involves a lot of people without whom it would never get off the ground. But it is a privilege to put on— I don't think I'll ever look at it as something that's burdensome or too big of stressor because playing this instrument in this building makes me the luckiest person on the planet.
The photo on the right is one of my favorite photos from any concert I've been a part of . This was 2016— the second year performing a Christmas concert with an orchestra. I anticipate there being quite a few of these moments between me and the other musicians this year. Borislava Iltcheva, the concertmaster of the Baton Rouge symphony, was sitting opposite of me and I am super excited to be sharing the stage with her and her colleagues again.
To the people of Most Blessed Sacrament Parish— you welcomed me to your parish almost five years ago. I've been a part of your weddings, your funerals, your Sacraments of Initiation, Benediction, and everything in between. Every second of it has been an absolute honor. My singular hope with this performance is to give you a little extra piece of 'normalcy' as we make our way to Christmas.
If you're from Baton Rouge and and just want to hear some Christmas music, by all means grab a ticket. We'd love to see you there! There is a small army of people who work together to make this performance happen, chief among them is Amy Geeding, who for the seventh consecutive year, will be embarrassed when I point her out at the performance. She has been there from the beginning, lending a critical musical ear and sacrificing enormous amounts of time and energy for these shows to happen. Father Phil Spano, Kathy Duplessis, Penne Leier, Jean Mancusso, and many others work together to be the funniest, most fulfilling group of people to play alongside. To them I am very very grateful. We all hope to see you on December 16th!
Yours,
Michael