The world got really small last weekend.

Event One:  After Chicago a cappella's Thursday concert at Fourth Pres downtown, we had a coffee-and-cookie reception.  One of the songs on our concert was the now-famous Spanish carol, "Riu riu chiu."  One of our sopranos, Kathryn Kamp, had been speaking at our reception with one of the people in the audience.  She came over and told me that he was from Sweden.   I bopped over and greeted him with my limited Swedish, which perked him right up.   Imagine my surprise when this kindly gentleman, in perfect English, told me that:  (a) he lived in Uppsala, home of the famous manuscript in which "Riu, riu chiu" appears;  (b) he had sung in Sweden with Håkan Parkman, the composer who wrote "My love is as a fever" and "Madrigal [Take, o take those lips away]," both songs that Chicago a cappella had recorded on our Shakespeare CD (our first on Cedille Records);  (c) he had made a point of collecting CDs of groups who had done Parkman's works after the composer died in 1988, so he had bought ours;  (d) he was coming to Chicago for a professional conference and went to our website to see what might be fun to do; and (e) found out we were singing right near his hotel, so along he came to the concert;  (f) he said we were better in concert than he had expected!   Wow.

Event One and a Half:  The Swedish gentleman e-mailed me afterward and told me he would gladly introduce me to Mrs. Parkman if I ever get to Sweden.  What a guy.

Event Two:  This one blew us away.  If you have been at our concerts in the past few years, and/or have heard our new CD, you will know the Luo spiritual from Kenya called "Nyathi onyuol" (For unto us a child is born) by Christian Oweggi.  We weren't sure we wanted to put it on this program yet again since it had been done many times before.  However, when Obama won the election, it became clear that we simply had to put it on the program.  Why?  Well, Barack's father came from the same Luo tribe as our beloved song, so we wanted to honor the musical legacy of our new president!  (Hoss Brock and Brian Streem said from the stage during our concerts that it was really a shameless ploy to get CAC invited to the inauguration.  I was never part of that conversation, for the record... )  So after the Evanston performance, longtime patrons Jane and Joel Erkenswick brought a friend to meet me.  She is a Kenyan nun who is here in school with Jane.  The nun said our Luo dialect was impeccable and she had of course known the text her whole life, but she had never heard the music to the version we sang.

Event Two and a Half:  For our encore, we sang Rollo Dilworth's spiritual "Sistah Mary."  Guess what was the name of the nun from Kenya?  You guessed it:  Sister Mary!  That made me smile.

Happy holidays from the entire Chicago a cappella organization to you and yours.