chichester psalms

A dear friend was singing in the difficult-to-get-into university choir at an old church last night, for a gala night of leonard bernstein (composer, conducter and university alumni). The leaves have started to turn and walking through cambridge is to walk through a crescendo of autumnal colours, red, oranges, deep rust, amidst falling leaves. There is talk of apple-picking next weekend and cherry blossoms in washington in the spring. Perhaps a weekend up in Maine too where the wind comes rolling in off the coasts. The choral piece was the Chichester Psalms by the eclectic Leonard Bernstein. His family were in presence at what I think last night was his sixteenth death anniversary. I had never heard it before and in the cavernous halls of the church, as the draughts whispered through the pews; it was perfect and wintry and everything I had never thought I had already imagined.